Bailoutmania Could Bankrupt US Government
Once responsible companies are now basing decision critical decisions on government handouts. This is this is an expected, but unplanned for, result of the Paulson’s Panic in September. Says the Wall Street Journal:
The rescue efforts are "evolving in ways that I don’t think anyone anticipated," said Camden Fine, president and CEO of the Independent Community Bankers of America, a trade group. "Things are just hitting them from every single direction, every day, and I don’t think they know whether to spit or go blind."
In the past 2 business days, GM and Ford CEOs crawled and groveled before their masters in Congress, Reid and Pelosi; AIG received another $25 billion of our money to flush down yet another crap hole; American Express became a bank to apply for government money. From WSJ.com:
On Monday, mortgage giant Fannie Mae said it is losing money so rapidly it may need a cash infusion from the Treasury Department by year’s end. The funds would come from a special $100 billion pool Treasury set aside back in September to aid the company. Fannie Mae had a loss of $29 billion for the third quarter.
The money, though, is running out. Expect US Treasuries to be downgraded before Obama takes the oath.
Then we’ll be in a world of hurt.
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Communism in America
I’ve received some notes and e-mails from friends who say I’m overboard in my rhetoric about Obama’s potential to communize the USA. I respect them, but they’re simply wrong.
In Philadelphia, you can be arrested simply for wearing McCain-Palin t-shirts, as proven in this video.
And these are Philly’s finest, not Obama’s promised jack-booted thugs.
Be vigilant, America. Sleep with one eye open. Remember the words of William Wallace in the movie Braveheart:
Aye, fight and you may die. Run, and you’ll live… at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin’ to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take… OUR FREEDOM!
James Hansen’s Boldest Lie To Date **Update**
Dr. Hansen apparently believes the world is as stupid as, well, as stupid as the world seems to be.
All of the October surface station temperature from Russia was corrupted. So what did Hansen do? He simply copied and pasted Russia’s temperatures for September into October and reported that October 2008 was the hottest October on record.
Why isn’t James Hansen in prison? The AGW argument has lost so much steam that he’s resorted this level of lying, fraud, and deceit. So fast are the data disproving Hansen’s theories that he’ll stoop to bald faced lies to protect his crumbling reputation.
Meanwhile, 2008 is shaping up to be below average across the vast majority of the United States.
**UPDATE: The outrage and call for action spreads:
- Ed Morrissey at HotAir
- Tom Nelson
- Mark Noonan at Blogs for Victory
- Gateway Pundit
Ed Morrissey is exactly correct. GISS has a long and accelerating record of changing history to fit its models, of publishing doctored climate data, and of encouraging criminal activity to hide its own corruption. One of the great errors of the 2008 election was the failure of both political parties to treat the AGW scam as a massive criminal enterprise. Perhaps the peasants with pitch-forks will have to prosecute this crime themselves.
A Uniquely American Despotism
When I first read Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” the hair on my neck stood at attention like soldiers on a parade ground before some mighty dignitary. A palpable fear shook my psyche. Its reverberations echo in my heart and soul some 28 years later, the way some scientists claim the Big Bang can still be heard pin-balling around the universe.
I allowed myself a few days to digest the reality of last week’s election. I needed only a second. Immediately and constantly Tocqueville’s horrifying paragraphs on Despotism in America spring to mind the way a toy snake launches from the novelty can of nuts.
Tocqueville:
It would seem that if despotism were to be established among the democratic nations of our days, it might assume a different character; it would be more extensive and more mild; it would degrade men without tormenting them.
[I] think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change
Tocqueville:
I think, then, that the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything that ever before existed in the world; our contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their memories.
Tocqueville on the pursuit of the petty:
The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives.
Tocqueville on isolation:
Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest; his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fellow citizens, he is close to them, but he does not see them; he touches them, but he does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country.
And the most frightening paragraph ever written about America:
Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?
Obama:
[T]he Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf.
