Yes, never forget that the left runs on sheer Loser Power. Thus, the creation of more losers always results in more power for the left.

You're absolutely correct, Gerard.

Good point, Gerard. I was just reading the poignant posting of our friend Wretchard re: the fate of Detroit. Don't forget the possibility that Barack Obama can do for America what Coleman Young did for the Motor City. There is no more secure Democrat stronghold than Detroit, no matter how corrupt or clown-like the behavior of their politicians. If that's the goal, they've started on the road to it.

Honestly, I can't visualize a world where this would happen. I tell myself that I can, but I can't. Were freedom loving Americans outnumbered in Detroit? I know dozens of freedom loving Detroiters that work with me today - I'm in Florida, BTW.

I keep asking myself why we are given this legislation in the same manner that geese have their livers converted into fois gras. It doesn't make any sense using any kind of long term thinking. It's almost as if V.I. Lenin himself is calling the tactical shots. It's going to be an interesting year, I fear. I predict a long, hot summer.

I hear the rumblings of laughter from the English Cemetery in Rome wherein lie the ashes of Antonio Gramsci. How he would have enjoyed reading this and been gratified that not only were his plans implemented, but that the adversaries of his philosophy would advocate the same tactics to reverse its success. About turn! Loooooong Maaarr-chh!

Nah - the bribery of the hoi-polloi, the welfarism that you describe, will work, just as it has in the UK. We've had Gramsci's disciples in power for 12 years and HM's Opposition (a putative 'Conservative' (ha!) government after the General Election in the Spring) is also riddled with them (even supposing they win - which is by no means certain).

The Long March continues apace (in the wrong direction) and is inexorable. The Oval Office is crawling with commies. The last bastion of freedom has fallen. Blair was the Trojan Horse that carried them into No.10; Obama is your equivalent - with knobs on - in the occupation of the White House.

Prove me wrong FFS. Please, please prove me wrong!

It needs saying by as many of us as can say it. There is no silver lining, no light at the end of the tunnel. This is Very Bad and the fix was in almost two years before the election.

To live politically moment by moment and think you have the full import of the situation is to be lulled into fantastical denial.

The "hook" is not only deep it is everywhere, embedded in every sinew of society.

Just one minor example that I encountered last week: my elder daughter is currently a junior in college. For her psychology final they had to write a paper on Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers." The main theme of the course, and the book, being that it is not your intelligence, talent or hard work that determines your success in life but it is more a stroke of luck combined with what society/community gives you.

It is the perfect Democratic mind set; i.e. if you are a high earner it is largely a result of luck and you don't "deserve" it and therefore it can be justly taken away from you.

Gerard speaks of conservatives dreaming...boy ain't that the truth.

Wave a magic wand and put a conservative in the White House right now. How much control over the bureaucracy does he/she really have? They certainly would have little say over State or the CIA. These departments would be in open warfare with the President just like they were when Bush was in office.

The Republican party is completely out of touch and I'm afraid that "conservatives" are too split on social issues to get any kind of majority. Most likely a Tea Party movement will simply split the conservative vote and ensure Democratic victory.

To end on a sadder note, if that is possible, today we learn that Sen. Reid has inserted a line in the Health Care bill that would prevent future Congresses from changing it. You can't make this stuff up. How that is Constitutional completely escapes me but logic went out the window quite awhile ago.

So, perhaps the question for us is, to quote Sean Connery in "The Untouchables," "What are you prepared to do?"

The voters didn't want to know what was in Barry's background, no matter how loudly the rest of us yelled about it and linked to it.

The voters wouldn't even have given Barry a shot if the experience of Jimmy Carter had any value to them.

During this health care fiasco the anti-forces have been busy arguing, like they did with HillaryCare, the plan will cost too much, be of poor quality, and have unintended consequences. That just left the voters waiting for a government takeover of health care with the right people saying in the right way this will cost less and provide better outcomes. The truth is even if it cut costs 90%, doubled life-expectancy, and ended diabetes it's an atrocity to be avoided at all costs.

The citizens want their American Idol and "free stuff" and if it puts us all in gulags, they are told they will be nice gulags so why not?

Our side constantly underestimates the intrinsic evil in our oppopents and sprains our shoulders patting ourselves on the back for objecting to the takeover of our country in tones suitable for a country club luncheon while our opponents call us war criminals for wanting to keep the smallest bit of our wealth and liberty.

Save your country, punch a hippy professor.

Obama is bent on destruction.

The political class - not the elected portion, but the punditry, lobbyists, and media - cannot comprehend a government narrative of tomorrow that is not substantially the same as today. The same including, but in no way nearly limited to: deficit spending, corruption, gross incompetence, bad faith, and shameless hackery... as a start.

But Congress... the Congress is where the actual nuts and bolts and fissile material that are going to destroy what we thought was our republic is stored.

