It was 30 years ago today that Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Jay Reding doesn’t write nearly enough, but when he does, it’s always good.

And he does in one post what I did in about ten with my “What the hell is wrong with the MNGOP series” in this piece, “Winning on Principles”:

Everyone looks at the GOP’s problems through the lens of “conservatives” versus “moderates.” That is the wrong way to look at the issue: what this battle really is about is “principles” versus “politics.” The moderates want the GOP to play towards what they see as the political “center”—or the left. The principle-minded factions wants the GOP to stand on a bedrock of principle.

The dichotomy in Minnesota is best shown by watching “Sturdevant-approved” Republicans railing against “extremism” in the party on the one hand, and conservatives calling Tim Pawlenty a “RINO” on the other.

The moderates have a point. If you want to win as a party, you go where the votes are. It’s classic Anthony Downs, the voters fall along a bell curve and the party that can capture the most votes in the middle will win the election.

But the problem is that if the choice is between the Democrats and the Democrats-Lite, why not vote for the real thing? If Republicans start advocating for more government control, they lose the conservative and libertarian wings of the party and end up losing anyway.

Also the country; so many Democrat policies are irreversible; the nation’s addiction to other peoples’ money booms every time the Dems have unfettered power, and short of an epochal catastrophe will never go back to where it was.

There has to be room for both. The GOP cannot win by turning its back on its principles, but it has to be able to advocate for those principles. Being the best conservative in the world does absolutely nothing unless the GOP cannot get others to understand the importance of that stand.

That is the problem with the GOP today. They have no ability to connect with the average voter. They’ve lost the popular imagination, they’ve lost their political “brand” and there is no message coming from the GOP today. Even when they do have a point, they are so ham-handed in making it that they end up hurting each other.

I’ve written it before; conservatism is difficult.  When you get beyond single-issue advocacy on abortion, guns and taxes, conservatism takes some serious thought to wrap your arms around.  P.J. O’Rourke framed it well in Parliament of Whores; Liberalism is Santa Claus – happy, indulgent, with only hypothetical consequences (did anyone actually get a lump of coal?  C’mon) and, in the end, nonexistant; Conservatism is like God – there are immutable rules and consequences, and judgments get made! It can be difficult selling “abstemiousness, principle, consequences and eternal truths” when the alternative is “Barack Obama is going to pay my mortgage and my heating bill”.
It should go without saying that it’s harder when the media actively sabotages that message – and worse still when the likes of Duke Cunningham sabotage it even more.  Still, that’s what we’re here for.

Reding notes something I’ve been trying to discuss with my Dem friends:

All is not lost. Obama is a mule—a rare character that comes out of nowhere, establishes power, but leaves no lasting coattails. Obama is a rare individual, which makes him dangerous to the GOP, but the more the Democratic Party becomes a cult of personality, the worse off they are. Obama becomes largely irrelevant no later than 2016, and by then the sheen will be off.

This is a good point.  If people thought we had Bush fatigue – for an administration that, leaving the war aside and ignoring for a moment his spending (which was un-conservative but seems almost quaint looking at Obama’s budget) didn’t really do all that much – then Obama is going to leave a toxic hangover, even if he does win re-election.

Now is the time that the GOP needs to regroup and experiment.

That is what the GOP ultimately needs to do. They can’t be afraid of failure. They’ve already failed, now is the time to be bold. Yes, the GOP needs to stand on its principles, but what they really need to do is win on those principles. That means trying everything they can to advocate for their values and seeing what sticks. As badly as Michael Steele’s first weeks on the job has been, at least someone is trying new tactics.

This is a good point.  In my job – designing user interfaces – sometimes you need to show the customer a design that isn’t quite right.  It gets them thinking about what they do want things to work like – which is the goal in the first place.

Moving in a direction will help people figure out how to move in the direction.

Politics is cyclical, and the Democrats are already sowing the seeds of their own downfall. They will grow complacent and arrogant (and have already), and the GOP will get their opening. Exploiting that weakness will take time and trial. But the Republican Party must learn to stand for something and be able to make that stand one that others will join. That is a tall order, but it is the way politics work in America. Politics is cyclical, and any claim of permanent Democratic majority status is as premature now as claims of a permanent Republican majority in 2002 were then.

Heh.  Anyone remember that discussion?

Anyway – go read the whole thing.

The Bad News:  Eric Cantor  ais making “Sturdevant Republican”-style noises:

Early last week, Cantor talked like a man ready to make amends for the unanimous Republican “no” votes on President Barack Obama’s budget and economic stimulus plan.

“As we near the end of the first 100 days of this administration,” Cantor told reporters, “I think we can also reflect back and see that the era of bipartisanship we’d hoped for could probably be improved upon, and I believe that’s how we’ve come back from the Easter recess, to say to the president that we do want to work together, that we can actually unite.”

The good news:  Maybe it only looks like he’s drinking Capitol Hill Koolaid.  Maybe he’s really spitting it into the flower pots when nobody’s looking:

But headed for a meeting with the president at the White House Thursday, Cantor and other House Republican leaders couldn’t resist picking at the scab. They sent Obama a letter praising him for his “common-sense idea” that “Washington can work together for the American people instead of for political parties” — but also claiming that Democratic leaders in Congress had “ignored your call for a new era of bipartisanship in Washington.”

