The Great Obama Top-Kill Fail: May 2010 Jobs Report

Remember the Great Stimulus Porkgasm of 2009? The One arrived in Washington in January 2009 with The Mother Of All Spending Bills already written (Golly, Beaver--how did that happen? Maybe His posse already had their lists made up?), and demanded its passage. As in--ya'll don't need to read it, ya'll just need to pass it. Trust Me. Oprah does, and you can too.

If they didn't pass it, why unemployment would approach (gasp!) 10%. If they did, The One promised it wouldn't crack 8%, and The One knows about these things.

In the main, a Congress starved for fresh pork did just that. They never read it, and they passed it.

It didn't work.

Not even close, and even TurboTax Timmy admits it. (Big HT to innocentbystanders. net, by the way)

From Reuters this morning:

The Labor Department said on Friday payrolls rose 431,000 as the government hired 411,000 workers to conduct the population count. That was the largest monthly increase since March 2000 and marked a fifth straight month of gains.

But private employment, a barometer of labor market strength, increased just 41,000 after rising 218,000 in April, as employers opted to increase hours rather than hire new workers. The average workweek rose to 34.2 hours from 34.1 hours in April.

(Think about that second paragraph for a moment. This means that net fewer employees, since retirements and resignations aren't being replaced, are being required to take on more responsibilities, with no increase in compensation. Ya'll know that feeling: The sense that you're now doing the work of three people, instead of one ten or fifteen years ago. It's not just you--it is the reality of our Brave New Economy. And when you burn out, fifteen people stand in line to shoulder your load. It's a wonderful life, here in the land of YesWeCan.)

As many sane voices quietly attempted to explain, it was not going to work, because mathematically, it couldn't work. After almost eighty years of massive governmental interventions and tinkering in the economy and culture, and massive growth of debt, more debt and more intervention proved futile. Debt and intervention are the problem, not the solution.

It was the governmental equivalent of BP's ill-fated attempt to 'top-kill' the infamous oil leak a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. It was a noble effort, but no pump has been built that could push that much oil and gas back down into the ground. If it weren't a major gusher in the first place, the oil rig would still be quietly beavering away, and no one would have given any of it a second thought.

There is no amount of debt and money printing we can engage in that can refloat an economy crippled by debt and money printing. You can't cure a drunk with another case of Jack Daniels--that just accelerates the liver damage. As one old recovered drunk succinctly stated: 'The solution ain't in the problem. The solution's in the solution!'

The analogies break down past a certain point, obviously. But at the points they disintegrate, it only makes us as a culture look more foolish. It isn't like we weren't warned decades ago that the massive growth of government could only end in tears. It isn't like we didn't have the lessons of history at hand, ancient and modern, that demonstrated that only free market/free society/small government models survive, that top-down models always crash, because they must.

And now, as OleSouth prepares to treat the sainted Mrs. OS to breakfast at the local cafe, he is greeted with the visage of Cristina Romer, one of The One's White House shills, cheerfully assuring us all that we just have to give the stimulus programs time to work, etc. etc. etc., that all will be well and all manner of things will be well.

After all, The One is in charge. Trust us. Oprah does.

The interviewer is incredulous.

She doesn't look like she believes it, either, as she engages in verbal Top-Kill.

We now wait to see if the equity markets begin to finally respond realistically to reality. All those fools who bought long for too long are now about to experience the old 'wash-and-rinse', to borrow a favorite phrase from the wonderful Arthur Cutten.

Ray Stevens Says It All: Come To The USA

Laughter is the best medicine. Truth is the greatest disinfectant.

As Ray Stevens weighs in on illegal immigration, he serves up platefuls of both in this new song--as always, cleverly written and produced.

Work Ethic Trumps All: American Students At The Bolshoi School

 In the daily grind of laziness, stupidity, and stupid laziness that so characterizes our culture in the Age of President Teleprompter, the Yew Nork Times brings us all a moment of joy and inspiration.


