Blogs For Victory

Top the GOP list for 2012:

When it comes to which Republican candidate should take on pro-abortion President Barack Obama in 2012, GOP voters are essentially evenly split between three former candidates. Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, and Mike Huckabee are within just a few percentage points of one another.

In a new Rasmussen poll released today, the former Massachusetts governor tops all Republican candidates with the backing of 25 percent of GOP voters.

Palin, who recently announced she would resign her position as Alaska’s governor, follows Romney in second place with the backing of 24 percent. Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, received the support of 22 percent of Republicans.

We seem to be turning from the “party which can’t shoot straight” to “the party which can’t miss”. This is an immense pool of talent to draw on, and the secondary players (ie, Pawlenty, etc) are also a good crop. All the Donks will have in 2012 is what they’ve got now…a President who is failing miserably, and a VP who is a national embarrassment.

Uncle Jimbo over at Blackfive gives a short, excellent run-down of what we’re doing there:

There are signs that our military leaders have learned lessons from both our 7 years of operations in Afghanistan and our successes in Iraq. They have begun a major shift in strategy and tactics to reflect that. We have discussed some aspects of it here including the decision announced to limit bombing of residential dwellings even if we are receiving fire from them. While this decision may seem counter-intuitive at first. when examined in the framework of a larger shift toward safeguarding populations v. killing bad guys it becomes very understandable.

This same change in Iraq, to take territory and then stay there alongside the populace, was instrumental in shifting public opinion in Iraq. In conjunction with increased security from local forces it led to our ability to let the Iraqis take care of themselves. A similar strategy is now being employed in Afghanistan, but faces many more challenges. The Afghan security forces are near useless as currently constituted. Tribal issues make it almost impossible for any national forces to be used in an area where they are not native. Our training efforts have focused on attempting to put together Afghan police and military units but the problem is that other than perhaps Hamid Karzai there are no Afghans. There are a patchwork of tribes and villages and cliques that speak different languages, hold centuries long beefs and don’t see themselves as part of this larger, artificial thing we call Afghanistan.

That last bit is important – and provides a clue on what we should be shooting for in Afghanistan. Now, we don’t want to bulldoze into Afghan’s decisions, but we can encourage – and I believe we should encourage a Canton system such as that which exists in Switzerland. Keep in mind that the Swiss kept it together – by keeping a bit apart, internally – when Europe was riven by sectarian strife during the Reformation. Swiss Protestants and Catholics yet managed to remain in the same country while elsewhere bitter civil war was the order of the day – and the religious divide was only one of several within the country. A common currency, free internal trade, a common foreign policy, a common national army (the trickiest part, but it can be done – if the army remains small and highly professionalized)…but within each Canton, a maximum amount of local control with no interference from the central government. Allow time to ease the sectarian and tribal strife until, as in Switzerland today, the prospect of a split in the country is just unthinkable (and keep in mind, it took centuries for the Swiss to reach this condition).

One way or another, Afghanistan must not be allowed to slide back into chaos and/or Taliban-al Qaeda control. Take ten years, take 100,000 more troops – whatever the price to be paid, victory is worth it because defeat would be a catastrophe for the United States and the whole world…imagine Islamo-fascism sweeping into Pakistan and central Asia, armed with nuclear weapons and convinced that victory over the US is assured. Its not something we want to contemplate.

Now, will President Obama have the courage to carry on? The wisdom to pick out the right policy?

Time will tell.

The story of the family attacked on the 4th of July by a gang of young toughs – a white family attacked by a swarm of black youngsters shouting racial epithets? You don’t want to ignore it, but you don’t want to give an open sesame to racists to make hay over – its a terrible symptom of our societal breakdown and a clear result of racial grievance-mongering for decades.

The best I can do right now is to issue a blanket condemnation of all those in our society who propagate lies – such as, for instance, the lie that racism still keeps a black person down. Racism there is, but no racist can stop a black person from achieving whatever he wishes…but race-baiters like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton keep hate alive, and then young fools soak it up and, God help us, some times act out on the idiotic lies. Young black men instructed to take pride in the achievements of black Americans would be unlikely to do what this group does – but young black men instructed that being educated is “acting white” or that they still can’t get ahead because Whitey is keeping them down will do precisely what this group did.

