Saturday, November 22, 2008

We told you so

Via Glen Reynolds an Obama voter laments:

Hmmm... remember all the arguments about how Obama’s ‘executive experience’ as the head of a political campaign provided a basis for judging his capacity to serve as President? Now, we’re seeing his performance as the head of the transition, and it looks quite different.


Yes, you fell for a political con-man's lies (but I repeat myself). You let yourself be convinced that Obama was "different". Well now you, and the rest of us, have to deal with it.

Eric Holder: A frightful prospect for AG

Via Glen Reynolds, Volokh looks at Eric Holder's stance on what citizens should do with guns, versus what federal paramilitary agents should do.


What would you call an Attorney General using al-Qaeda as a scare tactic to justify restricting civil rights?Oh wait... it's about gun rights.
Beyond that, if any member of al-Qaeda had ever bought a gun at an American gun show, we would have heard about it, endlessly. The fact that these two are the only examples citable out of the millions of transactions at gun shows over the past decades suggests that on the list of threats to U.S. national security, the probability of a terrorist buying a firearm at a gun show ranks just above an invasion from Mars.


And it's a democrat. Never mind then. Because everyone knows only Republicans can "shred the constitution" and that the 2nd Amendment doesn't count anyway.

I guess it's only bad if Bush is the one using fear of terrorism to take away our rights.

Holder's also no friend of the First either.
Again he uses the populace's fear of an attack, to justify restrictions of civil rights. You see Free Speech should be limited to better "protect" us from school shootings.

"I guess when you've decided the Second Amendment is optional, I guess it's easier to conclude the one right next to it is optional, too."



Eric Holder *change* Obama believes in.

Rand Simberg notes a report on how mass shootings go.
They may select schools and shopping malls because of the large number of defenseless victims and the virtual guarantee no on the scene one is armed.


As soon as they're confronted by any armed resistance, the shooters typically turn the gun on themselves."

Unfortunately, too many in the media and the gun-control community are too stupid to recognize it as obvious. You might think that this startling result could be the basis for a more sensible policy, but judging by the election results, I fear not. Particularly if someone like Eric Holder becomes Attorney General.


It's not about saving lives or safety; it's about power.

Clearly the Obama Admin thinks that guns are a threat in the hands of the public.

Keep an ear to the ground. They're going to do something.

The Obama Admin: Hostile to your Civil Rights.

Ed Morrissey is on the case

If a job application included a question about religion, especially for a government position, First Amendment advocates would rightly go ballistic. The ire of Second Amendment activists is easily understood, then, arising from the questionnaire prospective Obama administration employees must complete. The 59th question demands to know whether the applicant or anyone in his/her family owns a firearm

...

Team Obama isn’t interested in enforcing gun laws through job applications. They don’t want gun owners working in the administration, and they’re screening for that right up front.

Gun ownership is a constitutional right. Employment discrimination on that basis should be illegal. It certainly should be exposed so that we can get a sense of how the man who will swear to protect and defend the Constitution plans on doing either for the entire Constitution.

Will a religious test come next in the Obama vetting process?


So, Obama doesn't even want people that have or even have family that excercise a Constitutional Right. That really bodes well for his repect for the Constitution.

Lovely, eh?

Monday, November 17, 2008

Hillary Clinton accepts Secretary of State?

Ace isn't alone in being shocked by this decision.

Why would Hillary become subordinate to Obama?
She'll be forced to execute his Foreign Policy decisions.

Not only will this eliminate (the slim chance of her running in 2012), this also means that any failures of our next president's will be hers.

What I want to know is, how does this benefit Hillary?

Capitalism versus Free Markets

Rand Simberg has thoughts on that, and the division between statists and dynacists.

Who is the conservative — the person who wants the taxpayer to maintain the status quo at the cost of future wealth generation, or the person who favors letting the market work its course and redeploy the economic resources in a more fruitful direction?

There was another politician who abhorred "change," implementing policies to preserve wages and prices, even jailing people for charging five cents too little for cleaning shirts. In reaching back decades to the failed philosophy of Franklin Roosevelt, which was what made the Great Depression great, extended its duration by seven years, and prevented the creation of an unknowable amount of wealth that might have stood us in good stead in World War II, Barack Obama isn't offering us "change we can believe in." He isn't offering us change at all. He's simply come up with an economically destructive conservatism and stasism, as old as FDR and Mussolini — or even Karl Marx, if not older.

Know what's unconstitutional? Constitutional amendments

Ace notes something worrying brewing in California

Whether you believe in Prop 8 or not, judges, supposedly, derive their power to overturn legislation based on laws' purported conflicts with The Constitution -- it is the Constitution from which their power derives entirely.

How on earth can they claim that constitutions themselves are unconstitutional?

