Poll: Should we stay on "summer time"?

NPR asks the question:

Should the U.S. stop changing its clocks?


Or, to put it another way, should Americans stop going "off" Daylight Saving Time every winter?

There are parts of the U.S., including Arizona and Hawaii, that don't change their clocks. Here's a question: Should the rest of the nation just stay on "summer time" permanently so that our evenings always (sort of) last longer?

Letter to the Editor: TEA Party movement falling prey to lack of organization, power hungry leadership and political prostitution

BY: Roy Hollingsworth

With the taste of victory experienced by the TEA Party in the last elections came a false sense of power for some. As a loose confederation of like-minded individuals mad about government spending and overreach, the group found it easy to affect the political conversation. I was one of that number. But the details of policy are proving to be a little messier. The same group that railed at the audacity of then Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s flaunting of House rules to push her big government agenda have no problem demanding that Republican’s now do the same.

The current argument between House leadership and TEA Party activist’s swirls around that stalwart of publicity, Michelle Bachmann; the geographically challenged representative from Minnesota. Mrs. Bachmann has packaged herself as the TEA Party leader in the House by doing little more than grandstanding for political points. She, along with Representative Steve King, wants to add language to the current Continuing Resolution (CR) that will strip funding for Obama care from the federal budget.

Here’s the rub: The CR temporary spending bill is an appropriation bill, not an authorization bill. And you cannot take away "authorized" money on an appropriations bill without playing Pelosi style loose and goosey with the rules. If the TEA Party is about principle, then we should stick to that principle. If it’s now about winning at all costs, then some of our self-described patriots have shown themselves to be dupes at Bachmann’s self-constructed alter. I want no part of that.

Furthermore, many of the King/Bachmann supporters say they are willing to force a government shutdown over the whole affair. The shutdown would effectively slow government spending, but it wouldn’t cut government spending. And the House leadership is on track to do that across a large swath of federal agencies by passing CR’s, allowing for comprehensive reductions back to 2008 funding levels. This tactic not only follows the House rules, it puts our federal government back on a path to sustainable spending. We need not cut off our nose to spite our face. These problems didn’t happen overnight, and they won’t be solved in a week.

This lack of forward thinking by the TEA party “leadership” illustrates how the movement is coming apart at the seams. One of the latest state-wide leadership meetings attracted only a handful of people. Many Mississippians still identify with the basic TEA Party message of less spending and less government. But, I have spoken with a number of TEA Party members who believe that overzealous behavior and a lack of education with respect to process is exacting a price. The “cry wolf syndrome” without first studying all aspects and angles of an issue is pushing away many previously active members of the group. The members I have spoken with say current leadership seems to have allowed the new found power to go their head, as they begin to make decisions without consulting rank and file members.

TEA Party leaders continue to tout the organizations numbers for obvious reasons. But, the latest episodes show the gloss is wearing thin. The “mad as hell” antics are getting tired. It is time for the TEA Party to get serious about educating itself if it hopes to remain a force in politics. Launching an arm of the group that focuses on development of policy, procedure, and how to disseminate that information to members would be a good start. Until the TEA Party rank and file can have calm, considerate and informed discussions with public officials, we are ripe for the picking for state and national opportunists and personalities, and we will continue to fall prey to political prostitution.

For Crying Out Loud

By Daniel J. Flynn/The American Spectator

House Speaker John Boehner insists his tears, like his tan, are genuine. Too bad. His election night sob story over his climb to success, followed by his 60 Minutes blubbering over schoolchildren, might be excusable if inspired by a Machiavellian streak. Alas, a lack of self-control, rather than an act to exert control over his audience, explains the teary-eyed outbursts.

Boehner's waterworks flow most frequently and famously. But his aren't the only tear ducts opening when the cameras are rolling. Senator Tom Coburn cried during his speech in favor Judge John Roberts's confirmation to the Supreme Court in 2005. Weepy behavior is bipartisan, as Senator Chuck Schumer whimpered during his introduction of Judge Sonia Sotomayor at her confirmation hearings last year. Mitt Romney choked up running for president when talking about his church admitting blacks, his father, and seeing a casket return from Iraq. America is in trouble when the behavior of its elected officials resembles that of the YouTube sensation who tearfully exhorted everyone to "Leave Britney alone! Please!"

One needn't be a stoic to find something unseemly in all this crying. Almost fifty years ago, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons counseled big girls not to cry. Today, one can't suggest so much to grown men without appearing like a troglodyte. Wussy is the new manly.

Politics merely reflects the culture, which likes its men to be like its women. Sometime after the appearance of man purses but before the pandemic of male eyebrow waxing, the culture gave the green light for guys to wail and weep. "It's okay to cry," we were told. But male icons in sports, movies, and television told us that it's not just okay to cry. It's obligatory.
Michael Jordan cried after winning his first NBA title and Tim Tebow cried after losing the SEC championship game. Get some perspective. You play a children's game. There may be no crying in baseball. Basketball and football are another story.

Joe Friday and Harry Callahan would never make it in today's Hollywood. Jerry Maguire, whose welling eyes impressed rather than repulsed the girl, seems a more iconic representation of modern manliness. He had her at hello. He lost me at boo-hoo.

In 2009, ABC presented Jason Mesnick as a catch to female contestants on The Bachelor. The indecisive, gushing Mesnick presented himself as unable to control his emotions to ABC's viewers. The man that ABC believed that women wanted turned out to be a bachelor for a reason.

Glenn Beck may or may not be a crier in real life, but he plays one on TV. Beck's weepiness has become as much a part of his shtick as Bill O'Reilly's temper or Keith Olbermann's sanctimony. When Walter Cronkite's voice cracked as he reported President Kennedy's assassination, few faulted him for his momentary betrayal of the dispassionate ethic of the anchorman. But in the news-o-tainment era, tears=ratings. Cry yourself to the bank.

Pundits who obsess over the artificiality of the tear flood miss the point. The indifference of the sincerely moved to suppress the impulse toward public emoting, and the eagerness of the phonies to release the feigned emotions, both tacitly acknowledge the benefits of being a crybaby in our society.

Proponents of crying suggest there is something unhealthy in holding back the tears. Perhaps they are on to something. Men are from Mars, not from Vulcan, after all. But why must so many men lose it so publicly? It's undignified. It can be, à la children's crocodile tears, manipulative. In leaders, it does not inspire confidence. As one might say to a couple partaking in similarly annoying public displays of affection, "Get a room!" -- the bathroom, the bedroom, the basement, wherever. Just take your crying eyes away from our eyes.

Cannot the dry eyes and the wet eyes come to a compromise? The former faction will grant that it is okay to cry, provided that the latter faction does so behind closed doors. Deal?