Keep this in mind – tell the truth, all the time and every where. About things great and small. Do your utmost to allow not the slightest untruth pass your lips or, worse, settle in your heart. We live in an Age of Lies and we are seeing the ever more terrible results they bring. Its time to bring a halt to this.

…and Obama’s approval dives…

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 30% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-eight percent (38%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of –8. The President’s Approval Index rating has fallen six points since release of a disappointing jobs report last week (see trends).

This is very encouraging because it is clear now that no matter how much Obama tries to erroneously pass the buck, people are going to expect results, and blame him when he fails to perform as promised. Remember, Obama said the stimulus would keep unemployment in check. It wouldn’t go above 8 percent, he claimed. Well, so much for that. He keeps talking up these bogus “jobs saved” figures which are completely meaningless and have no credibility.

At this rate, especially with the rampant spending that is only going to make the economy worse, Obama’s coattails won’t be worth dog excrement in the midterm elections, and Obama will have to prepare to move out of the White House in 2013… Not that someone so inexperienced should have been put there in the first place… After this horrible mistake, Americans may realize that the ability to read off a teleprompter hardly makes you ready and able for the highest office in the land. Sadly, we have to learn that the hard way.

Gordon Chang takes a stab at it in Forbes:

…the riots of the last few days show just how vulnerable that Chinese state is, even in the face of apparently weak opponents. For one thing, according to one report, the disturbances came completely out of the blue for many. “There were no warning signs about the riots,” said Tang Yan, a 21-year-old drug store employee who fled rampaging Uighurs in Urumqi. “No one expected it.” What started as a silent, peaceful demonstration–over the failure of authorities to investigate the murders of Uighur factory workers in faraway Guangdong province–somehow turned into savagery in the streets of Urumqi’s capital.

The chronology of events on Sunday is unclear, but it appears the gathering became a riot when police began to beat the protesters, even girls. There are, at this moment, so many grievances against the central government and the Communist Party that almost anything can spark an insurrection. And that’s especially true when security forces overreact, as they appeared to do on Sunday…

…The Chinese regime can fail because, as we are seeing in Xinjiang, the Party is losing hearts and minds, and, as Havel suggests, a ruling organization is vulnerable when that happens. In most other parts of China, ethnic tensions are not a factor, but the Communist Party has other problems. Almost nobody believes in its ideology, and everyone can see its failings as a ruling organization. Outside of minority-inhabited areas, few actively oppose it, but few anywhere enthusiastically support it. The Party stays in place largely due to apathy, fear and a failure to imagine that China can be better.

So this is a dangerous time for the one-party state. For three decades, its primary basis of legitimacy has been the continual delivery of prosperity. In the current economic downturn, however, it has been arguing that it deserves to remain in power for other reasons. As the Party tries to change the basis of its support, it puts its future at risk.

That last bit is the most important – the sole claim to legitimacy on the part of the Chinese government is the de-facto deal struck in 1989: “leave us in power, and we’ll make you rich”. Official predictions are for 8% growth in 2009 and the word is that China is doing just peachy keen swell hunky dory no problem at all…while exports fell by 26% in May. If you believe that China’s economy is strong or that any of the figures published by the Chinese are factual, then I’ve got a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. Its a house of cards, and its probably already come tumbling down – kept quiet by the determination of the Chinese authorities to hide the bad news combined with a strong desire by Western institutions heavily invested in China to keep up the pretense that their Chinese assets are still valuable. I don’t quite view things as the author does – or, perhaps, I’m just take a step further back.

The sight of one of your countrymen being savaged by a hated, foreign oppressor is an excellent spark to civil unrest, but my view always is that people who feel their basic needs are cared for will not revolt. The importation of Han Chinese in to Xinjiang which is close to making the Uighurs a minority in their own land isn’t likely being done at all fairly. I know, how do you “fairly” destroy a society – well, of course, you don’t. But the “unfair” part of this is that the Hans are likely taking the best jobs and the best places to live – with, to be sure, provision made for the locals. But now that the global economy is imploding and China’s economy teeters on the verge of complete meltdown, I’ll bet there are far less jobs in Xinjiang than there used to be…and the people keeping them are likely to be Han. And thus you’ve got Uighurs about who have nothing to lose and who start a fight, which results in an over-reaction, which results in a nearly revolutionary situation spreading like wildfire.

