Let’s have some blood flowing in the streets, shall we?

Sometimes it’s necessary to get out on the streets and "get a little bloody," a Massachusetts Democrat said Tuesday in reference to labor battles in Wisconsin.

Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.) fired up a group of union members in Boston with a speech urging them to work down in the trenches to fend off limits to workers’ rights like those proposed in Wisconsin.

"I’m proud to be here with people who understand that it’s more than just sending an email to get you going," Capuano said, according to the Dorchester Reporter. "Every once and awhile you need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody when necessary."

Really, do targets on a map even come close to this?

In more Civil Discourse Watch, here’s folks on the Left calling for riots, or at least pointing to rioting as a good example.

The failure of the repeal of ObamaCare can be laid at Democrats feet. We’ll see how well that works for them in 2012. (Didn’t work so well in 2010.)

In which country in the Middle East do Arabs have the greatest civil liberties? Click here to find out.

We keep hearing this refrain.

Shortly after taking office, President Obama traveled to Cairo to declare a new day in U.S. relations with the Muslim world – saying there was "no straight line" to building democratic societies in the Middle East.

The June 2009 address was in part intended to show a clean break from a George W. Bush-era "freedom agenda" of promoting electoral democracies across the region. Yet Obama now finds himself forced to move much closer to that world view as he escalates pressure on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to make immediate changes.

Regarding national defense and now foreign policy, Dubya had it right. Slowly, but too slowly, Obama is realizing this.

Law enforcement could have stopped the Fort Hood shooting by Major Hasan if political correctness hadn’t prevented them.

And finally, some bad investments. Click for a larger version.

The latest Shire Network News podcast is out. I’m hosting again, and we have segments from King George the III (pleading for a civil discourse in the American colonies), a listener contribution (Top 10 things that didn’t happen in 2010), and Gandalf. Lots of Gandalf. If you like political satire from a right-of-center point of view, you’ll enjoy this.

A verse I found highlighted by a friend on Facebook:

Proverbs 26:18-19 (New International Version 1984, ©1984)

¹⁸ Like a madman shooting
   firebrands or deadly arrows
¹⁹ is a man who deceives his neighbor
   and says, “I was only joking!”

The Left seems to forget their own hateful rhetoric when they start to point fingers at Sarah Palin. “…a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it.” “I’m just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live. That’s a fact.” “Somebody’s going to jam a CO2 pellet into his head and he’s going to explode like a giant blimp.” Indeed. These and other gems at Q&O.

On the (much) lighter side, I have finally been convinced that you should only put 1 space after a period, not two. I’m endeavoring to do so in this post, but it’s a hard habit to break.

Living up their promises, the Republicans have put forth a proposal for $2.5 trillion of spending cuts. Since it’s that amount over 10 years, it’s still only a drop in the bucket. But it’s more than they have suggested in the past (as far as I know) and certainly more than Democrats ever have. If the Dems want to criticize the choices of where to cut, let’s just see them propose their own.

I grew up in the Salvation Army denomination. (Yes, it’s a denomination.) Representatives from around the world are currently meeting to elect the next General, the administrative head of the Salvation Army. You can follow events on their web page, get e-mail updates, or even follow them on Twitter.

Cutting sugar, sodium and trans fats. Buying more produce locally. Cutting price premiums for healthier food options. That’s Wal-Mart for you. (Yeah, that Wal-Mart).

In Houston, it’s apparently safer for the homeless to go hungry than to get a meal that hasn’t been government certified.

Reason TV asks, what happened to the antiwar movement? It gives a serious look at the disappearance of a group that was so huge while Bush was President. Glenn Reynolds notes, they were useful idiots until they stopped being useful.

Charles Krauthammer:

Suppose someone – say, the president of United States – proposed the following: We are drowning in debt. More than $14 trillion right now. I’ve got a great idea for deficit reduction. It will yield a savings of $230 billion over the next 10 years: We increase spending by $540 billion while we increase taxes by $770 billion.

He’d be laughed out of town. And yet, this is precisely what the Democrats are claiming as a virtue of Obamacare.

Some say that if spending $X saves us $Y down the road(where Y is greater than X), then the government should spend it. But ObamaCare is much more a behemoth than simply judicious spending on road repairs before they get much worse. The claim that repealing ObamaCare will cost us money is ridiculous for Krauthammer’s reason.  Amazing.

And finally:

The deficit commission that President Obama convened agrees that most of ObamaCare should be kept.  Unfortunately, they believe in order to keep it fiscally sustainable is for it to include Death Panels.  They laughed at Sarah Palin for predicting this.  I don’t hear anyone laughing now.

Speaking of Sarah Palin, Richard Cohen (no conservative, he) just can stop reading about (and apparently, can’t stop writing about) the former Alaska governor.  And in writing about her and her beliefs, he includes this bit of honesty:

The left just doesn’t get America. I say this as a fellow-traveler of liberalism and as one who recognizes that many liberals fear the heartland. They see it as a dark place of primitive religions and too many guns. For such a person, Palin is the perfect personification of the unknown and feared Ugly American who will emerge from the heartland to seize Washington, turning off all the lights and casting America into darkness. The left does not merely disagree with the right; it fears it.

