Blogs For Victory

‘Cause the spending spree we’ve been on has worked out so well, ya see?

President-elect Barack Obama said he’ll make the “single largest new investment” in roads, bridges and public buildings since the Eisenhower Administration to lift the sagging economy and create jobs.

Obama, in his weekly radio speech today, said his plan to create or preserve 2.5 million jobs will also include making public buildings more energy efficient, repairing schools and modernizing health care with electronic medical records.

“We won’t just throw money at the problem,” he said. “We’ll measure progress by the reforms we make and the results we achieve — by the jobs we create, by the energy we save, by whether America is more competitive in the world.”

And, of course, the only people allowed to bid on these jobs will be the well-connected, unionized contractors who are already in business and who will use the very same people who are already being used to build bridges, roads, etc. There might be a bit of new hiring, but there’s just so much to do with building a road…and the other day I watched a “work” crew on a road project…one man operating the backhoe, three guys watching him operate it. Our tax dollars and work – and Obama just wants more of it.

What is needed, of course, is brand new businesses in economically distressed areas – and while Obama is the smartest man who ever lived, he’s not smart enough to figure out what poor people around the nation are able to do, nor what the people in the poor areas might want done. The end result of Obama’s plan will be a lot of money thrown at a lot of things which will not do anything to repair the structural issues which are currently burdening our economy – it won’t fix the things broken in corporate America; it won’t fix the things broken in the unions; it won’t fix the social problems in the poorest areas of America…it will just spend money with the primary beneficiaries of the spending being those who are already well off.

Government cannot create wealth – it is not capable of doing it. Any money spent by Obama is money which can’t be spent by other people – and, more importantly, is money which can’t be spent by the people who created the money Obama is spending. Its a worthless circle of money, and it will not only not make things better, but will actually make them worse.

Welcome back, tax and spend liberals – we didn’t miss you, but we’ve got you back.

I finally decided it was time to create a Twitter account for Blogs For Victory. So here it is if you would like to follow us:

@blogsforvictory

and here are a few others you should follow:

@mattmargolis my personal Twitter account

@marknoonan Mark’s Twitter account

@thebuffalobean my Western New York blog

@hubpolitics my Massachusetts blog

@demcorruption old account for Caucus of Corruption

From Hot Air:

New UAW ad: You people aren’t going to put us out of work, are you?

A poignant message from the folks who helped steer American automotives into a ditch. Too bad they mentioned cars in the voiceover; otherwise this could be recycled as is, replete with the “not a banker” class resentment element, by any industry demanding a future bailout. I’m going to file it away for redubbing just in case blog advertising dries up. That would never happen, would it?

Geraghty wonders who’ll be buying cars next year or the year after with the economy in the toilet, but I think he’s only saying that because he loves bankers. Meanwhile, NRO claims that Congress has stalled on a comprehensive bailout but that a bridge loan to punt the issue to Obama is possible. A final deal reportedly could involve a “big role” for government in restructuring the companies with even a “car czar” appointed for oversight — which has worked out super for TARP thus far. What could go wrong?

Of course none of us want the auto workers to lose their jobs – we’re just wary of using taxes on our $20 an hour or so salaries to be used to subsidize $50 an hour auto workers who’s union dues go to support the very same Democratic politicians who got us into this mess in the first place. Call us cruel, if you like, but most Americans figure that if the Big Three go bankrupt then they’ll be able to restructure under new management with new labor contracts paying auto workers for the actual worth of the effort they put out.

It does appear that the grandiose plan for an auto bail out are dead, at least for now – but I hope that President Bush refuses to even provide a bridge loan. Let them go into bankruptcy – don’t put a GOP stamp on this scheme to protect the Union bosses from their own greed and idiocy; nor put a GOP stamp on giving a new lease on life to the corporate bosses who were so intent on their golden parachutes that they failed to notice that their industry was sliding into collapse.

From NRO’s The Corner:

Today on Uncommon Knowledge, Peter Thiel, captain of capitalism, on the current state of the political economy.

