Blogs For Victory

Yeah, that “recovery” is just humming right along:

More Americans filed for bankruptcy protection in March than during any month since the federal personal bankruptcy law was tightened in October 2005, a new report says, a result of high unemployment and the housing crash.

Federal courts reported over 158,000 bankruptcy filings in March, or 6,900 a day, a rise of 35 percent from February, according to a report to be released on Friday by Automated Access to Court Electronic Records, a data collection company known as Aacer. Filings were up 19 percent over March 2009. The previous record over the last five years was 133,000 in October.

Long term unemployment is rising and housing continues to wallow in depression. Its natural that a lot of people are just giving a heave-ho to the whole concept of debt and looking for a fresh start. I’m not filing for bankruptcy, but I am – as they put it – “de-leveraging”. I’m banking money and getting rid of debt and as long as I live, I’ll never borrow for anything other than a house. No more credit cards; no more installment loans, no more auto loans – nothing. If I can save for it and buy it, then I’ll get it – if I can’t, then I won’t.

But the poor people who are really caught in a bind – they pretty much have to file for bankruptcy. No dishonor, in my view, on that. Time to clear up the books, dump the bad assets and start all over again.

Our only problem is that our government hasn’t learned the lesson – easy money got us in to this mess, and government’s answer is to pour even more easy money in to the economy in the hopes that poison will cure disease.

A poll has some eye-openers:

Since December, The Winston Group has conducted telephone surveys of thousands of registered voters and just this week released an analysis of its findings: that 17 percent of registered voters consider themselves a part of the Tea Party movement, and that they – like voters overall – are deeply concerned about the economy and jobs as we head toward the 2010 election.

The conventional wisdom about the Tea Party has not yet settled on any one definitive portrayal of the movement, but the data tell a fascinating story – over four out of 10 self-identified Tea Party members aren’t Republican, and a third don’t consider themselves conservative. They tend to be older than the voters on the whole, tend to come from middle-income households, and are slightly more likely to be male than the overall electorate.

But what truly sets the Tea Party apart from even Republicans or conservatives broadly is its commitment to economic conservatism. Tea Party members, like voters overall, are very focused on the economy and jobs; some 36 percent say it is their top issue. Yet while only 6 percent of voters overall say that the national deficit and spending are their top issues, that number spikes to 21 percent among Tea Party members.(emphasis added)

Just in the nature of things, a lot of TEA Party activists are Republicans – but not all. Just in the nature of things, a lot of TEA Party activists are conservative – but not all. It is not what the MSM-DNC talking points want everyone to believe about it. It is truly grass-roots, and bedrock American.

What is really curious about the TEA Party movement is that they’ve turned the left’s greatest asset – the television camera – against it. The left lives on simple (even simplistic) narratives which are boosted by emotional video depictions of events. Back when the left first started to use this medium- during Vietnam – it worked like a charm, and the MSM went along with it (even helping to stage events for strongest emotional appeal on television). As long as the video message was controlled by just a few outfits in tune with the left, all was well. As soon as the new media came about, that all got wiped out.

The left desperately wants the TEA Party activists to be painted as hate-filled racists with a propensity for violence. Back in the day, they could have done that – pick out the one or two kooks in the group, highlight them and, presto!, the whole group is now kooky in the public mind. This doesn’t work when (a) there really aren’t any kooks who are genuine members of the movement and (b) there are plenty of independent video outlets to ensure any attempt at falsification is swiftly exposed (the spitting and N-word accusation would have destroyed the TEA Party even ten years ago…but it was so quickly proven false that there wasn’t time for the leftist narrative to gain traction).

But the left still wants its simplistic narrative – so even if the slanders aren’t working, they’ll at least keep up the drumbeat that its just a fringe, conservative group astro-turfed in to existence by nefarious GOP operatives. This comforts leftists – it allows them to pretend that it won’t amount to much in November.

But if the TEA Party is actually representing an increasingly broad spectrum of the American electorate – and is moving that electorate in a conservative-libertarian direction, then the left has a massive problem on its hands. It’ll be very interesting to see how all this comes out.

Have at it, boys and girls – I’ve got Easter stuff to do; I might be able to update a bit today, but it also might end up being just this.

Interesting:

They are not typical Tea Party activists: A woman who voted for President Obama and believes he’s a “phenomenal speaker.” Another who said she was a “knee-jerk, bleeding heart liberal.”

These two women are not alone.

Some Americans who say they have been sympathetic to Democratic causes in the past — some even voted for Democratic candidates — are angry with President Obama and his party. They say they are now supporting the Tea Party — a movement that champions less government, lower taxes and the defeat of Democrats even though it’s not formally aligned with the Republican Party.

Naturally, the number of Democrats in the TEA Party movement is small – but it is telling, all the same.

