Blogs For Victory

This one does explain why all the other tax problems slipped through the vetting process:

White House general counsel Gregory Craig has seized control of Obama’s vetting process after a series of nominees with unpaid taxes. But his wife’s business may also have avoided taxes. Who vets the vetter?

Derry Noyes, Craig’s wife, runs Noyes Graphics, a design business, out of the couple’s home in northwest Washington. Between Craig’s work and hers, they’ve been on Washington’s A-list for a decade.

PBS’s American Stamps aired a profile of her two days ago. She designs specialty postage for the U.S. Postal Service, including a number of notable stamps. One recent series celebrating the work of famous architect Charles Eames was featured in Metropolis. Noyes herself is the daughter of architect Eliot Noyes, a friend of Eames.

Operating a business out of one’s home in D.C. requires a home occupation permit and registration with the city’s division of corporations. Additionally, the government has instituted a new requirement for business license permits.

A spokesman at the Washington D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs told Gawker that no one has ever sought any kind of permit or registration for a business under the name of Noyes Graphics or at the Craigs’ home address. By not registering Craig may have avoided local business taxes.

Private investigator Joseph Culligan looked into business records for Noyes Graphics, which is run out of the Craigs’ home, and found Dun & Bradstreet records showing substantial annual sales, a Yellow Pages listing, and an online listing inviting customers to visit the business at her home address (now posted on Webofdeception.com).

You Democrats do realize that all those taxes you’ve piled up on the economy have to be paid by you, too, don’t you? Or is it only the little people who pay taxes? It is disgusting to note that those who advocate for higher taxes are people who seem to have a problem paying their own taxes. This is like an anti-smoking campaigner taking a cigarette break.

Geesh:

When it comes to important national issues, 73% of adults nationwide trust the judgment of the American people more than that of America’s political leaders.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 13% place more trust in the judgment of the politician.

Now we know how large the real, rock solid and irreducible base of the Democratic party is.

Michael Ledeen points out that Obama’s quest for peace risks a war:

…We are making nice, we are unilaterally and preemptively granting them all manner of concessions, from lifting arms embargoes to Syria and Iran, to sending high-level envoys to talk to the Syrian dictator and (in the case of the unfortunate Kerry, who appears to be competing with Hillary, Mitchell and Holbrooke for the Neville Chamberlain award of 2009) hand carrying love notes from Hamas to President Obama. Who are our allies? Israel, Afghanistan and Iraq. What are we doing for them? Talking tough about Israel, threatening a yet-to-be-formed government with God-knows-what if it doesn’t make nice to its enemies, speeding up our withdrawal from Iraq, and openly dithering about the definition of our mission in Afghanistan.

If this continues, it is only a matter of time before the attacks against us and our friends and allies increase…

…It would not surprise me, in such circumstances, whether in response to an Iranian nuclear test, or a big terrorist attack on Washington, or London, or Rome, or Paris, to see an administration like this one respond massively. Just to demonstrate that we’re not wimps, that we won’t take it. And that this president is worthy of reelection.

Here, now, is something I wrote back in 2002 entitled “20th Century Victims of Peace”:

1920 – Winston Churchill urges Anglo-French to unite to destroy the Bolshevik regime; Churchill is derided as a “war monger”, trumping up phony fears of the Reds in order to improve his political situation at home. Wiser heads prevail, and the Bolsheviks gain full control of Russia – by 1940, this bit of wisdom in preserving the peace and refusing to be stampeded into pre-emptive action works its blessing; at least 20 million and maybe as many as 30 million Russians, Poles, Tatars, Uzbeks, Georgians, Chechens, Ukrainians, etc are murdered by the Bolshevik regime (this death toll is at least as much, and perhaps 50% larger, than the death toll in the First World War).

1932 – Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, watching as Japan attacks China and annexes a large portion of Manchuria, opined to President Hoover that we should run a “calculated risk of war” with Japan by cutting off their oil and scrap iron purchases in the United States. Stimson felt that Japan’s aggression, unchecked, would lead to a larger war, more deadly for America, in the future. As usual, wiser heads prevailed – no move was made, Japan got a hold of Manchuria and its resources and proceeded, year by year, to take ever more of China under its control – just in China alone, the death toll is estimated at 20 million from 1932 to 1945; when you add in the number of deaths experienced in other parts of Asia and around the Pacific when Stimson’s foreseen war did erupt in 1941, you can once again thank God that people preferred peace to war in 1932.

