Cranky-D

Back again for more punishment.

Squats:
2×5 using stick
1×5 empty bar
6×5 bar + 15 lbs
I caught myself cheating a little, so did an extra set. Note that it’s cheating if the tops of your thighs are not parallel to the floor at your lowest point. That sounds like it would hurt your knees, but it doesn’t, and I have bad knees. The fact is, when you don’t go down that far, you don’t engage your glutes and hamstrings, and your knees will hurt, because we are used to using our thigh muscles when we should be using the glutes and hamstrings. Once you think of using them, there isn’t a problem at all.

Bench press:
2×5 empty bar
1×3 bar + 30 lbs
1×2 bar + 50 lbs
5×5 bar + 70 lbs
The secondary muscles that used to let me know their problems have stopped complaining. This exercise is getting more comfortable. I still have room to put more weight on before I have to move to doing this exercise in the power rack (which can be set up to catch the weight in case you can’t push it back up).

Barbell row:
2×5 bar + 20 lbs
1×5 bar + 30 lbs
5×5 bar + 40 lbs

This is getting pretty close to my standard workout weight when I’m slacking. I can do more, but haven’t been a regular gym rat lately so I got weaker.

I finally went to Target and bought some tiny notebooks so I can take notes in the gym and plan my next workout. I have been guess what weight I should be doing, and going on memory, which can be faulty. From now on I can be a little more scientific about it.

So far I consider this a success. I have not come close to injuring myself, and equipment access hasn’t been a problem since very few people do squats. Also, I can move my weight up every time and am not in any pain, even though I know I’m stronger already, especially on the squats.

Today I was more careful about the bar I was using, but not about proper form. I found myself cheating on my squats, so I did some extra sets to hopefully make up for it.

Squats:
2×5 warmup no bar
7×5 10 lbs, cheated on some of the first sets by now going down far enough.
Again, my body is trying to tell me to stop, even though I have the strength. I think a tendency to laziness is built-in to avoid over-stressing and burning up all reserve strength, just in case a sabre-tooth tiger shows up at the last minute.

Standing Press:
2×5 warmup empty bar
1×3 5 lbs
1×2 10 lbs
5×5 15 lbs
The finish weight was enough to really engage me. I new I was weak on that exercise since I haven’t been doing it for a while.

Dead lift:
2×5 with 20 lbs
1×5 with 30 lbs
1×5 with 40 lbs
I really need to write up a plan before I go to the gym, rather than winging it once I get there, so I can be consistent.

Well, I managed to get to the gym in a timely manner today. I call my father every two weeks, and today was that day, so I wanted to get my gym visit out of the way first.

Anyway, it was squats, bench press, and barbell rows today.

Squat:
3×5 warmup no weight, but using a stick in place of the bar to put myself in the correct body position
5×5 bar + 5lbs
My body continues to try to tell me I can’t do these by trying to make me think my knee is going to give out, even though it isn’t. On the other hand, the weight is now much more comfortable, as is the motion. My arms don’t hurt as much trying to hold the weight on my back, so I’m getting more flexible.

Bench Press:
2×5 empty bar
1×3 20 lbs
1×2 40 lbs
5×5 65 lbs
Not much to say, can certainly do more weight, but I might have to start doing sets in the squat cage because I will soon be at the point that I could fail.

Barbell Row:
2×5 empty bar
5×5 with 20 lbs
It was easy. Too easy, as it turned out, because I used a lighter bar by mistake. I need to be diligent when making sure the bar is full-sized.

The gym came close to being too busy. I was surprised it was that busy on a Sunday. I probably need to get there earlier than 11:30 AM.

I totally forgot to write about my workout yesterday. Anyway, here is the synopsis:

Squats
3×5 warmup, no weight, but using a stick to mimic the bar
5×5 bar only, a little easier this time, still had a weak moment on the very last rep
will probably put on 5lbs next time.

Military presses
6×5 empty bar just to get the form down correctly. could add weight okay

Dead lift
5×5 with 20 lbs on the bar. could easily add weigh to this exercise.

