Yes, pirates.

The US asked for help in fighting al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Germany sent troops…as long as they weren’t to be in combat.

There was an oil tanker captured by pirates in the Indian Ocean.

Germany sent 1,400 troops sent to kill

In Afghanistan, the troops aren’t allowed the use their weapons. In the ocean, where targets are easy and combat is almost without risk, they are allowed in combat.

Excuse me while I laugh…

2008 is shaping up to be a bad, bad year for stocks. Do you know anybody who lost it all?

It’s odd…even though things sure look bad in the stock market (as bad as the Great Depression!), life carries on mostly as per the usual here in the US. Is this the calm before the storm, or are we going to avoid the kind of pain that we did in the 1930’s?

I think it is important to chronicle some of the lamer articles by big-name journalists and the major politicians who called the war a lost cause:

George Packer at The New Yorker asserted that the US was doing better in Iraq almost entirely to luck, and least of all to the Surge or the troops.

Frank Rich at the New York Times contended that the Battle of Basra was the equivalent of the Tet Offensive (of Vietnam). In actuality, the Battle of Basra was a decisive strategic victory for the US.

As noted at the Washington Post, both Obama and Hillary vehemently opposed the Surge and both supported legislation to reverse it.

Mr. Obama acknowledged some reduction of violence, but said he had predicted that adding troops would have that effect. In fact, on Jan. 8, 2007, he said that in the absence of political progress, “I don’t think 15,000 or 20,000 more troops is going to make a difference in Iraq and in Baghdad.” He also said he saw “no evidence that additional American troops would change the behavior of Iraqi sectarian politicians and make them start reining in violence by members of their religious groups.” Ms. Clinton, for her part, refused to retract a statement she made in September, when she said it would require “a suspension of disbelief” to believe that the surge was working.

Arianna Huffington at Huffington Post called it a failure, even when it was bringing about successes.

Bush’s escalation of troops is now one year old. When it was launched, we were told that the purpose of the so-called surge was to help bring about political reconciliation in Iraq. Clearly, that has not come about.

New York Senator Chuck Schumer advocated the United States unilaterally carving Iraq into three separate countries, divided by ethnicity, and then pulling troops out of Iraq entirely.

Howard Dean, Chairman of the DNC, said that:

“idea that we are going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong”

Victory at hand.

We won. The Iraq War is over.

I declare November 22, 2008 to be “Victory in Iraq Day.” (Hereafter known as “VI Day.”)

By every measure, The United States and coalition forces have conclusively defeated all enemies in Iraq, pacified the country, deposed the previous regime, successfully helped to establish a new functioning democratic government, and suppressed any lingering insurgencies. The war has come to an end. And we won.

What more indication do you need? An announcement from the outgoing Bush administration? It’s not gonna happen. An announcement from the incoming Obama administration? That’s really not gonna happen. A declaration of victory by the media? Please. Don’t make me laugh. A concession of surrender by what few remaining insurgents remain in hiding? Forget about it.

The moment has come to acknowledge the obvious. To overtly declare a fact that has already been true for quite some time now. Let me repeat:

WE WON THE WAR IN IRAQ

And since there will never be a ticker-tape parade down Fifth Avenue in New York for our troops, it’s up to us, the people, to arrange a virtual ticker-tape parade. An online victory celebration.

I couldn’t agree more. In fact, the deal just signed on US forces in Iraq seems pretty reasonable. The Surge worked, the troops excelled, the Iraqis rejected terrorism, and things are improving quickly.

It’s a real shame that the media won’t likely focus too much on this.

Uh…here’s some YAHOO! search suggestions…

Uh…here’s some Google search suggestions.

It used to be that only the convicted criminal had to do community service or pay a fine.

Is this the Obama Mandate?

Will more be expected of Tennessee?

————–

Seriously, though. This will lower the quality of volunteers (resentment of having your hand forced does that, see). It’s also not a great idea to have the state indoctrinating the kiddies, it’s not like we are suffering from a shortage of charity workers. I just don’t get it.

I never thought Obama would win until a few months ago. I assumed things like Clinton, Biden, and even himself all being on record disqualifying him due to inexperience would be all the Republicans had to keep repeating in order to send Barack packing. I was wrong.

The anger with Bush, spilling over onto John McCain, is all that matters right now. Ask 10 people on the street if Bush is a bastard, and you will get 9 people saying “yes”, 7 truthfully and 2 because they don’t want to be singled out as horrible people. One person might admit still liking Bush, a man described as affable and warm by all the people who got to know him, but lambasted as cruel and ignorant by those who chose not to know him, but to hate him regardless.

