Hey - Let's make America just like Greece!

I spent time in Greece and have dealt with their moribund bureaucracy, their rampant socialism, runaway spending, massive labor unions that cover everything from taxi drivers to prostitutes.

Last week Greece earned the first of two sovereign downgrades from ratings agency Fitch over its $436 billion budget deficit. Then Standard & Poor's cut Greece to BBB+ from A- and sternly warned that if the government didn't get serious about controlling its spending, the downgrade wouldn't be its last.

Through the week, investors dumped Greek bonds, and word rose that Greece would need a bailout from the European Union. European leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel loudly said no to that Wednesday, but it didn't help. By Thursday, Greece's problem became Europe's problem, with the euro tumbling to a three-month low against the dollar while U.S. Treasury prices — a traditional safe haven for sovereign investors — soared.

On Friday, S&P announced "a more pronounced and faster economic deterioration than we previously anticipated" for Greece, with a "protracted hard landing" next.

The whole crisis has a perfectly logical basis: Greece's budget deficit is more than four times higher than the European Union's 3% ceiling and stands at 12.7% of GDP. Its gross debt, at 112% of GDP, indicates it has more debt than productive output. And its socialist government has no credible plan to quit spending. Years of embedded socialism — in spending, labor and regulatory practices — are responsible. They've enabled the government to consume the very economy that's supposed to sustain it.

Even supposedly right-of-center parties spent state cash the same way. The last party in power was nominally conservative, but failed to stop expansion of government. It kept hiring, kowtowed to union demands for fear of strikes and did little to change the culture's gimme-gimme mentality.

Bureaucrats were hired like there was no tomorrow. These state employees are union members who can never be fired no matter how nasty, lazy or corrupt. Layers of such people go into ministries as payoffs for political favors.

Does this sound like a familiar path?

Who is the Biggest Ass?

The Democratic majority holds sway in the Senate, House of Representatives and Barack Hussein Obama's Administration over the Executive Branch of Government. Will the Healthcare Bill sink them?

Or will it be Cap and Trade - the environmental mandate built on the fiction of Global Warming? For any of you who are following the Copenhagen Conference (where Barack Hussein Obama pledged America would follow lock step with the emerging nations who are more or less exempt from the requirements to halt carbon emissions), the United Nations summit was promoted as a serious effort to mitigate climate change. I was shocked to see the summit co-sponsored by Barack Hussein Obama turn into an attack on capitalism.

America's Response: It pledges taxpayer money!

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe spoke in Copenhagen and their asinine remarks were cheered and applauded by attendees who seemed to think they were in the presence of great men.  Does America get the message too?

Hugo Chavez was celebrated as if he were a popularly elected president who has led his country toward greater freedom and prosperity instead of a socialist who rigged his election to be president for life, crushed civil liberties and wrecked his nation's economy.  "President Chavez brought the house down," according to newspaper The Australian, when he addressed the U.N. Climate Change Conference on Wednesday. "When he said there was a 'silent and terrible ghost in the room' and that ghost was called capitalism, the applause was deafening." Socialism, Chavez told the fawning audience, is "the way to save the planet" while "the destructive model of capitalism is the eradication of life." And: "Capitalism is the road to hell. ... Let's fight against capitalism and make it obey us."

Bolivia's President Evo Morales, a pal of Chavez, Ahmadinejad and Fidel Castro and the first fully "indigenous" head of state in Bolivia. Morales set the table for Chavez, declaring the real cause of climate change to be "the capitalist system."--"If we want to save the earth," he said, "then we must end that economic model." This man, a socialist who also fixed his election and consolidated his power, proposed an "international climate court of justice to prosecute countries for climate 'crimes.'"

Robert Mugabe, who has beaten, tortured and killed his opponents and has been sanctioned for human-rights abuses, held forth on the anti-capitalist theme. He scolded the "capitalist gods of carbon" who "burp and belch their dangerous emissions," leaving "the lesser mortals of the developing sphere" to "gasp and sink and eventually die."  The gasping, sinking and dying who Mugabe is most familiar with are within his own country. Tens of thousands have been killed by the poverty, cholera, famine and outright murder brought on by his socialist policies that ruined a once-thriving economy. (IBD)

The donkeys/asses who currently run the country are trying to run  it on the rocks in any direction possible and they are an absurd farce, entertaining America's enemies. The Biggest Ass Award has to be presented to Nobel Laureate, Barack Hussein Obama for his efforts to turn prosperous, happy America into a utopian socialist morass.