Peter Thiel: The timing for Obama is not as good as it was for FDR in the 1930s. Roosevelt took office in March 1933, the point where unemployment peaked. Things were going to get better anyway. He got all the credit.

I do not think that unemployment will peak in January 2009 [when Obama takes office]. It will be as if FDR got elected in the fall of 1930. Something like this happened in the UK. The Labour Party won in late 1929, but it was thrown out in mid-1931 and the Conservative Party ran the UK for the next fifteen years.

Peter Robinson: But you wouldn’t expect Republicans to win control of either chamber of Congress two years from now, would you?

Peter Thiel: No, but I think they will make very big gains and will most likely win in 2012.

This is a very likely scenario – Obama is going to have to make things work, and his problem is that he’s a liberal and everything he’s likely to try will probably make things worse. I figure the GOP at a 50/50 shot for control of the House in 2010 under any circumstances…and if unemployment is at, say, 7 or 8 percent come September of 2010, then just watch out.

The news story:

A majority of both Republican and Democratic voters oppose The Employee Free Choice Act, according to a new poll by Public Opinion Strategies of 800 general election voters.

Better known as the “card check bill,” the proposed act would give workers the right to unionize if a majority of employees publicly sign cards in favor of forming a union. Because it does away with the secret ballot, employers fear that such a law would allow unions to identify and coerce workers who otherwise would not vote to unionize.

“Across the ideological spectrum and across battleground states, significant majorities of Americans from every walk of life oppose this legislation,” said Katie Packer of the Workforce Fairness Institute.

When presented with neutral language describing the key provisions of the bill, voters surveyed opposed both facets. They strongly oppose a card check system and instead support the secret ballot process and they oppose changing the bargaining process. The poll found that 59 percent of all voters oppose the elimination of the secret ballot in union organizing elections and 53 percent oppose binding arbitration in contract negotiations.

In fact, when asked their preference if a union tried to organize in their workplace: 81 percent preferred a secret ballot, with only 14 percent preferring the card-check process.

The problem for Obama and his Democrats is that they promised this in return for the Union bosses donating massive amounts of money to their election efforts. But with 41 or 42 GOP Senators and a high level of unpopularity, it will be hard to get this un-American proposal through Congress.

I expect Obama and his Democrats will still try to push it – the Union bosses won’t let them off the hook, and that will work out to an excellent campaign issue for the GOP.

Par for the course when your main purpose in life is death:

Live Action Films has released an undercover video showing a deliberate violation of mandatory reporting laws for sexual abuse by a Planned Parenthood nurse in Bloomington, Indiana. The video also depicts the employee advising the girl how to avoid parental consent laws for obtaining an abortion by crossing state lines.

Lila Rose, a UCLA student reporter and president of the pro-life group Live Action, posed as a 13-year-old girl in a June 25 appointment with a Planned Parenthood nurse. Speaking with a nurse at Planned Parenthood of Indiana’s Bloomington Health Center, Rose claimed to have been impregnated by a 31-year-old man.

On the recording, after Rose explains her own fabricated age, the nurse replies: “I don’t want to know how old he is, OK?”

The nurse acknowledges her legal responsibility to report the incident to Child Protective Services.

Rose, speaking of her alleged partner, tells the nurse “he might be 31 now.”

The nurse dismissively replies: “OK, I didn’t hear the age… I don’t want to know the age.”

“It could be reported as rape, and that’s child abuse” she explains, advising the girl to misrepresent her own age and the age of her alleged sexual partner.

“You’ve seen him around, you know he’s 14, he’s in your grade and whatever. You know what I mean.”

Under Indiana law, sexual relations between an adult and a 13-year-old constitute a felony.

The nurse then advises Rose to cross state lines for an abortion.

“I cannot tell you this, but I can show you this,” she says, reportedly showing a list of clinic addresses. She circles an out-of-state abortion clinic before circling every other location on the list.

“So in Illinois,” Rose says.