All the things that went wrong over the last 8 years are pinned to George’s chest: the fact that he won two elections (by all reasonable accounts, fairly) is blamed on him, 9/11 is his fault, the world resents us because of him, the economy is in trouble because of him. Everything is his fault, we are told, and it will be better when he and his bad Republican friends are just gone.

So, here we are on November 4th - decision day. I already voted. Obama will most likely win. I know that.

I can stew about it, but instead I have been preparing myself psychologically for this day for the last many weeks. “The fix” has been in for Barack for a long time, so it was really just a matter of counting out the votes. Almost no national newspapers endorsed McCain. The three that did were thrown off the Obama Campaign plane right afterward. MSNBC, NBC, CNN, ABC, anc CBS all ran more than 100% more positive Obama pieces than McCain pieces, as demonstrated in a few different studies recently released. Obama broke his own promise on campaign financing, and proceeded to outraise McCain by an obscene amount, dwarfing all previous amounts of cash spent to secure the White House, while McCain hung himself by his own promise on financing. Within a few days of the election the Washington Post admitted it had been blatantly and unforgiveably biased in Obama’s favor throughout the election, letting us know that they didn’t even try to research Joe Biden while they sent plane-loads of “journalists” to Alaska to interview Palin’s old boyfriends. ABC’s Michael Malone discussed similar treacherous bias. The non-partisan Project for Excellence in Journalism found similar results of media bias. MSNBC was found to be especially keen on Obama.

It’s been depressing being a conservative. I’m not a social conservative, at all. I am a Libertarian-minded conservative. It’s going to be a rough four years, two if I’m lucky and the Republicans sweep Congress in 2010.

The “Employee Free Choice Act”, a blatantly anti-democratic piece of legislation tailored to balloon the ranks of the Unions and guarantee more Democratic voters on the rolls, will pass the Senate. This legislation will eliminate the secret ballot (a foundation of Democracy) for union-forming in American workplaces. Bear in mind the Democrats pressured Mexico to have secret union ballots just a few years ago, saying that it was un-democratic not to have secret ballots. Soon, in the US, workers will have to say “yes” or “no” in a public meeting, and suffer the wrath of their new union bosses afterwards if there vote didn’t happen to be the “right” choice.

The “Fairness Doctrine”, another bit of legislation with an Orwellian name, will be back. The government will be tasked with policing the airwaves to ensure “fairness” in the treatment of political news coverage. I won’t hold my breath for the major news networks like MSNBC to be cajoled into fairness, but I do expect an all-out assault by the left against conservative talk radio and, eventually, blogs.

All that being said, I will try to remain contented with myself. There is no other choice. I will begin grassroots efforts in my community and on the Internet to help establish a powerful conservative/libertarian movement so that in 2010 and beyond we can get this country back on the track to real freedom. All expansion of government control always dampen the human spirit and squash our dignity. I do not want our schools being denied federal funding because they don’t want to require students to join federal “volunteer” programs. I don’t want new taxes or new laws. I don’t want the TV, radio, or Internet to be monitored with “unfairness”.

I just want to be left alone. I will always vote for the person who promises to leave me alone. It’s as simple as that. Obama plans on bothering me, taxing me for being selfish, raising my electricity rates to stem global warming, and to remove the access the firearms so that I do not hurt myself or others. I don’t need any of that. I need to be left alone.

Good luck to anyone who endears their personal freedom, because this is going to be a long four years. Don’t hide away and don’t give up. Remain active. Write to and call your Senators and Representatives and explain to them what you want. Don’t get mad. Get organized. The Republicans were a huge disappointment, and got what THEY deserved, now we have to make sure WE don’t get stuck with too much of what the Republicans left us with.

A Reversal of Misfortunes

It’s often the case that the conventional wisdom is turned on its ear before the ink has had a chance to dry on the page. So might be the case as the economies of the world endure a reordering the likes of which  our planet has not experienced in generations. What seemingly emenated from the rotten core of American cowboy capitalism has washed across the Atlantic and Pacific and is now gnawing away at the foundations of European and Asian markets like a hurricane levelling the dunes, and the dunes on their shorelines are turning out to be far less sturdy than those protecting America.

