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The New and Improved Obama Magic Energy Wand)
The war is over!It’s got to be…..
bets are being paid. It may still be messy in Iraq, but for intents and purposes, the war is over. Bret Stevens in the Wall Street Journal, recounts his $100 bet with Francis Fukuyama about the war ending. Francis just paid off., although he’s now saying the war wasn’t worth it. Bret’s looking for another $100 bet that in five years, he’ll change his mind.
Here’s Bret’s view on why it was worth it:
Perhaps it's worth considering what we have gained now that Iraq looks like a winner.
Here's a partial list: Saddam is dead. Had he remained in power, we would likely still believe he had WMD. He would have been sitting on an oil bonanza priced at $140 a barrel. He would almost certainly have broken free from an already crumbling sanctions regime. The U.S. would be faced with not one, but two, major adversaries in the Persian Gulf. Iraqis would be living under a regime that, in an average year, was at least as murderous as the sectarian violence that followed its collapse. And the U.S. would have seemed powerless to shape events.
Instead, we now have a government that does not threaten its neighbors, does not sponsor terrorism, and is unlikely to again seek WMD. We have a democratic government, a first for the Arab world, and one that is increasingly capable of defending its people and asserting its interests.
We have a defeat for al Qaeda. Critics carp that had there been no invasion, there never would have been al Qaeda in Iraq. Maybe. As it is, thousands of jihadists are dead, al Qaeda has been defeated on its self-declared "central battlefield," and the movement is largely discredited on the Arab street and even within Islamist circles.
We also have -- if still only prospectively -- an Arab bulwark against Iran's encroachments in the region. But that depends on whether we simply withdraw from Iraq, or join it in a lasting security partnership.
Speaking of the war......
Coalition forces are great….except when they’re not.The Times (UK) reported yesterday that a
secret deal between Britain and the notorious al-Mahdi militia prevented British troops from coming to the aid of the US and Iraqi forces during the battle for Basra earlier this year.
Four thousand British troops – including elements of the SAS and an entire mechanised brigade – watched from the sidelines for six days because of an “accommodation” with the Iranian-backed group, according to American and Iraqi officers who took part in the assault.
US Marines and soldiers had to be rushed in to fill the void, fighting bitter street battles and facing mortar fire, rockets and roadside bombs with their Iraqi counterparts.
Hundreds of militiamen were killed or arrested in the fighting. About 60 Iraqis were killed or injured. One US Marine died and seven were wounded.
The deal, which aimed to encourage the Shia movement back into the political process and marginalise extremist factions, has dealt a huge blow to Britain’s reputation in Iraq.
Under its terms, no British soldier could enter Basra without the permission of Des Browne, the Defence Secretary. By the time he gave his approval, most of the fighting was over and the damage to Britain’s reputation had already been done.
Back to the US political scene.....
Is Obama more, or less?He seems to be both according to
Ed Lasky and
James Lewis in the American Thinker:
He has accomplished very little legislatively in his entire career; his vaunted accomplishments in the Illinois Senate were more the result of the handicraft of his political ally and mentor State Democratic head Emil Jones (w
ho tacked his name on legislation to bolster his career) than his own work on the issues .
Obama has done virtually nothing at the Senate level -- he has not even seen fit to call a meeting of the Committee he heads, the Senate Subcommittee on European Affairs. Despite its name, Obama's subcommittee has some oversight over Afghanistan. While he now says on the campaign trail that Afghanistan requires more attention, he overlooked his own jurisdictional responsibilities in that theatre for the entire time he has served in the US Senate. He refuses to take time off his victory tour to call his subcommittee to order to provide such oversight.
Paul Mirengoff of Powerline caught Obama in another
legislative sleight of hand . The candidate has long
opposed off-shore drilling, following the views of many other liberal interest groups. Obama has now flip-flopped again and made a feint towards supporting offshore drilling. Yet Obama, according to Mirengoff,
"has also led a one-man crusade to keep the American people ignorant about what is at stake in the debate over off-shore drilling". In 2005, he voted to kill legislation that would have measured our offshore reserves. That effort failed and a preliminary inventory report was produced in February 2006.