Remember, Rep. Cantor:  when Democrats are out of power, “Bipartisanship” means “reaching across the aisle and cooperating”.  When they are in power, it means the same thing it means to a Marine recruit at Parris Island.

“They” being the Obamanistas running our nation. Government doesn’t grow like grass growing on a peaceful prairie; more like a brain tumor.

Would-be Obama Administration Commerce Secretary Judd Gregg speaks out on why he turned around and walked back out the door, embarrassing the President yet gain with another failed or controversial cabinet appointment (I’ll bet he pays his taxes) and even more so with his postmortem.

[Obama] may be “a charismatic person” with “a very strong understanding of who he is and what he wants to do,” but when it comes to the substance of what Mr. Obama seeks to accomplish, Mr. Gregg is less charitable. “They have a goal,” the senator says, “and he’s very open about it. They are going to grow this government.”

Why? Because that’s what liberals do. Why? Because they got nothin’ else in their quiver. Big government is to be made bigger for its own sake. How does that bode for the future?

“We’re headed on an unsustainable path. The simple fact is these [budget] numbers don’t work and the practical implications of them are staggering for the nation and the next generation.”

And as a result of all that spending, “You see the size of government growing from 21% [of gross domestic product] to 22%, to 23%, 24%, 25% . . . toward 30%.”

For the sake of credibility let me remind you liberals, this is the guy that Obama picked for his cabinet.

We post on torture and war and our liberal readers go ape. We post on Tea Parties and liberals argue semantics rather than addressing the fiscal crisis behind them. Why aren’t both sides freaking out about what liberal politicians, both Democrat (mostly) and Republican (sadly) are doing to our country financially?

I suppose liberals aren’t enraged because they’ve been sold on all these Hopey Changey concepts like wind-powered scooters and affordable health care for everyone without weighing the costs – costs beyond what we can afford as a nation – unless we borrow. Costs that without any market forces keeping them in check will make the current health care “crisis” look like the panacea liberals are looking for. But liberals in both parties have no aversion to borrowing and spending other-people’s money so long as the cause is “noble” enough – so for them, problem solved!

For Mr. Gregg, this is like living a nightmare. He has been a hard-nosed advocate for government spending restraint since his days as a Congressman (1981-87) and governor of New Hampshire (1987-93). At times, his commitment to fiscal responsibility led him to oppose tax cuts when they weren’t matched by spending restraint. Those stances incurred the ire of his Republican colleagues, but he always stuck to his fiscal-responsibility guns. Now he’s staring down a spending explosion that makes those battles look picayune.

What hope have we that prefer our nation not become completely insolvent?

…the runaway spending and growing pile of debt, could yet set the stage for a Republican comeback, and sooner than most pundits would predict. Mr. Gregg will not run for re-election when his current term ends next year. Republicans, he says, “became very clouded as to what we stood for under the Bush presidency.” But now they’re getting their “definition” back.

Once again, liberals will have screwed up our nation’s finances so badly that conservatives will be called back in to restore confidence. When will America learn?

Andrew Breitbart says Republican is the New Punk rock – by which he presumably means less “Richard Hell passing out in a  puddle of his vomit in the dressing room at CBGB”, and more “anti-establishment”.

And the premise makes sense:

Johnny Cash was punk rock. The birth of rock came when Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison and Cash toured small towns and set the youth on fire. Parents were outraged. The long dippity-doo hair atop gyrating men “dancing like the negroes”  before frothing young girls set mainstream culture against this rebellious little movement. It was our first smell of anarchy and it scared the establishment.

“God Bless Ronald Reagan and God Bless America” – Johnny Ramone, longtime closet Republican on his induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Never before has rock been so central to the inauguration of a president. Bono is an ambassador in sunglasses who still knows how to pull a string and get an audience of thousands to put their fist in the air.

But rock cannot be both establishment and anti-establishment. It can’t be a rebellious underdog while endorsing and distributing the status quo. And yes, President Obama is the status quo of unlimited spending and government expansion he supposedly opposed during the election…This is the mainstreaming of the bad boy, complete with rat-pack suit and cigarette in hand. A snappy skin spread over the boring, failed, liberal Democrats of the sixties. Hope and Change was nothing more than a repackaging of policies that have no right to be associated with hope or change.

I’ll cop to it: I initially thought Breitbart had a stretchy thesis.

But one of the conceits “artists” cling to is that they give people a different approach to perceiving the world around them – both physically and intellectually.  And for much of recent Western history, art in its various media and genres (to say nothing of the culture of the “artist”) was by nature critical of the “establishment”, whatever that was.  This predates rock and roll, by the way; Beethoven thought that societies needed, and needed to exalt, artists precisely because they were uniquely qualified to look beneath the surface of society’s institutions.