This is all supposition on my part – but supposition based upon a clear knowledge of the way these things have worked throughout history. The “social contract” has broken down in Xinjiang – the Chinese government is no longer able to deliver the goods…and the goods are naturally being withheld from the outlying areas first in order that Peking and the major Chinese coastal cities (where all those prying foreigners live) are spared any great impoverishment and resultant political instability. Curiously enough, we’re partly to blame for this – our borrowing binge is forcing China to buy more of our bonds lest the bonds they have in hand become devalued…but China isn’t really making any money, so they have to take it from somewhere…and if the Chinese apparatchik has a choice between taking it from Big Party Boss or Despised Minority, where do you think the axe will fall?

How long can China keep afloat? Naturally, the Chinese government hopes it can keep a lid on things until the economy turns around…if the economy turns around. While I still see plenty of cheer leading in business reporting, the facts remain grim and even those predicting an end to the recession at the end of this year are stating that US unemployment will go to and remain above 10% for some time. That many unemployed Americans just can’t buy a lot of Chinese exports. The race is on – will China’s cash run out or will the recession end first? If the recession ends first, then China can weather the storm…if the cash runs out, then all bets are off.

Truth:

You can lead a man to Congress, but you can’t make him think. – Milton Berle

Well, now its fawning servility which cuts the mustard:

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who has had an eventful couple of weeks to say the least, believes House Republican opposition to climate change legislation and the stimulus indicates they’re cheering against the good ol’ US of A.

“It appears that the Republican Party leadership in the Congress has made a decision that they want to deny President Obama success, which means, in my mind, they are rooting against the country, as well,” the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman told WAMU radio host Diane Rehm on Tuesday morning, promoting his new book, “The Waxman Report.”

I really doubt that Waxman gets the irony here – I’m certain that he’s really this stupid. This is the man who opposed the troop surge…certainly an effort to deny President Bush a success, and thus – by Waxman’s logic – an anti-American act.

This just gets more nauseating all the time.

HAT TIP: Sister Toldjah

Mine, without question, is the Lord of the Rings. I really can’t count the number of times I’ve read it, and it remains ever fresh.

To find a book which speaks to your heart and frees your mind to rise is a wonderful thing, a grand gift of God to mankind.

Which book has moved you the most?

Mona Charen discusses:

You needn’t approve of the slatternly attire so often found on Western women to stoutly and angrily resist the encroachment of the burqa — and everything it represents — into Western life. Let’s be clear. It took guts for Sarkozy to say what did. He called the burqa “a sign of subjugation . . . of debasement.” Al-Qaeda, reliably enough, issued a fulminating statement: “We will not tolerate such provocations and injustices, and we will take our revenge from France . . . by every means and wherever we can reach them.”

I don’t buy the theory that Islam requires a woman to be veiled in public, let alone be entirely de-humanized by something like the burqa. In opposing the burqa, we are not attacking Islam but a facet of Islamo-fascism which seeks to suppress everything it fears…including independent women who look after themselves.

In the normal course of events, we would have little to say about the sartorial choices of Americans – as long as a minimum of public decency is maintained, we are free to wear what we wish. But I argue that the burqa is, in its own way, as indecent as a thong bikini – both modes of attire dehumanize and objectify women. I would not have American women treated as whores or slaves, and thus I believe we should – city by city, county by county and State by State, ban the wearing of the burqa in public and, indeed, prohibit the use of feature-disguising veils, as well. We are all human beings, endowed by God with our features, and no one must hide them…or, more accurately, have them hidden away by those who wish to control others.

What do you think?

Taking the place of our Phrase of the Day is Benedict XVI’s encyclical, Charity in Truth:

Fidelity to man requires fidelity to the truth, which alone is the guarantee of freedom (cf. Jn 8:32) and of the possibility of integral human development. For this reason the Church searches for truth, proclaims it tirelessly and recognizes it wherever it is manifested. This mission of truth is something that the Church can never renounce. Her social doctrine is a particular dimension of this proclamation: it is a service to the truth which sets us free.

I’ve only partially read the introduction, but I think this particular encyclical is going to wind up rather important in the history of human understanding – Charity and Truth are inseparable. There will be many lessons to be learned, for both the right and the left.