Overall, still very tired, but since I didn’t try as hard to get the weight low on my back for the squats, I don’t hurt as much today. I will just have to hope I get more flexible in time so I can put the weight lower. It’s still sitting on my back so it’s safe.

dead lift

I’ve been working out off and on for the last 27 years or so. Lately it’s been more off than on, due to the pressures of work, illness, laziness, whatever. Every now an then I would start up again, get stronger, then have to quit for some reason. I never reached my strength goals, minor though they were. Plus, it seemed that I spent way too much time at the gym. Being in the gym 4 or more days per week was easy when I wasn’t working, but now I don’t want to be there that often.

After some screwing around and spending money on a few programs, I found a free program at stronglifts. The base exercise is the squat. You work out 3 days per week, and squat every day.

I don’t like squats, and I haven’t done them in a long time (until today). I think the reason I don’t like them is because they really knock you out. Also, I didn’t like how the barbell set on my neck bones(which, as it turns out, is a very bad way to do them).

You know, I thought I was going to ramble out about this program, but the endorphins, which are still flowing hours later, tricked me.

Anyway, it’s a 5×5 workout, which means you do 5 sets of 5 of your target weight after warming up with other weights. However, you only do 3 exercises per day. Today it was squats, bench presses, and barbell rows. Note that you don’t do any isolation exercises; the idea is to get as much of your body involved as possible in every exercise. That way, all the smaller muscles that stabilize you get a workout, so that your whole body can grow rather than isolated parts of it.

The trick is, you add 5 lbs to the target weight every time. In short order, you can be moving a lot of weight. That will be helpful for me because I often had trouble knowing when to move up. Also, I always used dumbbells and you have to go 5lbs per hand when you move up, which can be a lot.

I’m going to chronicle my progress as a way to hopefully motivate myself to continue.

At my starting point now, I probably wiegh 250 lbs and can barely fit into my 40 inch waste “fat pants” 501s. Twelve years ago, I weighed about 205 and my 38 inch waste 501s fit fine. My goal is to get stronger and get back to my fatness level of 12 years ago. Ultimately I’d like to beat my all-time best bench press of 190 lbs (bar included). However, just getting stronger would be really good.

Today, it was obvious that I lack flexibility and am woefully weak in the squat. Here’s how it went.

Squat:
3×5 warmup sets (3 sets, 5 reps each), body weight only
5×5 strength sets with empty bar, which I was able to do but the stretch of holding the bar hurt a bit, and the last set I almost ran out of strength. My knees feel fine.
I need to really stretch more for this.

Bench Press:
2×5 warmup sets with the empty bar
1×5 bar + 20 lbs
1×5 bar + 40 lbs
5×5 bar + 60 lbs
This was easier since I have done some bench pressing in the past so my muscles are used to it. My form still needs some work, but it got better near then end.

Barbell row:
5×5 of bar + 20 lbs.
Hard for me to make my back parallel to the floor. More form work needed. Started light because I haven’t done this exercise very often in the past.

Overall comment: I’m beat. I haven’t been this tired in a long time. However, nothing seems to hurt yet. I think my over-stretched arms are going to complain soon.

My plan for next time is to keep the squat routine the same. Since I have two new exercises that time, I will again start with very light weights.

So, we’ll see how this goes.

If you want to know about the origins of political correctness, and how it ties in to what’s happening now, go here and watch some video. It could straighten some things out for you, as it did me.

Afterwards, you too can speak about the Frankfurt school and its lingering effect on what used to be called western nations.