Thirty-nine-years ago, Maine Senator Edmund Muskie stood outside of the Manchester Union Leader and denounced the newspaper for criticizing his wife. Amid the emotionally-charged speech, and winter's flurries, reporters glimpsed moisture trailing down the presidential frontrunner's cheek. Was it melting snowflakes or tears? It didn't matter. The mere suggestion that an aspirant to lead the free world broke down during a stressful situation was enough for some to dismiss his candidacy.

In less than four decades, America has morphed from a culture that cringes at grown men bawling to one that rewards it. That's almost worth crying over.

Good Balance Creates Good Leaders

BY: B. Keith Plunkett

Society has morphed into a mob that wants to hear our leaders definitively and emphatically say “never” and/or “always”. We get caught up in feel good phrases like “Yes We Can.” Empty and meaningless maxims discount one simple fact: none of us, not even those willing to shout such blather from the rooftops and podiums, are ever really in control.

We reward people as worthy of leadership for the pronouncement of meaningless platitudes. We use it to build an otherwise banal personality into a heroic figure and then lay at their doorstep our problems to be fixed. We want someone else to be the “go to guy”, because at our core, the majority of us are scared to stick out our own necks.

We are fearful little children, who learned to deal with life through our control dramas at a young age, and we have brought those dramas with us into adulthood. How do I get fed? I cry. How do I get my way? I throw a temper tantrum. How do I get out of this? I lie. How do I win? I cheat. Those are the standards of the playground in which we live. It is the ways we have deluded ourselves into maintaining the belief that we can control our situations. It is our lesser selves we revert to when focused on a shortcut to the end result. We have forgotten that we are not in control and never have been. We have allowed ourselves to become manipulators--and maninpulated, out of fear, out of laziness, out of aloofness, and in some cases out of blind allegiance to the perception of power.

That’s all power really is; a perception. Situational control, that is momentary management, will always lie with the person or group that is perceived to have power. That group and control will often change when that power is challenged, when a reaction to new circumstances is insufficient to maintain it, or when they begin to believe that they are above reproach. There are leaders and there are followers. Without belief there are no followers, and there can be no leaders without followers.

We deify those who say “never this” or “always that” and put them on a pedestal. But, when those heroes become all too human, as they inevitably do, those that believed in the miracle can only stand by quietly disappointed and watch as the axe is sharpened, usually by someone else who is shouting, “Never again!”

Then, the process starts anew.

We deify our demagogues, and then sacrifice them at the altar of their own failures when it is WE who have set the bar too high for them, while not even bothering to set a bar for ourselves.

We need a reawakening. We need a renewal of personal responsibility—not control, but responsibility. That doesn’t start with some political catchphrase. It starts with each of us. It begins at the most grassroots level, in our own backyard, and in our own communities. It starts by worrying about what we can do for others and relinquishing any hope at controlling the outcome, and by not scheming about what we need for ourselves or manipulating the situation to gain an edge. It starts with REAL public servants, those are people who are in it for the right reasons, people of courage, people prepared to help bring consensus to difficult issues to solve problems.

Politics reflects society. We get exactly what we deserve. Being courageous doesn’t require being obnoxious and building consensus isn’t the same as sacrificing principle. The path is narrow. It requires good balance to keep from falling off into the weeds.

Senator Chuck Hagel writes, "The quality of leaders and effectiveness of government are directly related to informed and committed citizens willing to participate in politics."

Nothing is accomplished by divisive avarice. Citizens should encourage good balance within our social networks and follow the leaders that naturally appear as a result.

Is Black Support for Obama Racist?



BY: Jerome Hudson

 With poverty at an all-time high, daunting black unemployment levels and Obamacare threatening black babies, black support for Barack Obama remains surprisingly strong.

Why?

Blacks are not uniformly as radical as Obama. So why do 91 percent of blacks still support him when only 79 percent of his Democrat constituency does?

It’s a black thang.

Again, why?

Some say Obama’s support comes from “black solidarity” — that birds of a feather flock together. That is racist in itself. After all, imagine if white voters similarly lined up in “racial solidarity.” This is compounded by the facts.

Under George W. Bush, black unemployment was actually lower than during the Clinton years and much lower than the 16.3 percent it is today. Under Obama, black unemployment rose from 12.6 percent to 16.3 percent as of August 1, 2010.

Despite promoting black upward mobility, Bush only enjoyed a black approval rating in the low 30s at a similar time in his presidency. Bush also made historic cabinet-level appointments of blacks and dramatically increased funding to fight AIDS in Africa. Much to Kanye West’s chagrin, President Bush did care about black people.

Furthermore, after nearly two years of Obama’s reckless spending, 43.6 million Americans (one in seven) live in poverty — a 51-year high. Blacks, who account for only 13 percent of the population, make up 22.6 percent of those now receiving food stamp benefits.

And, after a promise there would be no federal abortion funding in Obamacare, tax dollars for abortions may be provided through high-risk insurance programs in Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Maryland.

Polling shows blacks are overwhelmingly pro-life. We undoubtedly want jobs and freedom from poverty. So why the blind loyalty to someone who hasn’t delivered?

When a constituency clearly provides loyal support, as blacks are to progressives, it begs to be taken for granted.

So is it any wonder that, after 50 years of conceding support to liberals and letting Uncle Sam be their “baby daddy,” we are mired in an anti-empowerment culture of dependency?

Liberals can argue racism causes black stagnation, but is a 70 percent illegitimacy rate among blacks (90 percent in some inner cities) due to racism or a lack of accountability and personal responsibility? It’s also a painful truth that blacks kill more blacks (by gun, unhealthy lifestyle and abortion) than racists could ever accomplish.

So-called “civil rights leaders,” pseudo-intellectuals and liberal lawmakers must know this, yet they insist on pretending racism is more responsible for sluggish black advancement than behavior they foster.

It’s time for a frank discussion about the folly of black Americans’ monolithic support of liberalism. When 91 percent of any racial group votes one way, it’s either out of racism or blind groupthink. Neither is good for America.

FJ

Demint: The Fired Congress

Senator Jim Demint

BY: Senator Jim Demint

In December, more than a dozen senators will come back to Washington and decide how much more tax money to take from Americans, without being accountable to any of them.

Some companies have a policy that once someone is fired, they aren’t allowed back on the premises out of fear they might do further damage to the company. It’s too bad Congress doesn’t have the same policy. Because before they’re replaced in January, all of the Democrats who are put out of a job in November will be able to come back and rob the nation blind.

More than a dozen senators will come back to Washington and decide how much more tax money to take from Americans, without being accountable to any of them. Higher taxes, cap-and-trade, amnesty, and card check will be top-priority items for the Fired Congress, otherwise known as the lame-duck Congress. They’re also likely to roll unfinished appropriations bills into a massive, pork-stuffed omnibus to snag every last possible earmark on their way out of Washington.