1934 – Winston Churchill, being one of the few western politicians who actually read Mein Kampf, raises the alarm about Hitler’s recently installed regime in Germany – he points out that Hitler is unstable, ruthless and has promised to bring all Germans under the rule of his new Reich. Churchill is insulted in the worst possible terms – actually accused of wanting a World War just so he can rise politically. Wiser heads point out that the “root cause” of German bellicosity is an inferiority complex added to the humiliations the Germans felt about losing the First World War. This bit of wisdom allows Hitler time to build his power to the point where he can unleash both World War Two and the Holocaust – death toll, in the range of 40 million in the European area.

1948 – Stalin’s USSR in direct contravention of agreements entered into with the United States and Great Britain, blockades the city of Berlin. This challenge to post-war agreements is responded to. Some advocated going to war over Berlin, figuring that the aggressive nature of the USSR was manifest and that defeating them in 1948, when they were still exhausted from World War Two, would be easier than waiting to fight them some other day in the future, when they’d only be stronger. Others figured it would be better if we could preserve peace by just trying to get Stalin to play nice about Berlin. Wiser heads, you guessed it, prevailed – although US action ended the Berlin blockade, failure to take decisive, final action against the USSR allowed it to continue – in time to get nuclear weapons, in time to spread war and misery around the world in the service of its communist ideals.

1950 – In response to the unprovoked aggression by North Korea’s communist regime against South Korea, we engage in war to expel them from the South; Douglas MacArthur, perceiving that the war was actually hatched in Peking and Moscow advocates a vigorous response, not limiting ourselves to the narrow goal of re-establishing the status quo ante in Korea. The wisdom of the world is brought to bear (after all, MacArthur is just a war-mongering alarmist who does not understand the complexities of the situation) – and stalemate is accepted. The US accepts 35,000 dead, the Koreans suffer at least a million – Mao’s regime is preserved by our inaction, and goes on over the following 20 years to murder 20 to 40 million of its own people.

1964 – Faced with a growing crisis in Vietnam, the United States determines that intervention by US forces is necessary; this is done with great wisdom – we aver from the start that we are not there to secure victory, but only to prevent South Vietnamese defeat. This wonderful program – designed to preserve the peace and prevent a widening of the war – ends up with a couple million Vietnamese dead, the South Vietnamese regime dissolved and 55,000 Americans gone to their deaths fruitlessly.

So – remember people, whenever there is a bad situation out there, advocate peace. What is always needed is a willingness to talk to the enemy and try to understand his point of view. Remember, it is Judeo-Christian civilization in general and the United States in particular which is the actual problem. If we’d only break out of our narrow-minded bigotry and understand the Islamists and the tyrants, they’d come to forgive us and thus be willing to make peace. Whatever else happens, make sure that no action is taken to get at the source of the evil, because if you do so not enough people will die at a later date – the blood-lust of the peace movement must be filled, yearly and forever

One wonders just what rock Obama had to lift to find this guy:

…It now appears Mr. Obama has appointed a highly controversial figure to head the National Intelligence Council, which is responsible for producing National Intelligence Estimates. The news Web site Politico.com yesterday reported that it could confirm rumors that a former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Charles “Chas” Freeman Jr., has been appointed chairman. (My calls to the White House and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence produced neither confirmation nor denial.)…

…In 1997, Mr. Freeman succeeded George McGovern to become the president of the Middle East Policy Council. The MEPC purports to be a nonpartisan, public-affairs group that “strives to ensure that a full range of U.S. interests and views are considered by policy makers” dealing with the Middle East. In fact, its original name until 1991 was the American-Arab Affairs Council, and it is an influential Washington mouthpiece for Saudi Arabia.

While President Obama speaks of helping the people of Israel “search for credible partners with whom they can make peace,” Mr. Freeman believes, as he said in a 2007 address to the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs, that “Israel no longer even pretends to seek peace with the Palestinians; it strives instead to pacify them.” The primary reason America confronts a terrorism problem today, he continued, is “the brutal oppression of the Palestinians by an Israeli occupation that is about to mark its fortieth anniversary and shows no sign of ending.”