Hospitals closing or ridden with crime.  Doctors quitting the medical practice or leaving the country to find greener pastures in which to practice.  Shortages of medical supplies.  While these are predictions of what will come with ObamaCare, we have yet another example of where socialized medicine is failing.  Mr. Obama, call Mr. Chavez to find out how well it’s working in Venezuela.  (Hint:  It’s not.)

The Christmas song “Silver Bells” was inspired by the sound of Salvation Army bell-ringers outside department stores.  But apparently familiarity breeds contempt.

The character of Aslan in the Narnia series of books, as well established in “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”, is an allegory for Jesus Christ.  That was C. S. Lewis’ purpose.  But Liam Neeson, who provides the voice for Aslan in the movie series, has apparently been infected with the political correctness syndrome that pervades Hollywood.

Ahead of the release of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader next Thursday, Neeson said: ‘Aslan symbolises a Christ-like figure but he also symbolises for me Mohammed, Buddha and all the great spiritual leaders and prophets over the centuries.

‘That’s who Aslan stands for as well as a mentor figure for kids – that’s what he means for me.’

Mohammed and Buddha died for your sins?  Really?

Does Romans chapter 1 condemn homosexuality?  Some interpret it in such a way that it doesn’t, in spite of the words chosen.  John Stott takes apart such interpretations.

Bryan Longworth had an interesting tweet the other day.  “Comprehensive sex ed has been taught in schools 4 over 40 years. The results? Epedemic #STIs. How’s perversion working 4 U?”  Not so well, judging by the results.

And finally, Chuck Asay has some words for Democrats who are ostensibly fighting for the workers.  (Click for a larger version.)

As I noted earlier, if we stay on the same course, budget-wise, in just 5 years the interest on our national debt will approach what we spend to defend the country.  This must be dealt with.

Yesterday, a White House commission put together by President Obama released a draft proposal to do just that.

The leaders of a White House commission laid out a sweeping proposal to cut the federal budget deficit by hundreds of billions a year by targeting sacrosanct areas of U.S. tax and spending policy, such as Social Security benefits, middle-class tax breaks and defense spending.

The preliminary plan in its current form would end or cap a wide range of breaks relied on by the middle class—including the deduction for home-mortgage interest. It would tax capital gains and dividends at the higher rates now levied on wage income. To compensate, one version of the plan would dramatically lower and simplify individual rates, to 9%, 15% and 24%.

For businesses, the controversial plan would significantly lower the corporate tax rate—from a current top rate of 35% to as low as 26%—but also eliminate a number of deductions. It would make permanent the research and development tax credit.

There’s much more; cutting $100 billion from defense, raising gas taxes, raising the Social Security retirement age, cutting federal work force by 10%, and others.  It’s quite a sweeping proposal, and it’ll call on the government and the people alike to share the burden.

But what will it wind up doing?

Overall, the plan would hold down the growth of the federal debt by roughly $3.8 trillion by 2020, or about half of the $7.7 trillion by which the debt would have otherwise grown by that year, according to commission staff. The current national debt is about $13.7 trillion.

The budget deficit, or the amount by which federal expenditures exceed revenues each year, was about $1.3 trillion for fiscal year 2010, which ended on Sept. 30.

Even with all this, it’ll only cut the growth by half, with debt still rising by trillions every year.

This is where we find ourselves; overextended and really unable to do anything about it despite some Herculean efforts.  Our government has made so many promises that it can’t renege on, that the most we can hope for is "only" growing slower. Well, ya’ gotta’ start somewhere, and this is just a draft proposal.  But this is a good start.

Or is it?  How do other politicians see it?  (Warning: Easily anticipated reactions follow.)

Read the rest of this entry

With apologies to P. J. O’Rouke for the title, last night was a historic night for the GOP, but I have a feeling this was more the voters saying "Stop!" to Obama than it was saying "Go!" to the Republicans.

Still, there were other things at work here than a Democratic smackdown.  Witness the shift of so many state governments to the Republicans. These folks weren’t the ones who bailed out banks, took over car companies or squirmed a health care bill through Congress.  And yet, for example, for the first time since Reconstruction, Georgia’s major state offices will all be held by Republicans.  While the wave last night certainly helped, this is a shift that has been going on for years.  The state legislature shift is, I think, the underreported story of the night (though Erick Erickson gives us a good view of it).  It’s important because in many cases it is so historic ("not since the 19th century" historic, in a few cases), and because reapportionment is happening this year due to the census.  This is big, and I think it’s more than just coattails.

But if you look at things like how well Democrats did who had voted for the health care reform bill, it’s clear that there was, indeed, a significant portion of the vote that was a referendum on Obama and the Democratic Congress.  Complaining from Democrats that the bill wasn’t explained enough, over the course of 6 months, is simply a refusal to face facts; the American people generally did not want this behemoth.  There was a price to pay for all the shenanigans done to get it passed.