This is supposed to be the grand time for Democrats – holding the White House and very strong Congressional majorities, this should be the best time of a Democrat’s life. It isn’t. The promise of Obama has proven a bit hollow – while the promise of the Democrat Congress has turned in to a nightmare.

In the end, the vast majority of Democrats will fall in behind their party – but “vast majority” can mean a lot of things. The vast majority of Republicans swung in behind McCain in 2008…unfortunately, a very large number of them also stayed home, and a small percentage actually cast their votes for Obama. Its not that Democrats won’t get 90% of Democratic voters…but if the number of Democrats drops three or four million from the 2008 level, then even a 99% vote by Democrats for Democrats will be a crushing defeat.

Outside of the possible effects on November’s vote, it is encouraging to see some Democrats join the TEA Party. After all, any true American will always be wary of government power – you can want a trillion dollars spent on welfare without necessarily wanting Uncle Sam in charge of it.

The more the TEA Party diversifies, the stronger it becomes. What I saw in Searchlight last week was a large cross-section of Americans from different areas of the political spectrum, all united in their dismay over the course of government. The more of this, the better for America.

This just knocks the whole narrative in to a cocked hat:

Most of the indicted militia members accused of being anti-government extremists have active voting records, a check with area voter registration offices showed yesterday.

One is a registered Democrat, and the party affiliations of the rest could not be determined.

Jacob J. Ward, 33, of Huron, Ohio, voted as a Democrat in the 2004 and 2008 primary elections. He also voted in 10 other elections since 2000. Party affiliation in Ohio is determined by which party’s ballot they requested in the most recent primary election.

Think about it: would a conservative ever think of shooting the cops? We’re the guys with all the “back the badge” bumper stickers. Stands to reason that if there’s someone out there targeting the police, it is highly unlikely to be one of us.

This will be inconvenient for liberals who are eager to conflate this militia-kook group with the TEA Party and larger conservative movement. In their narrative, we conservatives simmer on the edge of violence – our hatred of government stoked by having a black man in charge and we’re just an ace away from exploding in a violent rage.

The reality is, of course, that we don’t hate the government – we hate what some people in the government are doing and we want them to stop. We want to restore our government to its proper powers and functions. Think of it like this – a great number of us once upon a time swore an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That is all we’re really doing, now.

Screwballs don’t like the Constitution. It gets in the way. It limits the power of government, but it also prevents kooks from running roughshod over everyone in pursuit of their aims. It prohibits government idiots from taking our guns – but it also prohibits anti-government idiots from using guns to overthrow the government. Its the best of both worlds – when it is rigorously adhered to.

And that is all we want – the Constitution, rigorously adhered to.

They really have no shame:

A handful of liberal groups — but only a few dozen protesters — marched on the Republican National Committee offices Thursday to denounce the threats against members of Congress during the health care vote…

…The main message of the liberal groups was that the RNC and Republican leaders in the House and Senate should more actively target individuals engaging in violence and racism nationwide and denounce it publicly.

The groups involved are MoveOn, Color of Change and CREDO. We need not spend time on MoveOn as that group is will known for its nastiness – but what of Color of Change and CREDO?

Well, Color of Change is a Katrina “truther” outfit co-founded by Van Jones. Yes, that Van Jones – the communist Obama was forced to toss under the bus.

As for CREDO, their “final four” for “the most malevolent forces in American politics” are Fox News, TEA Party, Mitch McConnell and Blackwater.

You get the picture – the kookiest of the kook left. And here they come, demanding apologies for things which didn’t happen. It wouldn’t be bad if it was just the kook left – but they are taking their cue from the Democrat leadership (or the Democrat leadership is taking theirs from them).

A toxic brew has been made – and it was made by the Democrats because they wanted to beat President Bush in 2004 and figured that his stature had to be brought down by attacking the mainspring of his popularity – his conduct of the War on Terrorism. For the narrowest of political ends, Democrats have unleashed on the American body politic the paranoid ravings of the worst of the left.

If you go about making accusations that the NSA’s signals intelligence program is “domestic spying”. If you back up the false claims of a mountebank about his trip to Niger. If you watch Fahrenheit 9/11 and aren’t immediately disgusted by its dishonesty. If you do this sort of thing, then you’ll eventually get leftist groups marching on the RNC to complain about things which never happened – which only happened in the sick minds of leftist activists.

And now the Democrats are stuck – if they denounce these kooks, they’ll look like fools and suffer losses on the left. If they don’t denounce them, then centrist will be increasingly turned off. Caught between a rock and a hard place – and if they had just been honest, it never would have happened.

No surprise at all:

I received many emails on Friday and this weekend about the data published here showing that on average Democratic districts are getting almost twice the amount of stimulus money than Republican districts. Republican districts also received smaller awards on average. The average dollars awarded per Republican district is $260,675,663, while the average dollars awarded per Democratic district is $471,533,539.

And per capita it is $692 for Democrats, $362 for Republicans. It is the tax money of all the Americans, but Democrats view it as money to reward their own.