Obama, though, did not give up in his efforts to keep the public ignorant. In January 2007, he proposed legislation to eliminate the authorization to conduct the inventory, as established in the 2005 law. Obama's bill is S. 115. The key provision is section 101(a)(5). It provides that "Section 357 (42 U.S.C. 15912) (relating to comprehensive inventory of OCS oil and natural gas resources)" is "repealed as of the date of enactment of this act." It's my understanding that Obama is the only sponsor of this legislation. Ironically, Obama called his legislation
"The Oil SENSE Act." How audacious a label for an act that would deprive the public of key information relevant to deciding whether off-shore drilling makes sense. As far as I know, Obama's legislation is still pending.
What else has he kept us in the dark about? Well, he has not been touting his "Global Poverty Act" lately (S.2433)-though earlier he promised to make passage of this bill a "
priority"
This pleasant sounding bill has provisions buried within its language that would impose many billions of dollars of foreign aid obligations on America (up to $845 billion in the next 13 years over and above what we already give in foreign aid). Some believe that this would grant the United Nations the power to bind America in a wide variety of other areas, as well. Barack Obama is a global citizen, after all.
The Obama campaign sends completely different messages to different audiences. He sends out reassuring 'post-racial' messages to Middle America. But he also sends out race-baiting messages to his adoring fans. As he just
said, he "doesn't look like those other presidents on the dollar bills" (big laugh from the libs).
Most of all, Americans don't realize that the Obama campaign is constantly sending out famous Marxist slogans, which are instantly understood by the radical Left, including Obama's buddies in the Black Liberation movement. Then Senator O tells the oil companies to send a thousand bucks to each American, playing the anti-capitalism card that they love so well. It's all part of the Audacity Hustle.
Boston Tax Party (from the Wall Street Journal)
Could it be? Could the Beantowners be at the forefront of the next American Revolution? Let's hope so.......there still is hope for the Fair Tax at the Federal Level, but not if Obama is elected.Massachusetts is about the last place one would expect a tax revolt, but that's what's brewing in Beantown. The state board of elections recently certified that citizen activists have gathered the 125,000 signatures required to qualify an initiative for the November ballot to eliminate the state income tax.
The Small Government Act would repeal the 5.3% income and wage tax, as well as the state capital gains tax, which reaches as high as 12%. The ballot initiative would replace the $12.5 billion in taxes with . . . nothing. "One of the points here," explains Carla Howell of the Committee for Small Government that is driving the referendum, "is to force the state legislators to start cutting the bloated state budget." The political shock of having no income tax would force the pols on Beacon Hill to make the difficult spending choices they now refuse to make.
The referendum may seem the longest of long shots in a state represented by some of Congress's biggest spenders. But the same initiative was on the ballot in 2002, and though the political establishment roared with laughter through Election Day, the measure got 45% of the vote. This time pro-tax forces such as the Massachusetts Teachers Association are planning to spend millions of dollars warning of Armageddon.
They have cause to be worried. A Fabrizio poll for Citizens for Limited Taxation discovered that the average Massachusetts voter believes that 41 cents of every state tax dollar are wasted. Coincidentally, that's the share of the state budget funded by the income tax. One big drain is a pension program that doles out billions each year to double-dipping pensioners and state workers retiring at taxpayer expense in their late 40s or 50s.
Nine U.S. states have no income tax, including such economic climbers as Florida, Nevada, Tennessee and Texas. These states are doing fine funding schools, hospitals and police without the income levy. Over the past decade 330,000 Massachusetts residents have packed U-Haul trailers and left -- more than have even fled Michigan -- and many have gone to no-income-tax New Hampshire.
"The idea here is to stop being on the defensive in fighting against big government and to start taking the political offensive," says Ms. Howell. She says the tax repeal would give every Massachusetts worker a 5% after-tax pay raise, or about $3,000 extra income per family. That's attractive when Census data show that, after inflation, state budgets nationwide are up 18% since 2005 while paychecks have remained flat.
The forces of the tax-and-spend status quo will descend on this initiative like British troops after the original Boston tea party, but somebody has to make an effort to stop the relentless growth of government.
Speaking of Taxes....the folks who have provided us with the ever shrinking effective education of our children, are the leading proponents of higher taxes. I support the right of groups of people to lobby on behalf of their perceived best self-interests, but I also believe that those actions should be highly visible for all to see. It's obviously not in the interests of children in failing schools to oppose vouchers that would facilitate their effective learning...Extracurricular Politics (from the Wall Street Journal)Teachers' unions are expert at presenting the interests of their members and of public school students as one and the same. Which is why it's always illuminating to see how the nation's largest teachers' union, the National Education Association, spends its political money.
