12 Signs That 2010 Is Going To Be A Really, Really Bad Year For The Democrats And The Obama Administration

Guest post below from "Michael The Patriot" of The Truth

The 2010 election is still almost 10 months away, but already every indication is that if the election was held today, the Democrats would suffer a crushing defeat. So will things get better for the Democrats by the time election day rolls around? Well, actually the truth is that things are only likely to get worse for the Democrats and the Obama administration in 2010. As the U.S. economy continues to fall apart, and as health care and national security continue to take center stage on the national scene, an increasing number of voters are likely to become disenfranchised with the Democratic Party. The following are 12 signs that 2010 is going to be a really, really bad year for the Democrats and the Obama administration.

#1) Health care "reform" has been a total nightmare for Obama and the Democrats. The majority of Americans have been horrified to learn that the plan put forward by the Democrats will make purchasing health insurance mandatory, will raise taxes, will give the government unprecedented control over health care decisions, will result in much fewer health care choices for the average American and will push U.S. government deficits through the roof. Approval ratings for the health care "reform" bill have been hovering in the 30s, and considering that this is the centerpiece of the Democratic agenda, this is a really, really bad sign for Obama and the Democrats.

#2) In fact, more Americans than ever are sick and tired of the financial mess that the U.S. government is getting us all into. The truth is that the U.S. government is drowning under an absolute mountain of debt and all of the spending that Barack Obama is doing is only making it worse. To finance this debt, the U.S. Treasury has been forced to issue so many new bonds that the rest of the world cannot possibly buy them all. So who is buying them all up? The Federal Reserve. In fact, the Fed is now purchasing approximately 80 of all new U.S. debt.

#3) But even with all of this reckless government spending the unemployment situation in the U.S. is still absolutely brutal. When even Wal-Mart is closing stores you know things are really bad. Wal-Mart just announced this past week that it will close 10 money-losing Sam's Club stores and will cut 1,500 jobs in order to reduce costs. So if even Wal-Mart has to shut down stores, what chance do other retailers have?

#4) In fact, some areas of the U.S. are a total economic nightmare at this point. The mayor of Detroit recently said that the real unemployment rate in his city is somewhere up around 50 percent. When things get that bad, the party out of power starts to look better and better.

#5) So just how bad are things when compared to past recessions? During the 2001 recession, the U.S. economy lost 2% of its jobs and it took four years to get them back. This time the U.S. economy has lost more than 5 percent of its jobs and there is no sign that the bleeding of jobs will stop any time soon. Those who do not have jobs are much likelier to consider voting for the party out of power.

#6) The reality is that more Americans are in financial trouble than at any point in recent times. Americans are going broke at a staggering pace. 1.41 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009 - a 32 percent increase over 2008. This is not a trend that is going to help the Democrats.

#7) We are also seeing a record number of mortgage defaults. According to a report that was just released, delinquent home loans at government-controlled mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac surged 20 percent from July to September. In fact, things are such a mess at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that the Obama administration recently removed the caps on the amount of financial assistance that the U.S. government will be giving these two entities. Whether or not Obama created this mess is not the issue. What is the issue is that an increasing number of Americans are blaming him for this mess.

#8) In fact, many analysts believe that the the housing crash is far from over. They say that a massive "second wave" of mortgage defaults is getting ready to hit the U.S. economy starting in 2010. In fact, this "second wave" is so frightening that even 60 minutes is reporting on it. When this second wave does hit, most Americans are going to place responsibility for it in the laps of the Obama administration.

#9) Now there is even concern that the recent global deep freeze could end up seriously affecting food prices in American supermarkets in 2010. As the past several decades have clearly shown, Americans tend to vote according to how their pocketbooks are doing, and if food prices shoot through the roof that will not help Obama and the Democrats at all.

#10) In addition, recent polls indicate that the majority of Americans are so concerned about terrorism that they would be willing to sacrifice certain freedoms in order to feel safer. Considering the fact that terrorism is considered to be an issue that greatly favors the Republicans, this has got to be very concerning to the Democrats.

#11) On the foreign policy front, Obama risks alienating the Jewish vote by continuing to insist that Israel give East Jerusalem to the Palestinians. The truth is that the Jewish vote is crucial for the Democrats and Obama in places like Florida, and by taking such a hardline anti-Israel position, Obama is not winning any new friends in the Jewish community.

#12) Also, Barack Obama is continuing to push for a treaty with Russia that would reduce the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal to approximately 10 percent of the size that it was at the height of the cold war. Such an irresponsible approach to national security is surely not going to win Obama and the Democrats many friends among moderate voters who are concerned about security issues.

