Is Herman Cain a 21st Century Ronald Reagan?

Herman Cain is surging in the polls and gaining the attention of more Americans, perhaps even garnering vaunted "first tier candidate" status.
  



And why not?  He's a brilliant, articulate man with executive experience.  He knows how to lead and manage and he has the successful track record to back it up.

Fred Barnes has written a thumbnail sketch profile of Herman Cain based upon his review of Cain's autobio:  This is Herman Cain! My Journey to the White House.  Barnes' article, Raising Cain, is well worth five minutes of your time.  He compares and contrasts Cain's background with that of the current White House occupant.

Unlike Obama, Cain's upbringing was stereotypically American and one shared by millions of blacks in this country.  Both parents worked, his father had three jobs, they were discriminated against, and they went to Church on Sunday.  Despite the hardships, Herman's parents taught him to love his country, love his fellow man, and to work hard and believe in himself.

This particular paragraph in Barnes' article stopped me in my tracks...

His upbringing may explain his gift for delivering a conservative message with a friendly face, as Ronald Reagan did. “I also like to smile, laugh, and have fun with people,” he says.

Of all the candidates in the field, Cain is perhaps the most Reaganesque. Folksy and eternally sunny, he has a talent for delivering a serious message with a smile and good humor. You can just tell he has a love and respect for his fellow man, and that he enjoys the give and take of the campaign trail. He has a lifetime of experience and he has spent years writing and talking about the great issues facing America.

Herman Cain could once again put a friendly face on American conservatism.

Fractured Banking

"As Europe's Crisis Grows," The New York Times frets, "suddenly, over there is over here." 

They are right. We live in an interconnected world. It used to be said that when the US sneezed, Europe (or Japan or South America) caught a cold. Now, it goes both ways, since we have so much money invested around the world, and the stewards of all this money are batwinged dastards who have suborned sovereign nations into their dark schemes.

A crucial mechanism linking financial players in the United States to the problems in Europe involves credit default swaps, those insurance-like products that did so much damage during the 2008 financial crisis. (Think American International Group.)

Billions of dollars in swaps have been written on sovereign debt, guaranteeing that those who bought the insurance will be paid if Greece or other countries default. But since these instruments trade in secret, investors don’t know who would be on the hook — as A.I.G. was in its ill-fated mortgage insurance — should a government default or a bank fail. (NY Times)

What the international financial insurers need to be told is that they’d better make good on it or they’re going to jail. Same for the bankers who loaned irresponsibly knowing that governments would bail them out or print them more money once they blew through their allotted portion.

Fractional Banking is Fractured

The first problem is that banks are loaning out money they don’t have, essentially creating money out of thin air. The second part of the problem is the exotic financial instruments that allow companies to gamble with money they don’t have and to write insurance policies full of promises they can’t keep.

If this were just financial giants screwing one another, who would care? Unfortunately, it’s not. Central banks of sovereign nations fund all of this high-flying chicanery, which really means you and I are the ones who pay when a bankster shoots craps at the casino.

Paul Volker warned us. He was the Fed Chairman who cleaned up Carter's mess. Obama hired him on to much high hope and fanfare when he first took office, and then promptly ignored him because he was crapping in the punchbowl.

Is Limited Purpose Banking the Answer?

Christophe Chamley and Lawrence Kotlikoff wrote a great little paper entitled, Limited Purpose Banking - Putting an End to Financial Crises.  Muchas gracias to Conservatives on Fire for turning me on to this little Gem.  Chamley and Kolitkoff's solution?

They propose restricting banks to traditional banking, and putting similar restrictions on brokerage houses and insurance companies.  Presumably, this would let the high fliers continue flying, they just would have to do it outside of our financial system and without the taxpayer-funded safety net.
 

Please go read the article.  It is very short, and his entertaining analogy explains those exotic instruments known as credit default swaps.

Progressives Hate the US Constitution

Harold Myerson gazes upon our gridlocked government and asks, “Did the Founding Fathers Screw up?”

The short answer is, “No, you dimwit. They planned it this way!” I do feel ashamed lecturing my elders, but it is so true that there’s no fool like an old fool.

Scratch a progressive, and you will find a goose-stepping totalitarian just below the surface

The current impasse between the Republican House and the Democratic president and Senate has only highlighted what is a chronic—indeed, constitutional—condition: Just as the American people have a bias for action, the American government has a bias for stasis. […] Much of the developing world now sees China and its model of capitalist authoritarianism as more efficient than the creaky workings of democracy. (The American Prospect – Harold Myerson)

That’s the way our government was designed to function, Harold. I know lefty statists like you look longingly towards China, admiring the virile collectivizing of their slave workers and making the trains run on time, but their per capita GDP barely ekes out Turkmenistan, with economic marvels Angola and The Cook Islands still outpacing them.

Bold action in the lives of the citizenry should spring from the citizenry, not a government politburo. This is America!

Meyerson bemoans the fact that “national consensus” is so difficult. Again, that is by design. Our founders set up a non-authoritarian government that was supposed to point itself outward, taking care of the big stuff and international issues so the states and the people could reign sovereign over their own lives. The federal government now bristles with horrible tools and instruments of opression pointed inward, demanding we march lock-step to its tune.

Those who look towards DC and shout “Do Something!” haven’t been paying attention. Look around you! And behold the Feral Government’s handiwork. They did a whole lot of somethings, tens of trillions worth, and they don’t have the money to pay for it.

“Do Nothing!” Should be the command. Or at least we should put DC in time out until each regulator, bureaucrat and politician has read the US Constitution and understands the concept of enumerated powers and limited government.

