Stanley McChrystal is a liberal who voted for Obama and banned Fox News from his HQ TV. Which may at least partly explain how he became the first U.S. general to be lost in combat while giving an interview to Rolling Stone: They’ll be studying that one in war colleges around the world for decades.

From the incomparable Mark Steyn – Rules of an unengaged president | obama, one, president – Opinion – The Orange County Register

We have entered a political wonderland, where the rules are whatever Democrats say they are. Mrs. Pelosi and the White House are resorting to these abuses because their bill is so unpopular that a majority even of their own party doesn’t want to vote for it. Fence-sitting Members are being threatened with primary challengers, a withdrawal of union support and of course ostracism. Michigan’s Bart Stupak is being pounded nightly by MSNBC for the high crime of refusing to vote for a bill that he believes will subsidize insurance for abortions.

Democrats are, literally, consuming their own majority for the sake of imposing new taxes, regulations and entitlements that the public has roundly rejected but that they believe will be the crowning achievement of the welfare state. They are also leaving behind a procedural bloody trail that will fuel public fury and make such a vast change of law seem illegitimate to millions of Americans.

The concoction has become so toxic that even Mrs. Pelosi isn’t bothering to defend the merits anymore, saying instead last week that “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” Or rather, “deeming” to have passed it.

Troopers raid popular bars for unlicensed beers | Philadelphia Daily News | 03/08/2010

IT WAS ELIOT NESS and the Untouchables, as played by the Keystone Kops.

The alleged offense: Although the bar owners had bought the beer legally from licensed Pennsylvania distributors and had paid all the necessary taxes, the police claimed that nobody had registered the precise names of the beers with the state Liquor Control Board – a process that requires the brewers or their importers to pay a $75 registration fee for each product they want to sell in Pennsylvania.

Based on a complaint from someone the State Police refuse to identify, three teams of officers converged last Thursday on the three bars, run by Leigh Maida and her husband, Brendan Hartranft. Checking their inventories against the state’s official list of more than 2,800 brands, the cops seized four kegs and 317 bottles, totaling 60.9 gallons of beer, according to police calculations.

In fact, according to Maida, more than half the beer removed by the State Police was properly registered – but the cops couldn’t find it on their lists because of "clerical errors" or "blatant ineptitude" between the police and the Liquor Control Board, with whom the officers were conferring by telephone.

She estimated the total value of the confiscated stock at $7,200, representing about 20 brands, some of which go by multiple names.

For instance, the cops grabbed Monk’s Cafe Sour Flemish Red Ale.

The beer has been sold throughout the state at dozens of restaurants and distributors for the last seven years. The brand appears on the state’s online list as "Monk’s Café Ale." It’s on tap seven days a week at the Center City bar after which it was named: Monk’s Cafe, at 16th and Spruce streets.

But that wasn’t enough to keep the State Police from confiscating 20 bottles and three kegs of the supposedly illegal ale at the three bars run by Maida and Hartranft – Resurrection Ale House, at 2425 Grays Ferry Ave.; Local 44, at 44th and Spruce streets, in West Philadelphia; and Memphis Taproom, 2331 E. Cumberland St., Port Richmond.

Maida said that the State Police also confiscated bottles of Duvel, a popular ale imported from Belgium that is widely advertised and available in at least 200 bars throughout the city and suburbs. The beer appears on the PLCB list as "Duvel Beer," while its label reads "Duvel Belgian Golden Ale."

…She added: "It’s McCarthy-like. They swarm in here and confiscate this product because they don’t know what the product is."

Industry sources complain that brand registration is typical of the onerous regulations that make selling beer in Pennsylvania difficult. For example, while it is the responsibility of the brewer or importer to submit the necessary paperwork and registration fee, it is the tavern or restaurant licensee who may be liable for selling unregistered brands, they said.

How many lessons here?  Excessive regulation.  Small businesses screwed once again.  Government seizes private property due to the ineptitude of public servants who nevertheless demand that the rest of us pay their above market, exorbitant pensions for life.  And so on…

For more information, see these posts by Threatswatch, Andrew McCarthy, DBKP and Anchoress. 

It is the interest on the national debt that makes our future unstable. The exploding size of that burden suggests that, short of devaluing the dollar and taking a large bite out of the middle class through inflation and taxation, there is no way to ever pay down that bill.

As of Sept. 30, 2009, the national debt was almost $12 trillion and interest on that debt was $383 billion for the year, according to the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Public Debt. The Congressional Budget Office on Oct. 7 estimated the 2009 budget deficit to be almost $1.4 trillion (about 10% of GDP). In August, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) estimated total government revenues at about $2 trillion. The revenue estimate included $904 billion from individual income taxes. This means the cost of interest on the debt represented more than 40 cents of every dollar that came in from individual income taxes…

In stark but simple terms, unless Americans are made aware of this financial crisis and demand accountability, the very fabric of our society will be destroyed. Interest rates and interest costs will soar and government revenues will be devoured by interest on the national debt. Eventually, most of what we spend on Social Security, Medicare, education, national defense and much more may have to come from new borrowing, if such funding can be obtained. Left unchecked, this destructive deficit-debt cycle will leave the White House and Congress with either having to default on the national debt or instruct the Treasury to run the printing presses into a policy of hyperinflation.

It is against this background that Washington is now debating whether to create social programs it can’t afford…

Americans need to take notice, stand up, and remind our elected officials that in a democracy the people can change bad leaders.