This must not happen. The only acceptable outcome of the lame-duck session is a continuing resolution to keep government operating at current levels of spending and taxation, as I pushed the Senate to do in 2006 after Republicans lost the majority to the Democrats. No last-minute earmarks, no add-ons, no tax increases, and no big deficit spending.

By simply passing a continuing resolution that kept the government funded at current levels until February 2007, Republicans stopped more than 10,000 earmarks from being enacted and prevented big spenders in Congress from wasting billions of dollars on pork-barrel projects. Then, 2007 became the year without earmarks, because when that temporary continuing resolution expired in February, Congress extended it for the rest of the year. We should adopt the same approach during the 2010 lame-duck session.

To stop a wasteful omnibus and instead secure a continuing resolution, Republicans must hold together. Fortunately, the GOP may have a few reinforcements on the way. Three new senators will take office immediately following the midterms — one each from Delaware, Illinois, and West Virginia, where special elections are being held to replace temporarily appointed senators. And the Republicans running in these races are eager to help.

Illinois Republican Senate candidate Mark Kirk has promised that if he wins, “I will become the 42nd Republican senator, with the opportunity to put the brakes on any lame-duck overreach.”

Delaware Republican candidate Christine O’Donnell has made it part of her pitch, too. “Who do you want serving in that lame-duck session?” she has said. “Someone who’s going to promote that very liberal agenda that can’t even get enough Democratic support, or someone who is going to push back against the establishment?”

West Virginia’s Republican Senate candidate, John Raese, who is up in the polls, has stated unequivocally that he would oppose the Democrats’ lame-duck agenda. He has said, “It is completely inappropriate for House and Senate Democrats, who would be in cahoots with President Obama, to take up any legislation that would significantly affect the country after an election that will considerably alter the political landscape of Congress. Any attempt to do so would be a slap in the face to all Americans who voted for a change from the liberal status quo.”

More candidates should go on the record with such statements. There’s a whole month of campaigning left before the midterms, and voters can extract promises from their elected officials not to let the Fired Congress pass major legislation. This is a reasonable request that even the Democrats should be able to support. Colorado Republican Senate candidate Ken Buck has called on Democratic senator Michael Bennet to promise to oppose any tax hikes Harry Reid may try to ram through during the lame-duck session. All Senate Democrats up for election this year should be asked to do the same.

Getting more elected officials to speak out against a spendthrift lame-duck session can help deter the Democratic leadership from cramming it with votes. It’s been reported that Democrats are considering as many as 20 pieces of legislation to bring up for a vote. After failing to get the New START Treaty (an agreement that hurts America’s missile-defense systems) ratified, to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and to pass legislation to give amnesty to illegal aliens, Democrats see opportunity after the elections, when a number of their members won’t have anything to lose.

Democrats are also hoping that the pressure of a Christmas deadline will get some Republicans to break their way. White House senior adviser David Axelrod recently said he thinks Republicans will “blink” and help Democrats raise taxes as the end-of-the year deadline approaches. Republicans must not cave.

Democrats are playing political games and Americans are going to fire them for it in November. When the Democrats come back in December to box up their personal belongings, Republicans must make sure that’s all they take with them.

Jim DeMint is a U.S. senator from South Carolina.

NRO

The Lighter Side of Deadbeats

BY: Tim Cavanaugh

After more than a year in action, the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) is showing improvement on redefaults. But that improvement will turn out to be brief, and the details demonstrate how little impact the expensive program can ultimately have.


Redefault occurs when a delinquent borrower works with a bank to change the terms of a mortgage, but then after some period of time stops making payments again. It occurs in half of all modified loans, and the alarming rate of redefaults prompts interventionists to call for more generous principal-reduction loan mods – the idea being that if you give enough money to demonstrated bad borrowers, eventually they will become responsible.
 
(T)he direct quarter-by-quarter comparisons show a definite comedown in delinquencies at the six-month mark -- though the change is substantial only for deadbeats who got haircuts of 20 percent or more.


But dig a little deeper into the report and you will see how little meaning there is in a time frame of less than six months. Even loans that received the most charitable modifications start redefaulting at higher rates once you get out to a year or more, with most categories over 50 percent redefault rates at the 12-month mark. The category of de jure government-guaranteed loans (In effect, all mortgages are now government guaranteed) has a whopping 64.8 percent redefault rate. Overall, 49.7 percent of all modified loans are back in default within a year.

HAMP is only a $75 billion program. So where is the money going to come from? And when will they stop claiming that taking money from taxpayers (the vast majority of whom have never been late on a mortgage payment) and giving it to deadbeats and stupid banks does anything but drag out the problem?

Read the entire article: Reason

Hedgecock: Democrats Want to Destroy Fiorina and Angle

by Roger Hedgecock

This much we know.

Carly Fiorina overcame a competitive field to decisively win the California Republican Senate primary election, earning the right to compete against incumbent Democrat Sen. Barbara Boxer in the November election.

Sharron Angle came from way behind to win decisively in the Nevada Republican primary election, earning the right to compete against incumbent Democrat Sen. Harry Reid in November.

What is not yet publicly known is the scorched-earth negative campaigns already beginning against both of these Republican women.

Hints in recent weeks have made it clear that the Democrats will not only campaign to retain these Senate seats, they will launch an immediate, relentless personal assault designed to destroy both women's reputations personally and politically.

What the liberal elites cannot stand about both women goes far beyond disagreement over their political views.

Both women were endorsed by Sarah Palin. Palin's endorsement in these races and others (notably Nikki Haley) made a positive difference. By contrast, Obama's endorsement didn't help Arlen Specter, or John Corzine, Creigh Deeds or Martha Coakley and only Bill Clinton saved Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas.

Why does Palin and everything she says and does provoke such a torrent of bile and abuse from the left? It’s because she is a successful, powerful woman who is definitely not a liberal feminist, and because she is an authentic American women of her time.

Palin is a success in her career, while she is also a mother facing the kind of difficulties in her family that sound all too real to many American families. She lives the daily juggling act that liberal feminists only write about.

Worse yet for the liberal elites in government, academia, and the media, she is politically powerful because she is authentic.

I witnessed Palin's appeal firsthand at the Tea Party Express rally in Harry Reid's hometown of Searchlight, Nev. On a cold, wind-swept day in the high desert before a crowd of nearly 30,000, Sarah Palin was introduced to a standing ovation.

But then something extraordinary happened. Women in the audience rushed the stage, many holding up Palin's book and all chanting "Sarah, Sarah." When was Nancy Pelosi last (or ever) greeted this way?

The gap between arrogant ruling liberal elites and "We the People," which fueled the Tea Party movement in the first place, has never been more apparent than when comparing the Botox phony feminist with a real accomplished American woman.