Congress is Oak Ridge and Three Mile Island and Manzanar.

Congress has been pushing a knife into the back of the Republic for more than half a century. Sometimes fast, but never so fast as to goad the people into really fighting back.

Thursday morning the hilt will settle against the skin just left of the spine, between the shoulder blades. All that will be left is for the heart to tear itself to pieces against the evil blade.

There is no "going back" once the Ming hits the flagstones.

Merry Christmas.

Hah. Many Democrats will feel the voters' lash in 2010 and 2012, just like 1994. But like Clinton, Obama will sail to term number two. Expunging one's innate racism with a diligent swipe in the privacy of the voting booth is like taking that diligent extra swipe with the fourth wad of paper in the privacy of the toilet. Both make the party feel good about themselves, but no one else really gives a damn.

Wow. Thanks Gerard. I've been consoling myself that maybe - just maybe - that 2010 and 2012 will undo this horror.

Alas - your words ring all too true.

Kinda funny - in my youth - I was a fan of Hal Lindsey and all that biblical end-times prophesy stuff (I'm still a bit entralled by it). Now that it is actually here - it does kinda suck. Hope the rapture happens - like - real soon!!!!

We live in "Interesting Times" indeed.

My two cents on Gerard's cheery piece:

What happens when a) the Donks finally run out of other people's money, b) they can no longer deliver even a semblance of the goods to the dependent class, and c) said dependent class is no longer willing to accept the excuses they're being offered?

I think we all know what's likely to happen....

"The Yellow Brick Road to Utopia usually ends at the foot of a scaffold."

Wow Gerard, I've never seen u so glum. Santa not coming this year??

JK. I believe you are probably right. My best bud from way back, who I still see regularly flat out tells me when I try to educate him about what's going on that he doesn't want to hear it. As long as he has his big screen tv and his feedbag he doesn't want to be bothered.

His wife is even worse in this way as all she does is, literally, play World of Warcraft from the time she wakes up, till she trudges off to bed.

It's sad really. They truly do not care about the country enough to be bothered.

On the other hand his parents are highly upset about what's going on, and so is my entire family in four different states. So are my instructors at school and most of my fellow students.

Quite a cross- section wouldn't you say?

So, save the crying for the funeral Gerard. It ain't over till your dead. Who knows what the future will bring.

I agree with a portion of your analysis. I cannot agree that conservativism is spent. Conservativism is a fairly simple concept. There are the three big poles in the tent - fiscal conservativism, social conservativism, and a strong defense. The other ancillary issues dancing around the sides are things such as federalism, etc.

I do not see any of these areas of conservativism as dead. Social conservatism is very much alive, though not as significant an issue I think, as it was three decades ago. On national defense, that peg is solid. It is the fiscal peg that is truly out of whack and is today, a cancer in the body of conservatism. The fiscal peg has been growing ever more out of whack since about 1996. Republicans have not only been unable to impose fiscal discipline, they have given the appearance of not caring. I think that is why conservativism appears at best lackluster and without any new answers today.

When Bush and Congressional Republicans tossed aside fiscal conservatism for eight years, they engendered cynicsm and loss of respect from their base and from independants. Indeed, even when McCain was running, you will recall that Republicans in Congress refused to promise to give up earmarks. I think both John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have a lot to answer for.

That said, the vast bulk of our economic woes have nothing to do with earmarks. Republicans have been fighting a rigged battle since FDR. Entitlement programs, once in place, have been protected by the left with complete success. Reagan came to power promising to reign in the stifiling regulatory schemes and entitlement programs. He mostly failed at both, and unfortunately, subsequent conservatives who have addressed these issues have not done so with fire and tenacity necessary to succeed. If anything, the fire has wained.

The simple fact is that the laws and regulations passed by the left have ever more put the screws to our economy through market distortions. The massive boom and subsequent bust of the housing market leading to our current fiscal nightmare can be traced directly back to Bill Clinton, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. They forced lowered lending standards through the CRA as a social engineering project, then defended it at every turn until it failed. I've traced the history of this in some detail at http://wolfhowling.blogspot.com/2008/10/hurricane-subprime-part-i-1977-to-2000.html

And as it stands, all of the chickens seem now to be coming home to roost. The lefts war on domestic oil, coal and other forms of energy production accounts now for half of our annual trade imbalance. The left's near three decade push to stifle production through environmental laws and to take hold of the economy hangs on a knife's edge with the EPA's recent finding that carbon is a dangerous pollutant responsible for global warming. Then, of course, there are the massive entitlement programs that threaten to bankrupt us - Soc. Security and Medicaid. The former has been run as a huge Ponzi scheme that would make Barnie Madoff appear as a common pick pocket while the latter has been ill managed. The left has been successful protecting these programs against any and all efforts at significant reform. And now Obama wants to double down on taxes, entitlements and market distorting regulations with Health Care, Cap and Trade and new financial regulations. Just as an aside, those regulations include a vast expansion of the CRA that got us into our current near depression. http://wolfhowling.blogspot.com/2009/06/obamas-prescription-for-our-recession.html

The inability to impose fiscal discipline during the Bush administration coupled with the symbolic refusal to forgo earmarks have left the conservatives disheartened - and thus the appearance of death. I prefer to think of it as in a hospital bed, just taken off the respirator.

