Blogs For Victory

From NRO’s The Corner:

The Law Library of the Congress of the United States (LLC) has issued an opinion on the removal and expulsion of Manuel Zelaya as president of Honduras. The LLC’s conclusion: Zelaya’s removal was legal but his deportation from the country was not.

Here is the summary of the opinion:

The Supreme Court of Honduras has constitutional and statutory authority to hear cases against the President of the Republic and many other high officers of the State, to adjudicate and enforce judgments, and to request the assistance of the public forces to enforce its rulings. The Constitution no longer authorizes impeachment, but gives Congress the power to disapprove of the conduct of the President, to conduct special investigations on issues of national interest, and to interpret the Constitution. In the case against President Zelaya, the National Congress interpreted the power to disapprove of the conduct of the President to encompass the power to remove him from office, based on the results of a special, extensive investigation. The Constitution prohibits the expatriation of Honduran citizens.

And, so, all that talk about a coup and the Honduran government being “de-facto” and how we all have to help Honduras resolve its internal issues is just so much BS. It was all put out, of course, because Zelaya is a darling of Chavez and Castro…and we know how the American left views these men. The left was hoping to have yet another leftist regime to oppose the United States.

Obama owes the people and government of Honduras an apology – but, I doubt one will be forthcoming. Obama doesn’t apologize for his own actions…

The title of her upcoming memoir. And it is, indeed, a bit of what we all need to do…heard today that Wall Street is showering money on Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in order to buy protection against regulation. Anyone want to bet on whether or not they’ll get it?

Only new people from outside the establishment can make this right…

As night follows day:

New companies will be crucial to the strength of any economic recovery. Businesses in their first 90 days of life accounted for 14% of hiring in the U.S. between 1993 and 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But this recession is taking a particularly heavy toll on business creation, as sources of small-business funding dry up…

And why are sources of small business funding drying up? Two things:

1. Government is on a borrowing binge…each dollar borrowed by Obama is a dollar which can’t be borrowed by a new business.

2. By bailing out the big banks, all we did was allow them to cover their losses…and they are holding on to what we gave them, because they’ve got even more losses to come in the next wave of home foreclosures and the surging commercial foreclosure rate.

Now, bailing out the banks was a bi-partisan bit of idiocy, but Obama is driving the last nail in the coffin by soaking up all remaining funds for his various “stimulus” projects. We’re taking away money for new start ups and giving it to people to buy cars they don’t immediately need, thereby hiring back – for a few weeks – a few thousand auto workers at the same, old dinosaur companies. Ditto with the credit for new home buyers – its nice to help youngsters in to homes, but people need jobs more than new homes right now: we can get new homes once the economy is back on track.

On and on it goes – its all just a waste of time. Of course, Obama and Co are getting ready to scream “recovery” at the top of their lungs once the numbers for the third quarter come in…I mean, just wait for it. As far as the left and the MSM will be concerned, this will be the biggest boom in human history, all ushered in by Obama and his Spendulus. Relentlessly it will be hammered home that everything’s great and we all owe Obama our very lives…meanwhile, the concerns about rising unemployment and continued contraction by everyone not receiving a government hand out will be ignored or downplayed.

And it all may work, for a while – Obama’s popularity might rise, Democrats might start feeling a bit bullish about the political future…and then its all going to come crashing back down. We can’t spend our way to wealth, and when you’re broke, the worst thing you can do is borrow more money. This is not opinion – this is basic, common sense.

A libertarian acquaintance of mine and I share a number of views in common; we are both for smaller and less intrusive government, as well as the right to pursue happiness in ways of our own choosing.

Where my libertarian acquaintance and I part ways is the question of abortion, and a woman’s so-called right to choose whether or not to maintain the developing life inside her womb. Although this acquaintance is personally pro-life, she appears to think that it is not necessarily the role of government to dictate whether a woman must carry a baby to term.

I wrote,

“I can get behind much of what you believe in.

Except for the abortion part.

You see, my right to do what I want with my fist ends with your face.

And the right of what a person can do with his or her body ends when that person’s choice interferes with another innocent person’s God-given right to live, no matter what station in life or life stage one finds oneself. (read it in the preamble to the Constitution)

The woman’s so-called right to “choose” is not a question of freedom. It goes much deeper than that. It’s a question of one’s fundamental right to exist. When that is called into question, the right to “freedom” is moot.”