Two American students and their families are willing to make the huge sacrifices to attend the Bolshoi ballet school in Moscow.

Joy, the young lady, describes the atmosphere.

The standards are such and the work ethic is such in Russia that there is no room for failure, there is no room for laziness, there is no room to be nice when it is not appropriate to be nice,” Joy said. “Russia is the best because there is this demand for excellence that there isn’t in any other part of the world.


Enjoy the article. It truly is inspiring.

AlGore And Tipper

It appears AlGore and Tipper have decided to go their separate ways after forty years of marriage, self-serving and self-righteous lecturing of the rest of us on exactly how we should live, what to drive, eat, watch, listen to, and of course, how to vote.

No bimbo on the horizon yet, but OldSouth can be patient.

AlGore is a Democrat politician. There is always a bimbo.

Wait for it...she's there somewhere in the shadows of his shadowy life.

Expect the book deals to be announced, the Oprah appearances to be booked, the TipperSympathy tours to schedule.

AlGore will find a way to blame the 'Deniers', the Teabaggers, i.e., anyone who disagrees with AlGore.

Just more hot air, as before:

A Good Beginning To The Week: Al-Qaeda #3 Meets His 72 Virgins (or not...)

In any case, he's not amongst us to kill any more innocent people.

The Pakis will whine. When they demonstrate the will to dispatch these monsters themselves, then the US, UK and the rest of the willing West can pack up and go home.

Until then...a big H/T to the military the Democrats hate, the quiet men and women who keep those fools and the rest of us safer in a dangerous world.

'Peace Activists' And Their Culture Of Violence: James Corum Remembers

James Corum is no right-wing nutter living in his mother's basement, as the White House would have us believe about any who dare disagree with The One.

James Corum is Dean of the Baltic Defence College in Estonia. He has taught at American and British staff colleges and is the author of seven books on military history and counter-insurgency. He is a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army Reserve (rtd) and has 28 years' experience as an army officer.

Colonel Corum has a chilling tale to tell of life on the receiving end of the 'peace activists' activities, in the wake of the 'peace activists' activities on behalf of Hamas.

[quote]

I had my first experience with peace lovers in 1965 when my father was the deputy commander of the Presidio of San Francisco, in those days an Army post located right in the centre of the city. Due to its location, it was a magnet for the 1960s-era protests. My father was tasked to deal with anti-Vietnam demonstrations that began with the deployment of US combat troops to Vietnam. A group of seven liberal activists – some of them who later became quite prominent in the Democratic Party in California – requested permission to hold a demonstration on the Presidio. Of course, political demonstrations of any type are forbidden on federal property. My father, following federal law, denied the protest request. My father was also noted in the local press as the one who had turned down the peace activists’ – so a personal target was clearly identified.

The night after my father denied the peace demonstration request our car – a beautiful 1957 Lincoln – was completely destroyed by terrorists. In those days the Presidio was an open post - and anyone had access. From that day on, and for the next few months, we received constant death threats. Federal agents traced a lot of the calls to Berkeley – center of peace activities in the Bay area. When I was twelve I got quite used to picking up the phone and having peace people tell me they would kill our family. When you personally experience terrorism as a twelve year-old, you grow up quickly in terms of understanding politics – and especially understanding the true nature of “peace” activists.

Hmmm...that's 'peaceful', isn't it?

Col. Corum has more to tell, and OS recommends his thoughts to you.

OS also wonders what the man is doing as a retired officer teaching in Estonia, instead of an active general in service of his country. But then again, since there are so many 'peace activists' who have made their way to upper reaches of the government in the past decade, it comes as no surprise. OS notes that the GW Bush administration was also famous for its intolerance of any and all who dared disagree, or demonstrated that potential.

OS also calls to mind the verbal (thankfully not physical) violence he has witnessed by the 'peace activist' types directed toward any who dare offer an alternate opinion to the Party Line. One special moment occurred at church some time back, as a patrician lady attempted to verbally disembowel him in the halls for refusing to accept and post copies of the then latest cause pushed by the Left. OS was much younger and more naive, and left the encounter with his feelings bruised, instead of just seeing the old bat for who she was--an old bat with an abusive streak.

