I'm Back...Let Me Vent

So the headline on Drudge a few minutes ago was : "ROMNEY: PALESTINIANS HAVE NO INTEREST IN PEACE."  It's another one of his "off the cuff" remarks from a fundraising dinner that someone filmed with a cell phone camera.  It follows closely on the heels (from the same tape) of the other remark that the Leftards are hyper-ventilating about - that 47% of Americans view themselves as victims.  More on that anon, but let's deal with this first headline.  Take a look at this picture:

There is no other way you can describe this other than "SICK."  This little mugwump is being trained by his parents to grow up and scale embassy walls in the name of Allah - or better yet - enter a crowded cafe and splatter himself all over the walls taking out a few people that don't believe in this twisted "religion."  

So explain to me what the hell we are apologizing for?  Some idiot posts a You Tube video that is dumber than the worst possible Japanese sci-fi film from the 1950's and we (our government) has to say "we're sorry, please don't hurt us?"  Is that what the foreign policy of O has brought us to?  Worse, our standing has decayed to the point that we have become the Rodney Dangerfield of super powers - we don't get no respect.  

But really folks...are you buying into the notion that a big bad video tape turned all these people into rabid America haters?  If you are, let's talk - I have some real estate I would like to discuss with you.  A simple review of the facts:

a. These people hated us long before the video tape came out - they hate everyone - they even hate their own kids...see photo above.

b. What day was last Tuesday?  Hmm..September the Eleventh...9/11.  Something else happened on that day a few years back - remember this:

I realize that these are Palestinians - not Egyptians or Libyans - but what do they have in common?  A love for people that hate the United States.  The big chant at the protest in Cairo was "Obama, we are all Osamas now." That saying has spread across the Muslim world - visually depicted at a protest in Kashmir:

Golda Meir had it right so many years ago: Peace will come to the Middle East when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us. And Mitt Romney has it absolutely right when he says that the Palestinians have no interest in peace.  They want to bully their way into an independent state that would push Israel into the Mediterranean.  AND Obama has it dead wrong.  We are seeing the fruits of appeasement - who was that preacher that said "America's chickens were coming home to roost?"  Take a look at this chart and see how many of Obama's chickens you can count:

This is Pew Research's latest study.  Note that even under the dreaded, evil, torturing Boosh, the Muslims liked us more than they do under the apologizing America bashing Bamster...he's lost us 10 points of favorability in three years.  At this pace, if he's reelected, we'll actually be negative in four more years.

Now the press can try to spin this any way they like...and they will, but this fracas was not caused by a stupid movie trailer.  It was caused by two things.  First, the ongoing, seething rage against the United States fomented by Islamist governments who blame our success as the cause of their misery.  Second, despite all of Obama's bowing and shuffling to Islam and the tyrants of the Middle East, what is the ONE accomplishment he takes credit for repeatedly on the campaign trail? "I killed Osama bin Laden."  He takes credit for GM too though that's a funny one considering the US taxpayers are going to lose some $25 billion on that "investment." These people idolize bin Laden because he took on the Great Satan and punished us by dropping the Twin Towers...and Obama runs around bragging about snuffing him out and we are supposed to believe there is no connection.

Here's the irony: if Obama had continued to show strength and steadiness towards the tinpots of the Middle East, they would have tolerated the Osama football spiking a lot better - they might not have liked it, but they would realize that there are unpleasant consequences to taking on the United States.  That fear has evaporated.

Now the other hack job the media is trying to do on Romney is the vituperative repetition that Romney hates poor people - most demonstrably shown by the "shocking" videotape wherein Mitt says of the 47% who don't pay income taxes: "My job is not to worry about those people."  OMG!!! Hyperventilate!!! What an awful person!!!  Unwad your panties liberals and try - just try- to think.  What he was saying was that vote is gone - he can't worry about them because they are addicted to the government tit.  Again...HE's RIGHT.  Take a stroll through the charts on this Business Insider piece and you will realize that dependency is a growth business under the Obama regime.  This is the fundamental difference between these two parties in this election: a culture of dependence ("We all belong to the government" - DNC Convention video) or a culture of independence ("We own it" - Clint Eastwood referring to the gov'ment at GOP Convention).