Although initial reaction to Mr. Freeman’s selection has focused on his views of the Middle East, that region is by no means Mr. Freeman’s only area of interest. He has pronounced on a wide variety of other subjects, including China, where he has attempted to explain away the scale and scope of the starkly intensive buildup of the People’s Liberation Army. The specter of a Chinese threat, he remarked during a China forum at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in October 2006, is nothing more than “a great fund-raiser for the hyper-expensive advanced weaponry our military-industrial complex prefers to make and our armed forces love to employ.”

On the massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989, Mr. Freeman unabashedly sides with the Chinese government, a remarkable position for an appointee of an administration that has pledged to advance the cause of human rights.

That a man so out of touch with reality could be even considered for head of intelligence shows how entirely clueless Democrats are about the world we live in. If this goes through, we are going to pay a price in blood for it – if this is the man to write our intelligence estimates, then we can rest assured that threats from Islamists and Chinese imperialism will be ignored, and likely ignored until it is too late.

This is another badge of shame for those on the conservative side who voted for Obama – we have littered throughout the Executive branch people who will work diligently to thwart the best interests of the United States and its allies. People who view America as the problem and our enemies as the aggrieved party. Don’t blame kooks like Freeman – he’s doing what he thinks is best, or at least what he’s paid to do by the Saudis and the Chinese. Blame ourselves, for allowing this purblind Administration to obtain power – and then remember, now and forevermore, that elections aren’t just exercises in political gamesmanship, but events which may determine who lives and who dies.

NRO’s Editors have it right about the absurd attempt to provide a House member for DC:

Congress is on the verge of granting the District of Columbia statehood on the cheap: This week, lawmakers in both chambers are debating a scheme to give the District a permanent seat in the House of Representatives. The bill in question violates the plain meaning of the Constitution and should go no further…

…Because efforts to make D.C. a full-fledged state have failed, the city’s political backers have resorted to incremental steps. Much like Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Guam, the District currently sends a delegate to Congress. The rules governing these posts have changed over the years, but in general delegates have been allowed to vote in committee but not on the floor of the House.

That’s because the Constitution forbids non-states from enjoying this privilege. The senators and congressmen who think otherwise should take a refresher course on Article I, Section 2 and the Fourteenth Amendment: “No Person shall be a Representative who shall not … be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.” Moreover: “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States.”

Democrats are attempting to secure GOP backing for this unconstitutional power-grab by dangling an extra – presumptively GOP – seat in Utah for our side. We must not be party to this – if the Democrats wish to ram this thing through, then let them do so – the inevitable court challenge will swiftly end in the Supreme Court striking down the measure.

Our constitution is under grave threat while Democrats hold the White House and Congress – having no understanding of what law is, Democrats are unreliable (to put it mildly) guardians of our laws. To Democrats, what is right is whatever is fashionable at the moment – if the hip, rich people are in favor of a thing, then it should be done, goes Democrat “thinking” on such matters. Children need to be kept from harming themselves, and Democrats in charge of laws are like children in charge of machine guns.

Nothing like those tolerant, loving liberals who seek to persuade by carefully reasoned arguments and respect for other points of view:

The owner of a family-owned ice cream shop and restaurant in Sacramento who has been targeted by angry phone calls and e-mails and obscene Valentine’s Day cards because of his support for the Proposition 8 campaign says Catholics should “stand up” for marriage despite the consequences and the “lies” of extremist activists.

The passage of Proposition 8, which overturned a California Supreme Court decision instating same-sex “marriage,” prompted major protests from homosexual activists and their allies.

Allan Leatherby, 46, told CNA that he and other family members decided to contribute to the Yes on 8 campaign after Bishop of Sacramento Jaime Soto personally called him to ask for his support.

Members of the Leatherby family, which owns Leatherby’s Family Creamery, gave $20,000 to the campaign. “It was a response to his personal request. Otherwise we might not have supported it in that amount,” he explained to CNA.

“Obviously as Catholics we value marriage,” he said, saying they saw some “huge red flags” about the effects of same-sex marriage.

When the family’s support for Proposition 8 became public, protesters targeted their business. The ice cream shop was picketed, employees in company sweat shirts were harassed and angry callers phoned the business. The business reportedly received hundreds of angry e-mails and was targeted by bloggers.

Leatherby also received obscene Valentine’s Day cards in the mail.