Some wisdom does come with age. Let's be careful out there. As he has stated before, anyone who demonstrates an enthusiasm for spilling blood over a domestic political difference of opinion is someone to be treated with a healthy wariness.

Maybe we're not the problem. Just sayin...

A Memorial Day Story

OS has a few good friends, and one of them has been kind enough to tell him his story as it unfolded over the years. He gave me leave to tell his tale, with sufficient smudging of the details to preserve the anonymity and dignity of both the living and the departed. If you think you know the persons involved, be assured you don't. They are real people, though, and this is a true story. As have all good stories, is has a moral, and OS will just go ahead and get to it:

If the US government is going to put its young people in harm's way, it better have concrete, well-defined goals, a plan to get there, and a definition of 'We Win'. Otherwise, it should sit tight.

And, it should always finish what it begins.

So, with that said, OS would like to relate his friend's story:

[begin]

I remember Stephen dimly, as I had just turned twelve when the news of his death arrived to our house. My father, George, had served with his father, Sam, in the Marianas campaign, which was a bloody grind. If memory serves correctly, they were in the same company.

Our families were next-door neighbors in the years shortly after the war, and the Millers remained in that little house in that little Southern town until Sam's death a few years ago.

Our family moved to different neighborhoods, but we always were in touch with one another. Sam was a fireman who built and flew r/c planes as a hobby, and always seemed to have a project car going in his garage as well. He was so kind, a man of few words, but large of heart.

The news arrived at our house by phone, and I saw Mom disintegrate into distraught tears. I asked what was wrong, and she cried: 'Stephen's been killed in Vietnam!'

The following days were a blur, with the funeral at a Church of God located nearby, next to the local funeral home. I had no real grasp of what had happened, just that everything about life had changed; obviously for Sam, his wife Mary, and younger son Billy, but for us as well.

I had never seen real grief before, and in the years that followed, this grief never went away. It sprouted and grew in the lives of the surviving family. Sam retreated into his Marine stoicism, until the final years, when old age brought back the memories of being wounded, patched up, sent back into the fight, only to be wounded again--three or four cycles at least, compounded by the loss of his first-born son; knowing the US had lost the war that had taken his boy and crippled his family. His death was a mercy, but it left my father bereft of his last friend. I watched him slowly fade away into his loneliness.

Billy attempted to enlist in the Marines as soon as he was eligible, attempting to mislead the corps about his status as sole surviving son. He was, of course, discharged, and sent home. He retreated into work, any work he could find; married, had a child, divorced, drifted, and finally found some peace via Christian faith.

Mary just seemed to die inside. Mom and other friends did what she could, and the doctors kept the antidepressants going, but Mary never came back.

At our house, the grief and fear nested to remain. My older brother, at age sixteen, already violent, began acting out even more than before. My mother knew the draft was coming for him, if his number was low enough, and his school grades were not good, to say the least. She was terrified of losing him, as Mary had lost Stephen, as she herself had lost her first (and perhaps only) true love to WWII in North Africa. My father retreated into his job, his fishing, Boy Scouts, and his constant attempts to corral my brother. I retreated into books, music, girlfriends, church--anything I could respectably do to escape, determined to not be my brother, at any cost. I didn't know what depression was, or that I now lived in the grip of it.

Brother's draft number was in the 320's; so he headed off to college, to wash out, briefly marry and violently divorce; return to another college, drop out, work, re-enter college, chase skirts, drink, fish, drop out, re-enter and finally cobble together a bare-pass state university B.S. after eight years. He eventually married again, bore two sons (like Dad), entered Dad's line of work, bought a house that looked just like the one he grew up in, and buried himself in work, fishing, Boy Scouts--just like Dad. Dad died about two years ago, and brother followed him to the Great Beyond just nine months later, giving his world about ten days' notice that he was suffering an untreatable and aggressive cancer. It fell to me to tell Mom that no, he was not getting better, and yes, he was going to die, soon. I visited him a couple of times before he expired, to find him still angry as always.