Of course, in the past two years America’s “artistic” community has pretty much abandoned that role to serve as shills for Barack Obama. Indeed, American “art” follows three tracks: academic “art” is beholden to a politically-correct academic establishment that is inextricably tied to the left; non-commercial art has turned itself largely into an entitlement-driven industry that is financially beholden to, and uncrically supportive of, the left; commercial art (think music, movies and publishing) have been in the bag for, and uncritical of, Obama all along.  Beethoven may have had a point in 1815 Berlin; what passes for America’s artistic community today is little but cheerleaders for the newest incarnation of the Establishment.
Breitbart:

The arts have failed. They no longer keep mass culture in check with thought-provoking art that challenges the establishment. Now they’re in charge of spreading the mainstream mandate of the Liberal Vatican. There isn’t an original thought among them, just a thousand-mile stare, a blue logo and the drone-like vocabulary of emotive, vaguely inspiring chants.

I was about to write “think Socialist Realism” – but then Obama-based art basically resembles the old official genre of the Soviet Union anyway:

Breitbart:

We’re the new rebellion against the majority juggernaut that doesn’t take kindly to dissent. Make a fist and show them what happens when they tell you what to think, feel and believe.

(Uh oh, Andy – that’ll get you labelled an “extremist”).

If you want me to unite to your cause, then end abortion, give the people back the money they earned, fight terror, keep your hands off free speech on the radio and enable job creators to make more jobs. Until then, screw your hope and screw your change.

I’m totally the Mick Jones of conservatism.

But I digress. Read the whole thing.

I’ll be heading out in about an hour and a half to go to the Minnesota Tea Party, at the Capitol Mall in Saint Paul.

There’ll be a Tweetup – if you have my Twitter ID, look it up; I’d love to see you there. All of us Domestic Terror Suspects gotta stick together.

Remember, when watching “coverage” of these events in the Mainstream Media or Paidoff Liberal Media; when reading turnout figures, multiply by at least five, if not a full order of magntitude.  I’ve been at Second Amendment rallies where I personally counted a thousand people that got credited with 200 attendees in the MSM and PLM; Jason Lewis’ annual tax rally, which packs the Mall solid from the steps down to Constitution (5-7,000) every year gets credited with maybe a thousand, to the point where reading MSM/PLM accounts of any conservative protest are like listening to Soviet Radio.

Also remember this: conservatives aren’t protesters.  We have jobs and families.  So if there are ten of us actually out somewhere, it means at least 1,000 feel that way almost strongly enough to come out.

The MSM/PLM are doing their best to try to trivialize this – the terminally vacuous Anderson Cooper (“the Nicky Hilton of News!”) has bought into the juvenile “teabag” slur, not that that’s a big surprise – because, at a high level, this sort of thing scares the piss out of them.

Think about it; to get a crowd of lefties – congenital protesters – out for an event in any legitimate numbers takes a massive Get Out The Protest effort involving MoveOn.Org or BarackObama.com; it’s big, it’s centralized, and it’s expensive.  Being liberal protesters, they need zealous kids with bullhorns to tell them where to stand and what to say, and entertainment to keep them from throwing rocks and getting into fights; that takes money and organization.

And yet these Tea Parties, lefty slurs notwithstanding (“Constitution Party?”  Puh-leeze.  I got more votes than them running as a Libertarian in 1998) are wholly organic; they were organized by a bunch of no-names on blogs and Twitter.  And it’ll end up being a bigger event than anything MoveOn has done in years, even with their millions of Soros Bux.

And remember – the left has seen this before.  The smart ones – and there are a few – know that when masses of conservatives gather, the grounds will be neat and clean and the police will be nice and bored, but politicians will get the message.  On Second Amendment issues, on taxes, on issue after issue, the workadaddy hugamommy conservative voter is the harried, benighted, put-upon giant of the American electorate.

And The One may have gone a tax too far.

Don’t forget – the Minnesota Tea Party is tonight, from 5-8, at the Minnesota State Capitol.

There’ll be a bunch of speakers – just go, you’ll find out – but the best thing about these events is that you get to meet a slew of other people of all parties who are excited about the same thing you are.  Which doesn’t happen often when you’re a conservative; ours is usually a solitary road.

Anyway – hope to see you there!

Watching Wall Street (for the umteenth time) this week had me thinking about my last post and our Great Recession. Conservatives accurately lay the blame at the feet of liberals who forced banks to loan money where it should not have been loaned in the interest of “fairness.”

Liberals lay the blame at the feet of greed, capitalism, lax regulation – or all of the above.

But greed and capitalism are not the same thing – although liberals will assert otherwise; if not in their words, then certainly in their policy making.

While greed is a necessary element of capitalism, as attraction is to procreation, the villain in this Great Recession is not greed or capitalism.

In Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, Gordon Gekko’s “Greed is Good” speech to the shareholders of Teldar Paper is widely celebrated and at the same time offered as a cautionary tale respectively by proponents and opponents of the American entrepreneur’s quest for profit.

Having heard it again in its entirety, I was reminded of another famous passage, misused and misunderstood by those who would unintentionally, or intentionally as it were, twist its meaning by ignoring it’s full context or deliberately plucking it therefrom.

Exhibit A: “Money is the root of all evil” which is derived from scripture. Observe it however, in full context:

1 Timothy 6:10 (KJV) [emphasis mine]: For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

Exhibit B: The infamous and polarizing “Greed is Good.” Now, behold the famous passage from Gordon Gekko [emphasis mine]:

Well, ladies and gentlemen, we’re not here to indulge in fantasy, but in political and economic reality. America, America has become a second-rate power. Its trade deficit and its fiscal deficit are at nightmare proportions. Now, in the days of the free market, when our country was a top industrial power, there was accountability to the stockholder. The Carnegies, the Mellons, the men that built this great industrial empire, made sure of it because it was their money at stake. Today, management has no stake in the company!

