Blogs For Victory

The news story:

For General Motors Corp., the task at hand is so difficult that experts say a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing is all but inevitable.

To remake itself outside of court, GM must persuade bondholders to swap $27 billion in debt for 10 percent of its risky stock. On top of that, the automaker must work out deals with its union, announce factory closures, cut or sell brands and force hundreds of dealers out of business – all in three weeks.

“I just don’t see how it’s possible, given all of the pieces,” said Stephen J. Lubben, a professor at Seton Hall University School of Law who specializes in bankruptcy.

And I don’t see how it is desirable – except, of course, for the Democrat party which needs the cushy, union contracts in order to keep bags of campaign money flowing in. The big question: in order to keep liberalism afloat, should the taxpayers be on the hook for GM’s problems?

Discuss

Melissa Clouthier over at Pajamas Media has an excellent blast against the concept that the GOP must become more “moderate” if we are to win again. Of course, we are most recently treated to the Specter party-switch and some how or another the fact that a rank opportunist ran away and hid when the going got tough is supposed to tell the GOP that just as discretion is the better part of valor, so is cowardice the better part of discretion. We’re supposed to valiantly hide conservatism in a closet and hope no one notices that we stand for something. This is designed to make it easier for us to pour money and effort into re-electing moderates in Pennsylvania…which just worked out oh, so well for us, didn’t it?

Ladies and gentlemen, did you know that your humble correspondent is a moderate? Oh, I know – to our liberal friends who visit here I’m just a step away from advocating a return to feudalism, but the fact remains that I’m a moderate. Think about it – I’m opposed to the death penalty; I’m against free trade; I want amnesty for illegal immigrants. In all of these things, I am clearly out of step with the large majority of GOP voters. And yet I’m a GOPer. And I’m not asking my fellow GOPers who are in favor of the death penalty, free trade and deportation to change or mute their views or risk losing my support. Honest people can have honest disagreements and remain friends and close allies. I am absolutely confident that no GOPer will ever wish for me to be out of the party on account of my views. Why is this?

Because I believe in the core GOP values: limited government (which means low taxes and spending above all); judicial restraint; strong defense; law and order, faith and family. Now, if I were to ever be in elective office, after garnering ardent GOP support for my bid, just what sort of person would I be if I then went on to vote in favor of some Democrat spending boondoggle? How is that in accord with the core GOP ideal of limited government? Why, in the end, should a GOPer put his faith in me if I can’t even hold to something as basic as that? On the other hand, if I were a staunch vote for spending restraint, national defense and family independence, what would a GOPer have to say to me if I, in addition to this, cast a vote in favor of a path to citizenship for illegals long in country? Oh, to be sure, a lot of GOPers would disagree and say so…but there would be no call for my ouster. There’d be no reason for it – I adhered to core GOP principles.

This what we mean by the “big tent” – that you can have differences of opinion, even quite stark ones, but when push comes to shove and a basic belief is at stake, its time to come down on the side of the basic belief. As a for-instance, GOPers can argue about whether we should cut the income tax or cut spending…but no GOP can say its time to raise taxes and/or raise spending. The moderates, so-called, will have to dance to core tunes. I do. We don’t have to agree on everything all of the time, but we do have to agree on a few things when push comes to shove. We tried the moderate path in 2006 and 2008 and it got us clobbered – we tried to be a nice version of the Democrat party. No more; no, thanks. Time to be the Republican party, and win under that banner, as we’ve won so many times before.

Gotta love Cheney.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday continued his verbal attack against President Obama, saying that the country is more vulnerable to a potential terrorist attack since the Obama administration took power.

Mr. Cheney said that administration’s dismantling of many of the policies and protections instituted by President George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks — including the planned closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba and halting controversial prisoner interrogation techniques — have made the country more vulnerable to future attacks.

“That’s my belief,” Mr. Cheney said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “I think to the extent that those [Bush-era] policies were responsible for saving lives, that the administration is now trying to cancel those policies … means in the future we’re not going to have the same safeguards we’ve had for the last eight years.” 

Cheney also explained how waterboarding saved American lives.

