CART WILLIAMS

Always crusty, sometimes cranky,
always on the right, seldom if ever wrong
yet hardly ever dangerous.

On a mission to impose a one hundred and
eighty degree course correction on a confused and
divided nation headed in the wrong direction.

They have chosen a grand destiny for themselves. In their hearts they know they’re doing it for self-aggrandizing reasons, but it’s bothersome to actually have to admit that, even to themselves. And I imagine some of the most callous and cynical take secret delight in it.

Either way, it is a species of madness (literally). The ship is being steered by madmen and women, prepared to sail the razor’s edge between a force radical ‘transformation’ and total chaos. It is a crisis unlike anything the nation has ever seen. What have we learned?

They are planning several steps ahead. Shaping the battlefield and anticipating our responses.

They are counting on our inability to fully fathom their scheme in time for us to respond. Keeping one step ahead and forcing us to react to current proposals so that we miss the big picture and are unprepared for what comes next.

They are wielding their full arsenal: the mainstream-media, academia, the Hollywood propaganda machine, street level organizations (ACORN etc.), unions etc. in an integrated and coordinated fashion.

They have a coherent narrative, though it quickly falls apart under scrutiny: ‘Bush and the reactionary, antiquated worldview he represents are the sources of all our troubles. Reject them and embrace our highest therapeutic ideals and all will be well.’ It strikes emotional chords and causes many to stop thinking. But it is paper thin and has already started to unravel.

What can we expect?

It would be foolhardy (as VDH suggests) not to assume an immediate barrage of new, equally sweeping statist legislation, passed through equally underhanded means. Caution and uncertainty held them back for a while; no longer. They feel they have some momentum now.

Indeed my greatest concern is that many Republican politicians and conservative commentators only partly grasp this. Yes, the repeal of healthcare must be pursued, but this is only one piece of a much wider program, and it is that program which must be assailed in toto. We must attack individual legislation, but we must also paint the broader picture in explicit terms. It used to seem outlandish to say that Obama et al. were radical socialists, now it seems at least plausible to most.

The Dems will seek to foment a measure of civil strife, believing this will facilitate their task. They do not necessarily seek total civil and economic chaos, just enough to demonize the right and provide cover for their sweeping unilateral restructuring of America. However they are prepared to accept total chaos as the necessary price of their great transformation. You can take that to the bank.

They are counting on one thing above all: our apathy and sense of resignation. (That is why demonizing all opposition – only weeks after Obama called Republican concerns ’sincere’ and ‘well intended’ has become a top priority for them.) In this I think they have badly miscalculated.

You have to hand it to them though, they have planned their revolution well. Though I still think their healthcare ‘victory’ will, in the long run, prove more costly than they realize.

What do we do now?Prager offers some good advice.

In a nutshell, we must all become political activists now. Engage everyone you know nonstop until November. Make political agitation the top priority of your daily life. (I know, the thought is odious to me too.) Talk to your conservative and moderate friends and family about it all the time. Keep reinforcing that sense of urgency. Discuss together how you can mobilize votes, reach out to conservative groups in your community and keep these issues front and center all the time. Open your pocket-books. Plan and participate in as many events as you can, small and large, rallies and marches, tea-parties and townhalls. That is the great power of democracy. Use it (while you still can), it is a decisive weapon.

Also, engage with the centre-left and moderate Dems you know and meet. Discuss the issues, humanize your concerns in a non-confrontational manner. Plant the seeds of doubt and keep watering them. I personally know several Liberals (some of them fairly far to the Left) who are badly disappointed by Obama, a couple are even angry, feeling betrayed by his high-handed about face on bipartisanship and transparency, and wary of healthcare. I’m certain that if elections were held today, several would refrain from voting for him again. Keep working those angles.

Uncomfortable as it may be (especially with family members) bring up the unsustainable debt and the sweeping statism in sincere, non-confrontational tones… and keep at it. Even if 1 in 10 have a change of heart, then it is a worthwhile effort.

Also, gird your loins for we will take more hits. Each one will be painful, but convert that into the will to act and it becomes useful. Make them feel it come November.