This is a simple admission that they do not base their opinions on the Constitution at all, but simply upon their own sense of That Which Is Good. Shorn of any theory which even plausibly hints at such a residuum of judicial power, their decisions are now lawless and themselves unconstitutional, without even a pretext of principled, limited theory of judicial intervention legitimizing their actions.


If the judiciary steps in and claiming that legally executed amendments are a unconstitutional... then that is a serious, serious breach of separation of powers.

Essentially, the courts will deny one of the few checks on their power.

That's more worrying than anything related to gay rights.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

What is Russia up to?

Remember how immediatly after the election the Russians said they would put Iskander Missles in Kaliningrad as a blunt to the US-European Missle Sheild?
Strategypage goes behind the headlines and looks into the logicstics and production of the Iskander Missle


Russia now plans to send five brigades of Iskander (60 launchers, each with one missile, plus reloads, which could amount to over a hundred missiles) to Kaliningrad. Iskander is just entering production, and it would take several years, at least, to produce that many. Actually, it might take five or more years to produce enough missiles for five brigades, because Russian missile production capabilities have sharply deteriorated since the end of the Cold War in 1991. This is one reason why the current Russian government is making so much noise about this imaginary NATO plot to surround and subdue Russia. Losing the Cold War did not go down well in Russia. Rather than forget and move on, many Russians prefer to remember, and use the imagined evil intentions of their Cold War foes to explain away defects in the Russian character.

This Russian deployment to Kaliningrad is all about a unique feature of Iskander, which is that it is not a traditional ballistic missile. That is, it does not fire straight up, leave the atmosphere, then come back down, following a ballistic trajectory. Instead, Iskander stays in the atmosphere and follows a rather flat trajectory. It is capable of evasive maneuvers and deploying decoys. This makes it more difficult for anti-missile systems to take it down.

More questionable math on Global Warming

NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) announced that October '08 was the hottest on record.

Well... not quite.
You see instead of comparing October '08 temperatures to October temps of all previous years on record, they used September '08 temperatures.

It's "accidents" like this that make me wonder if there's not some sort of.. bias at work here. At the very best you can say they're doing sloppy, sloppy work.

Yes, let's make decisions that involve global industry and economics based on data of this quality. Who cares about the data being correct when it "feels" right.

This is not science.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Why does Obama want a "Civil Defense" Army?

Ace has some thoughts on the President Elect's ideas on a "paramilitary domestic security force".

Among many other problems, such a force is, frankly, creepy and dangerous. But it's difficult to express a fear of a large domestic paramilitary devoted largely to a Cult of Personality without bringing up the H-word. Maybe the H-word is appropriate-- but it sounds nuts. It Can't Happen Here and all that.


It'd would be alot easier to think "it can't happen here" if our next president did not make motions that are -well- familiar.

What is Obama's goal here if not to undermine one of the main attractors of military service? The campaign continues running on the claim that military recruitment is low. Why does he strive to lower it further?


Again why does Obama want compulsory service and to limit firearms in private hands.
Add in a possibility of a "Fairness Doctrine" and other free speech controls.

What will Obama do? What kind of Change is he talking about?


Given that there is so little upside to the notion of a permanent civilian paramilitary, the serious chance of small political mischief, and the small chance of serious political mischief, weight against this, um, audacious plan.


That is the question: Does he still want to do that, and if so, why?

Friday, November 7, 2008

Well... that didn't take long.

Prepare yourself.

If Republicans are not prepared — right now — to resist the liberal policies that will be proposed after January 20, they will get steamrolled. Waiting until January to get up to speed will be too late.

If Republicans haven't figured out from the election campaign that the powerful combination of Obama as a cultural phenomenon, a worshipful media, and a populace anxious about the economy will give liberals an almost unparalleled opportunity to enact an unalloyed liberal agenda, Republicans will be beaten before they even lace-up their boots.

As I've stated before, this doesn't mean Republicans should oppose merely for the sake of opposition. But they must be alert and prepared, they must be marshalling their arguments right now against the harmful policies that Democrats have made abundantly clear they plan to enact.


Fore example:

Mandatory "Volunteering": it's coming.

President Elect Obama is already proposing to restrict freedoms. Ironically, concentrating on some of the voters those that supported him the most.

Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year.


If you don't think that mandatory "service" is a restriction of freedom, what do you think will happen to someone that refuses to serve? Quite simply, what our would-be President proposes is the first 'nibble" at limiting what US citizens can or cannot do.

Not a good sign.

This is in addition to a Classroom Corp, Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps that the President Elect is planning.