Like letting your young boy keep and care for a frog or turtle to prove he is worthy of having a higher-order pet such as a dog, government should first prove itself worthy of handling international relations, protecting the borders, regulating the value of our currency, guarding the US Treasury, and maintaining basic infrastructure. So far, it has failed miserably, and has thus proven it has no business expanding operations, especially going so far as to regulate the individual lives of free people.

I thank God we have the constitutional bulwark of checks and balances. FDR breached them, after cousin Teddy, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson sapped the foundations, and we are worse off because of it.  Progressive rats and cockroaches have weakened out constitution with a million nibbles and snarks, but it still survives, albeit in a weakened state.

If you think things are bad now, could you imagine the North Korean horror show this nation would now be if the progressives had their complete control to impose their twisted, liberty-hating will?  We’d be living in crowded city centers eating arugula, our automobiles confiscated, while the cognoscenti continued to enjoy their country manors, large carbon footprints and jet-set lifestyles.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely executed for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." ~ C.S. Lewis

Awlaki's Dead. Justice Served?

Liberals are up in arms over the Al-Awlaki killing. And so are many conservatives...

I posted a quick link on this topic yesterday supporting the president, and ended up getting a lot of pushback.  Even Fuzzy Slippers disagreed with me, and that doesn't happen too often.

The discussion got so good here at Western Hero that I requested a cease fire on the topic and decided to do an entire post on it today.  You can read yesterday's comment thread here.

Uber liberal Glenn Greenwald sums up the case against Obama, leveling the charge of Due-Process-Free Assassination:

No effort was made to indict him for any crimes (despite a report last October that the Obama administration was “considering” indicting him). Despite substantial doubt among Yemen experts about whether he even had any operational role in Al Qaeda, no evidence (as opposed to unverified government accusations) was presented of his guilt.

This controversy involves two questions. One of law, and one of motives and legitimacy. Let's look at the legal issue first, since it is the more important of the two.

The Law

Which is operative? The fact that he is an enemy combatant? or the fact that he is an American criminal suspect? That's what this comes down to.  And it's clear that the US considered him a combatant, not a criminal suspect, since as Greenwald says, no charges were filed against him.

The editors at National Review make a compelling case in Obama's favor. Awlaki was a self-described enemy of the United States who joined Al Qaeda (AQ).  The United States took him out in a military action authorized by congress.  No subpoenas and no charges required:

The conduct of warfare, including targeting decisions, is inherently an executive function. In this instance, moreover, executive war powers are bolstered by a sweeping congressional authorization of military force that contains no limitations based on citizenship or geography. We don’t ask the courts to evaluate every strike we make against Taliban or al-Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan or Iraq, nor do we inquire about their citizenship. (NRO - Al-Awlaki's Just Demise)

Were it otherwise, all AQ would have to do is station an American traitor at every outpost and on every convoy to legally thwart our drone strike program.

Awlaki Renounced his Citizenship

Finntan did his usual yeoman research and provides the following results (Finn's words are italicized):

Loss of nationality, also known as expatriation, means the loss of citizenship status properly acquired, whether by birth in the United States, through birth abroad to U.S. citizen parents, or by naturalization. As a result of several constitutional decisions, §349(a) of the current Immigration and Nationality Act ("INA") provides that U.S. nationality is lost only when the U.S. citizen does one of the specified acts described in INA §349, voluntarily and with the intent to give up that nationality.

"taking an oath or making an affirmation or other formal declaration of allegiance to a foreign state or a political subdivision thereof after having attained the age of eighteen years."

"entering, or serving in, the armed forces of a foreign state if (A) such armed forces are engaged in hostilities against the United States, or (B) such persons serves as a commissioned or non-commissioned officer;"

"performs an act made potentially expatriating by statute accompanied by conduct which is so inconsistent with retention of U.S. citizenship that it compels a conclusion that the individual intended to relinquish U.S. citizenship."

"committing any act of treason against, or attempting by force to overthrow, or bearing arms against, the United States, violating or conspiring to violate any of the provisions of section 2383 of Title 18, or willfully performing any act in violation of section 2385 of Title 18, or violating section 2384 of Title 18 by engaging in a conspiracy to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, if and when he is convicted thereof by a court martial or by a court of competent jurisdiction."

I think Al-Awlaki personally made his position quite clear. He hasn't been an American citizen for years and it doesn't take a court or judge to formally renounce your citizenship. It can occur automatically based on your words, writings, or actions.

The Legitimacy Question

Many Right Blogistanis are questioning the president's motives, and I understand that based upon his past actions. However, this was a deliberate action with diligent legal review and it was carried out transparently, as befits a democracy. We can examine the unclassified information, and our lawmakers can review it all.

The only difference here is that the Justice Department also reviewed the plans because of the anticipated uproar over killing an "American."

That Justice Department review was just the last step in a standard review process that is routinely performed daily for all kinds of military and CIA strikes. Discrediting the whole operation just because a tainted Justice Department was involved is committing a fallacy known as Circumstantial Ad Hominem, where one asserts that because an entity is wrong on some issues, it is wrong on all issues. That's just not logical. Would two plus two no longer equal four because Adolph Hitler had once gotten that simple math problem correct?

The Case is Clear:  It was a righteous shoot

This was not an extra-judicial assassination carried out at presidential whim, and it sets no legal precedent that would allow a president to order American citizens killed at will.

Awlaki rejected his country of birth and renounced his citizenship, throwing his allegiance and aid to an enemy of America that congress has authorized the president to prosecute military action against.  President Obama transparently and with due legal diligence authorized a military strike against a military target.  Regardless of citizenship status, Awlaki made his bead, and now he's dead.

God Bless America 

Please visit the links below for other viewpoints:
Just a Conservative Girl - Are we going to follow the constitution?
WMR - Obama:  Warrior or Assassin
Left Coast Rebel - Terrorist Assumes Room Temperature

News links:
WaPo - The White House's Drone Policy
CBS - Justice Memo

Saturday Reading

Yeah... It's a boring headline, but so what?  Everybody's tuned into football, leaf peeping, or enjoying the Indian summer.  Here are some interesting links I collected but ended up not blogging about.