So get ready Carly and Sharron. The tornado of bitter, mean, false labels and charges is just beginning.

In Fiorina's case, Boxer has already previewed the witch's brew. According to Senator (don't call me ma'am) Boxer, Fiorina, as CEO of Hewlett-Packard, deliberately outsourced American jobs overseas, violated environmental standards and gouged her employees and the consuming public in a greedy drive to amass an obscene fortune while she, Barbara Boxer, by contrast has devoted her life to public service and the public good. Translation: Carly has actually created thousands of private sector jobs.

As for Sharron Angle, if you listen to Reid's paid shills in Nevada, she's a right-wing nut who would dismantle all the successful, necessary agencies of government and is backed by gun-toting militias full of Timothy McVeigh wannabes.

Apparently, Angle has the temerity to question the effectiveness of the federal Department of Education, and other monuments to wasteful, failed (and unconstitutional) liberal programs. And Americans who understand the importance of the 2nd Amendment do support her. Reid will soon find out that those supporters include the majority of Nevadans.

But beyond being prepared for the liberal smear machine, both Fiorina and Angle have a golden opportunity to unleash a secret weapon—the truth.

The truth is the U.S. cannot borrow its way to prosperity, our indebtedness to China is not an asset, and government "stimulus" is not creating good jobs. In short, Obama's campaign of HOPE has produced anxiety and despair and the CHANGE is widely seen as destroying jobs.

Hard times caused by failing Obama policies championed by Boxer and Reid cannot be forever masked by extending unemployment benefits.

Beyond telling the truth (You know, folks, the Emperor has no clothes), these candidates—and all who would win in November—need to tell us what needs to be done. What would they propose as an alternate to the failing policies now in place?

What real reforms would actually make the American healthcare system work better at a lower cost to more people? Could putting more power in the hands of patients be the beginning of a better plan than Obamacare, which starts by putting all power and choice in the hands of the government?

What is the proper role of government regulation now that the most regulated parts of the economy (banks, insurance and oil companies, for example) have experienced the most failure while the least regulated parts of the economy (Apple, for example) are the only good news we have.

Now that we know that the open border policy pursued by George Bush is also the policy of President Obama—and with equally disastrous results—what would these two candidates, if elected to the U.S. Senate, offer as an alternative? Our national security as well as the nation’s sovereignty hangs in the balance on this issue.

In foreign policy, now that bowing to foreign despots and apologizing for America has not brought greater security but rather emboldened America's enemies to new levels of atrocity, is “Peace Through Strength” an idea whose time has come again ?

Nikki Haley has shown that personal attacks can be turned to an advantage, and I wish Carly and Sharron the same success in the coming mud-slinging season,

More importantly these women have the opportunity to re-state the vision that inspired generations of Americans: Liberty guarded by a limited government, low taxes, an opportunity society anchored in personal responsibility, a free-market economy spreading the wealth to all who choose to earn it.

With this vision, the candidates win and the country wins too.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roger Hedgecock is a nationally-syndicated radio talk host. Visit http://www.rogerhedgecock.com/ . The Roger Hedgecock Show is syndicated on the Radio America network.

The Harsh Bigotry of Their Expectations

by Debra Saunders

Why did Florida pastor Terry Jones garner all that media attention last week for threatening to burn Qurans on Saturday's 9/11 anniversary? I believe it's because network swells had spent weeks trying to frame opponents of the ground zero mosque -- also known as the Lower Manhattan

Islamic community center -- as stupid anti-Islam bigots, but that story line wasn't sticking. So networks found a stupid anti-Islam bigot in Florida who had nothing to do with the mosque, but who reinforced their political view.

Two people died in protests in Kabul. If Jones had gone ahead with his stunt, pundits would have blamed him -- not themselves, not those who committed acts of violence -- for any bloodshed. It is a sad day in journalism when a huckster Holy Roller with a 50-person parish exhibits better judgment than many in media.

The Sunday talk-show types still don't get it. "Meet the Press" host David Gregory lamented "the demonization of the other." Said guest Reza Aslan, "Anti-Muslim sentiment in this country is at unprecedented levels. We all know this. ... Let's call a spade a spade for a moment. If you are painting 1.5 billion people with the same brush of violence and extremism, you're a bigot."

Last week, Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent announced that he had found "clear evidence that there's a direct link between public anti-Islam sentiment and public opposition" to the ground zero mosque. A Washington Post poll reported that 49 percent of Americans have generally unfavorable views of Islam and 66 percent oppose the Islamic center. His smoking gun: Two-thirds of those 66 percent have generally unfavorable views of Islam.

Funny. In 2002, after the priest-child sex abuse scandal erupted, an ABCNews/Washington Post poll found that 52 percent of Americans -- including three in 10 Catholics -- expressed an unfavorable opinion of the Roman Catholic Church. Now, I don't recall pundits referring to the majority of Americans as anti-Catholic bigots who are too stupid to know that most priests are not pedophiles. They likely figured, negative stories yield negative poll numbers.

Consider Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who shot to death 12 soldiers and one civilian in 2009. Ditto Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, the Nigerian arrested for trying to blow up a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas. Add the attempted Times Square and New York subway bombings. Islamic extremism was the common thread in those stories -- which makes it amazing that Islam polls better today than the Catholic Church in 2002.

At Friday's news conference, President Obama was righteous when he said, "We are not at war against Islam. We are at war against terrorist organizations that have distorted Islam or falsely used the banner of Islam to engage in their destructive acts." He then talked about the millions of Muslim Americans who are "fellow citizens," neighbors and friends. "And when we start acting as if their religion is somehow offensive, what are we saying to them?"

It's a true shame that Obama fails to exhibit such understanding toward, say, people in Arizona who support federal immigration law, or oppose putting a mosque near Islamic extremism's great crime. For such people, Obama has no problem with odious stereotypes.

JJ: Let the hit pieces commence

Jerry Mitchell

Kingfish at Jackson Jambalaya takes the Clarion Ledger and reporter Jerry Mitchell to task for a one-sided story on State Auditor Stacy Pickering.

It didn't take long after Neshoba for the Clarion-Ledger to do a hit job on State Auditor Stacy Pickering.

Hmmm..... I wonder how Mr. Mitchell even found out about Mr. Pickering's use of a state vehicle. It wouldn't be at all surprising if the "tip" came from someone doing some "opposition research". Its pretty obvious to any political observer Mr. Pickering will be a serious candidate for Lieutenant Governor. Family name. Good looks. Base of Laurel and Hattiesburg. Name recognition in the Jackson area due to his current tenure as State Auditor. Then there are the family connections and networks that could help if made available to him. Its no coincidence the Clarion-Ledger wrote a hit piece on an up-and-coming young conservative politician.