…

The new law of evolution in corporate America seems to be survival of the unfittest. Well, in my book you either do it right or you get eliminated.

…

The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed — for lack of a better word — is good.

Greed is right.

Greed works.

Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms — greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge — has marked the upward surge of mankind.

And greed — you mark my words — will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.

Thank you very much.

As an aside, read it again.

…and pretend he’s not speaking in 1985.

Now there have been plenty of bubbles and subsequent crises where unchecked greed coupled with insufficient regulatory oversight or intervention led to systemic havoc and widespread suffering.

This just isn’t one of them.

Only the federal government led by ill-informed “visionaries” can create a crisis this wide and this deep. More of the same can not and will not restore our economy.

It’s high time the other 53% of us came to grips with that fact.

…as they say in every investment ad and prospectus.

But hopefully this time it offers tuition for those that would rebuild Wall Street. Again.

Wall Street, or what remains of it, has dealt a catastrophic blow to its reputation in the past eight months of bonuses, bailouts and bankruptcies. What its current leaders, and the young who are lucky enough to be entering business, have to do now is begin rescuing and restoring that reputation.

This will, in fact, be the great work of a generation of American business leaders.

More is at stake than their standing. At stake is the standing of a free-market system that has flourished since America’s founding and made it the wealthiest nation in the history of man.

Peggy Noonan likens these days to those not so long ago when Wall Street was literally rebuilding itself after an unprecedented disaster.

Those days offer hope to those that would count Capitalism dead. They serve as a blueprint for redemption for those vilified justifiably, or more predominantly in this left-dominated environment, those vilified for the sake of political opportunism – lest this crisis be “wasted.”

And so the next morning, Monday, Sept. 17, 2001, the New York Stock Exchange opened with a podium full of firemen, cops, emergency medical workers and elected officials. A Marine Corps major sang “God Bless America.” There was silence. Then a Port Authority police officer, one of the last guys to come out of the pile, began to ring the bell. The others on the podium joined in. And as the bell rang out in triumph, the traders on the floor began to cry and cheer and shout themselves hoarse. Catherine Kinney was below the podium. “Was there a cheer—oh my God, you wouldn’t believe. I cried, I did. And prices start to go across the tape . . .”

America was open for business again.

It was a great moment in Wall Street history.

I dare say, despite speaking from the bottom of a metaphysical crater this time, that Wall Street has had a great many more good days than bad, for all Americans.

Financial advisors are by no means infallible but tend to work with clients that plan for the future, heavily discount  government’s role in their planning, and are self-employed. As such, they probably tend to have a pretty good handle on what drives investors and the economy – not to mention often times being self employed themselves.
What say they regarding our governments efforts to salvage our economy?

from Financial Planning Magazine yesterday:

Brinker Capital, an investment management firm, published its Brinker Barometer, a gauge of financial advisor confidence and sentiment related to the economy and the markets. It concluded that advisors across the industry are skeptical of the government’s attempts to shore up the economy. “Financial advisors continue to be concerned about the state of the U.S. economy and are critical of the Obama Administration’s efforts to introduce a meaningful stimulus package,” said John Coyne, president of Brinker Capital, in a public statement. “Fully 77% of respondents say the final stimulus plan will not be effective, while 88% of advisors contend that the plan itself was not the product of a bipartisan effort.”

About 43% of advisors surveyed said that government’s efforts should have job creation as the top priority. Tax cuts came in second at 30%, with housing and mortgage relief third at 16%.

How about Mr. Obama himself?

When asked to grade President Obama’s performance so far with a mock school-grading system, nine percent gave him an “A,” while 66% graded him between “C” and “F.”

Despite the Governments worst (and predictable given the current administration) efforts, advisors think that the markets, in anticipation of the economy, will improve – albeit slowly – despite the Obama Administrations ill-advised tactics.

Sixty percent of respondents think that the economy will emerge from recession in 2010. And more than one-third of respondents believe that it will take more than six years’ for portfolios to recoup their losses.

Just in time for Obama to take credit although it will be too late as his supporters will have realized by then that they are still making their own mortgage payments and filling their own tanks with gas.

So the banks – some of them, anyway, who bet long on toxic assets and lent like 14 year olds with too-big-allowances – are in trouble.  The government, rightly or (koff, koff) wrongly, is stepping in and socializing the major bank industry in all but name, and spreading the love downstream with an immense “stimulus” program that promises money to just about everyone.

The question is, how is this going to be paid for?

“Borrowing?”  Sure – but eventually loans need to be paid back (unless the government has ordered Fannie and Freddie to underwrite the loans, but that doesn’t apply in this situation).  And that’ll be “The taxpayer”

Who is this “taxpayer?”

Well, let’s find out who it’s not.

For starters, let’s leave out the 91 million Americans who pay no tax at all, leaving 209 million people to pay taxes.

Who are the patriarchs who caused the problem?  Men!  That leaves out the 51% of the population that are women, taking us down to 98 million.

