The Fall of the Berlin Wall

The ultimate finger was given to the oppressive Soviet Union twenty years ago today when Germans and the rest of the world said enough:
Our president couldn't bring himself to attend such a momentous event because it would have overshadowed his greatness I guess.

Spitting Venom

I'm pissed.

I'm pissed that I haven't had the time to post anything.

I'm pissed that the media spun a monumental electoral shift in New Jersey that was directly attributable to Obama and his policies into a story where it wasn't. I am happy I won't have to look at Corzine's fucking face anymore.

I'm pissed that the Stupak amendment was a big friggin' joke to the Dems and one GOP'er actually was cajoled to vote for the healthcare monstrosity that will forever burden us with heavy debt and poor medical choices.

I'm pissed that the FBI and other arms of the government had information that a Muslim soldier was potentially in contact with our enemies and did nothing resulting in numerous innocent people dead. I'm happy that one brave woman--Sgt. Kimberly Munley (pictured with her kids at right)--took down the terrorist scumbag while heroically putting her life on the line.

I'm pissed that the stimulus bill was passed and we now have 10% unemployment while it resulted in no significant job creation; only the padding of union leader's pockets.

I'm pissed that we have a president who is so insecure that he could not even mention Ronald Reagan when discussing the fall of the Berlin Wall.

I'm f-ing pissed.

More posting later if I can find the damn time.

A Misplaced Sense of History

As a candidate, President Barack Obama went to Berlin and reveled in the media glare afforded him by the European media. He gave a mediocre speech full of platitudes and hopeful rhetoric that a year and a few months later has proved an epic fail.

This year is the twentieth anniversary of the demolition of the wall; a moment that simultaneously freed half a nation and signalled the end of the single-most oppressive regime in the 20th Century. It was an affirmation of what thinking people had been saying for decades: that the Soviet Union in particular and communism as a whole were a black stain on the annals of history.

Obama can't seem to find time in his schedule to attend the celebration of this great event that was brought on by the policies of another American president a few years prior.

Sure, Obama can go to Copenhagen on a losing crusade for the Olympics but can't find the time to celebrate the greatest world moment of the second half of last century. Sad really.

Just to put it in perspective, here's Ronald Reagan single-handedly calling out the Soviets and a video showing the pure joy that was experienced once the symbol of Soviet communism was finally destroyed. Try to imagine Obama trying to be this forward-thinking...you can't.





More here.

The Folly of Big Government

In the last seven months, we've seen government expand at a rate greater than at any time in American history including WWII. We've added "czars" for capping spending limits on private business and czars for health care. Hell, we'll be seeing a "czar" to oversee all the other "czars" before too long.

We've seen a stimulus program tank when the proof is clear it wasn't ever needed and the country didn't even want. When a European nation leads the way on escaping recession by not spending money, one has to sit up and take note.

Anyway, we're now seeing a simple program designed by this administration to spur auto sales become so burdensome and expensive that those it was designed to assist may end up losing money and the government is forced to divert staffers from another, much more important agency, to help keep it running. Note, The One actually said that the Post Office was a great example of a government-run entity that was efficient and would be a model for how health care would be run:



So let's sum up, shall we? Obamacare is on the ropes because Americans like what we have and the costs would be incredible so they protest and are treated like vermin plus get dissed by their elected representatives. A nation known for a socialist bent spends no money and allows the markets to work themselves out is out of the recession while we are still deeply mired. And finally, we have a test program of small scale and little complexity that the government has turned into a quagmire due to incompetence and pure planning and they still expect us to support the largest, single program the nation has ever seen.

Matt Welch has the last word:

After 11 months of federal bailouts and freakouts, Americans have become bone tired of panicky power grabs from Washington. It's the big government, stupid.

The message of the various Tea Party protests, which predated this summer's ahistorical media panic over town hall "lynch mobs," has been pretty simple, says Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, the nonprofit that has helped organize the protests, told Reason magazine this spring. "It was: stop spending so much money, stop borrowing so much money, and stop bailing out people who were irresponsible."

Stop the Insanity! Obama to Apologize to Germans for WWII?

The America Sucks tour continues unabated with The One apparently set to apologize to Germany for a "war crime" committed by the Allies:

But when one considers just where exactly in Germany Obama is headed, then the significance of the visit becomes more clear. There is some talk of Obama visiting the Buchenwald concentration camp outside Weimar, in whose liberation Obama’s great uncle Charlie Payne is famously supposed to have taken part. But the Buchenwald visit appears not to be the main event and indeed it can be presumed to have been included in discussions as something of an alibi.

The latest German reports suggest Obama’s principal German destination will be Dresden. According to an article in the local paper Die Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten, representatives of the German and American governments met in Dresden last Wednesday to discuss preparations for the visit. An American security detail is reported to have already scoped out sites in the city: presumably for a public speech.

The symbolic significance of a visit to Dresden by the American president — especially one undertaken in connection with a D-Day commemoration in France — may be missed by some Americans, but it is absolutely unmistakable for the German public. For Germans, Dresden is the symbol bar none of German suffering at the hands of the Allies. The city was heavily bombed by British and American air forces in February 1945, toward the end of the war. According to the most recent estimates of professional historians, anywhere from 18,000 to at most 25,000 persons died in the attacks. These numbers come from a historical commission established by the city of Dresden itself. But far higher numbers — ranging into the hundreds of thousands — have long circulated in Germany and beyond. The bombing of Dresden is commonly described as a “war crime” in German discussions.