What will recussitate conservativism is when a leader arises who can articulate what needs to be done to put us on sound financial footing, balance the budget, and reduce the tangle of over regulation, market distortions and massive entitlements. That has proven impossible over the past three or more decades. Simple memes that have been used over those three decades to promise fiscal discipline will not suffice. They will appear, as you have noted, to be merely an intent to do what has already been tried and failed.

Fortunately, there is a clear and growing dissatisfaction with the Obama prescriptions of massive new entitlements and regulations. I do not see that beneficial to the left in any way. But it will go unexploited unless someone can come along and explain how we get out of this mess. And if there is enough pushback against Obama in '10 and '12, then it might be possible to do something.

For example, the left has horribly abused environmental laws, most if not many of which are reasonable on their face, to stifle production and construction across America. They need to have the right to sue carefully and deeply circumscribed, and decisions on environmental policy needs to be taken out of the courts and left in specialist agencies and our elected law makers. Indeed, if you want to know why the EPA made the recent decision to name carbon a pollutant, it was because of a court case that saw five noted climate scientists on the Supreme Court decide that such is what needed to happen. It is an incredibly costly travesty.

Whoever it is that takes the leadership needs to address fiscal conservatism in just enough detail and with just concrete ideals to present a coherent and understandable plan. Merely saying tax cuts just will not recussitate conservatism.

Despair not, be of good cheer. Thinking people with transferable skills will always find refuge. Don't limit your life, consider voting with your feet when it becomes untenable here. Turn the negative into a positive, be all you can be, show them you are better than they are.

This is the way I see it. If the progressives, in their misguided belief in equality of outcome take all I own and redistribute it, next year I will again have money and the great unwashed will again be broke. The difference is that next year the progs will need to rob someone else, we will be gone.

Merry Christmas, outlaws.

Your despair is not caused by the destroyers of civilization, who are a constant, but the quality of the defenders. That is what we own, and that is all we can address.

Your despair is not caused by the destroyers of civilization, who are a constant, but the quality of the defenders. That is what we own, and that is all we can address.

Good post, James. Thanks.

Expect the unexpected is all I can say. I assume you take this link into account and also the story of Rubio vs. Crist, the upset in N.J. and VA., etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP2p91dvm6M&feature=player_embedded

Merry Christmas!

I'm a little concerned that you ended with a Jacksonian call, which I believe is one the legacies that have led us down the historical road that many of us find so appalling today.

Appealing to the chimera of personal charisma and the will of an uneducated, ignorant mob has given us the cabal of Obama, Pelosi and Reid. I'm no fan of populism and no fan of Jackson. He was a democrat demi-god who expanded presidential power and played on the emotions of unhappy men to attain his goals. His tenure didn't enhance the Republic, but it certainly made it's mark and enabled the men who followed to befoul the document they were meant to honor.

I do agree that we're in for a long haul, maybe an inevitable sink, half of the populace pay no taxes, many believe government services bear no cost, my fellow citizens are ignorant sons of bitches and couldn't damn as long as the cable is running and they can surf porn on the internet.

I think we're fucked three ways to Sunday. Unless the standard republican GOP, conservative folks look to another way (and I doubt they'll find a way out of their squared tight, socially constricted box to fight for a better way) to champion their case, I think we're doomed.

Merry Christmas.

There was a rabbi who sang and danced (as is the Chassidic tradition) while he was being held in a death camp. Was his situation worse than ours? Let's try to cheer up just a little. God works in mysterious ways.

Here's the original song The Carol of the Bells is based on
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzRrGohy-jQ

If we have indeed become them, where's this much-talked-about "hope"?

That is how they got where they are, after all, isn't it? Failure simply never was an option. Every single election they lost, must have been due to Diebold tampering. The Will Of The People was "always" behind them.

On the conservative side, we've got all these Gloomy Gus people. They see a fellow conservative who is an optimist, and there's an unfinished task. The defeat has to be spread around. It's a primal urge. "I don't have any hope so you can't have any either."

All right, I'm a realist. If you want to recruit me to the "There's No Hope" doom-and-gloom chorus, here's the question I would like to see answered. Much of the previous century, we continued to dabble in socialism -- this is not our first foray by any means. Our movement has been everlastingly cyclical. Seven out of ten Presidential elections go to the conservative. Now, if the people aren't learning anything...if the conservative, constitutional-constraint movement really is like a candle, and once extinguished it is as dead as Joan of Arc...then how is this cyclical reverberation possible?