From here:

Should a restaurant allow smoking or not? I have no idea. Neither do you. Who does? The restaurant owner. The restaurant owner knows that if he bans smoking, he will get more business from non-smokers and less business from smokers. He also knows that if he doesn’t ban smoking, he will get more business from smokers and less from non-smokers. He will make that tradeoff and, if he has no particular interest one way or the other, will likely do so in a way that maximizes his net income from running a restaurant.1

Ah, but what about his employees? Don’t they matter? Yes, they do, and the restaurant owner knows that they do and has an incentive to take account of their preferences. If his employees don’t like working where there’s smoke, he will take account of both the extra wages he must pay to get good employees and the higher turnover of employees. These all factor into his decision. Interestingly, though, when I discussed this issue with a former waitress who doesn’t like smoke, she told me that she and her colleagues had preferred, as waiters and waitresses, to work in restaurants that allowed smoking. Why? Because, she said, people who smoked also had a higher probability of drinking alcohol and, therefore, had higher restaurant tabs and paid bigger tips.

In short, whether restaurant owners should allow smoking is not a public-policy problem. It’s a totally private issue, and the person who should make the decision is the owner. The only reason it looks like a public-policy problem is that the government has made it one—by increasingly putting its thumb on the scales and dictating non-smoking restaurants.

Note that this is only one topic with respect to private property covered in the piece. Please read the whole thing.

One of the things I don’t like about public policy is when it interferes with private property. The notion that a bar or restaurant is a public place is incorrect. The only public places are those owned by the people (or, as most would say, the government). Those are the only places the government should be allowed to regulate.

No one is forced to go into a bar or restaurant where smoking is allowed. No one is forced to work there either.

The government causes distortions and conflict whenever it sticks its hand into something. If we would return to respecting property rights rather than continuing the notion that all the property we have is subject to government control, we would all be a lot better off.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

C.S. Lewis

Sounds a little familiar, doesn’t it?

America before the entitlement state:

In the 19th century, even though capitalism had only existed for a short time, and had just started putting a dent in pre-capitalism’s legacy of poverty, the vast, vast majority of Americans were already able to support their own lives through their own productive work. Only a tiny fraction of a sliver of a minority depended on assistance and aid–and there was no shortage of aid available to help that minority.

But in a culture that revered individual responsibility and regarded being “on the dole” as shameful, formal charity was almost always a last resort. Typically people who hit tough times would first dip into their savings. They might take out loans and get their hands on whatever commercial credit was available. If that wasn’t enough, they might insist that other family members enter the workforce. And that was just the start.

“Those in need,” historian Walter Trattner writes, “. . . looked first to family, kin, and neighbors for aid, including the landlord, who sometimes deferred the rent; the local butcher or grocer, who frequently carried them for a while by allowing bills to go unpaid; and the local saloonkeeper, who often came to their aid by providing loans and outright gifts, including free meals and, on occasion, temporary jobs. Next, the needy sought assistance from various agencies in the community–those of their own devising, such as churches or religious groups, social and fraternal associations, mutual aid societies, local ethnic groups, and trade unions.”

What a novel idea: look to friends, family, and neighbors for help, because one day they might need your help.

Instead, we have a huge, faceless bureaucracy that costs a huge amount of our money just to maintain, and is incredibly impersonal in what it does. Ultimately it’s a source of destruction to the individual, not help.

Soon, it will destroy us all.

From the always relevant Victor Davis Hanson, we have a cautionary tale of a failing state.

I am starting to feel as if I am living in a Vandal state, perhaps on the frontier near Carthage around a.d. 530, or in a beleaguered Rome in 455. Here are some updates from the rural area surrounding my farm, taken from about a 30-mile radius. In this take, I am not so much interested in chronicling the flotsam and jetsam as in fathoming whether there is some ideology that drives it.

Last week an ancestral rural school near the Kings River had its large bronze bell stolen. I think it dated from 1911. I have driven by it about 100 times in the 42 years since I got my first license. The bell had endured all those years. Where it is now I don’t know. Does someone just cut up a beautifully crafted bell in some chop yard in rural Fresno County, without a worry about who forged it or why — or why others for a century until now enjoyed its presence?