Once again, Obama is displaying his lack of experience and the incompetence of his foreign policy team. Just as when he bowed to the leader of Saudi Arabia (and subsequent lame excuses) was a clear sign to the Arab world that we are not as powerful under Obama as we once were; this is a sign to Europeans that we are now no longer exceptional either. We are saying, in essence, that taking offensive action in a nation that invaded numerous sovereign countries, killed millions in planned exterminations and started a war that killed millions more was wrong and we are sorry for it.

Well I'm not. My heritage is German and I still have relatives over there but our actions were warranted, justified and in my mind stopped short of what they could have been. We needed to knock out their industrial complex and to not saturation bomb would have been the real crime.

Tomorrow I'll bring you the news of Obama apologizing to the relatives of Saddam Hussein for being rough when they pulled him out of that rat hole he cowered in.

Europeans Learning That Whole EU Thing Not So Great

As with any major agreement between many nations, the European Union has fine print that's written by ideologues who may not have all nations best interests at heart:

The peoples of Europe have finally discovered what they signed up to. I do mean "peoples" (plural) because however much political elites may deceive themselves, the populations of the member states of the EU are culturally, historically and economically separate and distinct. And a significant proportion of them are getting very, very angry.

What the strikers at the Lindsey oil refinery (and their brother supporters in Nottinghamshire and Kent) have discovered is the real meaning of the fine print in those treaties, and the significance of those European court judgments whose interpretation they left to EU obsessives: it is now illegal – illegal – for the government of an EU country to put the needs and concerns of its own population first. It would, for example, be against European law to do what Frank Field has sensibly suggested and reintroduce a system of "work permits" for EU nationals who wished to apply for jobs here.

Meanwhile, demonstrators in Paris and the recalcitrant electorate in Germany are waking up to the consequences of what two generations of European ideologues have thrust upon them: the burden not just of their own economic problems but also the obligation to accept the consequences of their neighbours' debts and failures. Each country is true to its own history in the way it expresses its rage: in France, they take to the streets and throw things at the police, in Germany they threaten the stability of the coalition government, and here, we revive the tradition of wildcat strikes.

Europeans and American liberals are all for open borders throughout the world--for instance US leftists would love to see the border between the US and Mexico erased. The problem as described above is that people are at heart nationalistic. They may join together in happy harmony while things are good but when it comes to feeding ones family, all bets are off. We're seeing that in Europe as we speak.

Just as all the nations who signed on to the Kyoto Protocols learned: an idea may sound great in theory but once people actually get involved, the happiness wanes and reality sets in, usually at great cost.

I see some coalitions splintering and some European leaders getting voted out in the near future.

Congress to US Carmakers: Sink or Swim

With trillions already tabbed for banks and insurance giant AIG, the US automotive industry is being pushed to the side and not getting a seat at the tax money trough:

WASHINGTON, Nov 13 (Reuters) - A senior Democratic senator raised doubts on Thursday that an attempt to bail out U.S. automakers had enough support to clear Congress this year.

As Republicans amplified their concerns about a bailout, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd raised the biggest red flag for fellow Democrats trying to craft a $25 billion rescue and pass it during a post-election session set to start next week.

"Right now, I don't think there are the votes," Dodd of Connecticut told reporters about prospects in the Senate. "I want to be careful of bringing up a proposition that might fail," he said.

I guess Dodd doesn't have any special friends at GM or Ford like he did at Countrywide but I digress.

Anyway, we have to draw the line somewhere and that somewhere is evidently the Big Three.

Detroit has been turning out an inferior product for decades now with a few exceptions. The Japanese, South Koreans and Germans have been designing and building better, sleeker and more efficient vehicles while GM, Ford and Chrysler have been regurgitating the same old same old for twenty years.

Add to that the inflated salaries paid to those assembling the cars in the US and you have the recipe for lower profits and lower sales. The average UAW worker makes somewhere between $30 and $40 per hour, but not said is that an extra $30 goes on top of that in benefits costs. Those benefits checks fund the pension plan, health care and, of course, help to line the pockets of UAW bigwigs and Democrat politicians. In other words, through greed and poor planning, the US auto makers have such huge payrolls that they've not been able to capitalize on the greatest advantage they have; no tariffs. The tariff savings are used up in payroll costs and not seen by the consumer who, when given the option of buying a Buick or an equally priced Toyota will almost always go with the higher-quality Japanese brand.

President Bush opened up the flood gates by pushing for the bailout bill and is now trying to keep the money from flowing out using a single sand bag and a small pump with a garden hose. It's not going to be that easy as Congress has instant access to trillions of dollars that they didn't have before and the spending will make earmarks look like pocket change. Bush has made a mockery of free market economics and by passing the bailout bill has paved the way for Obama t institute more socialist economic policies that will see spending balloon to the states and cities who are screaming "help!".

It's about time we took a breather and looked at what we have wrought. My guess is that Bush will long regret pushing for the bailout plan and going against a century of American thinking whereby companies that are not solid are than doomed to failure.

70 Years After Kristallnacht

Mata H. has the history.

Particularly enlightening is the story of the Polish resistance fighter who met with FDR only to be rebuffed. Granted, no one could grasp the horror of the Final Solution but FDR had to know that Jews were targeted for extermination and chose to remain ignorant and not believe what an eyewitness was telling him.

This occurred only 70-years ago and the Israeli's are afraid of what the incoming administration will do. Will Obama continue 69-years of American history and support Israel or will he change the status quo. Only time will tell but this video shows just why the Israeli's have reason to be wary:



More here.