And why are people, generally speaking, so much more exuberant and excited about spreading despair than about spreading hope?

The fall of constitutional government was a foregone conclusion. Not once, in the history of humanity, has any form of government persisted beyond a century or two. Oh, they may maintain a seemingly consistent outward form but the inner workings always end up as something quite different from what the founders envisioned. Rome kept a senate in place for hundreds of years after the establishment of imperial rule. The ancients tried several variants on democratic government and invaribly wound up with some form of authoritarian rule. And so it has gone right through to the present day.

The American government of today is nothing like that envisioned by the patriot founders and hasn't been for decades. The Constitution is no longer the foundational law of the land. The guiding principle is whatever current fashion dictates implemented by pure expediency. We see that once accord is reached among branches of the government then rule is by oligarchy and the will of the people is ignored. There is some question about whether the court will go along but it is not a great risk to bet that it will.

Human ambition, always wedded to human delusion, will not allow these matters to remain static. The ambitious will work relentlessly to make their "dream" a reality. Unfortunately one man's dream is, not infrequently, a nightmare for others.

John:

'Fix Bayonets!'

I sent 50 bucks to Mr. West during his last election bid and he sent me a personal note of thanks...Not some form letter.

Good man, that.
A Patriot through and through.

I'm afraid you're absolutely correct.

Right you are Morgan, the signs of overreach are much more evident, than at any other time, and with the likes of Col. West, and a few others, including
our preferred candidate, we can prevail. But counsels of despair, are much more satisfying for some, including our dear host Gerald

Might just as well kill myself now and save a lot of unnecessary time and money.

We'd all be happier in hell than in America AD 2010.

I don't agree. While the peaceful road back is getting more unlikely, I believe we can take back this nation through the Republican party. It must be done at the very lowest grass roots political level. The precinct captain.

There are several organizations organizing people at this level to put constitutionally minded people in all levels of government. This can work. The 912 project is getting behind it. So is Campaign for Liberty.

We try. We give our best with the system we have. If we fail, then we do what we have to. However, NONE of us wants the mess that we will live through if we fail, and we fail by default if we don't try.

www.nationalprecinctactivits.com

If this were an internal cumbustion engine, we would be part way into the compression cycle. You KNOW what comes next . . .

The destruction of family, values, and education had begun in earnest two generations ago, coupled with assisted importation and breeding of lower social strata.

The terrible fruit of those treasonous policies is the youth of today -- throngs of bangers, imbeciles, and emasculated victims. The Greatest Generation this most assuredly isn't.

Both parties prodded us along this path, beholden as they are to the same plutocrats, so the dichotomy of the political scene is assuredly a false one. Who cares about Obama? He's nothing more than a convenient and pliant figurehead. Cheering as one party overtakes the other is akin to the satisfaction of watching your favorite patch of gangrene win the race to the groin up one of your legs.

This is all to say that 2010 is moot. The demographic momentum is unstoppable, and so it doesn't matter whether the current crisis will impoverish sufficient millions to secure an unassailable handout-seeking (and non-tax-paying, I might add) voter majority. Nor whether amnesty will add sufficient millions to the rolls to the same effect.

If such an ironclad national-level majority doesn't happen in 2010, it will happen soon thereafter.

Given this unpleasant demographic reality, the only civil option that I see is to create local majorities of productive individuals, to avoid taxes inasmuch as humanly possible, and to have state legislators and county sheriffs resist the federal confiscation imperative. The 10th Amendment movement needs our support, though surely the spineless and complicit SCOTUS will not dare upset the Commerce Clause apple cart. However, this strategy must be exhausted before other things are tried.

My advice to folks is stay light on your feet if you aren't well situated geographically. Bankrupt collectivist shitholes such as CA are ratcheting up taxes as services dwindle and the unwashed grow more restless. The time to head for the exit is near at hand.

I love how people say how corrupt, Marxist, etc. the ruling class in DC is then turn around and say "just wait until November"! Like they will just give up power!! Like they acquired power legitimately to begin with. McFly! Wake up.

November doesn't matter.
It's all just re-arranging deck chairs.

Blair sunk UK.
Obama sunk US.

The self-appointed-overlords watch the serfs lick their boots, and they allow us to whine a bit.

We could go back to our web archives all the way to 2007 to show the current GOPe class, (even Rush is/was clueless) how totally insulated they are from the street, the ascendant power of the Left, and from the Dirt People, the Breitbarts.

Try and argue with them and they will sneer and call you names. Try to get them to see what they don't see about the times they are living in and you'll get pejoratives enough to swim in. Having failed to predict, they now cloak themselves in "Principles!!" as though the world ran on such a quaint notion.

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