“There is no way we could have prepared for the kind of reaction we got,” he said. “Business is actually down and that worries me. Can a business sustain that kind of negativity in the long-term? God only knows.”

I was about to write, “imagine what would happen if Catholics were to picket a business which supported Prop 8″…but, on the whole, Catholics just wouldn’t do that. You see, people have a right to believe what they wish and while we want to convince them to come over to our side, it would be immoral to unjustly harass people merely for having a different point of view.

Pity liberals can’t pick up on this.

The democrat-controlled U.S. House has just killed an investigation into lobbyist-lawmaker ties.

The House voted Wednesday to kill a resolution calling for an ethics investigation into potential quid pro quo between lobbyist campaign donations and lawmakers.

Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., sponsored the proposal that would have forced the House Ethics Committee to launch a probe into ties between the source and timing of campaign contributions by lobbyists and subsequent legislator requests for special projects or earmarks.

While open-ended, Flake’s resolution was a direct response to the ongoing federal investigation into the PMA Group, a lobbying company accused of making fraudulent donations to lawmakers using names of people who did not exist.

The firm, which has contributed millions to politicians in the last decade, has close ties to senior Democratic appropriators including Reps. John Murtha D-Pa., and Pete Visclosky,D-Ind. The FBI raided PMA’s headquarters in November and is investigating the group’s founder and president, Paul Magliochetti, a former Murtha aide.

“Whereas numerous press reports and editorials have alleged several cases of influence peddling between members of Congress and outside interests seeking federal funding the House of Representatives should respond to such claims and demonstrate integrity in its proceedings,” the resolution read.

The House decided to set aside the proposal by a mostly party-line 226-182 vote, though 17 Democrats joined Republicans in support of considering the measure.

Which is, coincidentally, pretty close to the margin of democrats in the House who voted against the Spendulus bill.

Promises, promises, promises.

And fuzzy math:

Q Robert, you talk about honest and transparent budgeting and I wanted to come back to Chuck’s question about the $2 trillion figure that the President used last night of savings over the next 10 years. We were told last night that that basically referred to two things. One is the expiration of the tax cuts on the wealthy that would happen next year. And two is a reduction of what we are currently spending in Iraq —

MR. GIBBS: I think that’s a — I think that’s certainly a decent part of it. I don’t know, not having seen — or at least not having in front of me the formal documents to know whether that’s 100 percent.

Q Okay. But let me ask — is it transparent to say that tax increases are part of savings? And is it transparent to say that we’re going to be saving that much from Iraq when nobody expects that 10 years out we would be spending what we’re spending today in Iraq? Even the previous administration agreed to get out of Iraq by 2012. And that’s the baseline you’re culling savings from.

MR. GIBBS: It isn’t — I mean, if we’re not spending the money, and the money doesn’t go out the door, and the money doesn’t increase the deficit, and the deficit decreases by some amount, ultimately getting you to the President’s goal of having a $1.2 trillion to $1.3 trillion deficit in his first four years in office —

Q But nobody expects to spend 10 years from now what we’re spending today in Iraq. And if we use that as our baseline, saying, oh, we’re saving because we’re not spending what we did 10 years ago, I mean, isn’t that sort of setting up a funny money comparison?

The answer to that is “yes”. So, naturally, Gibbs answered “no”, because when discussing Obamunism, honesty is most certainly not the best policy if your hope is to get re-elected in 2012.

This is part and parcel with the Obama assertion that his policies will create or save some millions of jobs…its the or save part which is important, because it allows Obama to cook the books any way he wants and claim to have carried out his program with 100% success, even if unemployment is at 14% in 2012. Its all part of a rhetorical shell game which is designed to gull the fools in the Democrat base and allow as few handles as possible for the GOP to hammer Obama upon – Obama hopes to have never answered a single difficult question in a straightforward manner by the end of this term – and, so far, his plan is working as the MSM – in spite of this rather trenchant line of questioning – is not showing itself up to challenging Obama directly.

The hardest task the GOP will have over the next few years is to speak the truth without sounding like we’re being mean or just knee-jerk in opposition. Obama and his handlers are masters at framing the debate into a “heads I win, tails you lose” set of propositions. This is why as we oppose Obama, we must do so with care and find the two or three issues which we can present most favorably to the American people, demonstrating that Obama is a fool and that his policies will fail…and once they do fail, we’ll then reap the electoral benefit. We can’t really stop Obamunism – Obama has the votes in Congress to pretty much do what he wants – but we can delay it, and set the stage for a swift repeal of it, once we are returned to power.