Any way you cut it, 2010 is shaping up to be a very bad year for the Democrats. Barack Obama's approval rating has already been plummeting like a rock, and there does not seem to be much hope of that turning around any time soon. In fact, if the signs above are any indication, the 2010 election could end up being really, really good to the Republicans. But with Obama still in the White House until at least 2012, will they be able to do much to clean up the mess?

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Jihad and the Department of Dawah…er, Defense

This past Thursday (1/14/10) I attended a briefing (an early iteration of the discussion contents are available here, entitled “To Our Great Detriment”) which elucidated in irrefragable detail the Pentagon’s willful capitulation to the dictates of Islamically-correct interpretations of jihad by various Muslim Brotherhood “consultants” to the Department of Defense (DOD). While the DOD adopts the absurdly apologetic interpretation of jihad at its most “aggressive” as a bloodless missionary “striving” to promote the Religion of Peace—negating the living legacy of Jihad as a genocidal war doctrine, in practice as well as theory—the Pentagon’s Muslim Brotherhood advisors, true to the authentic doctrines of Jihad as an endless war of propaganda and deceit, continue to espouse Jihad war to their Muslim constituencies.

The result of this stunningly corrosive process has been the willful subversion of US Department of Defense policy to the ultimate goals of both cultural and violent Jihad—Islamization. More immediately, the warped, criminally negligent “rules of engagement” this DOD subversion has engendered are imposed upon our troops actually battling armed jihadism, putting their lives in danger, unnecessarily, and for precisely the wrong “cause”—alternative forms of Islamization, such as supporting Sharia-compliant regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, irrevocably hostile to Western ideals and goals.

The dangerous absurdity of DOD subversion—and its cruel, destructive impact on our troops—is self-evident in this report and accompanying commentary (from Friday 1/15/10) by Diana West:

This wasn’t supposed to happen there. According to a ‘counterinsurgency’ plan (COIN), anti-US, anti-infidel violence just wasn’t supposed to erupt in Garmsir, Afghanistan, of all places. But it did. And at least eight Afghans died in this Helmand Province district in rioting this week inspired by rumors that U.S. troops had roughed up a Koran. Somewhere between ‘one thousand’ (UPI) and ‘several thousand’ (The New York Times) Afghans converged on the central bazaar in response to these rumors. ‘The Taliban were provoking the people,’ an Afghan police official told the Times. ‘The Taliban were telling the people, ‘This is jihad; you should sacrifice yourselves.’

Jihad? What’s jihad? Among see-no-Islam Western policymakers, Islamic war doctrine is a cipher, a taboo, so policy is made in ignorance. But thousands of uneducated Afghans knew exactly what the Taliban meant. And what’s more, they acted on it. It was ‘like watching the movie Blackhawk Down,’ a Marine master sergeant told UPI, except ‘I was in it. My gunner kept yelling he had definite targets, people shooting at us but he couldn’t fire back because there were unarmed people around them.’

The contemporary willful ignorance—and subversion—of our DOD, contrasts starkly with the studious and intellectually honest approach to jihad taken by C. Snouck Hurgronje. A professor and Dutch colonial official, Snouck Hurgronje was also a pioneering and prolific Western scholar of Islam.

He visited Arabia (1884–85), including a stop at Mecca, while serving as a lecturer at the University of Leiden (1880–89). Hurgronje’s 2 vol. classic work “Mekka” (1888–89), describes the history of the city, and expounds upon Islam’s origins, and the traditions and rituals of the earliest Islamic communities. Translated into English as “Mekka in the Latter Part of the 19th Century” (1931), the second volume includes many details of daily life in an Islamic culture, and also discusses the Indonesian Muslim colony at Mecca...

Although deeply respectful of Islamic religious life, as an authoritative scholar of Islamic doctrine and history, and Dutch colonial official, Hurgronje vigorously opposed Islamic jihadism. He stated plainly that all teaching with regard to the orthodox, mainstream Islamic institution of Jihad war and the establishment of a Caliphate should be prohibited in Muslim schools. But perhaps most importantly Hurgronje’s “prescription” was based on a meticulously researched, clear-eyed, and unfettered understanding of Islamic doctrine, history, and culture...

Hurgronje who spent decades studying Islam, notably years of insightful fieldwork in Indonesia researching and writing his seminal, The Acehnese, made these observations regarding the jihad from his Mohammedanism, (New York, 1916, p. 59):

…yet another duty was most emphatically impressed on the Faithful; jihad, i.e., readiness to sacrifice life and possessions for the defense of Islam, understood, since the conquest of Mecca in 630, as the extension by force of arms of the authority of the Muslim state, first over the whole of Arabia, and soon after Muhammad’s death over the whole world, so far as Allah granted His hosts for the victory.