America seems to be lying battered and naked beneath this beast, this antepartum “mild despotism” that makes itself “the sole agent and only arbiter” of our happiness. We know the rapist will, barring some miracle, will penetrate our sacred political virginity taking what was not offered, what is not his to take.
We choose not to fight but to live with the festering wounds inflicted by his desire to control us. We choose not to scream out but to quietly acquiesce to his unholy quest for pleasure.
Many of our fellows long ago reached that state described in the last sentence quoted above. Peggy the Moocher (as Michelle Malkin calls her), the woman who told Fox News that Obama would pay for her gasoline and mortgage so that she need never work again, would celebrate being spared “all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living.”
Tocqueville on that despotic government:
It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.
Well, I am energetic, damn it, and I consider my mind original. Most of the people I know and admire, many who will disagree with everything I write, are energetic and original. How dare anyone stop us from rising above the crowd? We are not Peggy the Moocher! We are Americans, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, one of which is the pursuit of happiness. I, for one, would rather be destroyed than nonexistent. Wouldn’t you?
Please read the entire chapter on Despotism in volume 4 of Democracy in America. You should know what’s happening to you even if you lack the will and the fortitude to do anything about it.
It is indeed difficult to conceive how men who have entirely given up the habit of self-government should succeed in making a proper choice of those by whom they are to be governed; and no one will ever believe that a liberal, wise, and energetic government can spring from the suffrages of a subservient people
The last thing conservatism needs is marketing
From Rich Lowry (editor of National Review) to Norman Ornstein (American Enterprise Institute), conservatives cry out for “message that resonates with young people and minorities.”
Hogwash.
Barack Obama won the election because, given the choice of two vacuous and banal “messages,” voters went with the more interesting one.
Blaming conservatism, Reagan, Christians, and clingers for the 2008 election results betrays a kind of ignorance for which non-profits raise funds to cure. Obama may have concealed what he stands for (and many who voted for him would not have voted for him had they known his true self), but he clearly stood for something. McCain’s problem was his history of compromise. Everyone knows–and I mean everyone–that people with convictions and who believe truth be on their side won’t compromise. Obama won’t compromise, except on the false promises he made during the campaign. McCain will compromise on anything [Althouse]. (H/T GayPatriot)
We are conservatives, not marketers. We sell the truth which we believe to be self-evident and God-given. We believe that all power, all rights, all decisions descend from God to individual human beings. We believe that men invent governments to discharge certain of our needs, the way some people hire “landscapers” to mow their lawns. We believe that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed and that the governed may rescind powers previously granted to government. In short, we believe man is a weak being that government, which is man’s flawed and broken creation, is even weaker. If a determined and resourceful and free man cannot achieve some noble ambition, then government doesn’t stand a chance.
If young people and minorities can’t deal with these truths now, let them live through 4 years of socialist created privation, rancor, and slavery: they’ll embrace our values in 2012.
The most destructive path for conservatism is to listen to people who want us to act like liberals. In fact, behaving as liberals is exactly what brought us to this long, cold night.
If our message, articulated consistently since the Revolution, is wrong today, then it was always wrong and always will be. If that’s the case, we are morally obliged to refute conservatism and to worship Obama and big government. Those who want to speak like liberals but govern like conservatives are frauds: they should shamed and humiliated.
If our message is right, then its truths will be self-evident. Glossing over the splendor and duty of conservatism, hiding its inherent risks and rewards, fools no one–certainly not the young, who don’t trust their seniors, nor minorities, who’ve been lied to for centuries.
With the truth on our side, with the power and the freedom and the wisdom God and the Founding Fathers have given us, we need no facades. We need only shout the truth from the highest mountain: “We KNOW the way! We Know the path! We know the secret of the pursuit of Happiness and good government. We are God’s children and if the fish in the stream and the deer in the wood have the power to live their lives and pass on life to the next generation, then how infinitely more able are WE to live our OWN lives, to make our OWN decisions, to create a better world for ourselves and our posterity?”
A message for the young and minorities? We’ve always had it. Now, let’s get about preaching it.
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