The city of Fresno is now under siege. Hundreds of street lights are out, their copper wire stripped away. In desperation, workers are now cementing the bases of all the poles — as if the original steel access doors were not necessary to service the wiring. How sad the synergy! Since darkness begets crime, the thieves achieve a twofer: The more copper they steal, the easier under cover of spreading night it is to steal more. Yet do thieves themselves at home with their wives and children not sometimes appreciate light in the darkness? Do they vandalize the street lights in front of their own homes?

This is what a failing state looks like. When lawlessness becomes something that is ignored by the government, and when the victim pays all the costs, civilization will crumble.

I’m surprised that the farmers in question haven’t been shooting the thieves. I guess that’s what happens when you live in a state that doesn’t allow you to defend your property.

Read the whole thing.

“English doesn’t borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammer.”

From here via the comments section here and ultimately seen first here.

Update: the actual quote is:

“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that the English language is as pure as a crib-house whore. It not only borrows words from other languages; it has on occasion chased other languages down dark alley-ways, clubbed them unconscious and rifled their pockets for new vocabulary.”
—James Nicoll, can.general, March 21, 1992

There are some outtakes from Obama’s interview on Sixty Minutes you might be interested in. Go here to see the edited video, which is just the remarks in question.

The key quote, “I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in out first two years against any president - with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR, and Lincoln, just in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history.”

Wow. That’s some mighty ego he has, even more than I thought, though I shouldn’t be surprised. I guess his humility kept him from claiming that he’s the best President in history, which he very likely believes.

Here, Victor Davis Hanson punctures some of the mythology surrounding Obama:

Presidential historian Michael Beschloss, on no evidence, once proclaimed Obama “probably the smartest guy ever to become president.” When he thus summed up liberal consensus, was he perhaps referring to academic achievement? Soaring SAT scores? Seminal publications? IQ scores known only to a small Ivy League cloister? Political wizardry?

Who was this Churchillian president so much smarter than the Renaissance man Thomas Jefferson, more astute than a John Adams or James Madison, with more insight than a Lincoln, brighter still than the polymath Teddy Roosevelt, more studious than the bookish Woodrow Wilson, better read than the autodidact Harry Truman?

Consider. Did Obama achieve a B+ average at Columbia? Who knows? (Who will ever know?) But even today’s inflated version of yesteryear’s gentleman Cs would not normally warrant admission to Harvard Law. And once there, did the Law Review editor publish at least one seminal article? Why not?

There’s a lot more good stuff in the article. You should read it.

Here is a video that outlines some things about The Frankfurt School that you should know.

In brief, the concepts of political correctness, the various “studies” (e.g. gender studies, women’s studies), and other things that are common in our society were invented by The Frankfurt School in order to bring about a communist society in the west, because the west as it existed was too resistant to communism.

This is not alarmist. This is not me foaming at the mouth. This is the simple truth.

I will try to write more on the subject soon.

I read this post and here’s a taste:

Well maybe a lot of people were, but not everyone was. From the 1990’s into the 2000’s, the dominant strain of Republicanism was neoconservatism, and here I am not talking about foreign policy, but domestic policy. Neoconservatism was invented by the original “neoconservatives,” who were in fact liberals who deserted the Democratic Party when it became a special-interest Sugar-Daddy soft-socialist creature.

…

In the case of Gingrich and Romney both: It is worth remembering that during the mid-90s to 2000s there was a widely agreed-upon urge that we must “do something!” (anything! do something!) “about health care.” And of course the hated individual mandate was created by the the conservative Heritage foundation, as a supposedly “conservative, market-based, no-free-riders, individual responsibility” initiative towards the general gauzy goal of “doing something!” about health care.

We all know how this think-tank idea went over when it was actually imposed on us, and we had the chance to examine it, and weigh the supposed benefits (no free riders on my health insurance policy, which is inflated in cost to pay for the uninsured) versus the serious objections to it (since when can government boss me around? Why are we further expanding government’s power to make up for the problems with its current exercise of power?).

Still, this was, in fact, considered a “conservative” response. Not everyone believed in it. Very few tried it. But it was bandied about as being “conservative.” And few objected when it was so characterized.