The original narrative put forth by the liberal pundits and the European media was one of American over-consumptions, greed, and disregard. It was the end of America’s dominance. We were getting our comeuppance. The political elite in Europe clamored to be quoted and on-record in their prescience regarding the inevitable American meltdown:

European leaders have lined up to hail the triumph of welfare over Wall Street. “The idea that markets are always right was a mad idea,” declared the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. America’s laissez-faire ideology, as practised during the subprime crisis, “was as simplistic as it was dangerous”, chipped in Peer Steinbrück, the German finance minister. He added that America would lose its role as “financial superpower”. The Italian finance minister, Giulio Tremonti, claimed vindication for a best-selling book that he wrote earlier this year about the dangers of globalisation.

The popular consensus in Europe was that they knew, all along, that the excesses of American capitalism were doomed to failure, and that the resulting catastrophe would vindicate their highly-regulated socialist market philosophy. As the subprime crisis began to unravel in America, the Europeans were all-too-eager to point fingers at the cowboy Capitalism in America as the source of this unrest.

And then Europe unraveled.

Iceland is bankrupt. They are now waiting, on pins and needles, for a bailout from the International Monetary Fund. They are busily negotiating with the Russians, the concessions involved can only be eerily pondered. Speaking or Russia, with oil prices getting a 50% haircut in a matter of weeks and the Russian stock market crashing, things aren’t looking too good over there, either:

The markets no longer believe that the spending structure of the Russian state is viable as oil threatens to plunge below $60 a barrel. The foreign debt of the oligarchs ($530bn) has surpassed the country’s foreign reserves. Some $47bn has to be repaid over the next two months.

The nations of Europe have so much bad debt spread around the world that it dwarfs America’s subprime crisis. As reported today by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard,

Austria’s bank exposure to emerging markets is equal to 85pc of GDP – with a heavy concentration in Hungary, Ukraine, and Serbia – all now queuing up (with Belarus) for rescue packages from the International Monetary Fund.

Exposure is 50pc of GDP for Switzerland, 25pc for Sweden, 24pc for the UK, and 23pc for Spain. The US figure is just 4pc. America is the staid old lady in this drama.

You read that right. Austria has bad debt out there in the emerging markets (small, risky economies like Latvia) in an amount equal to 85% of the Austrian GDP. That is a staggering amount. American exposure to bad debt in emerging markets is 4%. As another example, let’s look at China. It is a much larger economy that Iceland, but it is still an emerging market. While the US Dow Jones Industrial Average has tumbled about 37% over the course of 2008, the Chinese market has suffered a 62% decline during that same time. India to the tune of about 56%.

So, while the Americans were irresponsible, the Europeans face an even graver threat to their national balance sheets due to even more irresponsible lending. The American government was practically co-signing millions of mortgages to low-income familes who clearly couldn’t afford to pay back the loans. The Europeans, on the other hand, were sending money overseas, to people in other countries who can’t afford to pay back the loans. If anything, bad loans within your own country are better than bad loans sent off to Estonia or El Salvador. The American government and it’s citizens stand a decent chance of recouping those losses as home values settle and begin to rise again, but foreign debt is not so easy. It might never come back.

As the crisis unfolds, another funny thing is happening. The American dollar, much derided over the past years for it’s weakness, is now relatively strong. In fact, it has gotten very strong over the past few weeks, so much so that it has been a large part of the reason oil prices have been plummeting. As foreign currencies start looking real dicey in comparison to the US Dollar, it has risen dramatically. It’s certainly not guaranteed that the Dollar will stay strong, in fact it will most likely weaken in the near-term, but it’s resiliency in the face of global turmoil is all the more important in comparison to the weak Euro.

A strong dollar. Cheap oil. Russia and OPEC on the ropes and running out of cash. Europe strangling itself with bad foreign debt. Global stock markets crashing. While the US is flirting with a depression, or at least a recession, the rest of the world is getting very ill, indeed. Far from this being the end of the line for the capitalist cowboys in America, this might be where we start picking off struggling foreign firms at rockbottom prices, and chuckling to ourselves as two-bit dictators and the OPEC countries feel the grind. No matter who “started it”, the US is uniquely positioned to profit from it. When this all shakes out, someone will be laughing all the way to the bank.

It’s times like these that separate the strong from the weak. There has been a lot of strong talk about weak America for a long time, and it’s about to be the time where we start to see who can do more than just talk the talk.

Why is Huffington Post all over StumbleUpon? Because Huffington Post pays StumbleUpon to send readers to their site.