Two kinds of "Liners"

It speaks for itself.

Hillary Clinton - Long in the Tooth?

Before the women rise up and condemn me for taking a shot at Hillary, I want to say that I have personally decried other "old lizards" such as John Mertha (D-PA), Vice President Joe (Slow Joe) Biden, Robert (Grand Cyclops) Byrd (D-WV), etc. who are men.

Hillary Clinton simply is not an attractive woman, but am I the only one who has seen her drift down hill in both influence, lucidity and appearance since she took up the Secretary of State's mantle? In the photo above, she's putting her foot in her mouth again - this time in Brazil. I wonder if Bill would consider taking over for her? He'd do a better job.

Enemies Should Fear America

War is hell. General W. T. Sherman said it, and anyone who has experienced it, understands that the statement fits just as well today as it did during the War of Northern Aggression in the Mid 1800's. There are low intensity conflicts going on in the world today that the mainstream media doesn't cover. Some of them involve America. One that comes to mind is the war with narcotics cartels - that turns bloody - inside and outside of US National Borders.

You can't pick up a turd from the clean end. You can't fight a clean war. General Thomas (Stonewall) Jackson summed it up this way: "War means fighting and fighting means killing."

You can't pretend that a turd is really chocolate soft serve ice cream. It's a turd. If you put flowers on it, it's still a turd. If you cover it with carmel sauce, it's still at turd and when you taste it, it will taste like a turd, not like ice cream.

The military provides each man or woman under arms an explanation for their place in the world. The military philosophy agrees with the service member's predilections and culture, allowing them through subjective belief to consider the rules back home the reliable author of objective reality.

That way of thinking gets warriors killed.

Robert Kaplan wrote a very interesting book titled, Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos. In that book, Robert Kaplan argues that the bedrock of sound foreign policy should be "comprehensive pragmatism" rather than "utopian hopes." Kaplan calls for a reestablishment of American realpolitik, one distanced from Judeo-Christian (or private) virtue and closer to a "pagan" (public) one. He aligns himself with America's Founding Fathers, who, he says, believed good government emerged only from a "sly understanding of men's passions."

The reality of war has nothing to do with what people portray on television - not even the best television shows or films capture war. War requires pragmatic solutions to real problems, delivered (often) by a young men barely old enough to shave on the spur of the moment. A thousand Department of Justice Attorneys can take ten years to debate those acts and decide on "the rules". But none of it changes war, or the way we fight. A politically correct war only leads to body bags filled with our own people.

In Kipling's Grave of the Hundred Head, the method of dealing with snipers who take out officers is explained. At the end of the poem, Kipling explains,

Then a silence came to the river,
A hush fell over the shore,
And Bohs that were brave departed,
And Sniders squibbed no more,
For the Burmans said,
That a Kullah's head
Must be paid for with heads five score.

The sad tragedy is that nobody in the American administration believes that a dead American serviceman/woman is worth one hundred enemy combatants.

When the change their minds, our enemies will fear America and they quite simply won't wish to fight us. As it is now, we show our weakness daily through the Commander-in-Chief's obsequious apologies and his zeal to distance himself from those who he commands. A weak man like Barack Hussein Obama will never cause the fear in enemies' hearts that averts war with us.

Obama vs US Navy SEALs

It's not easy becoming a Navy SEAL. The screening is intense, the training grueling, the rigor of deployment and re-training for deployment will destroy most family relationships the sailors form. The pay is slim and what is expected and accomplished is done from a sense of patriotism and duty to country, the Navy and fellow operators.

A platoon from Navy SEAL Team 10 were dropped into harm's way to capture Ahmed Hashim Abed, mastermind behind the killing, burning and mutilation of four American contractors working for Blackwater USA in Fallujah, Iraq, in March 2004. Their bodies were then hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River.

Fortunately for Ahmed Hashim, he seems to share the same faith as the US Commander-in-Chief, Barack Hussein Obama - who may not be Muslim by his profession, but seems to be through his actions, by his obvious lack of concern over the Ft. Hood murders by Army Officer and Jihadist Nidal Hasan.