Why Ron Paul Will Never Be Elected President

Praise Allah, we schwacked another turd in a turban who has been plotting America's destruction.  As a bonus, he was a traitor to America as well.

Instead of celebrating, Ron Paul called it an illegal assassination.  That's not presidential; unless you are president of an America-hating turd-world nation.  Dr. Paul is awesome on banking, economics and small government, but he loses me when he starts talking crap like this.


How Money Works

If you want a quick lesson on international currency, how one goes up and others down, and just what it means to have the dollar as the reserve currency (and why losing reserve currency status could be a good thing), read this article:  FP - An Exorbitant Burden

Ve hav Vays of making you stop talking...

Even Liberals are Fed Up with TSA.  Advice Goddess Amy Alkon, no conservative but a great blogger, has accused the TSA of rape.  In true Chicago fashion, HeimatlandSicherheit Kommissar Janet Napoleonitano looks on approvingly as the accused TSA groper threatens to file a defamation lawsuit against blogger Alkon for writing about the incident.

How to Balance the Budget

John Stossel explains how to balance the federal budget

Cosmetology Cartel Kills Jobs
George Will tells a true story that illustrates how government regulation protects big business and guards the prerogatives of special interest cartels, killing jobs in the process.

Clearing out the job-killing regulations would give us an immediate economy stimulating jobs program without the half-trillion price tag.

Finally, the Quote of the Week

The honor goes to the plain-spoken and always on his A-Game, 98ZJUSMC

I never brag about my paltry foreign adventures, but our leftist friend Ducky will nonetheless zero in on them from time to time, for some strange reason.  On this particular day, he was chiding me for my service in Colombia, a beautiful country full of wonderful people and an excellent military and police force.

How much did we pay you to guard the pipeline in Colombia?

98ZJUSMC Responded:

But, everything's just ducky when Shanks McMulligan, Lightbringer of the Receeding Oceans, Possessor of the Magic Key, Guardian of the Idiot Realm and purveyor of Keynesian economic nonsense pulls off another teleprompter enabled coup of Fordian dimensions.

Gays in the Military was not about Gays in the Military

Don't Ask, Don't Tell has been officially repealed

The strategy gay advocates inside government used to allow gays to serve openly in our armed forces was revealing (Yes, it was an inside job). The fanfare, the open advocacy of the gay lifestyle, indoctrinating the troops into the gay agenda and criminalizing dissent, carving out another protected, special-rights group for gays.  The government did not have to do all that to simply allow gays to serve.

The Department of Defense, with the concurrence of Congress and the President could simply have removed all laws from the UCMJ that criminalize homosexual acts and been done with it. Period. But no, this was not about gays in the military; it was about nationalizing gay marriage and shoving the acceptance of homosexuality in everyone’s faces and forcing us to bow down at the rainbow altar.

Gays in the military was about federalizing gay marriage by first boxing in the DoD. Step 1 is complete, now comes step 2...

NORFOLK, Va. — A gay rights group kicked off the repeal of the U.S. military's ban on openly gay troops with a protest outside the world's largest Navy base that called for an expansion of benefits for gay and lesbian military members.

"Same sex couples can't live on base together, they don't have medical benefits, they don't have travel allowances, they don't have housing allowances. They don't even have the right to be notified if their partner dies in battle." (Gazette.com)

Nor do unmarried opposite sex couples. You've got to be married to get those bennies, and the advocates know that. They have pitted the federal government against itself. In the name of fairness, DoD must now grant these benefits to every boyfriend and girlfriend. That will never happen.

Here's what will happen: A phalanx of well-funded lawyers will bring a suit against the federal government, forcing the DoD to accept gay marriages (Which are five times more likely to involve infidelity than hetero ones) and treat them the same as traditional ones.  And they will win.

* Late breaking news!  Now the trannies want in on the deal.  I don't know about you, but if someone can't find their gender with both hands I don't want them handling explosives and having other military members rely on them for mission success.
...................................
I have no problem with gays serving, but Western Hero co-blogger Hugh Farnham does, creating an editorial split.  Here's his take:

With the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, many military bases are getting copies of LGBT newspapers - for free. This is to help the gay base population to adjust to the new order of things. Hugh Farnham thought he'd help them out with this  (Right click and download to embiggen):

Progressives in Retreat

View From the Ridge

The Hopium cloud has dissipated. Only the foul stench of overripe progressivism hangs in the air. Americans having caught pungent nosefuls and are recoiling in horror

Conservatives are now the single largest ideological group in America, according to Gallup.

The Wisconsin Democrats scampering across the state line to Illinois in a futile attempt to dodge reality turned out to be an apt metaphor of the state of American Progressivism. It is in collapse.  On the run.  Reviled, discredited, angry and sullen...

I get the impression that progressives really do believe we should all just fall in line and let the philosopher kings implement Plato's Republic.  I think ordinary Americans sense it as well, and they are repelled. I know I am.

Al Gore as Metaphor:  A Global Collapse

I think progressivism may be facing a global rejection as well. Oh, it will always be around, and could even achieve a new ascendancy thanks to unrepentant global financial predators, but for now it is facing a shameful repudiation, encapsulated nicely in the the discredited "Climate Change/Global Warming" movement.

Gore has the Midas touch in reverse; objects of great value (Nobel prizes, Oscars) turn dull and leaden at his touch. (Walter Russell Mead)

Remember just a few short years ago, before the scandals and the lies, when serious people took the Global Elmer Gantry and his International Climate Change Road Show seriously...