As of this writing, Romney has not backed away from either of these comments...and I pray he does not.  The path of independence with dignity in work is one that will lead this country back to fiscal health and ultimately to the respect we have frittered away.  Obama's campaign slogan may be "Forward"  - Romney's response should be "Freedom."

Required Rumbler Reading

Sharing some goodies from my never ending stack-o-stuff:

Barbarians on the Thames: The always eloquent Theodore Dalrymple dispenses with the silliness of attempts at liberal explanations (income inequality!) for the rioting in England this past summer...a lot of these lessons can be applied here.

Mid-summer stroll in olde London towne.

I am generally not a fan of 60 Minutes - but if you missed this episode, you missed a sad but critical piece of our problems in Washington:



A lot of that material came from this book:

I am working through it right now - have to keep the blood pressure meds up, so I'll get back to you.

Illinois: State of Embarrassment - Joel Kotkin's analysis of the underlying problem with Barack Obama...it's the culture of Chicago politics.  This short piece lays it out in excruciating detail.  But hey, at least Blogo got sentenced!

The Dangers of Democracy: An excellent piece to hand to those who want to gush about the "Arab spring."  Bottom line - we got it way wrong in Iran 30 years ago...we almost certainly have it wrong in Egypt, Libya, Yemen....

Democracy for Mohammed and a few of his friends...

Enough to keep you busy...

Rumble on!

Dividing America

I am on the mailing list for an entertaining morning read from the investment advisors over at Penserra Securities called "The Marginal Prophet."  A couple of weeks ago, in his "From the Cheap Seats" section,  the author posited this:

While commenting on the veracity of the Occupy Anything movement, Robo asked the question, “When did our society become so polarized?”I can point to the exact moment; Monday; October 29^th, 2007. Though I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday, that moment in time is still burned into my memory banks. I was five months into my second retirement, and I was Occupying “Flippers,” a local greasy spoon. The Dow Jones was a shade under 14,000, the value of my home had two commas in it, and I was about to wolf down a fiendishly delicious cheeseburger and fries. Life was not just good. It was very, very good. Just as I picked up my sloppy three-quarter pounder, I was interrupted by a unique ringtone from my iPhone; a barking dog. It was Robo. “Hey there, Little Brother, XYZ (the name of the company is withheld to protect the innocent) is trading at $19,” he gushed. “We can do this!” I gave my meal a brief pardon and replied, “That’s right, Little Brother (we call each other ‘little brother’- don’t ask). Let’s always remember this feeling, because it will never get better than this.”Little did I know how right I would be. In October 2007, a tea party was what old women threw to amuse themselves. People occupied jobs instead of parks. Debates between a black male presidential candidate and a white female presidential candidate seemed downright civil. So long as asset prices kept going up, tempers kept going down. American society was on a roll.Here’s a snapshot of where we are four years later. Republicans and Democrats can’t agree on where the sun sets. The Federal Reserve is out of bullets. Billionaires stare down millionaires in the NBA. Tea Party advocates go to work everyday ready to eviscerate unemployed college graduates who Occupy their way. People don’t work for paychecks: they intern for the opportunity to get a paycheck. Obama seems impotant, and shooting pepper spray seems the best way for people from campus police to Black Friday shoppers to communicate their differences.When did everybody get so mad? It's painful out there, for sure, and there are plenty of issues to be upset about. But when did compromise become a four-letter word? Sports experts like to say that winning covers a lit of ills. So too does a rising stock market. And a rising housing market. And a job market where asking your boss for a raise isn’t met a scowl and a pink slip. A rising tide may lift all boats, but a falling tide reveals what really lies underneath the water.C’mon America. We’re better than this.

