When lying is condoned

Pamela Geller is right.  The current exhibit "1001 Muslim Inventions" travelling throughout the western world to great acclaim everywhere (Prince Charles loved it) is now visiting Washington D.C. at the National Geographic headquarters.   This "stuff" about the wise Muslims is just that: stuff.  It has no basis in reality or history.  It is blatant propaganda and should be ignored by all westerners.  It is also an example of the practice of TAQIYA the Muslim doctrine that condones lying in the furtherance of the Muslim faith.

Is the US Constitution irrelevant?

Thomas Sowell raises an issue here that should truly concern every American.  Executive orders have been used by presidents many times over the years and for many different reasons, some appropriate and some not.  The danger of the use of these orders lies in the ability of the executive branch to circumvent the will of the people as expressed by the Congress.  It is the Congress alone that has the authority to make laws and while the executive branch has to interpret the law in order to carry out its responsibility to execute it, the executive has no write to overturn aspects of a given law it may disagree with.  And yet this is what is happening with great frequency in the Obama administration no doubt because progressives don't really believe in the Constitution.  As Sowell points out, freedom is lost in increments, not all at once.  Do we really want an imperial executive as the head of our government to the extent he is the final arbiter of what the law says and how it is to be executed?  The point here is do we want to return to the 17th century idea of a benevolent tsar, like Peter the Great, for example.  Peter the Great did many impressive things for his country including creating the city of St. Petersburg and bringing Russia into conformity with all the advances of European countries of that time.  He also beheaded those who displeased him for any reason, took the country into war for any reason he wanted and favored some over others because he liked them more.  He was the justice and legislative systems rolled into one autocrat.  Okay if you were one of the favored few maybe, not so good if you weren't.  Most Americans would not like to return to those days.

Media bias

One has to wonder what the influence of the MSM (Mainstream media) would be without the mitigating influence of Fox News, Talk Radio as well as a number of conservative blogs that expose their bias and corruption.  Media Research Center is another extremely important check on these so-called journalists.  An example of how this wing of the Democrat Party operates, from the MRC:

* During the first 72 hours of the Akin controversy, ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news shows ran a combined 40 segments totaling nearly 89 minutes of airtime compared to less than 20 minutes for Biden.

* NBC and CBS both immediately attempted to link the “firestorm” created by Akin to Romney even though his campaign openly supports rape exemptions.

* Obama’s extreme pro-abortion record – including his support for partial birth abortions – was almost entirely ignored by the networks in 2008.

* The networks have given Akin 10 times more coverage than they gave to credible allegations by Juanita Broaddrick back in 1999 that Bill Clinton actually committed rape.

Media Research President Brent Bozell reacts:

There’s no denying that what Rep. Todd Akin said was completely inappropriate, but for it to receive four times more coverage than the Vice President of the United States’ indefensibly racist gaffe is unconscionable. Todd Akin is a congressman. Joe Biden is one heartbeat from being the leader of the Free World. Once again, the media’s double standard is exposed for all to see.

Gangster government

Michael Barone has spoken out on the subject of "gangster" government many times since that description was first used by him at the beginning of the Obama administration.  Here, here, and here are three such discussions by Barone.  "Gangster" government is really simply a euphemism for statism or totalitarianism of the Mussolini/Hitler variety in which the the state controls all aspects of an economy without taking outright ownership of the means of production.  It does this by edicts, by taxation, and of course increasingly complex regulations all of which inhibit and limit innovation and wealth creation.  There's a reason why all socialist states, all fascist dictatorships have failed in the end.  They can make the trains run  on time for a while, but they cannot innovate and create the environment that produces the Bill Gates, and Steve Jobses who literally create brand new industries that end up creating businesses that create millions of high paying jobs.  There are a number of reasons why the Obama gang should be run out of town this November, but at the top of the list of these reasons is their fundamental lack of understanding of how the free enterprise system, i.e. capitalism, works.  Everyone would do well to remember that when Hoover and FDR began the federal central planning programs in the 1930's designed to put the government in control of the economy to prevent any future depressions, there was no real improvement in unemployment conditions for over 10 years.  It took WWII to put people back to work.  The message:  the government does not create jobs, the government does not create wealth therefore the government does not create a growing, expanding, productive economy.  The Obama people simply don't get this.

A sidebar to this gangster government discussion is the tiresome and largely false mantra of leftists columnists and pundits 24/7 that greedy Wall Street caused the 2007/8 sub-prime mortgage driven financial meltdown and that government must step in and take control of these vampires before they suck all of our collective blood dry.  This is not a complicated nor difficult issue to resolve.  A starting point is this article by Joe Pinto in the AEI Journal.  There's plenty more written about this disaster in this blog in the past.  One thing is clear.  Wall Street played a part in the fiasco, however, that role was largely at the behest of the government at many levels.  What needs reforming here is the liberal notion that a private dwelling and every other material consumer good should be considered a civil right.

Detroit revisited

Occasionally, very occasionally, the LATimes produces good work  There was the series a couple of years ago about the failed hospital in south L.A., and now a piece on the California Teachers Association and its lobbyist Nunoz.  If one wants to know the depth and seriousness of the economic woes in California, one needs go no further than this article..  It tells it all.  What we have here is Detroit revisited, and we will, in due course, have the same end result.  Unions and their excessive demands caused Detroit's ultimate demise.  Yes, there was the issue of the failure of management to deal with the unions in an effective way, a fact that cannot be overlooked.  But, in the end, the compulsion of unions to keep bringing home the bacon for their members by always increasing wages and benefits, and by always adding to restrictive workplace rules and regulations, is the overriding reason Detroit shrank in population from several millions to its current 400,000,  from a thriving metropolis to a basket case, failed city that is bankrupt.