In fact, this proposition was in fact so non-controversial that most people don’t even remember it. There was not a big argument in the early-mid 2000s whether an individual mandate was “conservative.”

Point is, the party has changed, and the overton window has moved, significantly. Stuff that was a clear submission to the ever-growing socialist state was given a quick paint-job and branded a “conservative” solution.

Note that this does not give a complete picture of the post itself, or of the site’s editorial policy over the last few months. One of the things I think the site handled poorly was the accusations against Cain. There are ways of reporting what had occurred without jumping on the condemnation bandwagon. If there had turned out to be substantive proof, that would have been the time to lower the boom.

I wrote a comment in response the post, and to other posts on the topic. It isn’t great, but it has its moments:

Are you working out the kinks in what is basically a “He started it” or “He does it too” argument?

Won’t fly.

It no longer matters what we would put up with before. What does matter is if we continue to put up with it. At what point are we allowed to expect behavior more consistent with our principles without being labeled a crybaby?

From what I’ve seen with respect to the editorial policy here, that would be the day after never.

BTW, the one thing that makes Bachmann being “unelectable” a certainty is everyone decreeing it so. That goes for any other candidate. As long as you let the GOP establishment and the left control the language and set the narrative, nothing will ever change, and we will get squishes like Romney, who, by the way, will be destroyed by the left and the MBM in the general election, in the same way the other candidates have been destroyed one by one.

They all had flaws outside the ones the MBM pushed, of course, but that doesn’t matter because those flaws pale in comparison to the simple narrative the MBM has created and used as a bludgeon.

Cain, for instance, may have failed on his own, without the breathless repetition of accusations of harassment and infidelity without any vetting of the accusers. However, the fact that he was immediately condemned on the basis of accusations, with no proof beyond a he said/she said should be a cautionary tale to all. This technique will be used again, and successfully, because some are too afraid to stand up to the media onslaught and prefer to just go along with the narrative as set by the left.

Whoever thought what happened to Cain (or, earlier, Palin) was okay, you can bet your ass that your chosen candidate will be next. I will cherish your tears of frustration, as they will taste so sweet.

To be fair, the site is one of two I visit daily, and for the most part I haven’t had too much trouble with the content, but the election content has caused me (and a lot of other readers there) some annoyance. Still, I recommend it. I don’t read it for opposition research, since it’s branded as a relatively conservative site, I read it to see what the opinion shapers are saying.

I spend most of my time at protein wisdom, so you might want to check that site out, too.

I have been feeling pretty down about our prospects as a nation. I watched the character assassination of Herman Cain, my choice among those who are running for the Republican nomination (dammit, Sarah!), with chagrin. The GOP establishment wants Romney, who in my mind is no better than Obama, and we’re going to get him. And he will lose, because people like me will refuse to vote for another Statist Republican.

Given that, I was looking through all my open tabs and reading what’s in them so I can close them out. I came across this piece from the always observant Victor Davis Hanson:

We are in a fresh round of declinism — understandably, after borrowing nearly $5 trillion in less than three years and having very little to show for it. Pundit strives with op-ed writer to find the latest angle on America’s descent: We are broke; we are poorly educated; we are uncompetitive; we have gone soft; our political institutions are broken; and on and on. The Obama administration does its part, with sloganeering like “reset,” “lead from behind,” “post-American world,” and America as exceptional only to the degree that all nations feel exceptional.

This is not new. In the late 1930s, the New Germany and its autobahns were supposed to show Depression-plagued America how national will could unite a people to do great things. After all, they had Triumph of the Will Nuremberg rallies; we still had Hoovervilles. They flew sleek Me-109s; we flew lumbering cloth-covered Brewster Buffaloes. We, the victors of a world war, were determined never to repeat it; they, the losers, were eager to try it again.