Frankly, its hard to see what the fuss is about. Mr. Pickering is to be admired if commuting from Laurel as it shows dedication to his job and his family. Mr. Pickering could have imitated some current state senators: get another home here in Jackson, keep the family stuffed out of sight and mind in another part of the state, and make a mockery of his marriage. Mr. Pickering instead chose to commit himself to the roles of State Auditor, husband, and father. For doing so, he earned sniping from the "state newspaper" and the rest of the Jackson media. The same media that lauds one particular state Senator from another part of the state who is married, keeps a home here in Jackson, stuffs the family out of sight and mind back home, and flaunts his floozies in public for all to see while the media talks about what a great guy he is because he is the media's best friend. He is not the only legislator who does that either. Mr. Pickering returned over three million dollars to the taxpayers of Mississippi, dwarfing the record of is predecessor. For his troubles, Mr. Pickering earns a small salary, which he knew when he ran for office. If Mr. Pickering's use of a state vehicle costs even a few thousand dollars, its a bargain. Forget the fundraising numbers, if Mr. Pickering is receiving this kind of scrutiny from the Clarion-Ledger, somone must be worried.

Read the entire article at Jackson Jambalaya

From the Goldberg File: Making a Mosquery of the Truth

BY: Jonah Goldberg

I cannot be alone in thinking that the mosque debate is getting really old. But since I still seem to be in the minority, here are three quick points that I think need to be given more air.

1. The liberals are the ideologues on this. Michael Bloomberg and Barack Obama have claimed countless times that they are non-ideological pragmatists. But their position, right or wrong, is wildly ideological. Meanwhile, conservatives who say, "Fine, build your mosque, just not right there," are the pragmatists. But conservative pragmatism is never recognized as such if it breaks with the liberal party line. When conservatism breaks with liberalism, it must be denounced as ideology or, of course, bigotry.

2. Stop calling it a mosque. Defenders of Cordoba House sometimes say, "It's not a mosque, it's a cultural-affairs center with a prayer room," or some such, as if this were a defense. To me, that makes it worse, not better. If this were some small, one-story mosque for the handful of Muslims living nearby to pray in, the arguments over freedom of religion would have more merit. But this would be a 13-story institution with an obvious political component to it. That strikes me as gaudy and an invitation to mischief. This is another point I think non-bigoted Americans understand better than the condescending supporters of the mosque.

3. The staggering hypocrisy of liberals is really an amazing thing. Everywhere you look, you hear these scandalized liberals talking as if it were beyond the pale to criticize religion. You'd never know that these overnight stalwarts of religious freedom had been demonizing Christian conservatives, Mormons, and increasingly orthodox Jews for years. It's as if these people never wanted to ban a crèche, outlaw a Christian group, or claim that Jewish supporters of Israel suffer from dual loyalties. I'm not making a two-wrongs-make-a-right point here. I do think that some of the rhetoric on the right goes too far -- Newt's Nazi analogy, for instance. But it is amazing how establishment liberalism can spend years demonizing organized religion in this country only to turn on a dime when it comes to defending the Islamic equivalent of NikeTown two blocks from Ground Zero.

A Tea Party Manifesto

The movement is not seeking a junior partnership with the Republican Party. It is aiming for a hostile takeover

By DICK ARMEY AND MATT KIBBE

On Feb. 9, 2009, Mary Rakovich, a recently laid-off automotive engineer, set out for a convention center in Fort Myers, Fla. with protest signs, a cooler of water and the courage of her convictions. She felt compelled to act, having grown increasingly alarmed at the explosion of earmarks, bailouts and government spending in the waning years of the Bush administration. President Barack Obama, joined by then-Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, was in town promoting his plan to spend a trillion dollars in borrowed money to "stimulate" the economy.

Mary didn't know it, but she was on the front lines of a grass-roots revolution that was brewing across the nation. More than 3,000 miles away, Keli Carender, a young Seattle school teacher and a member of a local comedy improv troupe, was feeling equally frustrated. She started to organize like-minded citizens. "Our nation's fiscal path is just not sustainable," she said. "You can't continue to spend money you don't have indefinitely."

Today the ranks of this citizen rebellion can be counted in the millions. The rebellion's name derives from the glorious rant of CNBC commentator Rick Santelli, who in February 2009 called for a new "tea party" from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. By doing so he reminded all of us that America was founded on the revolutionary principle of citizen participation, citizen activism and the primacy of the individual over the government. That's the tea party ethos.

The tea party movement has blossomed into a powerful social phenomenon because it is leaderless—not directed by any one mind, political party or parochial agenda.

The criteria for membership are straightforward: Stay true to principle even when it proves inconvenient, be assertive but respectful, add value and don't taking credit for other people's work. Our community is built on the Trader Principle: We associate by mutual consent, to further shared goals of restoring fiscal responsibility and constitutionally limited government. These were the principles that enabled the Sept. 12, 2009 taxpayer march on Washington to be one of the largest political protests in the history of our nation's capital.

The many branches of the tea party movement have created a virtual marketplace for new ideas, effective innovations and creative tactics. Best practices come from the ground up, around kitchen tables, from Facebook friends, at weekly book clubs, or on Twitter feeds. This is beautiful chaos—or, as the Nobel Prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek put it, "spontaneous order."

Decentralization, not top-down hierarchy, is the best way to maximize the contributions of people and their personal knowledge. Let the leaders be the activists who have the best knowledge of local personalities and issues. In the real world, this is common sense. In Washington, D.C., this is considered radical.

The big-government crowd is drawn to the compulsory nature of centralized authority. They can't imagine an undirected social order. Someone needs to be in charge—someone who knows better. Big government is audacious and conceited.

By definition, government is the means by which citizens are forced to do that which they would not do voluntarily. Like pay high taxes. Or redistribute tax dollars to bail out the broken, bloated pension systems of state government employees. Or purchase, by federal mandate, a government-defined health-insurance plan that is unaffordable, unnecessary or unwanted.

For the left, and for today's Democratic Party, every solution to every perceived problem involves more government—top-down dictates from bureaucrats presumed to know better what you need. Tea partiers reject this nanny state philosophy of redistribution and control because it is bankrupting our country.

While the tea party is not a formal political party, local networks across the nation have moved beyond protests and turned to more practical matters of political accountability. Already, particularly in Republican primaries, fed-up Americans are turning out at the polls to vote out the big spenders. They are supporting candidates who have signed the Contract From America, a statement of policy principles generated online by hundreds of thousands of grass-roots activists.