I don't disagree that being civil is a whole lot easier when the Dow is rocketing through 14,000, Europe looks stable  and the Chinese are content with making cheap goods instead of hemispheric domination BUT, I do think there's more to incivility than a rising stock market.  I was not alone.  Another reader of the Marginal Prophet sent him this response, which he published the next day:

I think your date of October 27, 2007, pinpointing when our society became sopolarized, was the tipping point.  However, it took two decades to build to thatpoint, and I give equal, if not greater weight, to the following dates: (1) July 1, 1987, when Ted Kennedy took to the floor of the US Senate and trashedRobert Bork, who just minutes earlier was nominated for the Supreme Court by RonaldReagan.  Kennedy knew his tirade was BS, as did his fellow Democrats, but they stuckto that story and forever changed the "process" to nominate and approve SupremeCourt justices.  Facts and truth no longer matter to the process, just innuendo andsmears. (2) December 19, 1998, the day the U.S. House of Representatives impeached BillClinton.  Although Clinton was impeached on charges of perjury and obstruction ofjustice, it will be forever linked in the public mind that he was railroaded over aprivate encounter. (3) November 8, 2000, the day George W. Bush was elected president, and it wascontested by Al Gore. To me, the contested Florida recount in Bush/Gore marks the turning point for whenthe America I knew ended.  Before that election, the supporters of the losing sidealways threw their support behind the presidency (not necessarily the man), nomatter how nasty or brutish the campaign.  They may have preferred a differentoutcome, but there was still some respect for the office.  After Florida, theliberals/progressives never accepted Bush as "legitimate'" and set out to destroyhim personally, and did great damage to the office of the presidency in the process.The Republicans have returned the favor with Obama.

An interesting counterpoint and I don't disagree with the dates.  I would add that what happened to Robert Bork was repeated with Clarence Thomas and others.   We have reached the point in the selection process of Supreme Court nominees that it's best to put ups someone that is plain vanilla with no track record than to nominate a serious juris doctor.  Nevertheless, I submit there are dates even further back that began the journey to the hanging chads of Florida.  Allow me to posit a few:

1. May 4, 1970: The Kent State Shootings.  The Ohio National Guard fired 67 live rounds into a crowd of students killing four American citizens.  Sure, there had been rioting in the town, a lot of threats had been issued about burning down the ROTC building and the like - but you DON'T fire on your own citizens!  This galvanized the anti-Vietnam war movement and gave them moral superiority.  The backlash was taken out on American GI's returning from the war.  It was inexcusable, but I submit,  it was the beginning of our polarization.

2. December 13, 1974: North Vietnam resumed combat with South Vietnam ignoring the Paris Peace Accords.  President Gerald Ford asked the Democrat controlled Congress for funds to support the South Vietnamese and they refused.  This ultimately led to the fall of Saigon and the humiliating American exit from Southeast Asia. Democrats became linked forever to weak defense;  the military - an institution which reports to the civilian government - would never fully trust Washington again.

3. April 19, 1993: Attack on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.  OK, David Koresh was a certifiably kooky and creepy religious nut with a lot of guns.  (This country was founded by religious nuts with guns.) But what gave Bill Clinton and Janet Reno the right to use tanks - TANKS! - against a bunch of American citizens...well, some 20 odd were Brits - but overall 76 people were incinerated.  For what? Because they thought Koresh was the new messiah?  By that logic, the Justice Department should have attacked the Democrat Convention in Denver when they nominated the current occupier of the White House.  This attack, along with other suspect incursions by an over-zealous DoJ like Ruby Ridge, led to a growing paranoia on the Right.  As soon as the White House changed hands, the paranoia shifted to the Left.  Regardless, if we can't feel that we can trust our government, we will come apart at the seams.

4. March 21, 2010: Passage of Obamacare.  This single act of partisanship - ramming an unpopular piece of legislation down the throats of the American people with barely a nominal majority is probably the most divisive act of the last thirty years and it will take many years to undo and overcome.  "We'll have to pass the bill to see what's in it." Will go down as the most irresponsible act of (non) governance in the history of the Republic.  Brute force has become the standard of governance.

If you have any suggested dates, pass them along for consideration!

Rumble on!

Required Rumbler Reading

Haven't done an R Cubed column in a bit, but over Thanksgiving I worked through my "Read it Later List" and thought I would share a few gems with you.