As for leadership, that is that great X factor. Has anyone heard from yet? The buzz is that he is thinking of running. On the Republican ticket? (I don’t know why but I get the sense that there is a deep reverence for the Constitution and all it represents in his soul.)

I think a Petraeus-Palin ticket might be a killer combo. He has the gravitas, experience, leadership, tactical and strategic savvy, eloquence, knowledge and trust of the nation to be formidable candidate.

It is time to call the question.

The leftists and their co-conspirators in the entrenched media have seized control over the government and they are making it in their image against the will of the voters, I believe.

They did not run on this platform. It was concealed and propagandized as something entirely different.

We should not fear asking to call the question. Do we wish to unravel our free market enterprise for socialist/communist/Maoist or any other type of leftist system? If we do, then we have to live with what our countrymen vote for…or leave, I suppose.

If we do not, we should not endure a stealth takeover of the system. We need transparency and we need to call it what it is. We need to stand in accusation against the conspirators and shine a light on them. We need to call the question.

I hope I'm wrong. Of course, I do not know if Amnesty would mean they could instantly register to vote for the November 2010 elections (2012 almost certainly), or if some other steps would be required by the legislation. But to me, it looks like this is the reason that the Democrats feel absolutely no need to listen to the wishes of the majority of the electorate right now.

Simply put; they are not legislating for this current electorate. They are legislating for the electorate-to-come, the one that will exist after Amnesty is granted to 15-30 million new Democrat voters. It's a trump card.

Essentially, this means that 2008 could end up being the last major election that our current electorate (as demographically constituted today) will ever have participated in. Thus, they know that they might never have to answer to this current electorate again.

A Zogby poll for the Center for Immigration Studies found that 56 percent of Hispanics, 57 percent of Asian-Americans and 68 percent of African-Americans think legal immigration is too high.

I am honestly frightened by the direction in which we are moving. There are points beyond which certain actions may be justified but we aren't there yet.

The country's toughest sheriff takes rehabilitation to new levels. Already passed by the state's Senate and currently being reconciled with a similar version in the House, the bill would essentially criminalize the presence of the 460,000 illegal immigrants living in the state.

The measure allows police to detain people on the suspicion that they are illegal immigrants, outlaws citizens from employing day laborers, and makes it illegal for anyone to transport an illegal immigrant, even a family member, anywhere in the state.

McCain is in the midst of one of the toughest primary campaigns of a lengthy career in politics.

McCain, who once back a bipartisan effort to grant illegal immigrants amnesty, has deflected questions about whether he supports the legislation.

Contender J.D. Hayworth, a former Republican congressman, however, has come out to actively support the bill and used McCain's ambiguity to attack him.

"Sen. Russell Pearce of the Arizona State Senate has worked very hard to combat illegal immigration and I think his Senate bill 1070 is a good bill," Hayworth told ABC News.

Obamacare has been signed into law, and I feel healthier already. I think I’ll get pregnant with octuplets, demand free prenatal care, and then decide to abort in the eighth month, because a pregnancy belly makes me look fat.

Obamacare is an amazing thing. Like the mortgage mess, it’s an example of knowledgeable people going against their own best interests, in a way that is bound to cause great misery.

My take on things like this is that they have their root in the supernatural. There is no other way to explain such a dumb course of action, taken by so many people who knew better. Democrat politicians are virtually begging to be recalled. When has that ever happened?

But if anyone is interested in the role of race on the battlefield, one could probably do far better in skipping Hanks, and reading instead E.B. Sledge’s brilliant memoir, With the Old Breed, that has a far more sophisticated analysis of race and combat on Peleliu and Okinawa, and was apparently (and I hope fairly ) drawn upon in the HBO series. (Sledge speaks of atrocities on both sides in the horrific close-quarter fighting on the islands, but he makes critical distinctions about accepted and non-accepted behaviors, the differences between Japanese and American attitudes, and in brilliant fashion appreciates the role of these campaigns in the larger war.

One should memorize the last lines of his book.)

It would be easy to say that Hanks knows about as much about history as historians do about acting; but that would be too charitable. Anyone with a high school education, or an innate curiosity to read (and Hanks in the interview references works on the Pacific theater), can easily learn the truth on these broad subjects.