Remove those in State and Federal prison, (3.8 million), as well as the 3% of Americans on parole (another 9 million), and you’re at just under 86 million people on the hook for these plans.

Of course, you can’t count the 73.5 million Americans who are below age 18, obviously.  They’re kids.  It’s not their fault.  That leaves 12.5 million of  us – except we’re going to have to leave out 10 million illegal immigrants, leaving us at 2.5 million), the military (since they’re busy), the employees of federal and state governments (since they’ll be the ones solving the problem and…

…that leaves two Americans.  You, and me.  We are the ones who are going to wind up paying for all this.

(more…)

The Democrats, playing from the Chomsky playbook and using their hegemony in the mainstream media to shape opinion, have been trying to create a false choice in the minds of the vast, non-affiliated “middle” in American politics; asking “Is Rush Limbaugh the voice of the GOP?”, while quite deliberately setting up and glorifying non-conservatives (Chuck Hagel and Arlen Spector nationally; regionally, the likes of Lori Sturdevant burn lots of cycles setting up the likes of Ron Erhard as “responsible” Republicans, which translates to “indistinguishable from the DFL in every particular”).as an “alternative”.

The normally-very-sharp David Frum buys into the madness, playing the Dems’ game for them.

So who’s the voice of conservatism and the GOP in America?

Me.

I, Mitch Berg, am the voice of the Republican party.  My agenda – support growth, limit government intrusion, destroy the enemy (via violence, dipomacy or humanitarianism, it matters not), cut taxes, support the family, defend our culture – is what the party’s agenda should be.

Having an agenda, of course, is of little value if you can’t get it elected.  Republicans – conservative, moderate, whatever – need to get together, figure out the 80% of the message that 80% of us agree on, and convince the other 50% of this country (the ones that aren’t already either Republicans or lost causes) why it not only matters to them, but is a much better choice.  By this time next year, it might not even be all that hard – if we can stop letting the bad guys set us against each other.

So yeah.  I’m the voice of the GOP.

Of course, so are all of my True North colleagues.

And every conservative Republican in Minnesota who doesn’t write for True North, or write at all.

Also every conservative in America, from Rush Limbaugh and Tom Coburn through the guy in the plumbing supply store in Clear Lake Iowa who’s wondering how he’s going make ends meet.

There’s your voice of conservatism.

Note to the liberal media; I hope that settles this.

Speaking of which – I see Kathleen Soliah, the voice of the Minnesota DFL, is coming back to the state…

That hope that may now become a reality as the American people come to realize what the WSJ observed today…

The dismaying message here is that President Obama’s policies have become part of the economy’s problem.

Americans have welcomed the Obama era in the same spirit of hope the President campaigned on. But after five weeks in office, it’s become clear that Mr. Obama’s policies are slowing, if not stopping, what would otherwise be the normal process of economic recovery. From punishing business to squandering scarce national public resources, Team Obama is creating more uncertainty and less confidence — and thus a longer period of recession or subpar growth.

I don’t have time today to elaborate but this picture is worth a thousand syllables…

…and why?

[Jimmy Carter II] has chosen to spend his scarce resources on income transfers rather than growth promotion. Most of his “stimulus” spending was devoted to social programs, rather than public works, and nearly all of the tax cuts were devoted to income maintenance rather than to improving incentives to work or invest.

The powers in Congress — unrebuked by Mr. Obama — are ridiculing and punishing the very capitalists who are essential to a sustainable recovery.

That’s Change^® you’re going to lose your job over. Hopefully not you – the President.

US Bank essentially avoided the mortgage crisis and as such had no need for government bailout dollars. What does their CEO think of the government’s efforts to assist less discerning banking organizations?

While government leaders were well-intentioned in setting up the Troubled Asset Relief Program, it’s a “lousy program,” U.S. Bancorp CEO Richard Davis said at a business leaders forum Tuesday.

U.S. Bank was told, not asked, to participate in the program, which is a Darwinian attempt to “synthesize” weaker banks into stronger banks through consolidation, Davis said at the forum.

The problems with the U.S. Treasury Department’s program are that its goals and rules have changed since its inception last fall, it’s poorly defined and it’s caused collateral damage to healthy banks.

Davis said he would be “darned” if Minneapolis-based U.S. Bank would suffer collateral damage from the government’s “sloppy attempt at nationalizing the [banking] industry.”

No, that doesn’t sound like Socialism at all.

Source Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal

Now that the US has officially joined the ranks of Socialist nations, France wants to make sure that we play by the rules.

The European Union made noises last year about having the WTO verify that the U.S. auto industry assistance package doesn’t violate any international trade rules. Now French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said he will ask the World Trade Organization to stick their hands into the matter.

Critics suggest that this could be a diversionary tactic – Sarkozy himself was accused of violating trade rules with his proposed assistance to Renault and PSA Peugeot/Citroen. Or it could be a way to see if both the proposed French and U.S. proposals will pass the WTO test. Either way, Sarkozy and other European heads of state will meet to plan a Europe-wide response to the auto industry situation, as the E.U. continues to mull whether to bring a formal appeal to the WTO regarding the United States’ bailout package.

If another socialist nation thinks the Big Three Bailout was without merit, you know it was a bad idea. Gee, I hope they don’t call on the UN to come over here and enforce the rules.