Bob Owens has some thoughts as well.
The required service Obama proposes is nothing more than dressed-up impressment or conscription, and is unpaid forced labor. Stripping the racial overtones from slavery by requiring all to participate doesn't make it any less degrading. Involuntary servitude is reprehensible in any guise, and we should not suddenly embrace it as a consequence of "change" under the Fresh Prince of Bill Ayers.
...
A propensity towards tyranny comes easily for statists, and when Obama trumpets his desire for radical change and hope, you would be wise to listen closely to what he is actually proposing and pushing to implement as law. Is he talking about what is best for individual Americans, or is he pushing his belief of how a larger government is better for... someone?


Claudia Rosette has more
The irony is that Obama arrives at the threshold of the White House steeped in ideas that subordinate individual freedom to the collective. In his campaign and his victory speech, Obama declares that America's "timeless creed" is now, "yes, we can." This is not a defense of liberty. It is a declaration so malleable and generic that it could have applied to anything from Lenin's Bolshevik Revolution to the Little Engine that Could.


Yes, pretty words and noble ideals. They still don't cover-up conscription. Are we supposed to be grateful that it's a mere 100 hours a year? Are we supposed to be grateful that people in this program are "free" to do whatever community service they want, as long as the government approves of it and deems it worthy working off their annual service debt?

100 hours is two and a half work weeks. What if it gets bumped up to a full month? What if instead of a more "ad-hoc" style, the service is "organized". It's a short ride from mandatory community service to something much more troubling.

Ace has a more conventionally cynical view on the "Obama Youth Corps".

I think the goal here, by the way, is to demand what will be claimed to be the moral equivalent of actual military service -- thus denigrating real service by claiming that working in a soup kitchen a weekend a year is no different than putting your life on the line for your country.

Obamabots have been fond of the chickenhawk argument for eight years.
Well, boys, now that your man is in charge, and he needs to deploy three brigades to Afghanistan (which you are presumably foursquare behind), seems like it's time to sign up. And don't give me that crap about "you don't get to choose where you serve" (the left's favorite dodge). For one thing, you do get high preference as to where you'll serve if you specifically ask for combat detail."


More on what Obama's potential pseudo military may mean for the... real military.
ROTC still won't be allowed on college campuses, but I'm sure ObamaCorps will be heavily represented. And if the benefits to joining are remotely comparable to those of joining the Armed Forces — college tuition reimbursement, salary of some kind, chance to score with cute girls, etc. — you can bet that many kids will sign up to build houses in the middle of Atlanta instead of deploying to Whereeverstan to get shot at.


An even more cautionary view is the hope that these kids will only be building houses and other community service make-work and not being trained as a new paramilitary branch outside under special Presidential control (our military's primary loyalty is to the Constitution, what would the Obama Youth's be?). At what point does caution and skeptism become paranoia?
It all depends on exactly what our new President does.

Hmm... More Change!
The Obama transition team "tweaked" their community service statement. They're no longer saying it's required.

This is more reason to keep an eye on what our next President will do and how far he'll go.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Fairness Doctrine Stop it.

Fighting the Fairness Doctrine, now. Before it can get more steam.
Waiting until Inauguration Day to get geared up is too late. By that time the Fairness Doctrine Express will be at full steam— wavering Democrats will be pressed to support the new Democratic president, weak-kneed Republicans will want to display comity, the mainstream media will not be saddened to see talk radio annihilated and much of the public will be too enraptured by Obama's Camelot inauguration to notice or care.

The model for conservative activism (no oxymoron) on this is the immigration debate of 2007. Conservatives must contact senators now before the congressional holiday recesses. Email, call, write. If you're in D.C, go to the House and Senate offices. You likely won't get to talk to a senator or congressman but you can corral members of their staffs. If you're not in D.C., go to the district offices. Make sure GOP senators hold fast. Let Dem senators know that this is a major issue.


I agree and I'll be writing my congressman and Senator. It doesn't take much effort and it helps raise awareness and prepare the ground. Even if the Fairness Doctrine comes back, we'll be in a better spot having organized now, rather than later.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Steven Den Beste has some "Good News"

Kinda

Not the end of the world

I think this election is going to be a "coming of age" moment for a lot of people. They say, "Be careful what you wish for" and a lot of people got their wish yesterday.

And now they're bound to be disappointed. Not even Jesus could satisfy all the expectations of Obama's most vocal supporters, or fulfill all the promises Obama has made.

I think Obama is going to turn out to be the worst president since Carter, and for the same reason: good intentions do not guarantee good results. Idealists often stub their toes on the wayward rocks of reality, and fall on their faces. And the world doesn't respond to benign behavior benignly.

But there's another reason why: Obama has been hiding his light under a basket. A lot of people bought a pig in a poke today, and now they're going to find out what they bought. Obama isn't what most of them think he is. The intoxication of the cult will wear off, leaving a monumental hangover.


Obama won by promising the moon and being whatever you wanted him to be.
Reality... won't let him stay that way.

