Blogs For Victory

I don’t think this scandal will go away:

There are two possibilities here. One is that Sestak was embellishing or outright fibbing, and the White House doesn’t want to hang him out to dry… The other is that there was some kind of offer, which might be illegal but is — in any case — the epitome of Washington insiderness and backroom deals, which the voters have come to loathe.

His opponent, Pat Toomey, echoes the New York Times (yeah, it’s a weird election year all right), putting out a statement that is restrained in tone but asks for a full accounting: “My response is simply this: Congressman Sestak should tell the public everything he knows about the job he was offered, and who offered it. To do otherwise will only continue to raise questions and continue to be a needless distraction in this campaign.”

It is a measure of how frustrated the press has become with the perpetual stonewalling and outright contempt this president has shown the media that the Times and other outlets are now aligned with a conservative Republican in demanding that one of the most liberal Democrats on the ballot come clean.

I doubt that Sestak was lying – anything is possible, but to make something like that up out of whole cloth not at all likely. He was offered something – or at least was given to understand he was offered something (it is doubtful that it was ever as straightforward as “if you get out, we’ll give you this; there would be a wink/wink, nudge/nudge aspect to this). It is also very much in keeping with the Democrats MO – they do these sorts of deals on a regular basis (you might recall the way they booted Bob Toricelli off the NJ Senate ballot – illegally – when the Powers That Be became concerned he would commit Mortal Democrat Sin…ie, lose the race).

So, who said what to whom? This is what must be answered – and the longer Sestak and the Administration stonewall, the worse it will be. Of course, it is much worse for Sestak – he already had an uphill climb to try and win the race ,now its a lot harder. For the Administration, not such a big deal. One more Democrat Senator, more or less, doesn’t matter and if Sestak loses, then the whole scandal dies for lack of interest.

Bad for Democrats, fun for Republicans – I wonder how long they’ll keep the stone wall up?

Some of the latest news:

North Korea accused South Korea’s navy Tuesday of trespassing in its waters and threatened military action, further raising tensions sparked by the sinking of one of Seoul’s warships in March.

The South has announced a series of reprisals including a trade ban after a multinational investigation concluded last week that a North Korean submarine had torpedoed the Cheonan on March 26…

Why on earth would North Korea torpedo a South Korean ship? I know – the rulers of NK are a bit lunatic, but where is the upside on this action? What were they hoping to accomplish?

I was initially thinking that this was a move to just shake us down for some more bribes – given the sort of President we’ve got, it was a good bet that provocation would be rewarded. But now things are taking a decidedly ugly turn. There is a real threat of a shooting war – not big; not like its sure to happen in a week…but its definitely there.

I begin to wonder – who benefits from a blow up on the Korean peninsula? Not the Koreans, to be sure. Neither do we. Japan sure as heck has to be nervous as all get out. Who?

China is about to have one heck of an economic downturn – they have to pay the piper for all the free money they shoved in to their economy in a bid to get past the recession. There are bubbles stacked upon bubbles in the Chinese economy and they all must come down – could it be that China is stirring the hornet’s nest?

A major crisis in Korea allows people to blame that for a severe down turn in the Asian economy – rather than blaming the Chinese government for their asinine economic policies. A blow up in Korea allows the Chinese government to excuse itself to the Chinese people for their coming economic problems – not our fault, those dratted Koreans did it! A war in Korea will distract the world completely from what is going on in China while China endures the down turn, represses its own people and puts its fiscal house back in order. And its not like it’d be hard for China to get hold of a North Korean torpedo and use it to hit a South Korean ship…heck, China might even be the source for NK’s torpedoes.

This is all just a theory of course – but if someone has a better one, I’m all ears.

The “unsinkable” ship is sinking, and sinking fast.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 24% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-four percent (44%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -20 (see trends).

The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve.

Ann Althouse notes:

“[W]hat if we could just be China for a day?… You know, I mean, where we could actually, you know, authorize the right solutions….”

“… and I do think there is a sense of that, on, on everything from the economy to environment. I don’t want to be China for a second, OK, I want my democracy to work with the same authority, focus and stick-to-itiveness. But right now we have a system that can only produce suboptimal solutions.”

So said Thomas Friedman on “Meet the Press”…

As The Anchoress additionally notes, we’ve also had Woody Allen and Andrea Mitchell chime in on the “wish we had a dictator” theme. Why? Because people of the left simply don’t like the tedious process of convincing people they are right. They already know they are, and thus they should just be able to get the job done.

A few years back I opined that liberals in America were junior-league Leninists. I caught a bit of flack for that – outraged that I would dare compare some of my fellow Americans to that inhuman beast. But, really, the only difference between Thomas Friedman and Lenin is that Lenin actually managed to obtain absolute power – had Lenin never done that, he’d be remembered today as no more than one in a long line of leftist thinkers…but he got his power and piled up millions of corpses.

For Friedman – and others – to pine for a dictator is just a natural outgrowth of the leftist world view. It is a demand that reality be forced to fit theory once it is realized that reality makes a mockery of liberal theory.