Don't worry children! Reverend Al Gore of the International Church of Gaia will release his chakras! He will sell you carbon credit indulgences so that you may atone for your enviro sins. So throw your trillions and your economies into the volcano so that the earth's temperature will be juuuust riiiight!

The third world kleptocrats volunteering their oppressed masses to play the role of Lazarus in this opera of the absurd, begging for scraps at the table of the rich nations, in order to shame them out of their billions, was a nice filigree.

Here's a hint. Anyone or any organization employing the word "global" or "world" in a serious manner should be avoided. Categorically so when spinning fairy tales about the world being tooooo hot....

Especially when just 20 years ago the cognoscenti told us it was tooooooo cold!

Professor Walter Russell Mead sums up Gore's (and progressivism's) credibility problem:

But grave as that danger is, Al Gore can consume more carbon than whole villages in the developing world. He can consume more electricity than most African schools, incur more carbon debt with one trip in a private plane than most of the earth’s toiling billions will pile up in a lifetime — and he doesn’t worry.

A father of four, he can lecture the world on the perils of overpopulation. Surely, skeptics reason, if the peril were as great as he says and he cares about it as much as he claims, Gore’s sense of civic duty would call him to set an example of conspicuous non-consumption. This general sleeps in a mansion, and lectures the soldiers because they want tents. (The Failure of Al Gore)

Gore's Global theater of high drama has descended into farce, an emblem of the High Church of Progressivism, and Al Gore is its apotheosis.  

Walter Russell Mead - The Death of Global Warming

Walter Russell Mead - The Failure of Al Gore: Part 1

Walter Russell Mead - The Failure of Al Gore Part Deux

Multi-Failure

The federal government has attempted to be all things to everyone, and as a result it has become damn near useless to everyone, except the political class and the narrow interest groups they service

Do you own a Leatherman, a Gerber multi-tool or some other all-in-one gadget? They're pretty handy, especially when you're in the back forty and the carburetor needs an emergency adjustment, or you're out checking up on some remote equipment and end up having to fix something unexpectedly.

The pliers can double as a wrench, but you usually end up rounding off the bolt a little. The screwdriver will work in a pinch, so long as it doesn't fold up on you and pinch your finger or wreck the screw head because it's not exactly the right size... And the knife cuts pretty good while the rest of the tool cuts into your hand as you use it, and same for the file, saws, awls, openers and other gadgets these tools have incorporated into themselves.

Federal Government:  Multi-Tool Failure

Over the past half-century, Washington has insinuated itself into a thousand-and-one decisions that individuals or local governments are more than capable of making for themselves.

Which medicines can you buy? How efficient should your light bulbs be? Can your children’s school day begin with a prayer? Who qualifies for a mortgage? When do unemployment benefits run out? Can you pay an employee $5 an hour if that’s what his labor is worth? Should abortions be restricted? Is health insurance optional? Do artists or farmers or broadcasters require subsidies? Are you in charge of your retirement income? (Jeff Jacoby)

Mentioning the Enumerated Powers elicits titters among the sophisticated class, and that's too bad. Toqueville admired our ability to order our own lives at the local and personal level without the aid of an overweening government at every turn.

In Federalist No. 45, James Madison emphasized that, under the Constitution, the powers of the federal government “are few and defined,’’ while those left to state and local communities “are numerous and indefinite.’’ For the first 150 years or so of US history that was largely the case. But New Deal and Great Society liberalism has turned the framers’ careful arrangement inside out. Today, there is almost nothing in American life that Washington does not consider itself fit to regulate, control, ban, tax, or mandate. (Jeff Jacoby)

The Federal Government has gone from a beautiful, narrowly-focused instrument into a horribly bulky multi-use tool with 10 bajillion gadgets that tears your pockets open, injures you every time you try to use it, and is so damned bulky it cannot be employed for its intended purpose.

Obama's Scorched Earth Campaign

President Obama took his classless act on the road, making political hay out of the catastrophic wildfires in Texas...

Without mentioning him by name Obama mocked Perry as "a governor whose state is on fire, denying climate change." (AP News)

A US president mocking a governor whose state is a disaster area because of wildfires (which also occurred before the “global warming” era) is unprecedented. President Obama is a low-class, disgusting Chicago machine pol.

Imagine President Bush mocking New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco after Hurricane Katrina:

"… a governor and a mayor who still believe in nanny-state liberalism, when it’s bred generations of people so benumbed by government assistance they no longer have the good sense to get out of the way of a hurricane! he he heh...”

This is not a man who is president of all Americans and unites us. This is a cornered, cracked-out street punk fearful of going down, wildly swinging iron bars at his enemies and dividing us so he and his gang can continue to dominate the government special interest trade.

It’s all about rescuing the progressive agenda

ATHERTON, Calif. (AP) — President Barack Obama charged Sunday that the GOP vision of government would "fundamentally cripple America," as he tried out his newly combative message on the liberal West Coast.

No, Mr. President, you’re confused...

 The “GOP vision” if guided by the tea parties, would fundamentally cripple the progressive feral beast that has wiped its ass with the constitution, suborned the federal government, and is now engorging itself on more and more of our tax dollars and our freedoms. That is what we set out to “fundamentally cripple,” and America will be much the better once we get it done.

Progressives make an arrogant mistake: Equating Government with America

Their doctrinaire religion inextricably entwines the two, conflating them into one pseudo-patriotic package. It's a neat trick that allows them to slap an American flag on their horrible statist creature and then damn to hell anyone who speaks heresy against it.

It's not working anymore. Americans are turning againt the soulless progressive beast.

It Might be Mitt

Face it fellow Right Blogistanis. Mitt Romney could be the GOP nominee, making him our only hope for making Barack Obama a one term president. 