This is, unfortunately, all too typical of Democrats – and it goes back a long way. During WWI, President Wilson tried very hard to impound the entire war effort in favor of the Democrats. To Democrat leaders, our nation is a piggy bank for Democrats, not a shared mission.

Mark Steyn captures it:

Watching the Commander of the Pacific Fleet’s deadpan face as Congressman Hank Johnson (D., Ga.) asks him about the danger of the island of Guam tipping over and capsizing is a glimpse of how the viziers to the loopier Ottoman sultans must have felt.

Presumably, when you’re the head guy of a major fleet for a big-time navy, you’ve got plenty of other ways of filling your time other than reassuring congressmen on whether miscellaneous land masses are likely to tip over and sink. But it’s business as usual in Congress. The Toyota execs hauled up to account for an entirely mythical epidemic of runaway Priuses surely had similar feelings — as will the Verizon/Caterpillar/John Deere CEOs summoned by Henry Waxman to explain why they had the lèse-majesté to factor the costs of Obamacare into their federally required earnings statements.

Bet Johnson gets re-elected.

We have serious people in this nation who make it work – factory workers, farmers, ranchers, miners. We have our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who defend it. And then we have the pinheads who currently hold the political power.

Its why things are jacked up – and until we get people in there in tune with the farmer and the Marine, its not going to get any better.

Sarah Palin lays out the fraudulent nature of Obama’s oil drilling program:

Many Americans fear that President Obama’s new energy proposal is once again “all talk and no real action,” this time in an effort to shore up fading support for the Democrats’ job-killing cap-and-trade (a.k.a. cap-and-tax) proposals. Behind the rhetoric lie new drilling bans and leasing delays; soon to follow are burdensome new environmental regulations. Instead of “drill, baby, drill,” the more you look into this the more you realize it’s “stall, baby, stall.”

Today the president said he’ll “consider potential areas for development in the mid and south Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, while studying and protecting sensitive areas in the Arctic.” As the former governor of one of America’s largest energy-producing states, a state oil and gas commissioner, and chair of the nation’s Interstate Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, I’ve seen plenty of such studies. What we need is action — action that results in the job growth and revenue that a robust drilling policy could provide. And let’s not forget that while Interior Department bureaucrats continue to hold up actual offshore drilling from taking place, Russia is moving full steam ahead on Arctic drilling, and China, Russia, and Venezuela are buying leases off the coast of Cuba….

This does seem to be mere cover for “cap and trade” and, of course, as a way of deflecting blame if gas prices rocket up this summer (we’re already over $3 a gallon for premium out here in Las Vegas – and this with significant reductions in American gasoline consumption…we’re really in for it this summer, it seems). Its all just smoke and mirrors – as most of Obamunism really is, upon close inspection. The only thing for real about this guy is his desire for government control – outside of that, its all eyewash.

We have the oil to significantly reduce our imports as we do the generational transition away from gasoline-powered transportation. All we lack is the political desire to exploit our own wealth. This is all just part of something Chesterton observed – the plutocratic origins of progressive fads.

Saving the world is a grand thing – but its not to be saved for the average man or woman. No, they are to be jammed in to noisome cities where they can take public transit to the job or welfare office, as appropriate. Just as it was rich progressives who first figured we didn’t need private property – because it prevented the development of what the rich progressives believe is the good life, for us – so the rich progressives figure we don’t nee cheap energy. Having such just wrecks the world, you see?

It is time to take America back and make it, once again, the land of the common man. It is our nation – it is to be used by us for our own benefit; not to be locked away because some rich progressives feel its in our best interest to be kept out (while they, of course, are allowed in). Who cares about a pristine landscape if you can’t go see it? Fish in its streams? Hunt in its forests? What good is countryside if there isn’t a farm on it? To what purpose is a world saved, if the people who live on it are forbidden to enjoy it?

We are to be stewards of this world – we are not to take God’s gift and bury it, fearful lest any harm should befall. It is time we set aside the absurd fear-mongering of environmentalists and start to use what is ours for our own benefit.

Jedediah Bila explains how:

It’s time for us to help the GOP take back the House and Senate, as well as place an authentic conservative in the White House in 2012. Remember that it’s not just about Republicans defeating Democrats. It’s also about conservatives defeating RINOs (see the Rubio/Crist race in Florida for details). With issues like cap-and-tax and immigration soon to be coming down the pike, it is imperative that full-blooded conservatives make big gains in 2010. They will see to it that the tenets of limited government and constitutional integrity stand in the way of legislation that would cripple American industry and give the government an even tighter grip over our liberty. Let’s make the Founding Fathers proud.

Any Republican is better than any Democrat because each one of them will be one more chance to get Pelosi and Reid out of leadership – but any conservative better than any non-conservative (though, in a pinch, a libertarian will do).

It is our government. This is our nation. It is time we took it back, and returned it to the Founder’s vision.