Blogs For Victory

Just wanted to send out our congratulations – great season, great game!

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Sorry I was remiss on the writing, guys and gals, but we had the party last night and after four or five beers, I’m probably not in shape for political discourse…

Sarah Palin’s TEA Party speech on You Tube.

Sarah Palin: Smarter than her opponents.

The GOP is encouraging new comers to run for office – a smart, but risky move. Smart because it brings new blood in and taps voter anger with the political maching; risky because you might get the odd bad apple in there…

Gore Vidal called a “crackpot”…read to find out who, apparently, was the last person on earth to figure this out.

Following the money on Climategate.

Climategate – a failure of Old Media journalism.

Mark Steyn: “The president tells us, with a straight face, that his grossly irresponsible profligate wastrel of a predecessor took the federal budget on an eight-year joyride, so the only way his sober, fiscally prudent successor can get things under control is to grab the throttle and crank it up to what Mel Brooks in Spaceballs (which seems the appropriate comparison) called ‘Ludicrous Speed.'”

And the Saints win it by 7.

UPDATE: The Tebow ad. Leftist, pro-abortion people are idiots, ya know?

My, goodness, that’s a lot:

Gay, Mentally Challenged Biracial Male Cheerleader Claims Discrimination

No more problems, though – every corporation in America will be seeking to hire this guy to fill a score or so affirmative action slots…

This is, as I said, getting more and more fun all the time:

Not just any generic Democrat either. Debra Medina, businesswoman and “tea party acitivist,” 41; Bill White, mayor of Houston, 38.

She’s not an “official” tea-party candidate, of course, since there’s no such thing — for the moment.

Gonna be a really fun year…

Told ya so:

There’s a reason why Americans who don’t happen to work for the government or directly benefit from its largesse are not sensing an economic recovery. For them, it’s mostly not happening. ADP’s January employment report showing 22,000 private-sector jobs lost, the last available jobs-related information available when this column was written, only confirms that feeling.

A look at what has happened to the nation’s inflation-adjusted gross domestic product (GDP), the value of all goods and services produced in the economy, during the last six quarters is sadly instructive. Comparing the fourth quarter of 2009 with the second quarter of 2008, we see that:

* Even after six months of “recovery,” the economy as a whole has shrunk by almost 2%.

* Uncle Sam’s level of annualized consumption and “investment” has grown by 8.5%.

* Despite the incessant pleadings of poverty by most state and local governments, their consumption and “investment” have hardly changed.

* What remains, i.e., the private sector, is over 3% smaller.(emphasis added)

Its all smoke and mirrors – Uncle Sam, via the Fed, magically created money out of thin air and has used it to “invest” in the economy resulting in GDP numbers which appear to be growing…but the real economy, where wealth is created, continues to shrink. And this means we are net poorer than we were before Obama’s spendulus was enacted.

We must balance the budget. We must cut taxes. We must remove the regulations which prevent wealth creation via making, mining and growing things. If we don’t do this, then we’ll just flop around – increasingly impoverished and ultimately heading for a crash which might result in a default on our sovereign debt.

If we follow Obama and his Democrats then we are just following them off a cliff…

Geesh:

Harry Knox, a member of President Barack Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, has stood by his past comment that Pope Benedict XVI is “hurting people in the name of Jesus.”

Knox, a former licensed minister of the United Methodist Church and a leader with the homosexual activist group Human Rights Campaign (HRC), originally made his comments in March 2009 in response to Pope Benedict’s comments about the effectiveness of condoms in fighting AIDS in Africa…

…In March 2009, Dr. Green told CNA that researchers cannot find an association between more condom use and lower HIV rates. He has also written that programs to increase fidelity in relationships and to reduce the number of sex partners are effective.

Previously, Knox has described Pope Benedict XVI and certain Catholic bishops as “discredited leaders” because of their opposition to same-sex “marriage.”

Though acknowledging the Knights of Columbus’ “good works,” he also called the Catholic fraternal order’s members “foot soldiers of a discredited army of oppression” because of the organization’s support for the successful California ballot measure Proposition 8…

Way to change the tone, there, and bring us all together. I feel the love. Is there anyone in the Obama Administration who isn’t an ass or a fool?

Anyways…

We know the drill – for the left, the way to cure the problems caused by immorality is to make immorality more prevalent. Thus the leftist response to teen pregnancy is to teach teens how to have sex and their response to the spread of AIDS is to work out ways where African men can remain promiscuous but feel like they are safe. We’re the “discredited army of oppression” because we dare to point out that the sure fire way to cure the problems caused by immorality is to try and be a bit more moral.

While we are called to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect, in practical terms we are only expected to try, day by day, to do a little better than the day before. Liberals bought the lie that we can be as gods, and when this boomerangs on them their response is to get angry with those of us who pointed out the error. Meanwhile, people are dying – but that is ok because they are poor, brown-skinned people that liberals never meet in Manhattan or DC or San Francisco…their deaths might be bad, but more important is to adhere to the notion that self-control is the worst thing possible.

And, of course, these people have found a home in the Obama Administration. How am I, as a Catholic, supposed to work with such people? I realize that no matter how gross the insult I am to forgive – and that is something I can and will do. But when Obama says he wants people like me to join him in partnership to make America better, what am I supposed to do? Grin like an idiot when some fool makes a bigoted statement about me and mine?