Here is the proof.

I just mark them as spam with the StumbleUpon toolbar “tools” link. My topics that I chose to have on StumbleUpon do not include anything remotely related to liberal politics. Still, every 5 or 10 pages when I click the Newspaper Icon on my toolbar is from Huffpo. I have checked and re-checked and there is no reason that garbage should be in my face. So, it is spam to me. I encourage everyone else sick of this crap to mark it as spam, as well.

HuffPo intruding on my stumbling. I tag the HuffoPo trash as spam whenever it pops up any more. It’s too much sick garbage. Those sick puppies need to lighten up over there. I wonder if they’ll eventually delete my account if I keep marking HuffPo as spam, thereby wasting the worthless time of the monkeys at StumbleUpon (owned by Ebay) sorting it out to their own likings. Huffington Post is like an all-star event for loony lefties, day after day.

Excuse me whie I throw up in my mouth.

It hurts me to say this, but I think Obama killed McCain in this debate. I must now prepare myself for a Democratic President. This will take some adjustment on my part to remain sane.

Ask 10 committed Obama supportewrs what it is they support most about his plans for his Presidency, and you’ll recieve 10 completely different answers.

This financial problem, thanks to the Dems and Reps, is turning our country into a socialist state. This is fucked up.

I’m an Athiest. I don’t mind Palin’s views about God or religion. It’s really not something I’m going to concern myself with since she hasn’t been getting in my face about it.

She certainly didn’t seem to be pushing her views on Alaskans during her time as a mayor or as Governor. Even the creationism flap is mostly just truth-stretching and misrepresenting of what she actually said. If you still believe Palin is a creationism supporter then you have to try using fucking Google or something.

The hard left is shrieking about her religious views because they despise her for it, and they assume that others will feel similarly. Unfortunately for the hard left, many Americans are religious and they aren’t disgusted by Sarah Palin’s faith in God. So, while many in the media and the entire liberal left faction of the Democratic base does their best to tear Palin and her family apart and to smear her as a religious extremist, they are just putting their own intolerance on display to the very same people they should be courting for votes.

Back to the regular religious Americans. They believe in God, and they don’t push their views on others. They are not ashamed of their religious views, though, and do not like to feel like “crazies” just because they have religious faith. These regular religious Americans see how much the hard left, and many in the media, have true hatred for Governor Palin - and they recognize that much of this hatred is due to Palin’s religiousness, which is why many of their attacks on her are based on religion, or creationism, or “God’s plan”, or whatever. These Americans reflexively feel defensive for Sarah Palin due to how she is being treated when most people know very, very little about her to base such animosity on. And these Americans themselves feel under attack, since they share many of Sarah Palin’s rural values which the Democrats view as quaint or even primitive and stupid.

The regular religious Americans then connect some dots and make the obvious assumption that the Democratic base and the liberal left would probably despise them, too, if they realized how much they empathized with Palin and how much regular Americans can accept her views so long as she doesn’t push them on others too much.

Most regular, hard-working Americans happen to be religious. I might not be religious, but unlike Obama’s mindless automatons out in the news media and the blogopshere and The View I understand that Obama’s groupies are hurting their own cause by making a juvenile display of their own intolerance and animosity in front of the people they should be trying to relate to.

Sean McCormack has it right.

The US regretted the actions of Venezuela and Bolivia, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

“This reflects the weakness and desperation of these leaders as they face internal challenges, and an inability to communicate effectively internationally in order to build international support,” he said.

This is so dumb. The US is not to blame. This is just ridiculous.

McCormack has it 100% right. It’s an opportunity to laugh at dictators who can’t cut the mustard. Let’s laugh.

Wow, life is pretty heady these days.

All in all, I am getting by on a few core beliefs:

-global warming is still bullshit

-i am still 100% right about everything

-obama still not ready

and

-mccain still not deserving

It’s always suspicious when people are beaten with the club of political correctness.

Granted, the source isn’t exactly solid gold.

Obama redeems a bit here:

“I’ve seen and heard worse,” Obama said. “[Still], in attempting to satirize something, they probably fueled some misconceptions about me instead.”

“But, you know, that was their editorial judgment,” Obama added. “Ultimately, it’s a cartoon, it’s not where the American people are spending a lot of their time thinking about.”

It really is just a cartoon. No big deal. It makes a point. Does the media focus on this meaningless bullshit because this is what sells or because they are too stupid to know what to focus on? I wish I knew the answer to that.