Dinesh D’Souza answers:

If you really look at the motivations of contemporary atheists, you’ll find that they don’t even really reject Christian theology. It’s not as if the atheist objects to the resurrection or the parting of the sea; rather, it is Christian morality to which atheists object, particularly Christian moral prohibitions in the area of sex. The atheist looks at all of Christianity’s “thou shalt nots”—homosexuality is bad; divorce is bad; adultery is bad; premarital sex is bad—and then looks at his own life and says, “If these things are really bad, then I’m a bad guy. But I’m not a bad guy; I’m a great guy. I must thus reinterpret or (preferably) abolish all of these accusatory teachings that are putting me in a bad light.”

In this Lenten season – when we’re supposed to reflect on how we fall short and what we may do to be better people – it is very appropriate, I think, to bring up this observation. You see, the hardest thing anyone can do – the thing non-believers balk at – is the admission of what a bunch of rotters we are. I mean, really, we’re creeps most of the time – but people don’t want to admit to this creepiness, preferring to note that there are worse people and, hey, I’m a pretty nice guy and I don’t think I’m a bad person, yadda, yadda, yadda…meanwhile, said self-satisfied individual spreads gossip, gets angry at those around him who fail as if he never fails, is envious of someone who got the better job, eats to his heart’s content without a thought – while eating – to those who have none, etc, etc, etc.

What people like to do is to tell themselves – and others – that the lousy things they do are not lousy, or are at least excusable. It is easier for us to give ourselves a “Get out of Hell Free” card rather than confront our errors, repent of them and seek to make amends. And for people holding such self-issued cards, the worst thing which can happen is for someone to come along and try to spoil the illusion…such as a devout Christian, Jew, Moslem or what have you pointing out that, really, repentance is absolutely necessary. And thus the battle – not over whether Christ is the Son of the Living God, but over whether cheating on your wife is really all that bad a thing to do.

And now, have at it.

How to stop the worst of the Obama train wreck is something we conservatives need to figure out – Bill Kristol notes this oncoming day of reckoning:

…Obama’s aim is not merely to “revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity.” Obama outlined much of this new foundation in the most unabashedly liberal and big-government speech a president has delivered to Congress since Lyndon Baines Johnson. Obama intends to use his big three issues — energy, health care and education — to transform the role of the federal government as fundamentally as did the New Deal and the Great Society.

All of those GOPers and conservatives who hopped on the Obama bandwagon in 2008 had better take note – your moderate, sensible guy who will govern from the center is an out-and-out social democrat who intends to make America as socialist as he can. And he’s going to do it because he believes it is the best thing to do – we’ve got a charismatic, popular, media-savvy uber-liberal who wants to remake America. The question for us conservatives: do we wish to fight this?

One would think that the answer is obvious – we’ll fight. But, its not. It is in the nature of things that Fallen man’s normal preference is for servility. Turned away from the one thing we should kneel before, we choose to kneel, instead, before anyone who appears able to take life’s burdens from our shoulders. It is hard to stand as a man or woman, dependent only upon God and willing to take life’s challenges as they come. Anything can be explained away or rationalized – because we prefer to be excused.

The people, as such, will not come to their senses – the reason there are leaders is because leaders are needed. There are tens of millions of Americans who are looking on with dismay as Obama proceeds to destroy that which made America great…but they won’t do anything about it unless people step out in front and lead. And when such leaders do emerge, it isn’t for us to sit back and allow them to take the load – those who are unwilling to lead but who also fully understand must accept their responsibility for helping the leadership to advance the cause, not issue childish dissents because someone isn’t doing 100% of what one would prefer.

America stands on the brink – on one hand we have Obama, heir to Wilson, FDR and LBJ, who is leading us to a point where a majority of Americans will be dependent upon government for their living. It will be a poor and nasty living, to be sure, but fear will keep dependent people in line; fear of losing the little they have. On the other hand stand the heirs of Washington, Lincoln and Reagan – dismayed, confused, wracked with doubt…but yet those who must defend what patriots have died to create and sustain: a nation of free men and women who look to God, family and self, not to government, for help with the burdens of life. How we conservatives behave over the next two or three years will tell the tale.