Amen brother Leo.

I dreamt that John McCain was President last night.

I know, I know…he’s not the most Republicanny Republican and all, but think about it for a moment.

We’d have three highly qualified candidates waiting in line to be Commerce Secretary instead of Obama’s “sometimes it takes three tries to get it right.”

…yah, I am sure you think that sounds pretty smart Obammy, but I’d like to know what Michelle thinks of that.

I think you meant it takes three tries to find someone desperate enough to put “Obama Administration” on their resume knowing full well what his policies are going to do to with what’s left of “commerce” in America.

It’s why we don’t have a Titanic II. No one would want to be Captain, let alone sail on her.

If John McCain were President, we would have a cabinet packed with people that actually pay their taxes, have actually started business (vs. reading about it in a textbook), hired employees, owned homes and paid mortgages – versus trading favors with a Chicago criminal to put a roof over their head.

There’d have been no speculation of Oprah’s official capacity either.

As for the speech last night, McCain would probably have dissapointed us ala the debates been less inspiring…from a show-business sort of perspective. Not a lot of charisma or flash. Not a lot of big words. Very little emoting.

We’d have his nervous ticks instead of Obama’s sweeping, graceful poise.

…and no Hopey Changey Messiah talk.

But McCain’s math would have been better.

Obama’s Math:

Socialize Health Care

+ Cap and Trade

+ Increase Taxes on Those That Actually Pay Taxes The “Rich”

+ Halve The National Debt Deficit

= Fatal Error. Please Reboot.

Either way, we’d still have Nancy Pelosi’s assenine permagrin dental work burned into our pixels (I actually had coffee with someone this morning that had to put a towel over the right side of the TV screen last night so he could watch Obama’s sermon).

If John McCain were President, Congress would still be hashing out the “Stimulus” bill under threat of a veto, and chances are in the end there would have been less pork hanging on it’s bones – it would still be a terrible mistake, but to a lesser degree.

…and we’d all actually have some true hope for the economy and our dollar.

McCain would be fighting for government policy that might actually have a chance of stimulation, like cutting taxes to corporations, business owners and consumers, and forcing government to do more with less, like the rest of us poor saps that have the audacity to pay our mortgages, live within our means and respect our commitments and responsibilities.

As it stands, the only thing Obama has proposed to cut is military spending – in the era of the only successful terrorist attack on American soil – barely a footnote in Obama’s monologue last night.

John McCain’s speech would have been shorter. He’d be less talky-talky and more worky-worky. He would have ended his campaign once elected. Obama can’t stop his.

John McCain likely would have tackled our nation’s issues like the decorated hero/servant that he is. He’d likely have picked the most urgent, pressing target, (it’s the economy, stupid) trained his sites and directed his resources and political capital in a focused campaign dedicated to it’s destruction, and we’d have some semblance of a plan right now.

Contrast that with Obama’s reckless design to force-feed thirty years of pent up and failed liberal agendas, without regard for the timing or capacity of our economy to absorb the costs or overcome the additional friction borne by the conduct of commerce.

The President and his book-learned liberal turd-squad think you can make a train start moving again by building more track and adding more cars. McCain would feed the boiler with more coal.

In all fairness, neither President would have a clue how exactly to solve an unprecedented, systemic and global financial and credit crisis; but one would have the good sense of what not to do right now.

…but he’s still the Senator from Arizona.

A guy can dream, can’t he?

Anyone else find incredible irony in a “Republican” governor that has run his state into the ground, and is now lauding the stimuless bill?

In an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, Schwarzenegger said he welcomes his state’s share of the massive $787 billion package, believing it could create as many as 400,000 new jobs.

“We welcome this economic stimulus package. I think it’s terrific and will help us,” the California governor said. “We were happy even though there’s…people complaining. It’s not what they envisioned, but what is? The people will give you 1,000 different answers.

“It was Obama that got elected. He put the package together, so let’s support it,” he also said.

Ahnold, I loved you in True Lies but in real life you are an “ee-dee-yot.” There is nothing “terrific” in the rest of us bailing you out after years of deficits and mismanagement of your state.

What a sad artifact of a bygone era that moniker is. Arnold Schwarzenegger circa the 2003 “total recall” election was going to sweep all before him as California governor, bringing the same élan and toughness he had on the big screen to fighting special interests and restoring his beloved state to competitiveness.

With no screenplay to save him, the much-reduced Governator simply buckled and switched sides.

Sadly, California may serve as a model for the rest of the nation, now following in California’s footsteps.

California Democrats are only slightly ahead of national Democrats, so the country’s fiscal future may be in preview in Sacramento.

The state has been buffeted by the housing crisis, but the ultimate cause of the mess is relentless, heedless overspending.

Sound familiar?

Sorry Mr. Kennedy-Shriver, its time to cut the mooring lines and let Caleefohnia float out to sea.

Barack Obama has a new web site…with some handy graphics too.

Recovery.gov

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will be carried out with full transparency and accountability — and Recovery.gov is the centerpiece of that effort. In a short video, President Obama describes the site and talks about how you’ll be able to track the Recovery Act’s progress every step of the way.