Petty Officer 2nd Class McCabe, 24, of Perrysburg, Ohio, and Petty Officer 1st Class Huertas, 28, of Blue Island , Ill., were arraigned. The third SEAL, Petty Officer 2nd Class Keefe, 25, of Yorktown, Va., will be arraigned at a later date. All are charged with dereliction of duty and making false official statements. McCabe is also officially charged with punching Abed "in the midsection with his fist" while in custody.

I know we live in a politically correct age where it's glossed over by the Chief Executive of the United States when a (brother) Muslim murders over a dozen and wounds a dozen more in an unprovoked killing spree. I understand (not really) the overarching need for Barack Hussein Obama to bow deeply to his Islamic masters. I hear the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Military bow, scrape and whine apologies for America. I see the US administration, consumed with apologetic fervor, officially pronouncing that the architect of 9/11's massacre, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, must be given all the constitutional rights and privileges of the Americans he murdered. Our justice system, we are told, must be an example to the world, as if that will impress jihadists making IEDs in some faraway hideout.

We ask SEALs to do very dirty, extraordinarily dangerous work in secret, without fanfare or bands. None have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for stopping wars or taking out people who would murder thousands. The media and the Navy, under pressure from the White House attacks the SEALs remorselessly for punching a terrorist. I'm sure they brought him back for interrogation. On hindsight, they should have cut his throat, bled him out and left him where they found him.

The mainstream media pines over the future of Tiger Woods, whose career has absolutely no value to our country's future. What happens to Matthew McCabe, Julio Huertas and Jonathan Keefe will matter to the entire special warfare community who is watching. They are taking note and in the future, will remember not to bring the bastards back for interrogation... People are more likely to recognize the names of Tiger's (alleged) bimbos than the names of these three Navy SEALs we sent into battle. They are not household names in a nation consumed with the sexual antics of billionaire athletes.

McCabe, Huertas and Keefe neither need nor deserve to be made examples to impress anybody. If they are court-martialed, the only thing impressed upon foreign terrorists will be U.S. weakness. And that will invite more terrorism as surely as our shameful withdrawal from Somalia after Americans were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu inspires Osama bin Laden.

I am disgusted with the conduct of the United States Navy in this matter, and shamed by the conduct of the Commander-in-Chief.  I wish God would find it in his heart to resurrect Ronald Reagan.

These matters need to be set right.

Is Truth an endangered species?

On Day 2 of the Copenhagen climate conference, the United Nations announced that the current decade is the warmest on record.

Yes, it's a LIE!

You know, the same thing that happens when Barack Hussein Obama reads from his teleprompter. Lies are not exactly new to the bloggers on the Internet.

On Tuesday, the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization released a preliminary report that claims the 10-year period from 2000 to 2009 is the warmest since records began in 1850.

Really?

How can serious scientists compare data from record keeping in 1850 to modern record-keeping? The report says the data are culled "from networks of land-based weather and climate stations, ships and buoys, as well as satellites." (IBD)

It might be rude to challenge Barack Hussein Obama (famous quasi Imam, defender of the faith, etc.) - BUT -  How many satellites, ships and buoys were used in 1850? How do the land-based weather stations match up? Are they the same set of stations used since 1850, or have stations been added and dropped through the decades? Have there always been enough stations to adequately represent the global temperature? A global map of weather stations shows they are highly concentrated in the U.S. and Europe. Their presence in Asia, Africa and South America is almost nonexistent. How can their readings from only a portion of the globe be indicative of the entire planet? And what about the placement of weather stations? Developed areas create heat islands that register higher temperatures, which aren't relevant to climate or global temperatures. How many stations located in undeveloped areas 150 years ago are now surrounded by growth and are recording distorted temperatures?

A look at temperatures over the last 10,000 years as determined by ice cores, not weather stations, shows that the planet has gone through much warmer eras than it is now experiencing.

Also inconvenient to the U.N.'s report is the scandal at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, one of three climate data analysis centers. E-mails between researchers recently made public reveal: a pattern of manipulation of the data; an effort to crush scientists who dissented from the "consensus" that man is warming the planet; and the possible defrauding of the taxpayers who have funded their research. (IBD)

Sort out the lies from the truth - THEN tell us what is left and allow other scientists to review data so that a realistic debate can be formulated.

I know, I know, Barack Hussein Obama doesn't care about the inconvenient truth. He sincerely wants to drive the America he resents on the rocks. The plain truth is that whatever he signs can be repudiated once he's out of office.