In the 1950s, Sputnik and the vast spread of Communism through the postcolonial world were supposed proof of the efficiency and social justice of Communism and the rot of capitalism — the inevitable denouement of the 20th century. Sputnik soared, even as our ex-Nazi scientists could not seem to make our rockets work. They had Uncle Ho and Che; we had Diem and the Shah. Their guys wore peasant garb and long hair; ours, sunglasses and gold braid.

By the 1970s and 1980s, Japan Inc. was the next new paradigm of the post-American world. Even American “experts” lectured us on the need to adopt Japanese-like partnerships between corporations and government. They made Accords and Camrys; we made Pintos and Gremlins. We played golf at Pebble Beach; they owned it.

As Japan faded, the next great hope followed in the 1990s when the EU captivated the American Left. The Europeans’ loud moral declarations, their pacifism, cradle-to-grave entitlements, trains à grande vitesse — all of that was what a backward America should strive for. They crafted the Kyoto Agreement; we drove gas-guzzling Tahoes and Yukons. Their strong Euros bought in New York what our weak dollars could not in Paris.

Where are all those supposedly post-American systems now? Fascism was crushed; Communism imploded; Japan is aging and shrinking; the European Union is cracking apart. But, of course, there is China, which, we are told, is the next new replacement for America — a country with enormous demographic problems, a reputation for crude diplomacy and an outlaw approach to international commercial agreements, censored media and a complete lack of transparency, vast inequality, environmental catastrophes, and no stable political system to transition a rural peasantry into a postindustrial affluent citizenry. No matter — our jet-setting elites still whine that they have shiny new airports; we have grungy LAX and JFK. They have sleek bullet trains; we, creaking Amtrak.

I realize that’s not uplifting as much as it is a cautionary tale that following the example of other nations may not be wise. However, it’s this next bit that gives me hope:

American petroleum engineers over the last decade have discovered radical new methods of recovering previously unknown or unreachable reserves of oil and gas. Contrary to all conventional wisdom, America’s natural-gas and petroleum reserves just keep growing. Suddenly, we have enough known natural gas to supply 100 percent of our domestic needs for the next 90 years — a huge window of opportunity in which to transition to competitive renewable energy. That is on top of trillions of dollars’ worth of new oil finds offshore and in Alaska, the Dakotas, and the West, which will create millions of new jobs and help pay down the deficit — if we have the will to extract such energy resources. The real story is not the pathetic machinations surrounding Solyndra, a statist, corrupt model that will never produce competitive power, but a quiet revolution in North Dakota, which is emerging as the new Texas. Within 15 years, North America could reinvent itself as completely independent from Middle Eastern gas and oil. Indeed, from Calgary to Argentina and Brazil, new petroleum and natural-gas finds may soon make the Western Hemisphere the world’s new Persian Gulf. That fact will change the entire global geostrategic and financial landscape in ways that are scarcely imaginable.

Think about that for a moment. We have in our hands the ability to completely revitalize our economy and help make some very problematic nations irrelevant to our economy. All we need is some leadership to get us there. We need elected representatives who represent us and not their own interests.

This is entirely possible. It might take a collapse to get us there, but I think we have the ability to quickly recover from a collapse if we get some sane leadership in place afterwards.

We will recover from this mess we’re in. I’m not confident it will happen if Romney or Obama is president, but eventually it will happen, even if the people need to rise up and forcibly replace our purported representatives with new blood (though I think in that case the politicians would scramble to do the right thing before they ended up hanging from lamp posts, and could just be voted out instead).

Even when there is a revolution, people’s first instincts are to replace the government with something structured exactly like the old one. In our case, that’s not a bad thing. We just need a vigilant populace that doesn’t reward bad behavior with re-election. It’s too bad this couldn’t happen through more civilized means.

Tonight is the third time one of my comments was read on the Special Report Online show. I imagine the job offers will be pouring in any second.