Moral depravity is like that – once you start thinking, for instance, that its ok to kill unborn children, what is the real problem with being complicit in rape and child abuse? If killing a child is ok, then raping one is no great shakes. After all, the important thing is that the abortion gets performed – and if performed in a Planned Parenthood facility, so much the better for America’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood.

Could be:

U.S. stocks fell for the first time in three days, pushed down by concern General Motors Corp. may file for bankruptcy and a plunge in energy shares following Merrill Lynch & Co.’s prediction that oil will hit $25 a barrel.

As oil prices fall and gas prices fall with them, the impulse for “drill, baby, drill” will lessen – and Obama’s promise to “look into” offshore oil drilling will remain just that; a bit of electioneering fluff. But in the by and by if oil prices spike and we’re back to $4 a gallon gasoline while Obama hasn’t drilled for any oil, then that in and of itself will crush him at the polls.

Just something to keep in mind – if Obama is lucky, oil prices will remain low through 2012. They could very well do so, depending on the economy and Obama’s willingness to actually increase US oil supplies…if so, then Obama has nothing to worry about. If not, then…well, that will be all she wrote.

It cannot sustain itself – and while no one knows how it will all shake out, the plain fact of the matter is that California has followed the liberal social and economic model and it is now a basket case which can only be rescued by a conservative revolution:

…we will have the highest sales taxes (ca. 9%) in the nation, the highest state income taxes (10+%), and probably the lowest thresholds to get into those top brackets — and yet only about 380,000 Californians pay 40% of the aggregate income tax revenue.

In exchange, our schools, roads, airports, hospitals, and police are, to use a euphemism, not competitive. The CSU campuses make up the largest university system in the world, with the largest unionized faculty, and yet nearly 50% of entering freshman must take mandatory remedial math and English courses. We don’t utilize our ample energy, mineral, and timber resources, but instead depend on other states who do. Such an odd mix — we have sermons on our own greenness, but stealthy dependence on other less liberal producers to satisfy our insatiable appetites. (Thank god for moose-hunting Sarah Palin’s Alaska and an assortment of Middle East authoritarians).

We have an enormously expensive, but incompetent government at all levels. It has a horrendously expensive bicameral Legislature, hundreds of boards and bureaus that serve as $100,000+ sinecures for political insiders and term-limited ex-politicians. Those with advanced degrees fly to our low- or no-income tax neighboring states, coupled with an influx of tens of thousands without high school diplomas. We have a political discourse that is polarized, self-censored, and completely framed by race, class, and gender agendas — reflecting the curricula of our high-schools, colleges, and universities. The electorate is as volatile as it is unhinged.

And I know that the immediate desire of liberals who read this is to point out that Schwarzenegger is a Republican, and thus Republicans must be responsible for California’s deepening crisis. To be sure, Republicans in California haven’t often been very helpful, but the plain fact of the matter is that in most matters, liberals have gotten their way in California. And this runs right from the State down to the lowest, local level – outside a few pockets of conservatism, liberalism rules the roost from San Francisco to San Diego and all points in between.

While I still love to go to San Diego and the Los Angeles area, it is really rather sad as you drive through California these days and see a State deteriorating right in front of your eyes. Kids aren’t being taught how to read, but I’ve seen gangster graffiti scrawled on walls in Barstow and other out of the way places in California. To descend from the Cajon Pass into the Los Angeles area is to take a step-by-step trip into increasing societal decay. Dirty streets, dirty walls, an indescribable smell, a flashy rich elite which just makes the spreading blight stand out in sharper relief – this is the area my grandfather lived in and my father was born, and neither of them would recognize it today. The life has just gone out of the State.

When will it end? As soon as the conservative forces in California work out a plan and find leaders who are willing to put it all on the line. Meanwhile, liberals will continue to tax and spend and allow things to run down more and more because, quite simply, liberals don’t know anything else to do.