I skipped the funeral. It was Brother's show, no need to interfere with it, as I was the bad son who had decided two decades earlier to escape the vale of tears that seemed to break irrevocably over us all in October 1966.

My story is not that interesting. I stuck to my plan of pursuing respectable productivity until the depression took over and would not be ignored. There was a long journey through a dark tunnel, and I little suspected what glories lay on the other side--a loving marriage, children I am humbled to know, a few good friends, and work that produces good things for a lot of other people. I carry a few regrets that don't bear mention here, with blessedly no side trips into major insanities like drug use or crawling into a bottle. But years were lost, and can never be recovered, although I wake up every morning hoping I can claw a few days back if I work hard enough at it.

This whole tale, of course, cannot all be laid at the feet of the death of one Marine. As in all of life, there are many moving parts in every story, many choices made for good or ill by all persons involved.

But 20 October 1966 was a watershed in all our lives.

Rest in peace, Stephen. I hope somehow the grieving stops here, and I pray my children won't live under its shadow.

God bless your memory, and God bless and preserve the United States of America.



[end]

Another Memorial Day, With A Much Different President: Reagan's Remarks At Arlington, May 1986

Shared with thanks to the Heritage Foundation, who posted it earlier today.

Note: The President spoke at 10:10 a.m. at the Memorial Amphitheater. Prior to his remarks, he placed a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

---

Citation: John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project [online]. Santa Barbara, CA. Available from World Wide Web: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=37350.
[begin text]

Today is the day we put aside to remember fallen heroes and to pray that no heroes will ever have to die for us again. It’s a day of thanks for the valor of others, a day to remember the splendor of America and those of her children who rest in this cemetery and others. It’s a day to be with the family and remember.

I was thinking this morning that across the country children and their parents will be going to the town parade and the young ones will sit on the sidewalks and wave their flags as the band goes by. Later, maybe, they’ll have a cookout or a day at the beach. And that’s good, because today is a day to be with the family and to remember.

Arlington, this place of so many memories, is a fitting place for some remembering. So many wonderful men and women rest here, men and women who led colorful, vivid, and passionate lives. There are the greats of the military: Bull Halsey and the Admirals Leahy, father and son; Black Jack Pershing; and the GI’s general, Omar Bradley. Great men all, military men. But there are others here known for other things.

Here in Arlington rests a sharecropper’s son who became a hero to a lonely people. Joe Louis came from nowhere, but he knew how to fight. And he galvanized a nation in the days after Pearl Harbor when he put on the uniform of his country and said, “I know we’ll win because we’re on God’s side.” Audie Murphy is here, Audie Murphy of the wild, wild courage. For what else would you call it when a man bounds to the top of a disabled tank, stops an enemy advance, saves lives, and rallies his men, and all of it single-handedly. When he radioed for artillery support and was asked how close the enemy was to his position, he said, “Wait a minute and I’ll let you speak to them.” [Laughter]

Michael Smith is here, and Dick Scobee, both of the space shuttle Challenger. Their courage wasn’t wild, but thoughtful, the mature and measured courage of career professionals who took prudent risks for great reward—in their case, to advance the sum total of knowledge in the world. They’re only the latest to rest here; they join other great explorers with names like Grissom and Chaffee.

Oliver Wendell Holmes is here, the great jurist and fighter for the right. A poet searching for an image of true majesty could not rest until he seized on “Holmes dissenting in a sordid age.” Young Holmes served in the Civil War. He might have been thinking of the crosses and stars of Arlington when he wrote: “At the grave of a hero we end, not with sorrow at the inevitable loss, but with the contagion of his courage; and with a kind of desperate joy we go back to the fight.”

All of these men were different, but they shared this in common: They loved America very much.