Chris Christie?
No way. True Believers on the right would be screaming "RINO!" within hours of his announcement. He's a tax raiser, expenditure increaser, cap and trader, and he has refused to join other states in the Obamacare lawsuit. And if you dislike Rick Perry's take on illegal immigration, you will absolutely hate Christie's.

Rick Perry:  The GOP's Lyndon Johnson
Rick Perry raises more questions than answers, and he's giving being plain-spoken a bad name, coming off as dismissive,  insulting and vulgar rather than folksy and honest.  He's the GOP's own Lyndon Johnson.

I love Ron Paul's constitutionalism, but his foreign policy is naive.  The good doctor takes a good thing, nonintervention, and turns it into a bedrock absolute, refusing to pull the trigger on a sworn enemy such as Bin Laden unless it is a completely righteous shoot.  When two libertarian foreign policy tablets would do, Dr. Paul makes us take the whole bottle. 

Congratulations to Herman Cain!

I am heartened at Herman Cain's Florida straw poll victory.  Anything that disrupts the press's dictation.  I would like to see him and Rick Santorum (an intelligent and articulate man whose expertise runs far beyond social issues) crack the top tier.

Meanwhile, Romney presses on. The man is like a battleship that won't go down. He's been campaigning for almost four years now and it shows. If he were any more polished we'd need welder's goggles to look at him. 

Here's some "out of the box" thinking.  Please stick with me.  I welcome return fire...

While I encourage my fellow conservatives to continue discussing and debating the merits of the various candidates, I also ask everyone to contemplate a Romney nomination win.  We could do worse.  He's an experienced businessman who understands economics and knows how the world works, and he's run a state, so he knows how to lead and make decisions.  He's a clean-living family man with no scandals in his past.

His flip-flopping could actually end up as an advantage (Stick with me!)

He's malleable.  Yes, I could see him jumping in with Democrats if they ran the house and senate, but the odds of that are very unlikely.  It's looking ugly for the dems in 2012; the GOP should hold the house and gain control of the senate.  Given a torch and pitchfork tea party mob and some stand-up small government types in a GOP-controlled house and senate, I could see Romney affably presiding over a party of mad slashers.  His job would be to put a friendly, responsible face on the gang that dismantles progressivism. 

What If...

Think about what you would do if your favored candidate lost the nomination.  Think what you would do if he or she lost it to your least favorite candidate.  You're thinkin' third-party, right?

Now, imagine a victorious Obama smiling and waving on the evening of November 6th, 2012.  Imagine him thanking the American people for affirming his socialist agenda by giving him four more years to finish off America as we know it.

Who am I for?  Anybody.  But.  Obama.

Clean Energy is Dirty

While Obama tries his best to send our economy and our currency the way of Argentina, his governing model is straight out of Chavez's Venezuela.

What does an Obama-favored crony crapitalist say?

"Upon the advice of my council I invoke the privilege afforded to me by the fifth amendment of the US Constitution and I respectfully decline to answer any questions."

That's an actual quote from the congressional hearings on the Obama administration-Solyndra criminal enterprise held this past Friday.



Industry lackeys in the Democrat party like Ed Markey and the ever more porcine Henry Waxman did their best to defend the malefactors against the righteous wrath of the taxpayer, but the Solyndra crooks had to be leaving that hearing thinking...

 "Crap!  Chrysler and GM and their union buddies got away with over $40 billion in government loot!  Wall Street got hundreds of billions!  And we're going down over a measly $500 million???"

This calls to mind a Ronald Reagan quote:

"When you get in bed with government, don't be surprised when you get more than a good night's sleep."

Freedom loving Americans have known that for decades.  It's great to see big government liberals finally learning that same lesson.

Sic Semper Tyrannis!

The Lyin' King, Starring Barack Obama

Anyone who believes a plumber pays more in taxes than a billionaire is probably also dumb enough to vote for Barack Obama. 






It's going to get worse before it gets better...

Even Obama's people are saying unemployment will not go down before the 2012 election, and I believe them. Removing $1.5 trillion from the economy is not the way to grow jobs.  That's according to Reaganomics as well as John Maynard Keynes.  The president is economically illiterate and his policies are an incoherent clash of careening desperation and overheated class warfare populism, all fueled by crony crapitalism.

Obama Will Run in 2012

Don't believe the speculation that Obama may go quietly into that good night and make way for another Dem candidate.  He's young and America is not yet completely broken.

President Obama is an effete liberal metrosexual who's "down with the struggle" community organizer persona is just a pose.  He's never been in a fight in his entire life, other than the time he and  his gay Muslim "porn 'stash" roomate both discovered a roach under the sofa cushion, and the room broke out into a cocaine-frenzied pillow fight.

Regardless, he ain't giving up his current gig without a global-billionaire-funded fight (where others do the dirty work.)

But anyway...  Greece will default, and who's in and who's out of the Eurozone won't really matter; Germany will end up on top...  It's gonna be ugly.

We here in the US will continue sliding sideways, but I think we'll come out OK, even after the ten years or so of misery and chaos we are facing.  For the most part, we still know how to take care of ourselves, our kinfolk and our neighbors; Those who do not should probably partner up with that Spanish-speaking family down the street.  Where they came from, you had to have some basic survival skills or you'd end up dead.

Our fundamentals are better than Europe's, and I really do remain optimistic that no matter how bad it gets, riots and all the rest, we will make it through, if only because North America (thanks in no small part to Canada) will remain fertile ground for capital, especially when compared to the rest of the world.  

China?

Are you kidding?  Their one-child policy has made China a dead man walking.  And the men not dying will not be able to find a woman, because the poor little commies aborted way more little girls than little boys.

Their environment is a nightmarish catastrophe bubbling just below the surface.  Hundreds of millions are still mired in poverty.  Smaller countries chafe at their role as The Middle Kingdom's slave state, while other nations find ways to undercut them with cheaper labor, just as China did to the developed world.  China will get old before it gets rich.