More HERE

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Political correctness and the 21st century battlefield

The national security panel at the Reclaim American Liberty conference in New York on Wednesday considered (1) whether we have the right legal architecture for maintaining our security and (2) whether we have the right battlefield architecture for this purpose. I summarized the panel discussion regarding the first question here. Tonight I'll write about the second.

The key panelist on our "battlefield architecture" was Col. Allen West (U.S. Army, Ret.). Col. West served as a commander in Iraq and, after retiring from the Army, served as an adviser in Afghanistan.

West retired from the Army with full benefits after being accused of misconduct in connection with the interrogation of an Iraqi police officer. Information obtained during the interrogation is said to have led to the arrest of two insurgents and the cessation of attacks on West's 4th Infantry Division battalion. At a hearing, West testified that he would act as he did if he had it to do over again. "If it's about the lives of my men and their safety, I'd go through hell with a gasoline can," West said.

Not surprisingly, West was blunt about our military's rules of engagement -- they are not suited for the 21st century battlefield and they put our troops in danger. On the 21st century battlefield, our enemy has removed its uniforms and taken to hiding among the population. Our rules of engagement enable them to obtain an advantage by adopting these tactics.

West noted that in a fire-fight, our troops typically have about five seconds before the dying starts. Yet, we require them to hold their fire until the intentions of the enemy have been verified and the potential for collateral has been assessed. This can't be done in five seconds. Thus, our troops are at a significant disadvantage.

In addition, when the enemy holes up in a mosque, we cannot attack. Thus, the enemy is able to use our own "politically correct" rules against us.

West argued that "top-down" rules of engagement are inherently inadequate on the 21st century battlefield. When these rules are driven by political correctness, our ability to fight is undermined even more.

The same lesson applies to the homeland, which West correctly considers part of the 21st century battlefield. The Fort Hood massacre illustrates the point. In this instance, political correctness prevented us from dealing with the enemy before he dealt with us.

Col. West is running for Congress in Florida's 22nd congressional district. Currently, that district is represented by Ron Klein, who defeated West in 2008 by a margin of 55-45. However, the seat was held until 2006 by Republican Clay Shaw, and we have seen that making up a 10-point gap from 2008 is, in the current environment, hardly out of the question. The Weekly Standard wrote about the race here.

West, an African-American, is quite charismatic and, if elected to Congress, would be a marvelous spokesman for the conservative cause. If you wish to donate to the campaign, you can do so here.

SOURCE (See the original for links)

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Limbaugh Lambasts the Interior Department

Another of Obama's ignoramuses doing his work of destruction

I never listen to the radio during the day, but yesterday I made an exception when blogger Bob McCarty alerted me to Rush Limbaugh's comments about the Interior Department's new rules on oil and natural gas drilling on federal lands.

Limbaugh pointed out that Rep. Dan Boren (D-Okla.) sent a blistering letter to Interior Sec. Ken Salazar on Jan. 7, repudiating him for his characterization of the small companies that drill for oil and natural gas. Boren took offense at Sec. Salazar's reference to drillers as the "kings of the world" during a recent conference call with reporters.

Boren said, "This kind of statement is beyond the pale when thousands of Oklahomans and people from other energy-producing states are losing their jobs due to the recession...The energy industry is overwhelmingly made-up of independent producers that drill 90 percent of the wells in the U.S...And quite frankly, they consider this brand of rancor as a slap in the face...."

Similarly, Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal took Sec. Salazar to task for handing control of oil and natural gas production "to the whims of those that profess a 'nowhere, not ever' philosophy" toward drilling. In a letter to Sec. Salazar, the governor said the Interior Department is proposing to add additional layers of analysis to the leasing process at a time when the Department needs to "get moving" on 2,000 leased parcels that have been waiting for a decision since June 2008. He added that the Department's delay is holding up about $26 million in state revenues.

"This involves families and jobs, schools and care for those on Medicaid--all at a time when our national and local economy is faltering," the governor wrote.

Rush Limbaugh had his own message to the Interior Department. "You guys say you want energy independence and you're killing the small business men and women in oil and gas production in this country who are trying to help you achieve that. It's on purpose, I'm telling you, folks, it's on purpose."

The oil and natural gas industry directly employs or supports 9.2 million American workers. If it were allowed to drill in energy-rich, non-park areas controlled by the government, it could create thousands of new jobs, generate revenues to pay for much needed services, and reduce the federal deficit. And no stimulus plan would be required.

SOURCE

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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