There was nothing they wouldn’t do for her. And they loved with the sureness of the young. It’s hard not to think of the young in a place like this, for it’s the young who do the fighting and dying when a peace fails and a war begins. Not far from here is the statue of the three servicemen—the three fighting boys of Vietnam. It, too, has majesty and more. Perhaps you’ve seen it—three rough boys walking together, looking ahead with a steady gaze. There’s something wounded about them, a kind of resigned toughness. But there’s an unexpected tenderness, too. At first you don’t really notice, but then you see it. The three are touching each other, as if they’re supporting each other, helping each other on.

I know that many veterans of Vietnam will gather today, some of them perhaps by the wall. And they’re still helping each other on. They were quite a group, the boys of Vietnam—boys who fought a terrible and vicious war without enough support from home, boys who were dodging bullets while we debated the efficacy of the battle. It was often our poor who fought in that war; it was the unpampered boys of the working class who picked up the rifles and went on the march. They learned not to rely on us; they learned to rely on each other. And they were special in another way: They chose to be faithful. They chose to reject the fashionable skepticism of their time. They chose to believe and answer the call of duty. They had the wild, wild courage of youth. They seized certainty from the heart of an ambivalent age; they stood for something.

And we owe them something, those boys. We owe them first a promise: That just as they did not forget their missing comrades, neither, ever, will we. And there are other promises. We must always remember that peace is a fragile thing that needs constant vigilance. We owe them a promise to look at the world with a steady gaze and, perhaps, a resigned toughness, knowing that we have adversaries in the world and challenges and the only way to meet them and maintain the peace is by staying strong.

That, of course, is the lesson of this century, a lesson learned in the Sudetenland, in Poland, in Hungary, in Czechoslovakia, in Cambodia. If we really care about peace, we must stay strong. If we really care about peace, we must, through our strength, demonstrate our unwillingness to accept an ending of the peace. We must be strong enough to create peace where it does not exist and strong enough to protect it where it does. That’s the lesson of this century and, I think, of this day. And that’s all I wanted to say. The rest of my contribution is to leave this great place to its peace, a peace it has earned.

Thank all of you, and God bless you, and have a day full of memories.

[end text]

After reading this, one hardly knows what say.

Obama's absence from Arlington today was not only physical.  It was demonstrative of his ethical and spiritual absence from the country he disdains whilst occupying its highest office.

This Memorial Day, we remember those young men and women. And we remember what it felt like to have a patriot in the Oval Office.

“At the grave of a hero we end, not with sorrow at the inevitable loss, but with the contagion of his courage; and with a kind of desperate joy we go back to the fight.”

22 Shot In Chicago In One Day--No One In Custody Yet

H/T Marathon Pundit, the excellent Chicago-land blogger.

Life has been lively in ObamaLand, with 22 people shot in multiple incidents, and no one in custody yet.

At least 22 people were wounded in separate shootings around the city roughly between noon Saturday and noon Sunday, including a man who died this morning after he was shot in the head, Chicago police said.

At a news conference this morning, Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis said that nearly half of the shootings appear to be gang-related, including the fatal incident. Weis added that at least two of the other victims have refused to cooperate with police, "which makes the job of our detectives ... far more difficult."

One of the shootings was particularly disturbing because one of the female victims was eight months pregnant, the superintendent said. 

No one in custody for any of the incidents.

For those not familiar with Chicago, there is a strict hand-gun ban in place. Which means, of course, that law-abiding citizens who understandably don't wish to get sideways with the criminal justice system don't own handguns. And thugs, who care not a fig for the rule of anyone's law, do have them.

Hmmm....and if the armed thugs outnumber the police, and have the law-abiding types in the neighborhoods terrorized, what happens to the culture of the city?

Again, let's remember, this is the place from which President Obama rose to power. This is the culture and model of governance he knows. He steadfastly supports gun bans for the law-abiding.

Do we wish the Chicago model of governance, which produces this sort of outcome, exported to all fifty states, their counties, cities, and towns? 

The map of Chicago murders for 2008:

And, as a reminder, Chicago has been run for decades by...