The former vice president defended controversial interrogation techniques such as waterboarding, saying that it had been an effective tool in extracting useful information from suspected terrorists such as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is accused of helping carry out the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks Washington and New York.

“He did not cooperate fully in terms of interrogations until after waterboarding,” Mr. Cheney said. “Once we went through that process, he produced vast quantities of invaluable information about al Qaida.” 

Of course, Obama’s White House wants everyone to believe that previously ineffective interrogation techniques that weren’t working would suddenly work.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: And I expect 100% of your liberals to congratulate Vice President Cheney for exercising the highest form of patriotism: criticizing the President.

Last night was the White House Correspondents’ dinner, as you may have heard, and amongst a whole slew of jokes, Obama made one that just didn’t sit well with me. He joked that Dick Cheney couldn’t make the dinner because he was working on his memoir tentatively titled, ‘How to Shoot Friends and Interrogate People.’

First, the reference to the hunting accident. As a someone new to hunting, and therefore recently completed a hunting safety course, I find joking about a hunting accident to be poor taste. Hunting may be a generally safe sport, but hunting accidents do occur and people have been killed. There’s nothing funny about that. 

Second, the interrogation line… What gets me about this is that Obama thinks “enhanced interrogations” are torture, so, for all you pro-Al  qaeda liberals ought to shocked that Obama would find that something to make a joke about.

Now, does this really surprise me? Well, to be honest, the part of the joke about interrogation surprised me more than the hunting part because Obama has no class at all. Remember his joke about the Special Olympics? Remember how he mocked the tea parties? But really, if you are someone who really believes that enhanced interrogation is torture, do you really think that it is appropriate to joke about it?

In loving memory of Barbara Jane Noonan (1933 – 2003) and Dolores Margaret Wilinski (1930 – 2009)

I’m a mother and a homemaker, and it isn’t glamorous. It’s tedious, monotonous, thankless, messy, germy, and it can be really hard on your manicure. It’s also the greatest job in the whole world.

Read the whole thing. And call your mother, if she’s still with you.

A Catholic rightwing extremist:

It is not morally possible for any Catholic to support abortion, euthanasia, fetal stem cell research, human cloning, or same-sex marriage. There are no ways around this, no justifications whatever. Why? For the simple reason that the Church holds these things to be intrinsically evil. They are evil in themselves, and no circumstances or subjective conditions can ever change that. – Fr. John Corapi

Nancy, we’re looking at you…

As I suspected all along:

The Federal Reserve significantly scaled back the size of the capital hole facing some of the nation’s biggest banks shortly before concluding its stress tests, following two weeks of intense bargaining.

In addition, according to bank and government officials, the Fed used a different measurement of bank-capital levels than analysts and investors had been expecting, resulting in much smaller capital deficits.

The overall reaction to the stress tests, announced Thursday, has been generally positive. But the haggling between the government and the banks shows the sometimes-tense nature of the negotiations that occurred before the final results were made public.

Government officials defended their handling of the stress tests, saying they were responsive to industry feedback while maintaining the tests’ rigor.

When the Fed last month informed banks of its preliminary stress-test findings, executives at corporations including Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. were furious with what they viewed as the Fed’s exaggerated capital holes. A senior executive at one bank fumed that the Fed’s initial estimate was “mind-numbingly” large. Bank of America was “shocked” when it saw its initial figure, which was more than $50 billion, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.

The banks pushed back – but since when does the regulating agency organize itself around the desire of the regulated to look as good possible? What likely happened here is a desire to avoid a complete collapse of the banking industry and a Dow of 2,000. The Fed – largely responsible for that part of our mess not caused by Fannie and Freddie – is playing fast and loose in order to avoid scrutiny while the banks and the Obama Administration are more than willing to go along for their own reasons. The only problem here is that if, as I suspect, our financial system is completely collapsed, then the longer we avoid facing it the worse it will ultimately be.