Yes, one has a right to engage in the behavior that may or may not produce a life. But one does not have a right nor necessarily the freedom to escape dealing with the consequences of one’s choices, especially when that choice impinges on another’s primary and fundamental right of existence.

There’s plenty of evidence and research that tells us it will cost Americans a lot of money, and do nothing for the environment… so why are we still talking about it?

Are you listening, liberals?

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says it’s a mistake to set a deadline to end American military action, as some liberals have sought, and that a defeat would be disastrous for the U.S.

In a stern warning to critics of a continued troop presence in Afghanistan, Gates said the Islamic extremist Taliban and Al Qaeda would perceive an early pullout as a victory over the United States as similar to the Soviet Union’s humiliating withdrawal in 1989 after a 10-year war.

“The notion of timelines and exit strategies and so on, frankly, I think would all be a strategic mistake. The reality is, failure in Afghanistan would be a huge setback for the United States,” Gates said in an interview broadcast Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Hey, how ’bout that? Just like Iraq, huh?

Our problem is that the liberal meme about Afghanistan (ie, “Iraq bad, Afghanistan good”) was just a talking point. A convenient means of hammering President Bush and attacking John McCain in 2008 – none of them, from Obama on down, probably believed their own words. Perhaps they just hoped that Afghanistan would prove easy…it seemed to be as much, even going in to late 2008. But, as it turns out, the campaign in Afghanistan changed as the enemy grew bolder and now we’ve got a long, hard fight ahead of us.

Liberals don’t want to fight it.

I think what our liberals would prefer is some way to scuttle Afghanistan in time for it to be forgotten by 2012…much as Clinton’s pulling the plug early on Somalia made it a non-issue by 1996. Afghanistan is a much more difficult and much more dangerous campaign – in fact and in effect around the world – than Somalia ever was, but our liberals are always willing to look in to ways and means of surrendering, especially if they can then ignore the issue on the campaign trail. The trouble is, scuttling Afghanistan won’t be something like Somalia – that surrender did, of course, encourage bin Laden and led by stages to 9/11, but the most important thing (to liberals) is that it didn’t cause them to lose in 1996. To quit on Afghanistan means certain Taliban/al Qaeda victory in that nation, and perhaps in Pakistan, as well…and this in addition to the massive encouragement it would give for jihadists to attack us here, at home.

The hard task for us conservatives, then, is to some how stiffen Obama’s spine – to work diligently for American victory, even though this would work to Obama’s credit, in the long run. Now, if it becomes completely clear that we can’t push Obama to fight for victory, then we will have to re-think what is best for our troops and our nation…it’ll be a choice between continuing a bloodletting in the hopes that in 2013 we can get new, victorious policies in place, or agreeing to a withdrawal. Neither of those outcomes is good for America – we’ll be deciding which is least-worst. Better, then, to work to keep Obama up on the rails vis a vis the War on Terrorism and the Afghan Campaign.

A difficult task, but we must do it.

What is justice?

Justice is a certain rectitude of mind whereby a man does what he ought to do in the circumstances confronting him. – St Thomas Aquinas

So much for all those green shoots:

Employers took 2,690 mass layoff actions in August that resulted in the separation of 259,307 workers, seasonally adjusted, as measured by new filings for unemployment insurance benefits during the month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Each action involved at least 50 persons from a single employer. The number of mass layoff events in August increased by 533 from the prior month…Over the year, the number of mass layoff events increased by 803…

So, gigantic increase from the previous month, gigantic increase from the same time a year prior. This is an economy which is getting worse, not better – and its like a ratchet. The more people laid off the lower the consumer spending – both by the unemployed and by people more fearful of losing their jobs (such as, for instance, me and my sudden desire to save as much as I can). And this, in turn, shuts down demand for goods – even for Chinese goods, for all those money men who are hyping up China as the savior of the economy.

Its going to get a lot worse before it gets any better – and this is in spite of government numbers which will come out in the next few quarters alleging that the recession is over. Buckle up tight and get ready to ride it out – the money men are in for the biggest and final crash, and then we’ll have done with them along with their enablers in Big Government.

Here’s one place you can go – its a Catholic retailer and thus very, well, Catholic in its product line…but at least its a start. More groups need to pay heed to this:

We believe that by purchasing products from China we would be contributing to the things mentioned here. Because of this, we refuse to carry most statues and pretty much anything porcelain that’s made today. We have been able to find sources for products in other countries. They may cost a little more but we rest better at night knowing that our money isn’t helping to support forced abortions and the persecution of Christians in China.