Published in April, the Contract amounts to a tea party "seal of approval." It demands fiscal policies that limit government, restrain spending, promote market reforms in health care—and oppose ObamaCare, tax hikes and cap-and-trade restrictions that will kill job creation and stunt economic growth. Candidates who have signed the Contract—including Marco Rubio in Florida, Mike Lee in Utah and Tim Scott in South Carolina—have defeated Republican big spenders in primary elections all across the nation.

These young legislative entrepreneurs will shift the balance in the next Congress, bringing with them a more serious, adult commitment to responsible, restrained government.

But let us be clear about one thing: The tea party movement is not seeking a junior partnership with the Republican Party, but a hostile takeover of it.

The American values of individual freedom, fiscal responsibility and limited government bind the ranks of our movement. That makes the tea party better than a political party. It is a growing community that can sustain itself after November, ensuring a better means of holding a new generation of elected officials accountable.

Mr. Armey, a former House Republican majority leader, is chairman of Freedomworks. Mr. Kibbe is president and CEO of Freedomworks. They are the authors of "Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto," out today from HarperCollins.

WSJ

Opinion: Awww!!! Mexico is Angry!

BY: Martha Donahue

Three cheers for Arizona !!!

The shoe is on the other foot and the Mexicans from the Staten of Sonora, Mexico do not like it. Can you believe the nerve of these people? It's almost funny.

The State of Sonora is angry at the influx of Mexicans into Mexico. Nine state legislators from the Mexican State of Sonora traveled to Tucson to complain about Arizona's new employer crackdown on illegals from Mexico. It seems that many Mexican illegals are returning to their hometowns and the officials in the Sonora state government are ticked off.

A delegation of nine state legislators from Sonora was in Tucson on Tuesday to state that Arizona's new Employer Sanctions Law will have a devastating effect on the Mexican state. At a news conference, the legislators said that Sonora, - Arizona's southern neighbor - made up of mostly small towns - cannot handle the demand for housing, jobs and schools that it will face as Mexican workers return to their hometowns from the USA without jobs or money.

The Arizona law, which took effect Jan. 1, punishes Arizona employers who knowingly hire individuals without valid legal documents to work in the United States. Penalties include suspension of, or loss of, their business license.

The Mexican legislators are angry because their own citizens are returning to their hometowns, placing a burden on THEIR state government.

'How can Arizona pass a law like this?' asked Mexican Rep Leticia Amparano-Gamez, who represents Nogales. 'There is not one person living in Sonora who does not have a friend or relative working in Arizona ,' she said, speaking in Spanish.

'Mexico is not prepared for this, for the tremendous problems it will face as more and more Mexicans working in Arizona and who were sending money to their families return to their home-towns in Sonora without jobs,' she said. 'We are one family, socially and economically,' she said of the people of Sonora and Arizona.

Wrong! The United States is a sovereign nation, not a subsidiary of Mexico , and its taxpayers are not responsible for the welfare of Mexico's citizens. It's time for the Mexican government, and its citizens, to stop feeding parasitically off the United States and to start taking care of its/their own needs.

Too bad that other states within the USA don't pass a law just like that passed by Arizona. Maybe that's the answer, since our own Congress will do nothing!

New Immigration Laws: Read to the bottom or you will miss the message...

1. There will be no special bilingual programs in the schools.

2. All ballots will be in this nation's language.

3. All government business will be conducted in our language.

4. Non-residents will NOT have the right to vote no matter how long they are here.

5. Non-citizens will NEVER be able to hold political office.

6. Foreigners will not be a burden to the taxpayers. No welfare, no food stamps, no health care, or other government assistance programs. Any burdens will be deported.

7. Foreigners can invest in this country, but it must be an amount at least equal to 40,000 times the daily minimum wage.

8. If foreigners come here and buy land... options will be restricted. Certain parcels including waterfront property are reserved for citizens naturally born into this country.

9. Foreigners may have no protests; no demonstrations, no waving of a foreign flag, no political organizing, no bad-mouthing our president or his policies. These will lead to deportation.

10. If you do come to this country illegally, you will be actively hunted & when caught, sent to jail until your deportation can be arranged. All assets will be taken from you.

Too strict ???

The above laws are current immigration laws of MEXICO !

MOU

Opinion Editorial: More Government Spending; Less Jobs

BY: Congressman Gregg Harper

Before I was elected to serve in Congress, I employed three people at a small business in Pearl, Mississippi. In my office, we had a budget. I had to make daily decisions to live within that budget, including making a monthly payroll.

The federal government is broke. By the White House’s own admission, the federal deficit could reach $1.47 trillion for Fiscal Year 2011, borrowing 41 cents of every dollar you send to Washington.

This unhealthy announcement comes after a failed $862 billion stimulus package that the Democrats claimed was designed to keep unemployment under eight percent, a trillion dollar health care overhaul that Nancy Pelosi said would create 400,000 immediate jobs, and an overreach of the financial system that assumes the federal government knows best how local financial firms should invest their assets.

Now – with nearly 15 million people unemployed – the Democratic leadership in Washington ignored their responsibility to produce a federal budget. The failure by the majority to sensibly construct a budget resolution threatens job creation, explodes spending and deficits, and intensifies America's debt crisis.

House Republicans understand the importance of balancing their checkbook. We also realize that the federal government’s checkbook is your checkbook. This is why we have launched AmericaSpeakingOut.com. This unprecedented initiative asks you – the taxpayer – to give your input and help direct the policies being debated in Washington.

Just around the corner, the Democrats have plans to enact the largest tax increase in American history. That’s right. On January 1, 2011, every single tax bracket is scheduled to increase. This means if you run a small business and pay 35 percent on your taxes, next year you will pay 39.6 percent. And if you file in the lowest tax bracket, next year you will be subject a 50 percent increase in your tax rate, not to mention the estate tax and the capital gains tax will return to their previous rates.

The President’s spokesman recently said, “I don’t think there’s an economist that believes there’s a stimulus to, or a good reason in terms of economic growth to, extend those tax cuts.” Ironically, the chairwoman of the President’s own Council of Economic Advisers has noted, “In short, tax increases appear to have a very large, sustained, and highly significant negative impact on output...the more intuitive way to express this result is that tax cuts have very large and persistent positive output effects.”

It appears that at least one of the President’s advisors share the same beliefs as me, Washington must give Americans immediate tax relief.

There is no denying that the economy is still fragile. But the verdict is in on government spending. America cannot borrow, spend and tax our way out of this economic downturn – plain and simple.

My family has a budget, my small business operated on a budget, and today my congressional office operates below our budget – voluntarily returning nearly 10 percent of my Members’ Representational Allowance. I urge Congress to follow this example by providing taxpayers with a fiscally responsible budget that spends much less, cuts taxes and reduces our national debt.

Gregg Harper represents Mississippi’s Third Congressional District. The freshman Republican serves on the House Budget Committee.

