Blogs For Victory

Got a lot of things to do Thursday morning, so no time to put up a good post for the AM. Have at it, boys and girls and I’ll come up with something later.

That ol’ Law of Unintended Consequences can be quite a bear:

McDonald’s Corp. has warned federal regulators that it could drop its health insurance plan for nearly 30,000 hourly restaurant workers unless regulators waive a new requirement of the U.S. health overhaul.

The move is one of the clearest indications that new rules may disrupt workers’ health plans as the law ripples through the real world.

Trade groups representing restaurants and retailers say low-wage employers might halt their coverage if the government doesn’t loosen a requirement for “mini-med” plans, which offer limited benefits to some 1.4 million Americans…

I know you liberals out there will just say this is greedy bastard corporations just being mean…but McDonald’s wasn’t hinting at dropping coverage pre-ObamaCare, and now they are. It is a cause and effect relationship. There is, really, no free lunch – and your attempt to create one is merely making corporations come to some hard and fast decisions…they can either be rapidly bankrupted dispensers of government mandated health care, or they can stay in business. Naturally, they are going to choose staying in business.

More than likely, they’ll get their waiver, however – large corporations know how to grease Democrat palms to get what they want. The real burden will be on small and mid-sized businesses who, surprise!, don’t have bottomless wells of money to pay for whatever it is Obama and Co want at the moment.

Repeal and replace – simple rationality demands this.

Because we essentially shut down a vital part of US manufacturing and shipped it to China – from Bloomberg:

A generation after Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping made mastering neodymium and 16 other elements known as rare earths a priority, China dominates the market, with far-reaching effects ranging from global trade friction to U.S. job losses and threats to national security.

The U.S. handed its main economic rival power to dictate access to these building blocks of modern weapons by ceding control of prices and supply…

The materials are used in making some of our most advanced weapons systems – we used to make the materials, now we don’t. We hope to ramp up some production by 2012, but the article says it could be 15 years before we’re in decent shape. China has reduced its exports of these materials and is using its leverage to obtain concessions from us and everyone else who uses these “rare earth” metals. This is criminal negligence in our part.

We can no longer afford to have others manufacture our goods for us. For the prosperity and safety of our people, we must engage in a crash course of re-industrialization…and if this takes a trade war with China to do it, then that is just what we’ll have to do. This is serious business and we have to treat it as the grave threat to national security that it is.

The environmentalists will have to shut up. The unions will have to stop trying to suck the life out of the American economy. The regulators need to be bound and gagged. The tax man has to be shown the door. We have to get busy working – and restore America to pre-eminence in manufacturing.

The story from Hot Air:

I’m surprised Gloria Allred didn’t wait two days to hold the press conference so that it’d be a true October surprise.

Well played, Democrats. Very well played.

Nicky Diaz, the household worker who alleges she was fired by Meg Whitman, the Republican nominee for California governor, after telling her that she was undocumented has recounted her version of what happened when she asked Whitman and her husband for help in June 2009…

I hate to disagree with Allahpundit here, but I have to say – very badly played, Democrats. Oh, I understand that this is a devastating little sound bite which will rock Whitman on her heels for at least a few days – in that, it is well played. But in the fact that it came out on September 29th rather than, say, October 25th…very badly played.

What it means is that the Democrats have done their internal polling and realize that they are losing the gubernatorial contest. This sort of bombshell is not the sort of thing you use if your candidate is well ahead…and not something you use if you’re running neck and neck with your opponent until the last week of the campaign. Using it now, more than a month before the vote, is a desperate ploy; an attempt to change the narrative in the hope that some how, some way, Whitman will self-destruct over it.

Now, perhaps Whitman will implode over it. Its clear that Ms. Diaz is a liar (she provided forged documents to Whitman when she took employment in 2000), but if it turns out – as some stories have alleged – that Whitman got the tip from the IRS in 2005 that Diaz was illegal, then the fact that Whitman didn’t fire her until 2009 will be extraordinarily bad news. I don’t think, in the end, it will be enough to hand victory to an aging, establishment liberal like Jerry Brown…but, it could. The lesson then would be to very carefully review all Republicans candidates…if they ever hired anyone of foreign birth, they’d better have gold plated proof of legal status.