1. Should the Rich Be Condemned? I grow weary of Obama's constant class warfare and the idiocy it has spawned in the streets. But Walter Williams nails it in this piece. "Class warfare thrives on ignorance of the sources of income," Williams observes.  Sadly, ignorance begets tyranny.  I can't think of any demagogue from Huey Long to Adolf Hitler that hasn't used the meme that "someone else is getting theirs unfairly" that has improved the situation.  The usual outcome is pretty grim.

2. U.S. Job Market Looking More Like Europe's:  This Wall Street Journal piece takes a hard look at the results of Obanomics and what it has done to the core job numbers.  It is a sobering prediction that if we don't change the regulatory environment and get the American economy focused on growth instead of "fairness," we're all screwed.

3. Speaking of the rich...what if we took EVERYTHING they had?  Bill Whittle did a short video on this that is highly instructive - I shared this before, but it really is worth another look:

4. FATCA: A Ticking Time Bomb for the Economy:  Is that intro missing a "T" at the end?  I had not heard about this, but it actually stands for "Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act," bred from the FBAR. No, my military veteran friends not "F***** Up Beyond All Repair,"  FBAR is actually the "Foreign Bank Accounting Report.  FATCA gives IRS the authority to find out the bank balances of U.S. citizens living abroad and to require the institutions holding those funds to report the information. This is truly scary stuff and will result in a complete abandonment of US financial markets by foreign investors.

5. Thomas Jefferson's Free Market Economics: as a student of the history of Mr. Jefferson, I was well aware of his love for Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations."  This short piece pushed Jefferson squarely into the economic libertarian camp.  It might be a bit of an overstatement - just as when Jefferson said "the tree of liberty must from time to time be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants."  He didn't really mean there needed to be regular violent revolution...it was a calculated overstatement to drive home the point that liberty requires vigilance.  This is a good piece, nevertheless, worth the read!

That's enough for now...

Rumble on!

Jobs (and not the Steve kind)

Ramirez's sentiment over at Investor's Business Daily really nails it.  Liberals in Washington (and all over the fruited plain) are lambasting the same corporations that their allies in the OWS movement vilify for not creating jobs. The OWSers lament, through their wafts of body odor,  that it is the corporations that are ruining America.  You mean the oil companies that can't drill?  Or perhaps you mean the food and beverage companies that are being regulated out of existence?  Maybe you mean the tobacco companies that can no longer advertise?  Perhaps you are talking about the evil pharmaceutical companies that can't get FDA approval for the product they spent billions of research dollars on?  Wait, wait, you must be speaking of the horrifying financial services companies that can no longer lend thanks to the shackles of the Dodd-Frank Bill?

As we have discussed on these pages before, some regulation is necessary to maintain order in the system.  But once the government has gotten in the business of picking winners and losers in the free market, we are finished.  How about a Solyndra powered Chevy Volt with a battery that catches fire and burns all the shareholders' interests (except the ones that contributed to the Obama campaign)?

Leaves one pining for a little blues - how about Joe Cocker's "Unchain my Heart?"

Rumble on!

How's That "Reset" Thingie Workin' For Ya?

Remember the famous Hillary "reset" button:

Of course the idiots didn't check their Russian-English dictionary wherein they would have learned that "peregruzka" actually means "overcharged."  But let's not get in the way of symbolism.  Back in those heady days when the oceans were going to recede and peace would be heralded throughout the world with vuvuzelas at the very image of our gifted young God  President...oh how the mighty have fallen.

Take a look at this Russian newscasters quite public opinion of Msr. Obama:



Man if the Russian media doesn't feel the love, you know you have fallen to a new low!

Just checking...

Yup - still resembling that famous Ross Perot line about giant sounds.

Rumble on!

Just In Time for Black Friday!

Don't go to the Mall!  You can get all you need for your loved ones at the "Gifts for Conservatives" e-store!  Get your special loved one that Ronald Reagan "Miss Me Yet?" T-Shirt.  How about Mark Levin's latest book on the evolution of modern America?  It's all here and we will be adding products daily!

Click on the image to go to the store.