Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Islam Rears its Hateful Head

Instapundit #tcot

We ignore this at our peril.

Is Eqypt Siding With Israel

John Batchelor  #tcot
It is a warning to Hamas that the Egyptian Army may soon get involved on the border.  Repeat, the Egyptian Army may soon get involved.  No mobilization yet, but Aaron Klein reports that all Egyptian Army leaves are cancelled.  On standby.  Hamas can see the hammer and forge, the IDF and the Egyptian Army.

Morality in Free Markets?

Asia Times  #tcot
It is becoming an increasingly obvious fact of economic history that the development of economic systems which concentrate on the common good depends on a determinate ethical system, which in turn can be born and sustained only by strong religious convictions. Conversely, it has also become obvious that the decline of such discipline can actually cause the laws of the market to collapse. An economic policy that is ordered not only to the good of the group - indeed, not only to the common good of a determinate state - but to the common good of the family of man demands a maximum of ethical discipline and thus a maximum of religious strength.

I agree that markets need to be influenced by a moral system but is religion the "only" source of that morality?

H/T American Digest

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

When Tolerance is a Charade

Vox  Popoli #tcot 
Equality has always been a fraud and the cultural tolerance model based on it is little more than assisted societal suicide.

Monday, December 29, 2008

Socialized Medicine Kills

Don Surber  #tcot #diggcons
A woman in Kent: “I’m beginning to agree with the way America works now! You get what you pay for by looks of it. Sad but true.”

Choosing Our Battles

American Thinker #tcot #diggcons
I want to discuss the impending transformations that are already out of our hands.
(A) The Judiciary
(B) Health Care Reform:
(C) Higher Taxes
(D) The War on Terrorism:
(E) Bailouts

There are, however, proposed changes that conservatives must challenge and certain fundamental principles we must protect:
(1) Illegal immigration
(2) Education:
(3) Religious Expression:
(4) The Global Warming Hoax.

Vaclav Klaus May Talk Some Sense to the EU

FT  #tcot #diggcons
One takes the form of President Vaclav Klaus, whose opinions on the euro, climate change and the EU’s Lisbon institutional reform treaty range from quirky to hostile and put him far ­outside mainstream EU thinking.

Government Cannot Be Trusted With Your Inofrmation

Newmark's Door #tcot #diggcons
When morality and justice are increasingly at odds with the law, it is time to challenge and change the law and the government that created it.

Creative Ideas for Conservatives

Newmark's Door  #tcot #diggcons
1. Phased-in--current recipients get all promised benefits--increase in the age for full Social Security/Medicare benefits to 75.

2. The Federal government sells a lot of its 600+ million acres of land.

3. A two-year freeze of federal spending (except for interest on the debt and defense).

4. Cuts in marginal personal and corporate income tax rates, payroll tax rates, and capital gains tax rates.


Good News - Bad News

Marginal Revolution #tcot #diggcons
We're in a race to see whether politics will become the dominant means of allocating financial wealth in this country.  That could be the single biggest domestic issue today, but too few economists are speaking up about it.

Inclined to Liberty

Econ Log #tcot #digcons
A book suggestion from Arnold Kling.
There are those inclined to liberty--freedom of the individual to live his or her life in any peaceful way. And there are those who are inclined to mastery--permitting others to live their lives only as another sees fit.

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Gun Ownership Correlated With Freedom

Volokh Conspiracy  #tcot
The data suggest that the relationships between gun ownership rates and these other measures are complex. The data show that (although exceptions can be found) the nations with the highest rates of gun ownership tend to have greater political and civil freedom, greater economic freedom and prosperity, and much less corruption than other nations.

Free Markets Like Natural Law

Carpe Diem  #tcot
Economic cycles are Darwinian, picking off weak companies and leaving survivors stronger.

Americans Give More to Charity

Instapundit  #tcot
For all its polyglot shifting, U.S. culture is unique when it comes to a belief in philanthropy. It's a value that may be rooted in Christian tithing, but has spread to the secular world. Maybe it's a recognition that with individual freedom comes responsibility, too.

In philanthropy in America, public morality plays its proper role: causing members to do what's good for the group, through expectation and social pressure rather than the law.

Egypt Blames Hamas

Gateway Pundit $tcot
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit harshly censured Hamas today (27 Dec), placing responsibility for the current situation on Hamas. At a noon press conference broadcast on Egyptian television, he said that Egypt had repeatedly cautioned against continuing the situation and that whoever did not listen (Hamas) should assume responsibility and not blame others. He added that Israel had publicly warned that continued rocket fire would lead to military action

Sarah for "man" of the year

davidwarren #tcot
My selection for "Man of the Year 2008" is: Sarah Palin. The citation reads: "For a politician of real accomplishment and promise, who has somehow managed, for the first time since Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, to cut through the verbiage and posturing of an election campaign, and look an electorate in the eye; a politician whose policy instincts are sound, whose wits are sharp, and whose moral vision is unclouded -- who drives all the right people crazy, across party lines."