Each year, NEA members pay into a "Ballot Measure/Legislative Crises Fund" that allows the union to spend tens of millions of dollars on all manner of state and national political issues. Mike Antonucci of the Education Intelligence Agency, a longtime union watchdog, has tracked this fund's spending. In the 2007-08 fiscal year, not surprisingly,
the NEA spent $2.3 million -- on top of $1 million spent the previous fiscal year -- fighting a school voucher referendum in Utah.
But other expenditures reveal this national NEA cash -- which is separate from PAC contributions that must adhere to federal campaign-finance laws -- as a fund for various and sundry left-wing political causes. Mr. Antonucci reports that during the current fiscal year the NEA sent the Hawaii State Teachers Association $20,000 to conduct polling on a state constitutional convention. It sent the Massachusetts Teachers Association $60,000 to oppose a state income-tax repeal. And it sent the Florida Education Association $200,000 to oppose property-tax cuts in the Sunshine State.
Expect more of the same going forward in a state near you. "Unlike most previous years," writes Mr. Antonucci, "NEA finished 2007-08 with a surplus of nearly $5.9 million, which means the union will enter the 2008-09 school year with almost $20 million available to spend." It's a shame the NEA doesn't spend as much money and effort trying to improve lousy schools as it does trying to keep taxes high.
Here's an exceptional analysis from today's Times (UK) of the incredible insight two great British authors had on the potential trajectory of Western Society. Unfortunately, they apparently were spot on.......What would Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell think?
They stood on opposite sides of the political divide, but both would have loathed British culture today
Orwell and Waugh feared the appearance of a new elite made up of the so-called educated classes. They predicted that a New Boy Network based on test-score merit rather than lineage would sprout, which would wield power and influence with a still greater disregard for the “common people” than their predecessors had shown.
This lot would conduct themselves not in accordance to a traditional moral code. Rather they would be regulated by the opinion of their own group, that inner circle of, in Orwell's words, “scientists, technicians, teachers, journalists, broadcasters, bureaucrats, professional politicians”. Members of this elite would dread nothing more than failure to conform to one another's views and behaviour.
It sounds all too familiar: today, the elite's unwritten code - we now call it political correctness - has replaced morality. No one would dare call a teenage mugger or a knife-wielding gang member wicked. To judge in terms of traditional morality is automatically to be censorious, which in turn automatically earns you pariah status.
Yet other judgments, rooted not in a moral understanding of the Universe but in a social understanding reached by the chattering classes, are taken as gospel: that personal fulfilment takes precedence over all obligations, that cohabitation is as good as marriage, that being brought up by a single parent is as good as by two. Scour recent broadcasts, policy papers or the NUT website for a chink in the armour-plate defence of these positions, and you will be disappointed: the new elite protect their commandments with a ferocity that Orwell could only hint at in Animal Farm and 1984.
Both Orwell, the avowed atheist, and Waugh, the Catholic convert, railed against moral relativism. It risked blinding the intellectuals of the Left to Stalin's oppressive regimes, and the appeasers of the Right to Nazi atrocities; but beyond their immediate political context, both literary giants saw moral relativism as the coward's ducking and weaving away from the truth. And the truth, like good and evil, was an unwavering absolute.
Both men reached the same conclusion: happiness was not found in mindless pursuits in the here and now but in a heart-felt connection with family, community and, ultimately, civilisation. The two authors' reaction would have been the same to the binge drinkers in our streets, off their heads on alcohol and drugs; to such recent offerings of the entertainment industry as the film Donkey Punch; to the Jordan wannabes carving up their bodies to increase their cup size; or to bling culture: horror, followed by elegantly written attacks on our bankrupt notion of happiness.
....... For as we read Orwell and Waugh's prophetic warnings we cannot help a shiver of recognition. We have created a world they would have abhorred
When the Germans build something, they build it right…….
Sea unearths secret Nazi bunkers that lay hidden for more than 50 years Air fetch…..The Matrix - with Muppets...
Lasik….David Copperfield’s way
Geraldo….this is your life….
Andy Mckee guitar extraordinaire
Johnny Cash - San Quentin
Interview with William Shatner filmed just prior to Star Trek's NBC premiere in September 1966.
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