The Collapse Won't be Pretty
 
The Chinese Communist Politburo still nurtures the illusion that they can ride the beast, doling out freedom with an eyedropper.  Good luck with that.  Gorbachev thought he could just crack the door open, and next thing he knew, freedom's hordes were storming the breach.  His Eastern European clients were hanging from lamp posts while Boris Yeltsen was blasting the walls of Parliament with hijacked tanks.  It's folly.  Once human beings get a whiff of liberty, it's all over.

China's Totalitarian-Capitalism chemistry set will blow up.  And it won't be a little ka-boom, it will be a roaring fireball seen and heard around the world.

Forget investing in the stock market.  Put your faith in God and your money in gold and lead.

Bankster's Paradise

Mark Thorburn

The International poobahs in charge of the Basel Agreement want to raise the reserve amount banks must keep on hand.  Wall Street is chafing.  







Here are a few excerpts from an interview with a clearly-upset Jamie Dimon, multi-bajillionaire president and CEO of the International Confederation of Verminous Rent-Seekers:

“I’m very close to thinking the United States shouldn’t be in Basel any more,” sobbed the multimillionaire. “I would not have agreed to rules that are blatantly anti-American,” he said, stamping his little feet for emphasis.

So true! The brave little crapitalist went on to explain what is American, in his not-so-humble opinion:

“Our regulators should go there and say: ‘If it’s not in the interests of the United States, we’re not doing it,.” He declared, wiping the tears from his eyes with thousand-dollar bills.  (Financial Times – Rules Unfair)  

See? From the Wall Street vantage point, US Government regulators (“Our regulators, bought and paid for” as Dimon would express it) should go push around others and do the dirty work of US financial houses. He’s crying because the Basel Group is requiring him to have enough cash on hand to cover 10% of his gambling debts. 10 percent!

We have four options. I list them from most-statist to most-free:

$ Nationalize the big financial firms and park permanent camps of government regulators in their offices, in their front pockets, back pockets and nesting in their hair 24/7. The downfall here is that this would just make it easier for the bankers to co-opt the regulators and solidify the DC-NY-Davos Axis of Evil.

$$ Break up the big financial firms, smashing them into enough small pieces so that any one’s collapse would not bring down our economy.  This would put an end to "Too big to fail."

$$$ Reinstate Glass-Steagall.  This essentially would separate traditional banking from high finance and global investing.  Restricting FDIC type government protections to traditional banking and leave the financial high fliers and their exotic instruments to the whims of fate.  Not one more taxpayer dime for Wall Street!

$$$$ Trash the entire government-sponsored central banking scheme and return to a hard currency pegged to something real.  Outlaw fractional reserve banking, and put free-banking laws in place.  

What do you think?

Fractional Reserve Banking Causes Bubbles
Europe's Banking Crisis

American Liberalism is an Incoherent Hodgepodge

Yoinked from Boil the Beast

American Liberalism is a loose confederation odd-ball interest groups.  It has no moral foundation and no philosophical underpinnings.  It is an illogical, immoral, agenda-driven, emotion-laden farrago of fear-mongering and grievance-nursing.






Behold the myriad inconsistencies of American Liberalism:

* Derisively insist their is no God, yet use the teachings of Jesus to defend their redistributionist schemes

* Trumpet free speech for America-haters and pornographers, but not for Christians in the public square or conservative talk show hosts in the free market of ideas

* Denigrate the right to keep and bear arms, which is clearly stated in the constitution, but use obscure clauses to launch multi-trillion dollar statist schemes

* "Pro-Choice" unless it's the food you eat, light bulbs you use in your home, health care options, school you send your kids to, secret ballots for union votes...

* Scream and whine about rightwingchristiantheocrats taking over the country, but defend religious extremists who actually blow things up and kill people, including their own family members

* Deride those of us who cling to our bibles and our Christian faith as dimwitted toothless hicks who want to foist our morality on everyone, yet naively and unthinkingly lap up everything Al Gore and the other liberal high priests tell them.  And insist the rest of us bow down at their altars as well.
  

* Teachers cannot mention God, but liberals insist their dogmatic religious tenets of statism uber alles, multiculturalism, and homosexual fetishism be preached in every classroom. 

Let Them Eat Food Stamps 

Most insidious, liberals would deny a poor mother the money-making opportunity to make burritos and other food items in her own home and then sell them on the street. It's all in the name of food safety and "keeping the flow of the city," dontcha know...

Handmaidens of the state like Jersey actually say stuff like this, never once pausing to consider how "health and safety" red tape serves as a corporate-sponsored barrier to entry into the free market.

Just give that young mother some food stamps, right?  It's so much easier (and enslaving) than giving her economic opportunity.

Banker Bailout

Europeans are irked, miffed and rankled at Tiny Tim Geithner's stern warnings against the eventuality of a Euro-Crash.

"I found it peculiar that even though the Americans have significantly worse fundamental data than the euro zone that they tell us what we should do and when we make a suggestion ... that they say no straight away,"

They say they don't need his lectures, and they're probably right.  They seem to be doing a hell of a job on their own, although they will gladly accept our money to keep the scheme afloat awhile longer.

The latest round of American financial assistance came Thursday with a promise by the Federal Reserve to swap as many dollars for euros as European bankers need.

Make no mistake.  This is a Banker Bailout, at US Taxpayer Expense

We The Taxpayer will pay for this by paying more for everything as the value of the dollar continues to erode:

But over the long term, consumers could feel the impact of central bankers flooding the financial system with cash, according to John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics.

If Greece and other unstable economies collapse, Goldman Sachs and their international partners in crime would suffer catastrophic losses, and we can't have that!  So you and I watch our savings continue to be eaten away by these rats and cockroaches, while prices climb, all so Tiny Tim can send Europe all the dollars it needs.