From here:

Intellectually, Obama has always been a consumer, having left no record of formulating new ideas or of penetrating old ones. Politically, he is a follower and figurehead: having grown up in the ever branching stream of socialist voluntary organizations, he surfed its leftward eddies, never forming or leading a faction. He was handed a safe seat in the Illinois state senate, a nearly safe one in the U.S. Senate, and was surprised when Harry Reid informed him that influential Democrats wanted to run him for president. The Democratic campaign of 2008 pushed against an open door. As president, he rides his party’s center of gravity.

In short, Barack Obama himself is not that remarkable. He can give a rousing political speech, of course, but that is usually not sufficient to get oneself elected president. So, since he seems to have been reading from a teleprompter all his life, and since words certifiably his own are both few and opaque, it is most fruitful as well as relevant for us to focus on whom and what he has been following.

What accounts for his smooth, unlikely ascent? Both his advancement and his character seem most likely attributable to the network into which he was born, and out of which he never stepped for an instant. That network’s privileges, wealth, and intellectual-social proclivities always depended to some extent—and nowadays depend more than ever—on its connection with the U.S. government. Its intellectual and moral character, like that of modern government itself, has always been on the left side of American life and, as such, has undergone splits and transmogrifications surely the most important of which in our time combines upscale social norms with radical disdain for the rest of America. Barack Obama came of age through these.

Unfortunately, that liberal Establishment has placed key facts about itself beyond public scrutiny—more in the fashion of Chicago Sicilians than of Roman pontiffs. Here we examine some of the books and other research that shed light on Obama’s origins, note at least as many questions as answers, and try to distinguish between facts and spin. The results are necessarily conjectural, because of the nature of the available evidence.

The article goes on to produce sound evidence for Obama always being a member of the progressive elite, and hints at the likelihood of his rise as being heavily influenced and assisted by the radical left. Highly recommended.

Again I quote Jeff G. at Protein Wisdom:

John Chambers of S&P noted (click over to PW to follow a link to the article) that Cut Cap and Balance was the only proposal that, had it become law, would have avoided the HISTORIC! credit downgrade.

The Democrat-led Senate refused to vote on (and the President threatened to veto) CC&B after it passed the House in a bipartisan vote — a failure to compromise, in that CC&B agreed to raise the debt ceiling, as the Democrats were demanding, in exchange for taking serious measures to address debt and deficit, including a plan for a systemic fix, which Republicans were demanding.

Whenever you hear someone talk about the “tea party downgrade,” which is the meme being floated by progressives and the make-believe media (but I repeat myself yet again), tell them this. The people who decided that the downgrade was necessary have said exactly why they did it.

When you hear progressives complaining about how the tea party types wouldn’t compromise, point this out as well. This bill was a compromise in the truest sense of the word. The bill that actually passed was not a compromise at all. It had a few fig leaves to conservatism that will amount to jack squat, but otherwise it was a pure Democrat bill.

The ship is going down, and the Democrats are using buckets to add more water, rather than to bail it out. The GOP establishment is right there with them in the bucket brigade.

In this post from the web site I always visit daily, a taste:

That the establishment GOP seems feckless in its attempts to get its message across is part of the Big Government kabuki dance: neither Republicans or Democrats who have become part of the career ruling class have any real desire to shrink government. The Republicans are willing to slow its growth occasionally — and they do believe in lower taxes; but as the Bush years should have taught us, they’re just as willing to spend as the Democrats, because giving gifts with other people’s money — and being praised for it — is the absolute easiest form of cheap grace on earth.

The entire establishment political class is corrupt. And it has declared open war against those Americans still left who believe in fiscal responsibility and a constitutional check on federal powers. Both the establishment Republicans and the Democrats (and their ancillary and parasitic attendants in the media and the inside-the-beltway political machinery) have shown themselves immediately willing to scapegoat the one anti-big government faction willing to insist on making the difficult choices necessary to save the country from the bloated, cynical, complacent pig class who presumes to run it in our name — though never in the way we wish. And that’s because party doesn’t really matter any longer, as I’ve been saying for years now.