Where is Your Money Going? (click on the graphic for more detail)

*Wealth Transfers, Political Payback and the Installment of Socialism

Eight Billion Dollars. Gone.

…all you can offer is “Other“?

Sadly the passage of the stimulus bill to an all-too-willing President serves to mark the certain end of an era.

We have become a nation ruled by a majority no longer able or equipped to face our challenges head-on, rather deferring them ever further into the future for our children to solve.

In a bygone era, we collectively strove to live our lives and suffer sacrifices to lever the rarefied benefits of freedom and enterprise for the sake of future generations in the interest of a higher standard of living.

A great many among us even risked their very lives so that America could remain free and were thus christened The Greatest Generation.

Alas, long gone are the concepts of thrift and sacrifice that faded memories of a great depression taught us generations ago.

There once was a time when the trappings of success were acquired once you were actually successful. Nowadays young people feel they deserve to pick up where their parents left off.

Indeed, our entire commercial culture is predicated on the fact that whatever you wear, whatever you drive, the very house that you live in is obsolete the day after you acquire it.

An anachronism indeed is the concept that if you can’t afford it don’t buy it. In its place: buy now pay later; you deserve it!

Is it no wonder then that our government is an apt reflection of we who sent them and are now levering the future for today?

Driven by an insatiable appetite for consumerism, enabled by institutions all too willing to lend with greater margins of risk, risk falsely mitigated by high minded liberals hell bent on gerrymandering and meddling their way to Utopia, our nation has been sowing the seeds of this crisis for decades.

Growing under the dark clouds of a three decade long supercyle of personal, corporate, institutional and government borrowing, the seeds needed only a nudge to emerge.

Now germinated, a crisis that has left our government so clueless as to the solution that it offers a larger dose of the poison as prescription.

Liberal politicians have hijacked the will of half of our electorate, skillfully conditioning their impressionable sensibilities and aligning millions behind the notion that mother government is somehow able to absolve them of their responsibilities as a citizen of a free nation.

They have been led to believe that they are entitled to the coffers, filled now only with obligations to future generations, or to be defaulted upon entirely, because they are entitled to be equal to those vilified by their choice to work hard, employ others, save and invest.

These hapless many are being reminded that all men are created equal, and entitled to remain so.

Substantiated by billions to be spent with no chance of any economic impact, this stimulus bill is the manifestation of all of this coupled with the inexorable will of liberals to enlarge our government as an instrument of their collectivism ambitions. This crisis is not seen as a challenge to solve rather it is a gift not to be squandered. The American people are vulnerable; time is of the essence for a liberal political land grab.

…all sold under the guise suffering and sacrifice are no longer modern concepts, offer no tuition and are to be avoided at all costs; even at the expense of our children’s financial future – even at the expense of our freedom as a nation.

Wars were once fought with sticks and stones but the wars of the future may very well be fought with financial instruments. The battleground may be the internet and in the financial markets. The strong, preying on the weak, especially those destroyed from within.

This battle may already be afoot.

This generation has brought our nation to its knees. Now manifested is the notion that a democracy made aware of it’s power to vote itself it’s riches will do so, and with a vengeance.

At President Obama’s El Grande Stimuloso Tour Del Mundo  New New Deal Road Show  Socialist Party Recruitment Tour Town Hall meeting in Florida this week, a downtrodden Henrietta Hughes stepped to the microphone and asked for an extra helping of Hopey Changey^© from the Messiah.

“I have an urgent need, unemployment and homelessness, a very small vehicle for my family and I to live in,” she said. “The housing authority has two years’ waiting lists, and we need something more than the vehicle and the parks to go to. We need our own kitchen and our own bathroom. Please help.”

Now, why didn’t she ask for help getting a fricken job? Why does she expect the government to skip to giving her the fish instead of helping her to catch one?

Who could be giving people the idea that that is how America works?

…I don’t even have my own bathroom – I have to share it with Mrs. Roosh – and Henrietta just got…three? Plus a study, a library, a jacuzzi, a three-car garage, and a big-screen telly-vision.

Supplied by Obammy’s handlers?

Nope.

A Democrat breaking rank and actually giving his/her own money?

Nope.

Chene Thompson, the wife of state Rep. Nicholas Thompson, R-Fort Myers, is letting Henrietta Hughes and her son stay in a house she owns in nearby La Belle rent free until they get back on their feet.

“You don’t have to be a politician to put forth a stimulus package,” Chene Thompson said during a joint interview with Hughes Thursday on CNN’s “American Morning.” “This is our own little mini-stimulus package for a person who was a stranger and now is a friend.

What? The guvment isn’t coming to the rescue?

Republicans…one voter at a time!

Now if someone could help find her a job…

Just so we set the record strait – since so many libs seem to have trouble getting it right – deregulation didn’t get us here (emphasis added):

CONTRARY TO A VIEW POPULARIZED DURING THE 2008 presidential election season, the current economic crisis was not the result of deregulation.The Bush administration made many mistakes, but deregulation was not one of them.

Not only was there no major deregulation passed during the past eight years, but the Bush administration and a Republican Congress approved the most sweeping financial-market regulation in decades.

Let’s recap:  Bush acted and spent like a liberal; liberal Democrats want to fix the consequences of liberal acts and spending with…more of both.

