Links and Minifeatures 2009 03 02 Monday

Carnival of Personal Finance

Carnival of Real Estate

"Card Check" Not as Bad as Thought! It's Worse.

The budget reveals the liberal Obama

Take this budget at face value, and when Mr Obama talks about "a new era of responsibility" he does not mean: "We are all in this together." He means: "The rich are responsible for this mess and it is payback time." Leftist Democrats are thrilled, and rightly so. The budget has three themes: healthcare reform, public investment and unflinching redistribution. This is indeed a new social contract: we get, they pay. Liberals never had it so good.

Question: What happens when the 5% Obama claims he wants to soak to the exclusion of everyone else leaves the country, or simply decides to stop earning quite so much money? Will he expand the target, or will he merely shift it onto the most affluent people who are left? Here's some cold hard numbers: If you soak the richest 5% for every last penny they're not already paying in taxes, it's not enough to pay for Obama's budget now.

Class warfare not only doesn't work, it's actively suicidal for a society.

There are those trying to save us: here's one group (put April 15th on your calendar). I joined their Facebook group, I intend to be at whatever San Diego rallies there are on April 15th.

If Mr. Obama doesn't back off his current course, he's going to be the best recruiter the Republican Party has ever had. I'm old enough to remember what Jimmy Carter did (and didn't do) and why Reagan won.

Victor Davis Hanson remembers also.

I wouldn't be this polite: Media Objectors to New Dover Photography Rules Can Pound Sand

That early graph is quite telling. If the aim is to honor the fallen, then with the permission of the surviving family, the best way to honor a fallen American man or woman is to capture their indiviual coffin and procession. Name them. Explain who they were, what they did, why and where they served. That's honoring them.

But most of the media simply doesn't want to get dragged out to individual funeral processions. It's quite a bother. Instead, their objectives are often disconnected from honor and instead focused on journalism critical of war efforts.

Don't take my word for it. Look at the coverage of the Iraq war sans images of draped coffins. How many soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines were you introduced to? How many reports of individual stories of sacrifice, courage and honor did you hear? How many of the fallen did you actually get to know as they were dutifully honored by the national media?

The aim is not to honor the fallen. It is to show bodies coming back. It is to to create popular sentiment against the war. In other words, propaganda. I don't think the fallen need to feed anyone's propaganda machine. To their credit, neither the Bush nor Obama administrations has attempted any noteworthy war propaganda. But that doesn't mean there isn't any. There's quite a bit of organized, directed, anti-war propaganda, and most of it is lying in the most vile ways possible.

Using photos of men like these to dishonor their sacrifice? I don't think so. The current rules (family permission required) make sense.

Wanting Obama to fail

Here's a confession: I'd be lying out of my 3rd point of contact if I said I wanted him to succeed. That's because "success" would mean the subversion of everything I find important into something I loathe. It would mean the supplanting of free market and capitalistic economic mechanisms with those designed by government. It would mean sanctioning and approving govenment driven market distortions. It would mean approving government picking economic winners and losers. It would mean agreeing that it is the job of government to provide health care, welfare, and retirement. And on and on we go.

I'd prefer that Obama fail to implement his agenda (or any more of his agenda), which is going to do major damage even if the Republicans win all available seats in the 2010 elections and reverse everything immediately (they're not going to do either of those). That's the absolute minimal fail possible - failure to implement any more of his disastrous agenda.

Beyond that, though, it isn't a matter of "hoping" he fails. It's a matter of watching something as inevitable as gravity unfold. Once started on the path, it's only a question of how bad the disaster gets, and how long we sit in denial watching it get worse. The Gods of the Copybook Headings ride again.