The main reason this will be a "coming of age" moment is that now Obama and the Democrats have to put up or shut up. Obama got elected by making himself a blank slate, with vapid promises about "hope" and "change" -- but now he actually has to do something. Now he has to reveal his true agenda. And with the Democrats also having a majority in both chambers of Congress, now the Democrats really have to lead. And they're not going to do a very good job of it. It's going to be amusing to watch.


Be careful what you wish for.


In the mean time, those of us who didn't want Obama to be president have to accept that he is. And let's not give in to the kind of paranoid fever dreams that have consumed the left for the last 8 years.

So what are the good sides of what just happened?


Indeed, we need to accept that Obama won, that he will be our president, and move from there.

Again go to the link to see the "good" news.

They're tempered by his predictions. Saddly, I can't really disagree with them. Gonna be a rough ride.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

It looks like Obama won.

Baring any extremely unlikely events, Obama will be the next US president.

Jonah Goldberg has some thoughts

Look, I expect to be one of the most severe critics of the Obama administration and the Democrats generally in the years ahead (though I sincerely hope I won't find that necessary). But Obama ran a brilliant race and he should be congratulated for it. Moreover, during the debate over the financial crisis, Obama said that a president should be able to do more than one thing at a time. Well, I think we members of the loyal opposition should be able to make distinctions simultaneously. It is a wonderful thing to have the first African-American president. It is a wonderful thing that in a country where feelings are so intense that power can be transferred so peacefully. Let us hope that the Obama his most dedicated — and most sensible! — fans see turns out to be the real Obama. Let us hope that Obama succeeds and becomes a great president, for all the right reasons.


The rest here.

I wish America well, and if that requires Obama to do well as President, then that's how it goes. I would rather Obama do a good job and have America stay free and do well than have Obama screw up and ruin the country.

And it's at least worth remembering that the job of political conservatism is not simply to see Republicans win every election, it's to move the country to the right. Conceding from square one that Obama will be the most leftwing presidency imaginable is not the best way to prevent that prophecy from becoming true.


I do hope that the "Loyal Opposition" can avoid any Obama Derangement Syndrome.

Go out and vote.

Vote early too. The lines are a bit long today.

Glen Reynolds has some notes on the turnout too.
Via Glen: Jonathan Gewirtz has some advice Vote for McCain, He May Win

But, if you can vote, you should vote for McCain despite the apparent odds. You should do this because no one really knows what the odds are. The Obama campaign, the Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) want Republican voters to believe that the election is a done deal and that voting Republican is wasted effort. They want to discourage McCain votes and votes for other Republicans down the ticket. They are doing this because McCain and the other Republicans still have a chance to win. That chance will be reduced to the extent Republican voters take the Democrats’ advice. Don’t fall for it, vote for McCain.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Can only Obama's supporters call him a socalist?

Technically it's Communist propaganda.
But still...

Soviet Doggies Bark for Barack

Obama supporters copy Russian Constructivist artist Alexander Rodchenko's work to make their posters.

So... it's okay to call Obama a socailist if you mean it as a compliment but not if you mean it as an insult.

How Orwellian.

If you don't want four long years of this... vote McCain.

Look who thinks he's already president.

Hotair has the link.

Jake Tapper: Why don’t you have a press conference?

Obama : I will. On Wednesday.


Obama thinks he can just run the clock down until Tuesday, and given how the mass media has constantly covered for him...

Latest Orwellian term from Obama: "Price Signals"

He only wants to use Price Signals to "change behavior".

If you don't actually think about it, it doesn't sound too bad. Then you realize that for the government "Price Signals" are taxes, fees and other restrictive actions.

Link with video.
So what does Obama want to do? Use government power to change what you can do, into something that pleases him.

Change!

Here's a specific example of Obama's "Price Signals" in action.

Say goodbye to 1/5 of the energy production in the US.

In short he wants to destroy the coal industry and make energy prices skyrocket.

Wow! Combine that with his plan to drastically raise taxes and I'm sure the US economy will go straight down the tubes.

Both links via LGF

Saturday, November 1, 2008

First issue of Osawatomie, a newspaper published by the Weather Underground in 1975

Well... this is a creepy coincidence.

Zomblog has obtained an extremely rare copy of the first issue of Osawatomie, a newspaper published by the Weather Underground in 1975. Noteworthy passages are reproduced below, along with exact transcriptions. The full pages, with each passage in context in high resolution, are found at the bottom of this post.

Much of Osawatomie, which was written at a time when the Dohrn-Ayers wing of the Weather Underground was transitioning from terrorism to “working from the inside” for revolution, concerns itself with the need to encourage “organizers” who will work in “communities” and use “audacity” to bring about “socialism” in America.

Don’t believe me? Read the quotes for yourself, and see them in context on the full pages below.


Go to the link to read the article and look at the logos too