It is a lot more complex than anyone can imagine – a Pakistani friend of mine was recently visiting his home country to clear up some family business and he described a society which is only barely functioning. He’s disgusted with the whole thing and hopes never to have to go back to his homeland again (he became an American citizen some time ago). To hear him tell it, Iranians and Indians and Afghan warlords and various Pakistani factions are all engaged in a massive, criminal conspiracy against the people of Pakistan – who, if my friend is anything to go on, are decent, hardworking people who just want to be left alone. This rings true to me.

As I’ve said before, we live in an Age of Lies. Dishonesty is not just something done, it is something very often preferred to the truth. Further, those who insist upon truth are usually considered annoying to an extreme degree. This is because lies are easier to go along with than truth – lies usually only require that you accept them, while truth usually requires that you do something. When we couple this natural fact about lies and truth with an amazingly large number of people who are willing to lie all the time and everywhere, we get the socio-political stew we are current beset with. First and foremost as we try to figure out what to do is to admit to the truth as far as we can determine it.

The plain fact of the matter is that none of us likely has a clear idea of what goes on in Waziristan and other undergoverned areas of Pakistan. People who have taken some time to read history will note that this very same area gave the British Raj no end of trouble and provoked a large number of ultimately fruitless punitive expeditions to the area. While an outsider can only know so much, it appears to me that the people of that are area fiercely independent, want to be left alone and consider any sort of trade to be legitimate trade – whether its television sets or rocket launchers, goat cheese or opium. I’m not sold on the story that the people of the area are in love with the Afghan and Arab Jihadists who have set up shop – but if said Jihadists are leaving the locals alone and providing money and goods the locals want, then I can see very much how the locals would want to help protect a lucrative source of income in a very impoverished area of the world.

Another important thing to consider is that the people of that area are, well, people. And one thing we know about is people – being people, ourselves. What do we want? To be left alone; given a hand when things are rough; protected from predators; able to work to improve our lives and the lives of our children…that sort of thing. Stands to reason that most people in Pakistan want the same things – and thus the ultimate problem of Pakistan is how to set up a system where the people – the average Ismail on the street – can get what most everyone wants.

We’re already doing part of it – those Predator strikes we see from time to time are probably coupled with various Special Forces operations; we’re taking out Jihadist leaders, and thus getting rid of predators and people who essentially bring a world of hurt to the people of that area. On the other hand, I haven’t seen much effort to purchase the loyalty of the locals. Who has more money, al Qaeda or the United States? If we can flush $700 billion down the Wall Street toilet, then I think we can afford to spread some swag around Waziristan. It might seem crude and mercenary – but, then again, that is precisely what it is, so its best we’re honest about it. We want to take out the really bad guys and bribe in to service the not-so-bad guys in order that the good guys can gain the upper hand by building up a quality of life which makes whatever the bad guys are selling seem worthless.

Fundamentally, the cure for Pakistan is to be found in victory in the Global War on Terrorism – and that war is only to be won by spreading liberty, security and prosperity to areas of the world which have known little or none of such things since the dawn of history. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but if we dispense with BS and work with what we actually know or can genuinely assume, then we’ll be half way there.

The news story:

At least 38 people have been killed in Tijuana since Saturday, nine of them decapitated, in escalating drug-related violence that appears to have left in tatters a Mexican military offensive launched two weeks ago.

The killing spree marked the end of the tenure of the city’s top law enforcement official. Secretary of Public Security Alberto Capella Ibarra was removed from his post Monday evening after a year marked by upheaval in the police ranks and increasing violence.

It is disgusting what is going on in the Mexican border areas – and it is entirely the fault of a Mexican government which turned a blind eye to smuggling because it brought currency into Mexico and thus allow Mexico’s entrenched establishment to ignore the structural problems Mexico faces. Things are going from bad to worse, and I feel for the poor Mexicans – but we also must not allow this state of affairs to drift across to our side of the border. The fence must be built – and if necessary built 100 feet high from one end of the border to the other. As long time readers know, I’m in favor of an easy immigration policy – but I’m also in favor of our being entirely in control of who comes across, and when.