But the larger picture is that the Democrats are losing, know it, and are getting desperate. Regardless of how this turns out for Whitman, its good news for Republicans.

Yet another example of the Culture of Death’s war upon freedom and human decency:

United Nations officials have asked the Human Rights Council in Geneva to address the issue of physicians worldwide who refuse to perform legal abortions.

Brian Clowes, director of research with Human Life International (HLI), tells OneNewsNow the statement simply fits with abortion proponents in the U.S. who want a future in which obstetrician-gynecologists cannot refuse to perform abortions, suggesting their religious concerns are nothing more than pure emotion. He says that also fits the philosophy of the Obama administration…

Indeed, it does. Nothing so rankles the pro-abortion movement than the fact that most doctors won’t perform an elective abortion. This is, quite simply, because most doctors know full well that an unborn child is a living human being. All that being a doctor is about revolts against the notion of performing an elective abortion. Only the most low-grade holders of a medical degree do such nauseating things – and they are getting fewer and harder to find…abortion is coming to an end for lack of practitioners. And so the Culture of Death wants to make it mandatory that you be a killer if you wish to be a doctor.

Thus the result of telling a lie – in this case, the lie that there is a right to an abortion. No right can ever be dependent upon the action of another human being. We are endowed as individuals with our rights – we have no right to command others to do for us. But, we allowed the pro-abortion movement to spread the lie that a woman has right to an abortion – and it is but a step from that to say that a woman then has a right to both have her abortion paid for, and the right to force a doctor to perform it.

We have been too weak and too cowardly – we must boldly state the truth of the matter. Even if abortion is to remain legal for a time, it must be made clear that you don’t have a right to one and that if you wish to engage in that horrific, anti-human practice, you’re on your own. Obama and his Democrats are pressing the issue (I’ve heard that in the Lame Duck session they’ll once again try to force through taxpayer funded abortions) – the Culture of Death paid a lot of money to help Obama in to office, and they want their pound of flesh…human flesh, to be consumed for the profit of twisted people.

No time for a truce in social issues, as some have called for – if we let these things slide, then ever new horrors will be visited upon us, leading to our utter moral degradation. Now and every day, we must fight against this.

HAT TIP: The American Catholic.

Amazing:

Pat Boone throws a red, white and blue bash, which was attended by about 200 people angry, in a Libertarian way, about taxes, government spending and a political process seen as broken and bankrupt.

“I am an American,” Pat Boone belted out the other day to an adoring crowd. “Born to be a rootin’, tootin’, flag-waving citizen.”…

The message is spreading – and people are very much fed up with things as they are. November 2nd will astound.

There have been rumors of manipulation of the stock markets for months now. As the economic news has worsened, people have watch in stunned amazement as the stock market has rallied. This market has rallied while “insiders” (corporate bosses who are in the know) are massively selling stocks and while capital has net flowed out of the markets for weeks on end. Today, the market was up, again, in spite of a raft of bad news (noted earlier here). Over at Zero Hedge, a possible reason for this:

…the Fed has continued to monetize Wall Street’s debts EVERY options expiration week since QE 1 ended… proving beyond a doubt that the Fed’s QE program did NOT actually end in March…

…last week Ben Bernanke pumped an additional $11.05 BILLION into the system ON TOP of the $11.15 pumped via the POMOs (the major banks who control sales of Treasuries – ed. note). In plain terms, the Fed juiced the system by $20+ billion in a single week, bringing its liquidity pumps RIGHT BACK QE 1 LEVELS.

If you want to know why stocks have rallied in the last month, this is THE reason. The economy isn’t improving and the European Crisis isn’t over. Nothing has improved. All that has happened is the Fed funneled money into the Primary Dealers who ramped the market…

The linked article has a chart which tends to confirm this assertion – that the Fed has found a means of pumping massive amounts of money in to the stock markets, thus keeping prices high and rising in spite of economic news which should have the markets in the tank. Why are they doing this? Likely because the whole purpose of TARP and “stimulus” has been to keep the largest financial institutions from going under.