While we can laugh at such things – and we should – we must not lose sight of the fact that if they could impose a dictator on us, they would. They would strip away our liberty in an instant – because in their minds our liberties are just getting in the way of their worldview – a worldview they are convinced will make all perfect in the world.

So, be on guard – watch for these liberal fascists and oppose them at every turn. Leave no statement uncontested, no action without strong opposition – any weakness on our part will result in a redoubled leftist effort to get at whatever we have left. These people can and will be defeated – but it will take all of us, fighting hard, to do it.

Love it:

The people are riled up and not about to put up with liberal garbage any longer.

From Rasmussen:

Support for repeal of the new national health care plan has jumped to its highest level ever. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 63% of U.S. voters now favor repeal of the plan passed by congressional Democrats and signed into law by President Obama in March.

No one wants it. Its a lousy law. It doesn’t do what its supposed to do. It costs too much money. It gives too much power to the government.

Yeah, we should run on repeal – its a winner for us.

Answered:

The sad news:

The number of mass layoffs by U.S. employers rose in April led by manufacturers who shed workers…

The Labor Department said the number of mass layoff events — defined as job cuts involving at least 50 people from a single employer — increased by 228 to 1,856 as employers shed 200,870 jobs on a seasonally adjusted basis.

The number of mass layoffs in the manufacturing sector totaled 448 resulting in 63,616 initial jobless benefit claims, the department said. That was more than 24,000 higher than the previous month…

Its an MSM report, so if you read it you’ll see they’re still spinning this as good news – its not as bad as it was in 2009! But its still worse than it was a few months ago – and that tells the tale.

Sharp economic observers were pointing out that the allegedly good numbers in the last part of 2009 and first part of 2010 were really just a matter of climbing out of the basement for a moment. Things had gotten so low by the end of the third quarter of 2009 that there was no way but up – for a while.

That while is now over and economic decline is resuming. If, of course, it ever stopped. Personally, I think that later, comprehensive studies of this time – not possible for some years until all the data are known – will show that in spite of some “up” GDP numbers, the economy never ceased to contract all through 2009 and in to 2010.

We still have too much debt chasing too little wealth – and, in fact, thanks to Obamunism, we have far more debt than we otherwise would have. At the end of the day, Obama has put us in a worse situation – in return for a few quarters of so-called growth, we’re mortgaged a great deal of the future. Now, before we can really rise, we’ll have to absorb this Obama debt, in addition to all the other debt we already had.

Stories are starting to abound about how the second half of 2010 will be brutal. We’ll have to see – mostly it depends right now on whether or not the Euro-zone can plug the gap and keep not Greece from defaulting, but keep Spain, Italy and other countries from following Greece down the economic abyss. I’m doubtful they’ll be able to – but when government threw over gold and gave itself a printing press, it gained massive ability to manipulate financial systems.

But, come what may, we are in for a bad time. It can’t be sustained – the debt cannot be repaid and default will have to happen to clear the economic decks. The longer we hold it off by means of increasing debt, the worse it will be when it finally does happen.

Our President – trust him?

For all the liberal talk about what Israel is doing to Gaza, the truth is how hideous Palestinians are making it:

…An iron curtain of a strict theocracy is slowly descending on Gaza, but many human rights proponents still prefer to depict it as the embattled bastion of freedom fighters.

“Immoderately” dressed women are frowned upon in today’s Gaza. Strolling with a man or even riding a motorcycle with one’s husband can invite questioning. “Modesty patrols”inspect cars to catch unmarried women with men who aren’t relatives.

Male hairstylists are banned from beauty parlors. Women lawyers have, on occasion, been required to don headscarves. The hijab and loose robes are mandatory in secondary schools. Men aren’t allowed to swim in the sea shirtless.

The degree of devotion and prayer habits by mosque worshipers are strictly monitored by appointed commissars. Internet cafes and Christian institutions are particularly popular targets…

Throw in rampant corruption and summary executions, and you’ve got yourself the nauseating mix which is Gaza – and none of it done with an Israeli anywhere to be seen. This is Palestinians eating their own – and the liberals of the west, who will toss a condemnation at Israel at the drop of a hat, remain silent.

Why? Well, part of it is rank fear – cross an Islamist, and you could get killed. So, better not to cross them. The other part of it is the fact that hating Israel has become a matter of ideology on the left, and ideology always trumps in leftist circles.

The best thing which could happen to Gaza right now is the re-imposition of Israeli rule. The Israelis at their most obtuse and oppressive were never as bad as the Palestinians have proved – and, yes, the Israelis did wrong things…but there’s a difference between the wrong done by a boneheaded politician or an over-reacting soldier and the wrong done as a matter of policy. The Palestinian leadership’s evil is not a bug, its a feature.

Its a sad state of affairs and we’ll sadly watch a lot more people die – mostly off camera and thus out of mind – and no change can be made until there is a change in American government…a change away from a policy of considering the Palestinian leadership a responsible partner for peace.