In Hanks’ case, he is either ignorant and has done little real research, or in politically-correct fashion has taken a truth about combat in the Pacific (perceptions of cultural and racial difference often did intensify the savagery of combat) and turned it into The Truth about the origins and conduct of an entire war—apparently in smug expectation that such doctrinaire revisionism wins applause these days in the right places (though I doubt among the general public that he expects to watch the series.)

Mitt Romney's new book, "No Apology: The Case for American Greatness," will debut on top of the New York Times bestseller list due out March 21, a source tells me. (The Author is neither a liar nor a homosexual and Mormonism is not devil worship. Therefore, he is not automatically disqualified. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of FNC's Huckleberry).

Romney's book tour has, so far, attracted pretty large crowds, serving -- along with the book sales -- to reassure his supporters that, though he may not draw Sarah Palin style hordes, he's a figure of genuine popular interest. He reportedly attracted more than 1,000 people to a book signing in Naples, Fla. last night.

See nutbag butterfly expert Paul Ehrlich... once again, rearing his ugly head.

Back in 1968, this bozo predicted that hundreds of millions would starve to death in decades, and suggested placing sterilizing agents in the water. He predicted food riots across the globe, and blamed western civilization for everything. And, yet despite this charlatan never being right about anything.... he's back.

In the thick of the climate-gate scandal, he urged his global warming "colleagues" to go after the skeptics, instead of improving the science.

No surprise. What drives green activism isn't saving the planet - it's a hatred of humanity, and an envy of those who succeed.

Adding an unaffordable entitlement to already bankrupt entitlements; making energy unaffordable; raising taxes; harassing business; growing government while the economy shrinks; shrinking the economy while government grows; and most important of all, draining the wealth out of the middle class. Squeezing the last savings and remaining asset value out of them.

The Democrats have won countless political victories because they have persuaded easily gullible voters that the money is readily available to fund the welfare state. We merely need to slightly increase the taxes of wealthy individuals like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.

The reality, of course, is that there are simply not enough rich people to pick up the tab—and the very poor pay next to no taxes. This means middle class citizens, especially those earning their living in the private sector, must ultimately pay the bills.

“I think I just summed up southern Europe, Northern Europe in about a year, California in about five years, and the U.S. in about ten.”

California probably cannot be saved. I am nonetheless much more optimistic regarding the purple and red states. They cannot afford, however, to allow themselves to be conned by any dead cat economic bounce.

Their citizens must relentlessly push for a sharp decrease in the size of their municipal and state governments. The odds are on their side. They simply have to stay focused.

There is no serious discussion in California to allow offshore oil drilling. What more do you need to know? The idiots are in the majority. It is quite obvious that the more difficult decisions will never be reached.

On average, government employees, state and federal, nationwide make about 50% more (in salary, pension, and benefits) than their counterparts in the private sector.

I am looking over a pile of form letters and going over emails of anguish, all decrying the cuts in state government. Indeed, I just got my regular alumnus email note from the UC system — outraged over the destruction of the university through massive budget cuts. Of course, there is very little self-reflection in all of this furor. Not one of these notices suggests, “There is no money left. It does not grow on trees. Look in the mirror.”

You, the Greedy — Not Us, the Anointed

No, nothing is much said about the gargantuan number of UC administrators, their pay, the percentage of administrative costs in the budget, the number of non-academic employees serving in the system, or any explanation why the rate of annual increase in the university budget has consistently over the years exceeded the rate of inflation — in many years at twice the rate of inflation.

What is the rationale for the United States, the world's greatest debtor nation, putting itself deeper in debt to China to send foreign aid to nations that will never repay us and that vote habitually with China and against us in the United Nations?

This city does not seem to grasp that the days of wine and roses are over. We are not in the 1950s or 1960s anymore. Then, we could throw open our markets to imports from the world. Then, we could dish out foreign aid and fight wars in Vietnam with 500,000 men, while maintaining 50,000 troops in Korea and 300,000 in Europe.

We apparently are reaching a point in the process at which failure to modify behavior will place us inexorably on the path of Weimar Germany.

Hyperinflation, economic collapse and then, who knows. We can read the history of Germany to get one possible path and it isn't a pretty one.