They are propping up a rotting edifice.  The foundation has been eroded by rent-seeking rats and moral relativists.  The walls are shot through and the roof is sagging, threatening to fall in at any moment.

Collapse is inevitable.  Maybe all at once, or maybe piece by piece.  A credible argument can be made that it has already started.  Does anyone in their right mind really think Greece, Greece! can pay all that money back? Really?

The Economist explains The Cost of Break-Up.  Experts conclude that more borrowing is the only answer.

It is a bad sign when the only remedy the wizards can come up with is more of what got you in trouble in the first place.

Bloomberg - End The Fed's Dual Mandate

Delusional Democrats

Jack Camwell over at Christian Fearing God Man wrote a succinct and on-target post about how delusional Democrats are, even in the face of so many electoral losses.

It's all been downhill since the coronation of the ObaMessiah and the ensuing two-year liberal bacchanalia.  The Hopium hangover is hard to shake...

Anyway, Jack wrote this great post about how the democrat party obstinately refuses to recognize the will of the people, even in the aftermath of the momentous 2010 electoral pimp slap the American people administered to them. The subsequent special election losing streak is just the icing on the cake...

I'm sure they'll say that this is all meaningless, that the American people still believe in whatever horseshit the Democrats have been shovelling.

As if on cue, raving liberal Jersey McJones stepped in with a foul-mouthed rant blaming all of our problems on... wait for it... George Bush and the Republicans! He sums up his vulgar and vapid missive with that great old standard from the liberal hymnal... "... the American people are so f#&%ing stupid..."

That's right.  We're too stupid to see the brilliance of progressive statist programs that have flushed this country down the toilet...

My Advice to Jersey and other Democrats

Yes, by all means, write Obama and tell him to keep it up! Tell him and the democrats in congress to double down! triple down! Quadruple down! Demand that the next stimulus be ten trillion! Let a thousand Solyndras bloom!

Bearded crapweasel Paul Krugman can be the finance czar overseeing Obama's Great Depression II.  Kick off the 2012 campaign by telling ordinary Americans they are too stupid to understand the brilliance of Obama and the Pelosicrats. Call us all stingy and hateful and continue to demand we "pay our fair share" so they can "spread it around."

Tell the Obama administration to not only continue screwing Boeing and the thousands of South Carolinians deprived of a job, but demand Obama close down every non-union business that has more than one employee.

Explain to us again how borrowing and spending more money so Obama can reward his friends and punish his enemies is a brilliant idea.

Hell, I'd contribute money to that Democrat campaign.

Life Lessons From Star Trek

Or How to Deal With Liberal Lies
by Hugh Farnham

In The Menagerie Captain Pike is drawn to the planet of Talos 4 by a fake emergency beacon. Little does he know the planet is inhabited by deceitful and psychic Talosians who could foist any imagination upon the starship crew they desire. And they do – all to get Pike trapped in a breeding relationship with Vina, an apparently hot female of an uncertain age.

After drawing him into their lair with the blond honey pot, they deceive him believing he is imprisoned by impenetrable walls and the Talosians have full control over him.

Only until he recognizes their mind-bending deceit does he break free of their lies and back to freedom.

While watching The Menagerie recently, I noticed the Talosians were buttheads, like some liberals I’ve dealt with in the past. Then I had the epiphany these aliens use the same lies as liberals – in this case, against Captain Pike.

Liberals Lies and How to See Through Them

During the episode, Pike constantly uses logic and deduction to slice through the imprisoning alien lies. He then calls them on it. He breaks them down with logic and a little violence. Here’s some of the lies liberals have tried to imprison us with:

- Higher taxation leads to an improved economy!
- Greater regulation of manufacturing leads to job growth
- If TSA doesn’t fondle your wife and grandmother then America is at risk
- Just give up some of your freedoms for security. No? You Tea Party Terrorist!
- Food stamps stimulate the economy – keep paying up, taxpayer!
- There’s no liberal bias in the main stream media, so keep slurping up our new lies
- Conservatives just want to throw people out in the street to starve – change your evil ways! (and keep supporting the welfare state)

Here are the usual tactics used by liberals:

1) Question The Motivations: When liberals are losing an argument, they love to shift the discussion not to the facts at hand, but to the motivation of the person on the other side.

2) Ridicule, The Anonymous Smear and his brother, the Ad Hominem Attack: When facts don’t support a character attack, make them up! Use ridicule and personal abuse. Saul Alinsky would approve.

3) The Teary-Eyed Victim: As Ann Coulter has written, “Talk Loudly and Carry a Small Victim.” Who couldn’t believe a victim – what? You want them to suffer more? You cold conservative. Racist.
4) Rewrite History and the Meaning of Words: When history won’t back you up, rewrite it. When challenged, use an appeal to authority to shut down the argument. It’s not freeloading, it’s an entitlement. It's not counterfeiting, it's Quantitative Easing.

5) The Ransom Note Method: Take a brief sound clip and use it completely out of context. Who has the time to research the context of clip?

6) My favorite to expose, The Straw Man: Take the conservative’s point of view to a ridiculous extreme and then paint them with it. Watch them struggle to escape as from an Iron Maiden.

7) Change the Subject: When in doubt, divert. Your job is to hold their feet the fire and don’t let the liberal squirm away.

8) It’s Bush’s Fault: While the Bush Presidency had some questionable actions, the current administration has had plenty of time to fix things - and haven’t.

9) The Fake Emergency: The ozone hole. Global warming. Energy crisis. Starving school kids in America. Mega bank bailout. Something has to be done, AND NOW! These “emergencies” are fraudulent at the core. Kind of like the Talosian’s fake emergency beacon that draws you in closer...