There are two motivations for that action – primarily it is because Bernanke, et al are part of our failed financial system and simply won’t allow their friends to go under. Secondarily, it is because the economic theories believed in government and high finance hold that a financial crash followed by bankruptcy is the worst thing which can happen. In their understanding, that is what caused the Great Depression – that it was actually caused by a fall off in demand resultant upon the destruction of life and wealth in WWI and the “Spanish ‘flu” of 1919 entirely escapes them. In Bernanke’s mind, he’s saving us from disaster (and, as an aside, he’s doing what he can to protect the Democrats…a Dow at 5,000 wouldn’t help matters on November 2nd…and only the Democrats stand between the Banksters and complete disaster, for the Banksters).

We cannot be sure that this is happening, but the circumstantial evidence indicates that it is, indeed, the case. Our best means of finding the full truth is to audit the Fed, as some have been calling for. My preferred ultimate outcome is to abolish the Federal Reserve, entirely and leave our financial and monetary policy entirely in the hands of elected officials, who are at least vulnerable to popular discontent. Leaving it in the hands of un-elected bankers who meet in secret has proven a disaster, and is un-American, in to the bargain.

And, indeed, to the whole of the United States Congress – from the Orlando Sentinel:

In an attack ad labeling his opponent ” Taliban Dan” Webster, U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson uses Webster’s own words to prove the Republican thinks wives should be subservient to their husbands.

One problem: The Grayson campaign edited the original video, chopping it up and taking Webster’s words out of context. Webster actually was advising husbands to bypass those particular Bible passages, according a longer video clip released Monday by Webster’s campaign…

…(Webster’s) wife, Sandy, said his words were taken out of context…”Alan Grayson is a disgrace to this district.”

I won’t link to the Grayson ad because it is nauseating in its falsehood – quite honestly, he deserves to be expelled from the House, or at least censured. That won’t happen, of course, because the Democrat leadership doesn’t care how disgusting the lie is; their only concern is whether or not it will work. If Grayson manages to get re-elected, then Democrats will be fine with whatever he does.

But there is a matter of honor – and this isn’t just an over-eager mistake; this is the deliberate falsification of what a person said in order to slander him in public. It is a lie, more over, designed to provoke hatred and division.

The Democrat party will stand in disgrace just as long as Grayson is a member – and especially an elected member.

They want a big rally for DC – and to help ensure the grounds aren’t empty, they are giving away tens of thousands of free rides…kinda says it all about liberalism, doesn’t it? From Big Government:

On October 2nd, the NAACP and national labor unions will give tens of thousands of people free bus rides, free lunches, free T-shirts and free Metro farecards as inducements to attend the One Nation Working Together rally being organized by a coalition of radical leftist organizations at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has promised to give free bus rides from major metropolitan areas within twelve hours of D.C. The United Steelworkers are also busing in demonstrators from across the Northeast. Even the Screen Actors Guild is ‘getting on the bus.’

Local NAACP chapters on the East coast are also offering free buses, as are the Communication Workers of America.

Rally co-sponsor the AFL-CIO states, “Unions are sponsoring some 1,400 buses from around the country to come to the march.”

At an average of an estimated 50 passengers per bus, that comes to about 70,000 attendees getting free rides to the rally.

They are doing this because they have to – unless you do it for a liberal, most times he won’t do it. Don’t you realize how hard it is to get a bus ticket and plan a trip all one your lonesome? There is not among the left that spirit of volunteerism there is among the right. Partially this is because of liberal servility – they always wait for orders and couldn’t imagine deciding to do something on their own – while another part of it stems from simple lack of enthusiasm.

This rally will, of course, be massively covered by the MSM and the crowd estimates will run towards 500,000, at least. But it won’t really be anything. No event which takes this much organizational prep work is other than a propaganda ploy. They’ll get their positive news cycle, and that will be the end of it.