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Thinking you can avoid reality is a disease

QandO  #tcot
I believe these ideas hold sway largely because they promise happy, pain-free solutions. They are the economic equivalent of miracle weight-loss programs that require no dieting or exercise. The theories permit economists to claim mystic wisdom, governments to pretend that they have the power to dispel hardship with the whir of a printing press, and voters to believe that they can have recovery without sacrifice.

Podhoretz Speaks Truth About Israel's Counterattack

Contentions  #tcot
According to international law, the responsibility for any civilian casualties in such a situation rests entirely with those who a) failed to wear uniforms and b) interwove themselves with non-combatants. The fault is Hamas’s, not Israel’s.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Britain Losing the Will to Fight

The Corner - Mark Steyn  #tcot
The question is whether a nation that's "lost the stomach for a fight" has also lost its survival instinct.

Facing Evil

American Thinker  #tcot
The reason that the Be Nice people do not want to learn about political Islam is that they have too many suspicions about the truth and know that they don't have the courage to face the reality. So it is better to deny that an Islamic doctrine exists and ignore it. Then when the history and doctrine are pointed out, they hint that we are bigots, we are worse than the jihadists, that such talk is offensive and should not be tolerated. To quote Islamic doctrine has been defined as bigotry and not nice.

Good Samaritans Now Liable

Daily Pundit  #tcot
The court has sent a signal to the people of California: don’t get involved

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Where Is Our Threshold for Pain?

Wizbang  #tcot


The Reasons Why Marriage is Inherently Heterosexual

Ugly Side Effects of Modern Feminism

Recycling BS

Classical Values
Penn and Teller nail the "do gooders".  Just one of the many mis-information ideologies of the liberal left.


Mostly Idiots Running the Asylum

Blogs for Victory
Its hard to remain angry at the incompetence on display in senior management. One actually starts to pity them, after a while - they don’t know how the company they run grew, they don’t know how it works and they are in deathly fear of losing their jobs They jump from one trendy management nostrum to another, hoping to find the magic bullet which will spare them the next round of layoffs. If everyone would just settle down and understand that (a) we all have a vested interest in the success of the company, (b) in rough times the bank which helps out the customers will earn loyalty and (c) we’re all going to get a bit poorer over the next year, so don’t get nit-picky about who makes how much.

We have been drinking the Kool Aid for too long.

Information and Our School System

American Daily
Sadly, we send the flower of our youth to these bastions of anti-Americanism then wonder why they come out voting for the least American Party? How could we be so stupid?

This is something I rarely hear discussed.  It is one of the root issues conservatives need to address.

Friday, December 19, 2008

Monday, December 15, 2008

Why I am a Conservative

GOP USA
It's no surprise, I'm sure, that I am a registered Republican. However, I consider myself more a "conservative" than a Republican. For me, it's more about principles and values than it is about political party. I don't have a particularly strong allegiance to the Republic Party, whereas I am an avid believer in Conservatism. If a true "Conservative" party were to emerge, I would change my registration in an instant.

A reminder of core, conservative principles.

More Evil Information Control

Flopping Aces
So rather then seeing an investigation on to the end the MSM held their own self interest as being more important then ensuring some real scum get sent away for a long time.
In order to be a fully functioning democracy, we must clean up the MSM.

Selfishness and Victimization Rules the Day

Bookworm

This is the kind of cultural rot that conservatives need to stand against.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

The Academic Elite In Power

The New Conservative
Just what America needs, huh? A bunch of pointy-headed theorists who have never
accomplished anything outside of Planet Academia, rushing to Washington to tell
inhabitants of the real world how we can solve all our problems.

Killing the Economy by Driving Business Away

Redstate
This is what happens when oil companies are unremittingly portrayed as villains, when various businesses have their patriotism questioned as a consequence of rational and entirely defensible decisions that they make–decisions that are based on the current climate in the United States and when politicians threaten to remove all restraints on the power of unions through antidemocratic measures like card check. It’s imperative, of course, to reverse this trend of business flight–especially given the current economic downturn and the need to rebound from it–and yet, the same old class warfare and Pavlovian demonization of business continues unabated.

Business is not blameless, to be sure. Large enterprises staffed by human beings make mistakes. But there is a difference between honest criticism and demagoguery. The former makes the target of criticism better. The latter only serves to drive away any prospect whatsoever of reasoned discourse. And in the present case, it is serving to drive away moneymaking, job-creating, service-providing enterprises, which have decided that they can do better outside the United States than they can in it.



GooglEvil

GooglEvil
Control of informatioin is the real evil we must fight.

How a Real 'War Within Islam' Would Look

How a Real 'War Within Islam' Would Look

This is not Islam but a cynical, calculated misuse of Islam...It is also
not the responsibility of the United States alone to deal with this global
growing threat, but rather the obligation of all of Western society and the
civilized world, including - and perhaps primarily - the Muslim world itself,
which stands revolted and terrified by the ideas and atrocities perpetrated by
the jihadists. It is time for moderate Muslims to save Islam from the
jihadists.

Saturday, December 13, 2008