Opinion: Building A Mosque Two Blocks From Ground Zero Is A Grievous Insult To The People Who Died On 9/11

BY: John Hawkins

On 9/11 radical Muslims murdered almost 3,000 Americans in the name of Islam. Now, Islam is going to be allowed to profit from those attacks? Manhattan liberals say "yes,"

A New York community board has resoundingly backed a controversial plan for an Islamic cultural center and mosque two blocks from Ground Zero.

The non-binding vote by the Manhattan community board late Monday passed 29:1 with 10 abstentions in a strong endorsement of the planned project.

The equivalent of this would be building a "tribute to Japanese military history" at Pearl Harbor. Why do you think they're building a mosque on that spot? They're not blind to the symbolism of it. It's to send a message: "We killed your people and benefitted from it. In your face!" How many smirking radical Muslims will go to that mosque, so that they can laugh over the graves of dead infidels? It won't be a small number. You know it, I know it, and the people who want to build that mosque know it, too.

The liberals who are turning a blind eye to this are not just wrong; they're doing something that's extremely provocative, potentially dangerous, and utterly immoral. Isn't it ironic that the same liberals who are always going on and on about sensitivity don't give a d@mn about urinating on the graves of the thousands of Americans who were murdered by radical Islamists on 9/11 by building a mosque at Ground Zero?

RWN

Opinion: The Children Of Illegals Have No Business Demanding Anything

They took their protests right to the steps of Congress. Hundreds of students, including ten from Georgia, lobbied at the nation’s capitol for “The Dream Act,” which offers undocumented students a chance to become legal citizens.

I contend we don’t need “Immigration Reform” but “Enforcement Reform”, meaning the federal government should do its job and enforce the existing laws on the books. However, the children of illegal aliens believe they should get a pass because they didn’t do anything wrong.

Here’s my analogy on this situation….

Let’s say one day a family wakes up to the sound of the front door of their home being bashed in. The father is handcuffed and escorted out of the home by federal law enforcement officials and is audibly charged with embezzlement. The family is told they have five minutes to gather their most personal belongings and then vacate the premises because their home and automobile is being seized because stolen money is believed to have purchased said assets.

The family soon finds out their bank accounts have been frozen because they too may contain monies as a result of the father’s possible theft.

Who should the family be mad at, the federal government that suspected the father of theft or the father for putting the family in the precarious position they find themselves in now? I suspect the wife would be rightfully furious with the husband, as would be the kids. But when it comes to parents who knowingly violated our sovereign border, no blame is being issued to them by their children. No, it’s the federal government’s fault for not letting those kids have their way and let them operate freely in a country they are in illegally.

For this reason (as lacking in compassion as is sounds) I have no sympathy for the offspring of illegal aliens who are being denied in-state tuition for colleges, or admittance at all. They have no business protesting a college, state legislature, congress or citizenry of a state or the nation. If anything, these kids should demand their parents explain why they decided to break the law and hide out for decades knowing it could hurt them in the long run.

The federal government wouldn’t drop the charges against an embezzler because it would inconvenience his or her family.

Illegal aliens aren’t deserving of amnesty and their kids are in no position to make demands.

Black and Right

Thought Provoking Thursday: Why Do You Matter?

Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to answer this question. Open Thread. Have at it.

Thought Provoking Thursday: June 24, 2010

It's an open question. What's your answer?

Canada may point the way to sensible immigration policy

BY: Froma Harp

Immigration reform? Look north. Canada has a large immigration program but little illegal immigration, because Ottawa won't tolerate it.

Ripped from the news: Haitians are illegally crossing into Vermont from Canada, looking for work.

Why didn't the Haitians stay in Canada, where the social-safety net is far cushier? Because, as the head of a Haitian radio station in Montreal told The New York Times, "they saw that they had no chance to become Canadian permanent residents." And, he added, "people thought that the United States were going to receive all the Haitians."

What do we take home from this?

First off, porous borders are not the biggest reason that illegal immigration has become such a huge problem in the United States. Note that while President Obama is sending up to 1,200 National Guard troops to secure the border with Mexico, there are no troops, rivers or even fences along most of the U.S.-Canadian border. Some country roads mark the boundary with a simple stone.

True, illegal aliens can walk into the United States from Mexico. The logistics are easier in the American Southwest. But there are plenty of illegal workers in Washington state, Michigan and Maine — and little stopping them from going on to Canada.

Our northern neighbor has a large immigration program but little illegal immigration, because Ottawa won't tolerate it. No country with generous entitlements can afford a growing population of low-income workers.

Canada tweaks its immigration program to meet economic needs. It favors entrants with highly desirable skills. And when the economy recently turned sour, it stopped renewing many temporary work permits.

Should America do as Canada does? Should it stringently enforce its ban on hiring illegal workers? Yes. And should it stop fretting over what happens to undocumented people already in the country? Yes, but not yet.

What separates the United States from Canada on illegal immigration is a consistent message.

America's landmark 1986 immigration-reform law banned the hiring of illegal workers while granting amnesty to several million already here. But it was purposely rendered toothless at the last minute, when saboteurs yanked out a provision requiring a secure check of job applicants' identities.

Talk about messages. Suppose you're an impoverished Mexican. You know that the United States has offered several amnesties to illegal workers, and in any case, hasn't much enforced the law. You heard President George W. Bush announce that he was going to "match any willing worker with any willing employer." And you know that the conservative Wall Street Journal has called for open borders, while the liberal New York Times runs editorials on immigration that refuse to distinguish between legal and illegal.

What would you do? You would come to the United States, papers be damned.

We've had several decades of a two-faced immigration policy during which millions have come to this country illegally, taken jobs, started families and become part of the American scene. They are mostly good people who have been integrated into our economy and communities. There must be a last amnesty to cover them.

And it will be the last one if two things happen: One, we pass immigration reform that requires every new hire to present counterfeit-proof ID. Two, the public demands that their government go after lawbreaking employers.

After virtually no enforcement in the Bush years, the Obama administration has begun to cite and fine employers who break the law. This is needed to move public opinion toward an immigration package that includes legalizing many already here. Sending troops to the border may also boost confidence.

But as Canada shows us, it's not the ease of crossing the border that encourages illegal immigration, but the ease of getting a job once in. The United States needs to get its act together and its message straight on immigration.



Immigration

We’re too broke to be this stupid

STEYN: Beleaguered taxpayers may finally put a stop to the sheer waste of government spending

by Mark Steyn
Back in 2008, when I was fulminating against multiculturalism on a more or less weekly basis, a reader wrote to advise me to lighten up, on the grounds that “we’re rich enough to afford to be stupid.”