Another big repudiation of the evening was of the media.  (Hmm, repudiation of Democrats and the media.  Why do these two groups keep getting mentioned together, I wonder?)  Uniquely labeling the Tea Party "extreme" by mainstream reporters and pundits alike, and spending so much press trying to make Christine O’Donnell the de facto face of the Tea Party, the voters have apparently decided for themselves what is or isn’t "extreme" and who’s endorsement (rather than the press’s) they’ll listen to (i.e. Sarah Palin’s picks are currently running more than 2 to 1 in the win column). 

Other interesting highlights:

No to recreational pot:  Californians voted No to make marijuana more available than it already is.  

Arizona governor re-elected: Jan Brewer got a vote of confidence from her state.  Apparently, enforcing laws that the feds refuse to enforce hasn’t been the economic meltdown her detractors claimed it would be.

I’ll close with some words from Don Surber, but read the whole thing.

This is not a normal midterm election in which the president’s party typically loses seats. In the last 10 midterms, a president’s party has averaged a loss of 12 House and two Senate seats.

That includes 1994’s tsunami, as then-Congressman Bob Wise put it.

President Carter lost 15 House and three Senate seats in his midterm.

Obama lost 59+ and 7+.

This was a big deal.

But I say to Republicans: Great, kids. Don’t get cocky.

The battle has just begun.

I knew unions supported the Democrats, but really; getting fired for wearing a Bush hat and sweatshirt?  Even though it’s referring to the aircraft carrier the George H. W. Bush?  That your son serves on?  Really?  That’s a sign of rabid, unthinking support of the Democrats.

Andrew Fergusson, Head of Communications at Christian Medical Fellowship, writing in Christianity Today, lays out the big difference between embryonic stem cells and the adult variety.

Ron Futrell, writing at Big Journalism:

During the discussion where Williams said he gets “nervous” when he sees people on a plane in Muslim garb (that’s what got him fired).  Williams also warned O’Reilly against blaming all Muslims for “extremists,” saying Christians shouldn’t be blamed for Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy McVeigh.

Timothy McVeigh was not Christian. Love ya Juan, and sorry to hear about what happened with NPR, but Timothy McVeigh was not Christian. He was agnostic. He made the statement many times to newspapers. He also said “science is my religion.”

Political violence is an indictment against the cause that motivates it … except when Democrats do it.  If you just read liberal-leaning blogs, you haven’t heard the whole story about the Rand Paul supporter "stomping" on the MoveOn.org activist.

And finally, a scary Halloween story.  Click for a larger version.

No, really.  The same guy who complains that Fox News is slanted, is going to appear on a comedy show run by a guy who’s an unapologetic liberal.  He doesn’t want fair treatment; he wants favorable treatment.

But hey, his constituency is watching that show.  They likely think it’s a news show, and his appearance will simply confirm that to them.

The “One Nation” rally of liberals vs. the “Restoring Honor” rally of conservatives.  What a study in contrasts.

Let’s start with the numbers.  Now, you may say that the numbers really aren’t that meaningful; what matters is the message.  Fair enough, except the number really mattered to the Left.  As pseudonymous writer “LaborUnionReport” notes from RedState:

You see, the size of the Saturday’s OneNation rally would not really matter if…

1. MSNBC’s Ed Schultz didn’t foolishly make the claim that he would have 300,000 people at Socialist Saturday;
2. Leninist labor boss Richard Trumka hadn’t predicted 100,000 union members;
3. The SEIU hadn’t claimed 75,000 of its purple progressives would be bused in (unless the SEIU really meant that 75k of its janitors would do park clean-up for all the SEIU signs that were left lying around), and;
4. Some dolt didn’t come on stage and claim that a satellite image proved that the Marxist March on Washington was bigger than Beck’s 8/28 rally…

Identical aerial views of the two rallies clearly show what one would call a gaping enthusiasm gap.  Keep those shots in mind when you read media articles that try to equivalence the two.  And consider, too, how many bought-and-paid-for attendees were there for “One Nation” (including students getting school credit for attending) and they still couldn’t hold a candle to the crowd from “Restoring Honor”, the vast majority that came on their own dime.  Nancy Pelosi once called the Tea Party “astroturf”, but clearly the plastic grass is on their side of the fence.

Oh, and another contrast is how you treat something you pay for vs something that’s provided for you.  You care more for something you paid for yourself, and thus there was quite a difference between how the “One Nation” attendees left the Washington Mall vs how the “Restoring Honor” attendees did.  When you pay for something yourself, you tend to take better care of it, which is a truism that can apply to government policies in general; a lesson the Left  never seems to learn.

And as Doug Ross notes, socialism played a big role in the rally.  Do these people even know the sordid history of socialism in the world?  That’s where this bunch wants to take us; further and further dependence on government and the power grab that is part and parcel of places like Venezuela.

This is their “America”?  What an awful place, and what a contrast between liberal and conservative.  I still do have hope.