I have a headache.

Harvard Economist Robert Barro:

This is probably the worst bill that has been put forward since the 1930s. I don’t know what to say. I mean it’s wasting a tremendous amount of money. It has some simplistic theory that I don’t think will work, so I don’t think the expenditure stuff is going to have the intended effect. I don’t think it will expand the economy. And the tax cutting isn’t really geared toward incentives. It’s not really geared to lowering tax rates; it’s more along the lines of throwing money at people. On both sides I think it’s garbage. So in terms of balance between the two it doesn’t really matter that much.

Translation: This bill sucks and won’t work (although you probably didn’t need my translation given the non-Economist descriptors “worst” and “garbage.”)

Clearly Barro recognizes giving money to people that don’t pay income taxes is being fed to us as a “tax cut.”

We are going to borrow 800 billion dollars to no economic effect, although mark my words, Democrats will take credit for the recovery that will eventually come with or without the bill. Because this is still America after all.

…at least for now.

Jim Rogers on the banking “bailout:”

The new financial rescue plan may not work and could even make things worse because it plunges the US further into debt and it is designed by the same people who failed to forecast the crisis and take measures, legendary investor Jim Rogers told CNBC Tuesday.

But Rogers said Geithner, who was president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, “has been dead wrong about everything for 15 years in a row,” and so was President Barack Obama’s economic advisor Lawrence Summers, who acted as Treasury Secretary at the turn of the century.

Translation: This bailout, once it is decided upon, will suck.

“If I were on your show 15 weeks in a row and was wrong, you’d probably never invite me back. These guys have been wrong year after year after year consistently and here they are making the same mistakes again. This is not going to solve the problem, it’s going to make it worse.”

It never ceases to amaze how so many in our country expect the same people that caused the crisis will grow a brain and fix it…and with the same tools that caused it.

I don’t have much patience for – I’ll try to be civil, here – really dumb arguments.

The one that I hear the most on blogs and talk shows, lately, is “you’re just reciting talking points”, stated as a way to simply dismiss an argument or point of view.

Let’s take a moment to unpack what a misguided and nonproductive statement that is, when abused – and these days, it most usually is abused.

Let’s take a hypothetical example:  Say you, a liberal, construct an argument about, hypothetically, a political issue, one that springs from your perspective.  That perspective has a lot of background to it; your background, your own life experiences, conclusions you’ve reached after a lifetime of thought and – since the issue in the example is a political one – bits and pieces of the political philosphy you’ve adopted. 

Given that you are a liberal, is it not reasonable that, in among the bits and pieces of your argument will have things in common with some of the overarching ideas and ideals of liberalism?

So what are you doing?

• Creating an argument based on your interpretation of a philosophy that you agree with – knowing that since you agree with the philosophy, and are not alone, that there may be points in common with other people? Or…
• “Reciting talking points?”

I thought about this while guesting on Marty Owings’ “Radio Free Nation” last weekend.  A caller responded to one of my statements with “you’re just reciting conservative talking points”.

And the possible responses ponged about my mind like four-year-old boys who’ve gotten into the chocolate espresso beans:

• Of course, the oldie but goodie: “Please show me where this memo is from which I supposedly get these “points”, because I sure never read it”.
• Given that these are supposedly “conservative talking points”, please tell me – who is the “authority” that makes these “points” up for the rest of us?  The “Conservative National Committee?”  There is no such author or authoring body! 
• Perhaps you mean “Republican” talking points, since there’s actually a group of officials that do that kind of thing for the GOP?  But wait!  Given the abysmal record of the National and State GOP in getting anything done over the past four-eight years, what makes you think that even if a GOP official were to send me some “talking points”, I’d use them?  What has the GOP done for us lately?
• I’m 46.  I’ve been “working” as a self-appointed pundit of sorts for most of my adult lifetime.  In that time, I’ve developed some form of opinion or another about just about every topic you can think of, from cuisine (Mediterranean!) to liquor (Polish Vodka!) to music (Springsteen, Richard Thompson, Tchaikowski, Mahler, Marah, Emmylou Harris!) to literature (Dostoevskii and Hemingway!) to sports (don’t care about much but Baseball!) to guitars (rosewood fingerboards!) to firearms (Garand, Colt, Heckler und Koch!) to politics (need I go into details?).  In every case, if I’ve bothered to develop an opinion, it’s because I’ve become convinced that “that’s the way it should be”, through a process whose intellectual rigor you are not equipped to understand – merely emulate, in your own way, in  your own mind.  In short, I don’t need anyone to give me “talking points”; I write my own. 
• The same, indeed, holds true for pretty much everyone (who doesn’t write for “Minnesota Progressive Project”, anyway). 

In other words – Duh.  I’m a conservative.  Some of the things I believe will be common to many, even most, other conservatives.  That’s why it’s called a “movement”, rather than a “completely random instance of applied interpersonal chaos theory”. 

I think the actual response I used with the caller was “You need to quit snacking on the lead paint chips in your efficiency apartment, go gather up the scraps of the pathetic excuse for a life that you are supposedly living, try to find a sack so you can sack up and head out on the street and try to make something other than “a piece of walking semi-sentient suet” out of yourself”. 

Karl Rove told me to say it.