Furthermore:

They can’t kill the TEA Party. Because the TEA Party can disband only as a descriptor. The attitude and beliefs that give it its most visible shapes, from time to time — be it as the revolutionaries who broke from a King, or as the Reagan Revolution, or as teh TEA Party — cannot be disgraced or marginalized. Because the attitude and beliefs that give rise to iterations like the TEA Party are the attitudes and beliefs that in a very real sense are this country and, insofar as we really do believe in the words of our own Declaration of Independence, are the beliefs and attitudes shared by all men and women who wish to break free of tyranny and live their lives not as subjects, but rather under a set of natural rights that governments exist solely to protect.

Perhaps I quoted too much, but you must go there and read it in its entirety.

I’ve mentioned previously that the progressives are at war with the Tea Party. The establishment GOP is also at war with the Tea Party. That’s because in both cases we are talking about people who like big government being at odds with an increasingly vocal section of the populace who do not like big government. Most people wanted the Cut, Cap, and Balance deal that would have made a serious dent in the spending over the next ten years. Most people, of course, except the politicians who are supposed to represent us. They didn’t like it one bit, because it would have decreased the amount of money they could use for favors to each other.

Ultimately their war will never succeed, because there is no Tea Party to destroy. There is no national leader, and there are no national meetings. It’s a spontaneous response to an out of control government that is hell-bent on our destruction, whether the politicians choose to believe it or not.

We aren’t going to change our minds, and we’re not going to be shut up. We’re here, and we are going to do our best change the way the Federal government works. Either that, or when we’re picking up the pieces after our financial collapse, we’ll make sure this kind of thing cannot happen again.

From The Telegraph:

The truly fundamental question that is at the heart of the disaster toward which we are racing is being debated only in America: is it possible for a free market economy to support a democratic socialist society? On this side of the Atlantic, the model of a national welfare system with comprehensive entitlements, which is paid for by the wealth created through capitalist endeavour, has been accepted (even by parties of the centre-Right) as the essence of post-war political enlightenment.

I think we can all conclude that the answer to that question is, “No.” At least, this cannot be done at the level it is being done.

As the EU leadership is (almost) admitting now, the next step to ensure the survival of the world as we know it will involve moving toward a command economy, in which individual countries and their electorates will lose significant degrees of freedom and self-determination.

“Command Economy” is another of saying fascism, by the way. And while I don’t know if there is such a thing as benevolent fascism, I do know that having that much concentrated power will always corrupt. It’s already corrupted our Federal government, and we don’t have a command economy. Yet.

We have arrived at the endgame of what was an untenable doctrine: to pay for the kind of entitlements that populations have been led to expect by their politicians, the wealth-creating sector has to be taxed to a degree that makes it almost impossible for it to create the wealth that is needed to pay for the entitlements that populations have been led to expect, etc, etc.

The only way that state benefit programmes could be extended in the ways that are forecast for Europe’s ageing population would be by government seizing all the levers of the economy and producing as much (externally) worthless currency as was needed – in the manner of the old Soviet Union.

We aren’t aging as fast as Europe, but we are aging. Also, Obama has been forcing a European model on the U.S. while many European countries are trying to abandon it because it costs too much. So either Obama is really as smart as he thinks he is, and has a solution in mind, or he is so blinded by ideology that he will do what he thinks is proper no matter what the facts say. I tend to believe it’s the latter.

The hardest obstacle to overcome will be the idea that anyone who challenges the prevailing consensus of the past 50 years is irrational and irresponsible. That is what is being said about the Tea Partiers. In fact, what is irrational and irresponsible is the assumption that we can go on as we are.

This. The guardians of the great society are calling those of us who are against its continuation terrorists. They have become thoroughly unhinged.

There is a meme that is probably being spread right now on the Sunday chat shows calling the looming recession (you know, the one that they said we were out of, but are now headed back to) the “tea party recession.” Our debt rating was downgraded because of spending, not because of attempts to cut spending. The progressives, who are always in error but never in doubt, will continue to rail against any attempt to roll back the social programs they need to keep people voting for them.