Don’t Fall for their Lies. Hold your Ground. Don’t Give In

As the Obama nanny state tries to extend its grip into every area of our lives, have a firm backbone not to give in. Boldly resist Statist lies when you come across them, and don’t participate in the welfare state. Educate your kids in a private school or home school them. Spread the word to your neighbors and friends. Create a critical mass that can’t be overcome by lies.

Arrange your life so you don’t have to rely on the "Federal Family". You can’t fight Big Brother while suckling at his teats, as Claire Wolfe once said.

- Hugh Farnham

Link to The Menagerie

Mitt Romney a Cyborg, Ron Paul Supporters Allege

Courtesy of Proof Positive

"Dude, he's like so upright and never makes a mistake. And what does he put in his hair, shellack?" said 23-year-old anti-war activist Shay Leggard.

Romney supporter Norman Workman dismissed the robot allegations as the ramblings of pot-smoking draft-dodgers.

"That's bogus, dude!" countered Leggard, spilling bong water all over his medical marijuana card, adding an emphatic "dammit," before warning reporters to clear out before his mom got home from work and "got all pissed because there's too many people in the house."

I love this picture.  Wish I'd thought of it...

A big-time blogger quoted me!

How cool is this?  Walter Russell Mead quoted me in a blog post!  And he agreed with me.  It was a comment I made in a previous post of his, concerning discipline and self-improvement.

  I'm the second quote that he introduces with ... " Another reader countered, writing..."

Check it out here: http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/09/11/self-improvement-isnt-only-for-elites/

Professor Mead writes cogently of the failures of "The Blue Model."  Yeah, anybody, including me, can write about that, but he provides in-depth analysis and explores solutions.  I highly recommend him to my fellow Right Blogistan thinkers.

Don't Californicate Colorado

We’re getting dumber, at least here in Colorado...

It's not enough that unwashed liberalism has spilled out of the hippie asylum known as Boulder, we are also suffering a plague of liberals swarming the state as they flee their collapsing progressive experiments.  Even worse, these blue state refugees now want to invite even more, including liberal foreigners.

The city of Denver is looking to bid on the 2022 Winter Olympics, and I am firmly against it. I don’t want mobs of outsiders screwing up my skiing and clogging up my roads and I don’t want my state stuck with the inevitable debt and the deadbeats who decide to stay on after the party's over.

Here’s an excerpt from a Denver Post article describing why Colorado used to be such a great state before the California liberals moved in…

In 1972, Lamm led an effort to block Denver from hosting the 1976 Winter Games — the only time an Olympics city has done that. Nearly 60 percent of Colorado voters agreed to reject the Games, which had been awarded to the city 2 1/2 years earlier. Voters had feared taxpayers would be stuck paying for skyrocketing costs and wary of the environmental damages caused by hordes of spectators. (Denver Post)

We used to be a good mix of libertarian liberals and conservatives with a live and let live attitude. Not anymore.  We’re now getting stupider, and this is being powered by the mass influx of east coast and west coast liberals into the liberal loon town of Denver.  You can see evidence of this in on-line forums.  Enlightened progressives sing Obama's praises and remark what an east coast feel Denver has, and they are right.  It is now easily the least "Colorado" part of the state.

Reminds me of that old saying:  Half of the people in Colorado live in Denver, and the rest of us are glad they do! 

For my rant that heaps scorn on LA transplants who don't know how to drive on snow, read A Liberal Mess

Language and Tone Matter

Unlike most on the right, I enjoy reading the NY Times house conservative David Brooks. He is a true compassionate quasi-conservative, a moderate-conservative who has patiently filed down his rough edges and sharp corners and installed comfy, cushiony liberal-friendly padding.

Virtue begat prosperity, and the daughter killed the mother.  -- Cotton Mather

He comments intelligently and non-threateningly on Rick Perry’s pledge to work to make DC inconsequential:

The Republicans, and Rick Perry in particular, have a reasonably strong story to tell about decline. America became great, they explain, because its citizens possessed certain vigorous virtues: self-reliance, personal responsibility, industriousness and a passion for freedom.

But, over the years, government has grown and undermined these virtues. Wall Street financiers no longer have to behave prudently because they know government will bail them out. Middle-class families no longer have to practice thrift because they know they can use government to force future generations to pay for their retirements. Dads no longer have to marry the women they impregnate because government will step in and provide support.

Moreover, a growing government sucked resources away from the most productive parts of the economy — innovators, entrepreneurs and workers — and redirected it to the most politically connected parts. The byzantine tax code and regulatory state has clogged the arteries of American dynamism. ( NY Times)

It may surprise my fellow Right Blogistanis to hear me say that the GOP needs to learn to use such language. Yes, I love lashing out at our big feral government, but I’m not a politician. Tone is important. Progressives are rightly threatened by our angry speech, and we have a right to be angry. But politicians are hired to channel that anger into a cogent agenda that is palatable to the broadest base possible.

A prosperous nation with a pay-for-play government will inevitably attract rent seekers.  Another great point by Brooks:

Stable societies are breeding grounds for interest groups. Over time, these interest groups use government to establish sinecures for themselves, which gradually strangle the economy they are built on — like parasitic vines around a tree. (NY Times)

Can we all recognize that?

Can we rally around an effort to not destroy the entire government, but an effort to roll back the worst of its abuses? Can we also agree that human nature tends towards venality, selfishness and corruption?  Can we insist that government craft policies with the understanding that welfare deadbeats and Wall Street cheats will grab it all with both hands and gorge themselves when given half a chance?

I agree with Brooks’ assessment of the problem: Lagging business startups, slowing technological innovations, the dismal state of our educational system, and stubborn poverty and increased social stratification.

I strongly disagree with his solution: More big government. How can a man so smart reach such a tired solution so discredited by empirical evidence?