A Good Crisis...

"You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid."

Although the crisis ploy has been around for decades, one might, in observance of Rahm's now famous words, be tempted to call this the Emmanuel Doctrine...

The Deepwater Horizon incident is the perfect illustration of not letting a good crisis go to waste, sort of. Sort of, in that the hoped for results could not all be readily produced. There's no doubt that the Obama-ites did everything they could to magnify the environmental damage of the catastrophe. They paid as little attention to the whole incident as possible, while behind the scenes they delayed and denied every proposed mitigation. When that charade began to really unravel, the boy king made a speech about looking for an ass to kick and they got busy with a shakedown of BP.

They are now on their second attempt to halt drilling in the Gulf. We'll see if it plays any better than the first attempt, but is is useful in that it exposes the underlying agenda: with a crisis for cover, deprive America of it's own energy production and keep America dependent on enemy states for oil. In other words, weaken America in every situation, regardless of how tortured the "logic".

Destroy America. It's the Prime Directive of the left...

This brings me to an uncomfortable thought that is weighing heavier and heavier on my mind: When the government of the day has the oppression of its citizens and the destruction of the country as it's main goal, and when capitalization on crisis is the main tool they use to advance the agenda, what will they do when they need a crisis and don't have one handy?

If you don't believe this is how they think, here's a recent example: "The bottom line here is that Americans don’t believe in President Obama’s leadership," says Rob Shapiro (former Clinton official and Obama supporter) "He has to find some way between now and November of demonstrating that he is a leader who can command confidence and, short of a 9/11 event or an Oklahoma City bombing, I can’t think of how he could do that." (Such words, coming from the mouth of a former Clinton operative, bring back memories of reports that Clinton was jealous that 9/11 happened on Bush's watch, since it was such a great opportunity to appear "presidential"...)

Google the term "false flag" and read up on the long history of contrived crises and subsequent power grabs by their perpetrators. Be very suspicious of the origin of any "crisis" between here and the election, and during the lame duck legislative session that follows. (For that matter, be suspicious of any crisis at any time.) After all, the Reichstag Fire wasn't patented, and anyone can use the ploy.

Reason and Logic

I've long held that committed leftists are inaccessible by way of reason and logic. Yet, being reasoning and logical people, most conservative arguments including my own remain rooted in reason and logic. From there, it's easy for us to end up on the defensive against emotional arguments.

It's time to change the conversation...

The most effective change we can make is to take a page out of the left's own playbook, and start asking questions like:

"Why do you hate freedom?"

"Why are you ruining the economy?"

"Why are you depriving America of oil?"

"Why are you ignoring the law?"

"Why are you bankrupting us?"

The point is to cut to the chase and identify their end game in our questions. Don't just complain that they're doing it - ask why! Everyone knows what's going on here, and it's high time to acknowledge it with questions that put THEM on the defensive!

Totalitarian Utopia, Version 2.0: Purificationism

Here's a great treatise on the mindset behind the left's unquestioning acceptance of the "change we can believe in" folks. This explains the comfort the left has with radical Islam, and you'll not like the reasons why. At least you'll understand how socialists, radical environmentalists and Islamofascists make such good bedfellows these days...

Know your enemies.

This is one of the most important articles I've seen this year - please read it all.

A big hat tip to Mike at Sipsey Street, linked here.

Housing Market HAS NOT Bottomed Yet...

Who was it who said "there are lies, damned lies and statistics"???

For April 2010, the Commerce Department claimed 42,000 new single-family home sales. That's an annual rate of 504,000… and a 15% increase over March levels. In May, it counted only 25,000 new home sales. In addition, they revised the April numbers down to 37,000 and revised March's numbers down by 4,000 to 32,000 after people backed out of their agreements.

What matters is that May 2010 was the worst month for new home sales in America since record keeping began in the early 60's.

The Commerce Department says the average sales price for these new homes was $200,900 - that's a new seven-year low, down 10% from a year ago, and 22% from the all-time high in June 2006.

Thirty-year "A" paper fixed mortgage rates dropped to 4.69% last week, yet applications fell to the lowest levels seen since 1997.

As icing on the cake, a Realtor friend who has sold a few of these "tax rebate homes" suspects that at least half of these recent buyers will end up defaulting, just adding to the foreclosure mess. She says most of these buyers don't fit the profile of someone who can weather an economic storm. (As anecdotal support for that hypothesis, one in ten mortgages in America experienced at least one late payment in Q1 2010.)

It's not over, and there's nothing we can do but watch. It must feel rather similar to live in Oklahoma without a tornado shelter, with a storm approaching...

Astounding...

in my blog list I refer to Wm. Grigg's blog, but this article needed to be permanently linked.

It's later than you think in America

Acton was spot on.