As I’ve said before, I used to be an ardent Free Trade advocate – but now I’m a proponent of Freedom Trade. This is the concept that we should have free and open economic activity with all the free peoples of the world, and absolutely zero traffic with the tyrants who enslave their own populations. If we are to buy cheap, consumer goods overseas, I’d rather we bought them from, say, the free people of India than the slaves of China’s corrupt oligarchy. And, yes, this means I also want to stop all imports of oil from Saudi Arabia, before anyone out there accuses me of inconsistency…if its an unfree nation, not one American cent should go there.

We who are free must stand together – and by standing together, we’ll bring closer the day when all men are free and able to pursue Truth, unfettered by tyrants. The cost of liberty might be high, but it is a price well worth paying.

When you see stories like this:

…A West Michigan woman says the state is threatening her with fines and possibly jail time for babysitting her neighbors’ children.

Lisa Snyder of Middleville says her neighborhood school bus stop is right in front of her home. It arrives after her neighbors need to be at work, so she watches three of their children for 15-40 minutes until the bus comes.

The Department of Human Services received a complaint that Snyder was operating an illegal child care home. DHS contacted Snyder and told her to get licensed, stop watching her neighbors’ kids, or face the consequences.

“It’s ridiculous.” says Snyder. “We are friends helping friends!” She added that she accepts no money for babysitting.

Mindy Rose, who leaves her 5-year-old with Snyder, agrees. “She’s a friend… I trust her.”

To be sure, legislation is starting up to stop this bit of nonsense – but since when do the authorities even have a reason to look in to such matters? And where do we get people like the stoolie who called the cops? And how did a government agency get the right to issue fines and threats before a trial and conviction? For all our alleged efforts to ensure free choice and privacy, it sure seems to me that our area of liberty is shrinking.

In a free society, all is permitted unless there is a specific law against it. The mark of a tyrannical society is that nothing may happen unless the government permits it – right now, for this kind lady to watch the neighbor’s kids for a few minutes she’ll either have to get permission from the government, or wait to see if the government passes a law allowing normal, human interaction.

When I first read this story I was outraged – and I mean really outraged. I seriously desired, just for a moment, that everyone involved be flogged. 10 lashes with a cat o’nine tails for the stoolie, the government officials and whomever originally wrote a law which worked out as a ban on being human. I’ve calmed down since then – but I’m still enraged over this…and very concerned. Because it occurred to me as I pondered the issue that there are a myriad reasons for the authorities to arrest and/or harass us in our daily lives. To be sure, not in our sex lives – government has kindly resigned itself out of that (thanks, liberals…really good job there, boys and girls), but every other aspect of our lives is ever more under the thumb of government.

Which of us, stopped by the authorities, could really say we feel confident that justice will be done? Someone I know had a summary judgment placed against him in a civil suit – he had never been served; the plaintiff had put a notice in the newspaper, which this person never reads, and that was considered sufficient notice by a judge…and then it was in to efforts at wage garnishment. Someone could denounce any of us, anonymously, and the way things are working out, we’d have to prove our innocence. And that is only if we’re given the chance – there’s no indication in the linked story that the lady was charged with a crime and then convicted by a jury…nope, just an anonymous denunciation, a drum head investigation by bureaucrats, and then “watch it, slave, your masters are after you!”.

We need a genuine civil rights movement – probably an armed one, in to the bargain. We need to curb the government and the busy-bodies who set government upon us. First off, we should end the use of anonymous denunciations – I know, the cops like them: all the more reason to ban them. If a person is not willing to put themselves out on the line with their accusation, then it simply should not be used. Secondly, we should ensure that no government entity can take any adverse action against a person absent a confession in open court, or conviction by a jury. Third, anyone accused of any crime should not have their name and particulars released to the public by the authorities until after a conviction is obtained – true, the MSM will dig out a lot of such names, but only in prominent cases…we certainly don’t want our government covering us in muck, especially if we turn out to be innocent of the charges. Fourth, impose severe penalties for false accusations and for prosecutorial/bureaucratic misconduct.

Our freedom is at stake here – we’ve allowed our liberty to erode for too long. Time to take it all back.