I don’t think so. There are many steps President Obama can take to make it more likely that Christians of an orthodox stripe will give him a hearing – and one of the first he can do is get rid of Harry Knox.

The news:

Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) — Non-performing loans in China have risen into the “trillions of renminbi” because of poor lending practices, an insolvency lawyer said.

“We work really closely with SASAC, the state-owned enterprise regulator in China, and there are literally trillions and trillions of renminbi of, frankly, defaulting loans already in China that no one is doing anything about,” Neil McDonald, a Hong Kong-based business restructuring and insolvency partner with Lovells LLP, said at an Asia-Pacific Loan Market Association conference yesterday. “At some point there’s going to be a reckoning for that.”

What is happening? Well, the truth is that no one really knows – least of all the Chinese government. Think of it like this: the Chinese government at the start of the year says that growth will be 8% this year. Are you going to be the apparatchik who sends up word that there was actually a contraction of 10%? Only if you want to get shot.

The only thing we do know for certain is that a huge amount of fiat money has been shoved in to the Chinese economy. The government made the money and then ordered China’s banks to lend it – and lend they did. And the Chinese people borrowed like mad and bought property and stocks in a gigantic, speculative bubble. Is that bubble bursting right now? Impossible to tell.

China’s government – at least officially – is concerned about this and is allegedly taking steps to reign in the borrow and spend binge before it gets entirely out of control. But there still is the fact that if you’re in charge of anything in China, you’d better show growth. And if a higher up wants a loan, you’d better give it to him. Its a huge mess – the lid is kept on, for the present, because the Chinese government is willing to use extreme measures to crack down on any unrest sparked by this…and, of course, a lot of western financial institutions, invested to the hilt in China’s stock and property bubbles, have a vested interest in convincing everyone that all is well…just as they had such interest in the US housing bubble…and we remember how well that worked out.

This will blow up in everyone’s face. Do not for a minute believe those who are selling the story that China has developed a new economic paradigm which is destined to over take the United States and become the model for the world. China is a communist dictatorship – corrupt, hidebound and fundamentally unstable, as are all regimes which don’t base their power upon consent of the governed. We heard the stories of a new paradigm with Germany in the 60’s and Japan in the 80’s – each of those nations was also supposed to have permanently figured it out and was going to outstrip the United States. This one is worse than Japan and Germany because, of course, the entire Chinese economy is a confidence game.

Get ready for the crash – now, next week, next month, next year; it will come.

HAT TIP: Mish’s

Love this headline over at Gay Patriot:

Sh**load of Global Warming Set to Cripple Northeast USA

UPDATE: India proves itself smarter than us.

Not at all surprising:

The Gallup Poll reports that a majority of Democrats, 53%, have a “positive” image of socialism, which includes independents who lean toward the blue party.

Only 17 percent of Republican and GOP-leaners hold socialism in a positive light. In total, more than one-third of Americans, 36%, have a positive image of socialism.

Also viewing socialism positively: 61% of liberals, 39% of moderates and 20% of conservatives.

So, perhaps Obama’s plan is really just a Bolshevik plot, even though he denies it?

Well, the new numbers are out… Unemployment remains teetering around ten percent — even though Obama said it wouldn’t go above 8 percent — and even the though the unemployment edged down a bit, 20,000 jobs were lost, we’ve still lost 8.4 million jobs in this recession. How many jobs “saved or created” does that come out to?

 Is Barry proud of this? Is this a solid B-plus economy? Is 16.5 percent underemployment the best this administration can deliver?

UPDATE: Past Deficits vs. Obama’s Deficits in Pictures

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Mish breaks down the job numbers:

In the continuing theater of BLS absurdities, the unemployment rate fell to 9.7% in spite of a 25th consecutive month of job losses. Some stopped counting at 22 months in November. However, I find November questionable.

This month professional services contributed 44,00 jobs to the plus side, but 52,000 of them were part-time jobs. Amazingly a table below shows the number of part-time workers decreased by 849,000 from last month. Go figure.

Moreover, the so-called 64,000 rise in November can be attributed to the seasonally adjusted hiring of 94,000 temporary workers…

Read the whole thing.

Me: I’m doubtful about this 9.7% number – it just doesn’t make sense given that we’re still shedding jobs and I can’t imagine that many people getting discouraged while there was a recent extension of unemployment benefits (once your benefits run out, you’re no longer counted as unemployed, even if you haven’t got a job). There’s always been a bit of BS in the unemployment numbers but it still has been a useful metric because it used the same methodology all the time, and thus you could at least spot the trends (ie, is unemployment going up, or going down?)…but now, I’m not so sure. I wonder if someone is playing around with the number of discouraged workers? The more such there are, the better the official unemployment rate looks…and who really gets to say who is “discouraged”? Given the rank dishonesty of the Obama Administration, its easy to believe they are faking the numbers.

Have to make my world famous, Noonan-family recipe spaghetti sauce – an old recipe first worked up by my grandmother in the 1930’s and refined ever since first by my father, then by myself. We’re having a get-together tomorrow, and so I have to make the sauce today (because spaghetti sauce always tastes better the second day, ya dig?).

Anyways, this pre-empts the morning writing time, so have at it – and remember, if you ever meet me and get a chance to sample the sauce, it means you are exceptionally lucky. It really is good stuff.