Two years later, we’re a lot less rich. In fact, many Western nations are, in any objective sense, insolvent. Hence last week’s column, on the EU’s decision to toss a trillion dollars into the great sucking maw of Greece’s public-sector kleptocracy. It no longer matters whether you’re intellectually in favour of European-style social democracy: simply as a practical matter, it’s unaffordable.

How did the Western world reach this point? Well, as my correspondent put it, we assumed that we were rich enough that we could afford to be stupid. In any advanced society, there will be a certain number of dysfunctional citizens either unable or unwilling to do what is necessary to support themselves and their dependents. What to do about such people? Ignore the problem? Attempt to fix it? The former nags at the liberal guilt complex, while the latter is way too much like hard work: the modern progressive has no urge to emulate those Victorian social reformers who tramped the streets of English provincial cities looking for fallen women to rescue. All he wants to do is ensure that the fallen women don’t fall anywhere near him.

So the easiest “solution” to the problem is to throw public money at it. You know how it is when you’re at the mall and someone rattles a collection box under your nose and you’re not sure where it’s going but it’s probably for Darfur or Rwanda or Hoogivsastan. Whatever. You’re dropping a buck or two in the tin for the privilege of not having to think about it. For the more ideologically committed, there’s always the awareness-raising rock concert: it’s something to do with Bono and debt forgiveness, whatever that means, but let’s face it, going to the park for eight hours of celebrity caterwauling beats having to wrap your head around Afro-Marxist economics. The modern welfare state operates on the same principle: since the Second World War, the hard-working middle classes have transferred historically unprecedented amounts of money to the unproductive sector in order not to have to think about it. But so what? We were rich enough that we could afford to be stupid.

That works for a while. In the economic expansion of the late 20th century, citizens of Western democracies paid more in taxes but lived better than their parents and grandparents. They weren’t exactly rich, but they got richer. They also got more stupid. When William Beveridge laid out his blueprint for the modern British welfare state in 1942, his goal was the “abolition of want.” Sir William and his colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic succeeded beyond their wildest dreams: to be “poor” in the 21st-century West is not to be hungry and emaciated but to be obese, with your kids suffering from childhood diabetes. When Michelle Obama turned up to serve food at a soup kitchen, its poverty-stricken clientele snapped pictures of her with their cellphones. In one-sixth of British households, not a single family member works. They are not so much without employment as without need of it. At a certain level, your hard-working bourgeois understands that the bulk of his contribution to the treasury is entirely wasted. It’s one of the basic rules of life: if you reward bad behaviour, you get more of it. But, in good and good-ish times, who cares?

By the way, where does the government get the money to fund all these immensely useful programs? According to a Fox News poll earlier this year, 65 per cent of Americans understand that the government gets its money from taxpayers, but 24 per cent think the government has “plenty of its own money without using taxpayer dollars.” You can hardly blame them for getting that impression in an age in which there is almost nothing the state won’t pay for. I confess I warmed to that much-mocked mayor in Doncaster, England, who announced a year or two back that he wanted to stop funding for the Gay Pride parade on the grounds that, if they’re so damn proud of it, why can’t they pay for it? He was actually making a rather profound point, but, as I recall, he was soon forced to back down. In Canada, almost every ethnocultural booster group is on the public teat. Outside Palestine House in Toronto the other week, the young Muslim men were caught on tape making explicitly eliminationist threats about Jews, but c’mon, everything else in Canada is taxpayer-funded, why not genocidal incitement? We’re rich enough that we can afford to be stupid.

It’s not so much the money as the stupidity, which massively expands under such generous subvention. When it emerged that President Barack Obama had appointed a Communist as his “green jobs czar,” I carelessly assumed it was the usual youthful “idealism”: no doubt Van Jones, the Communist Obama appointee in question, had been a utopian college student caught up in the spirit of ’68 and gone along for the ride. A passing phase. Soon grow out of it. But, in fact, Mr. Jones became a Communist in the mid-nineties, after the fall of the Soviet Union. He embraced Communism after even the commies had given up on it. Like the song says, he was commie after commie had ceased to be cool. On Fox News, Glenn Beck made a fuss about it. But the “mainstream” media thought this was frankly rather boorish, and something only uptight right-wing squares would do. I mean, what’s the big deal? True, everywhere it’s been implemented, Communism causes human misery—not to mention an estimated 150 million deaths. But it doesn’t make you persona non grata in the salons of the West. Quite the opposite. The Washington Post hailed the grizzled folkie Pete Seeger as America’s “best-loved commie”—which, unlike “America’s best-loved Nazi,” is quite a competitive title. Even so, why would you stick a commie in the White House and put him in charge of anything to do with jobs, even “green jobs”?


Well, because “green jobs” is just another of those rich-enough-to-be-stupid scams. The Spanish government pays over $800,000 for every “green job” on a solar-panel assembly line. This money is taken from real workers with real jobs at real businesses whose growth is being squashed to divert funds to endeavours that have no rationale other than their government subsidies—and which would collapse as soon as the subsidies end. Yet Tim Flannery, the Aussie climate-alarmist who chaired the Copenhagen racket, says we need to redouble our efforts. “We’re trying to act as a species,” he says, “to regulate the atmosphere.”

Er, “regulate the atmosphere”? Why not? We’re rich enough to be stupid with the very heavens.

In his book The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism (La tyrannie de la pénitence), the French writer Pascal Bruckner concludes by quoting Louis Bourdaloue, the celebrated Jesuit priest at the court of Louis XIV, who preached on the four kinds of conscience: 1) the good and peaceful; 2) the good and troubled; 3) the bad and troubled; 4) the bad and peaceful. The first is to be found in Heaven, the second in Purgatory, the third in Hell, and the fourth—the bad but peaceful conscience—sounds awfully like the prevailing condition of the West at twilight. We are remorseful to a fault—indeed, to others’ faults.

It’s not just long-ago sins like imperialism and colonialism and Eurocentric white male patriarchy and other fancies barely within living memory. Our very lifestyle demands penitence: Americans have easily accessible oil reserves, but it would be wrong to touch them, so poor old BP have to do the “environmentally responsible” thing and be out in the middle of the Gulf a mile underwater. If you’re rich enough to be that stupid, what won’t you subsidize? The top al-Qaeda recruiter in Britain, Abu Qatada, had 150,000 pounds in his bank account courtesy of the taxpayer before the comically misnamed Department for Work and Pensions decided to cut back his benefits.

The green jobs, the gay parades, the jihadist welfare queens, the Greek public sector unions, all have to be paid for by a shrinking base of contributing workers whose children and grandchildren will lead poorer and meaner lives because of the fecklessness of government. The social compact of the postwar era cannot hold. Across the developed world, a beleaguered middle class is beginning to understand that it’s no longer that rich. At some point, it will look at the sheer waste of government spending, the other shoe will drop, and it will decide that it no longer wishes to be that stupid.

Macleans