Our financial system is based on funny-money and set up in a crazy-quilt of various usurious programs which do little or nothing to advance the genuine wealth creation of making, mining and growing things. It all worked well for a while, but the only way we’ll get back on track is to ditch what we’ve been doing and essentially start over with a clean slate. Doing this, of course, will mean that we have to allow a lot of huge corporations to fail and, of course, we won’t have the funds for grandiose schemes to Europeanize America – and thus the Powers That Be are determined to pretend that all is well.

Its gonna really suck when everything hits the fan – but, we’ll survive. We’re Americans, after all, and once we clear out the corrupt cretins in DC, we’ll be able to start building again.

The news story:

A voter registration drive last year illegally required canvassers to meet quotas to keep their jobs and resulted in thousands of “garbage” registrations gumming up Clark County voter rolls, officials said Monday as they released a criminal complaint against the drive’s organizers.

The complaint names the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, as well as Chris Edwards, the group’s former Las Vegas field director, and Amy Busefink, who was regional director for voter registration.

In all, there are 26 charges of compensation for registration of voters and 13 charges of being a “principal” in the incident. An initial hearing has been set for 7:30 a.m. June 3 in Las Vegas Justice Court.

“In Nevada, it is unlawful for a person to provide compensation for registering voters that is based on the total number of voters a person registers,” said state Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto.

ACORN’s canvassers, she said, had to gather at least 20 voter registrations a day to keep their jobs. There was also a bonus program, known as “blackjack” or “21 plus,” which rewarded employees with $5 extra per shift if they brought in 21 or more completed registrations.

Canvassers under pressure to keep their jobs turned in registrations with fake names and phony addresses — even, in one case, the starting lineup for the Dallas Cowboys.

“These practices are clearly a violation of Nevada law,” Cortez Masto said. “By structuring employment and compensation around a quota system, ACORN facilitated voter registration fraud in this state.”

You liberals out there still want to claim that ACORN, as an institution, is innocent and merely the victim of over-zealous employees?

What have you got? The fact that your man, Barry, was elevated to the White House at least partially on the back of illegal actions. Now Obama wants to shower taxpayer dollars on this corrupt, anti-American group. What say you?

The news story:

One of the nation’s largest liberal advocacy organizations, MoveOn.org , is resisting efforts to clear the Democratic primary field for Republican-turned-Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter.

The political arm of MoveOn flexed its muscle Friday by releasing the results of an online poll that showed the vast majority of the group’s roughly 170,000 members in Pennsylvania — 85 percent — would consider supporting a Democratic challenger against Specter.

The group expressed concern over Specter’s vote against President Obama’s $3.4 billion budget just one day after defecting to the Democratic Party. MoveOn also cited comments Specter made in an appearance on “Meet the Press” last weekend suggesting he would oppose a public health insurance option that some Democrats would like to see included in any health care reform proposal.

Now, the story does go on to note that if Specter goes flat out kook left in his voting, a lot of MoveOn members will be willing to back him, but I still like the fact that these screwballs at MoveOn have a little bit of sense. Why should people who have worked desperately to enact an insanely destructive agenda allow the Democrat powers-that-be to saddle them with a person only moderately-insane? The Democratic party gets an advantage – securing a Senate seat on the cheap…but for the drooling morons of MoveOn, what do they get?

So, have at him, MoveOn…force the Democrats to either get Specter to go so far ’round the bend that Chuck Schumer looks conservative, or defeat him and get an even more batsh** crazy nominee. Either way, we GOPers are behind you 100% in this effort. Meanwhile I, personally, wish to congratulate you on a bit of backbone – after years of watching you bend over and say, “thank you sir, may I have another?”, its nice to see that there is a least one or two American blood cells remaining in your systems.

The proof:

…The government had to pay greater interest than expected in a sale of 30-year Treasurys. That is worrisome to traders because it could signal that it will become harder for Washington to finance its ambitious economic recovery plans. The higher interest rates also could push up costs for borrowing in areas like mortgages…

This means it will be harder to finance the massive debt Obama wants to run up, which means we’ll have to pay more to do so, which means deficits will be higher than expected, which means debt will rise faster than forecast…which means, not to put too fine a point on it, we’re screwed.

America’s New Economic Rule Number One:

You can’t spend your way to prosperity.

One of these days even liberals might figure that out.