The economic pressure the Chinese dictatorship feels to continue creating jobs can be captured by the fact that they need 24 million new jobs this next year just to break even.

Their fear is that without jobs unrest will grow and that historically in China unrest can rapidly become very destabilizing. This focuses their energy on jobs and the economy in a way no American politician can fully appreciate.

So, the Chinese leadership feels intense pressure to create 24 million jobs every single year!  Meanwhile, back in Obama’s USSR, unemployment reached 14.9 million (August – US Bureau of Labor Statistics) and  Obama & Co. appear perfectly content to simply manage expectations for this level of unemployment to persist for years, as indicated last week by Obama’s chief economic advisor, Larry Summers.

More on this later…

From Yahoo News:

On the eve of the August recess, members are reporting meetings that have gone terribly awry, marked by angry, sign-carrying mobs and disruptive behavior. In at least one case, a congressman has stopped holding town hall events because the situation has spiraled so far out of control.

“I had felt they would be pointless,” Rep. Tim Bishop (D-N.Y.) told POLITICO, referring to his recent decision to suspend the events in his Long Island district. “There is no point in meeting with my constituents and [to] listen to them and have them listen to you if what is basically an unruly mob prevents you from having an intelligent conversation.”

Really?

Well Tim, guess what: you work for your constituents, not the other way around. 

It would appear to this commentator that the Reps and Senators who feel “besieged” by their constituents in town hall meetings might have paid better attention in September and October when they were told by 300:1 margins not to pass the EESA/TARP bill.

Or when they were told repeatedly to NOT try to advance amnesty for illegal aliens and refuse to enforce our immigration laws.

Or when they were told repeatedly to quit bailing out the irresponsible, looking the other way while the populace is looted systematically by those in the banking and other “coddled” industries.

There are a whole host of issues like this, and Congress seems to think (because it has gotten away with it for years) that ignoring the voters is not only acceptable, but is indeed a good idea.

Let me remind Mr. Bishop, along with the other Congressfolk, that the entirety of our government serves at our pleasure, not the other way around. Specifically, let me cite The Declaration of Independence:

….That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness….

Loud voices of dissent and sign-waving constituents are an unmistakable sign that our government has pressed the line of tolerance, and may, if it does not reverse course, exceed it.

And before someone claims that I am some sort of “right-wing nut” or similar, let me point out that the above text is not mine – they are the words of the founders of our nation, who believed that absent consent government does not exist – that’s tyranny, not government.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

How close to the line has our government come?

I have no idea, but this much I do know: I do not want to discover that the line has been crossed.

Again:

• Stop the looting and start prosecuting.  The bankers, lenders and others in the “bizness side” have been literally robbing the people for over two decades.  This includes both so-called “captains of the banking industry” and government officials who have looked the other way and in some cases (e.g. OTS) actively conspired to conceal the truth.  Taxpayers have lost hundreds of billions as a consequence yet nobody has gone to prison for it nor are there even outstanding indictments. There is no reason on God’s Green Earth why Goldman Sachs should be allowed to keep the roughly $13 billion in AIG pass-through money, nor why they should, having elected to become a bank holding company, be able to keep using their “VaR” risk model (instead of the more-stringent BANK risk limits.) There are dozens of examples; Goldman is hardly alone in this regard.
• Quit voting FOR bills you did not read – end to end! There’s no excuse for this.  The Stimulus Bill, EESA/TARP and more – this is absolutely common behavior and it’s outrageous.  Sorry, there is no emergency that demands passing a 1,000 page bill until every member has read it from one end to the other, personally.  If you need to pass something fast then it needs to be simple enough that it can be read in the hour you get before the vote!  I don’t care what the emergency is – if you haven’t read the bill cover-to-cover the only acceptable vote is NO.
• Quit spending more than you make. We are here because we have turned into a nation of Madoffs, and nowhere is it more evident than in Washington DC.  We cannot have a sustainable economic recovery until the debt-to-GDP ratio is restored to a rational and sustainable ratio. This means much less spending; promising that which cannot be paid for is how we got into this mess.
• Represent your constituents and TELL THE TRUTH. We’re tired of being lied to, and government has done a LOT of lying.  The idea that “the economy is improving” is just one example; go ask your unemployed constituents what they think of this claim.  Fact: The economy stinks and it stinks because Washington DC conspired to blow a bubble after the 2000 tech implosion.  You’re culpable; take responsibility and do the right thing instead of trying to blow air into a popped balloon!

Our government has become an unacceptable and unaccountable den of liars and thieves, and the people are getting damn tired of it.  The evidence of extreme dissatisfaction, which may rise beyond the soapbox and ballot box if this trend is not reversed and soon, is clear.  Nobody with a shred of intelligence wants to see the inevitable outcome of a government that refuses to follow the law itself, refuses to prosecute criminal wrongdoing by favored parties, and refuses to listen to the electorate on the issues of the day, instead mollycoddling those who have committed massive fraud upon the public and giving them hundreds of billions of dollars in hand-outs funded by the very people they ripped off in the first place!

Lots of articles commenting on the One and his socialist buddies, but the Michael Ramirez cartoon above sums it up succinctly.  Other commentary on the “coup” that wasn’t (Zelaya arrest by Honduran military) and the coup that almost was (Zelaya illegal referendum) includes:

Investors Business Daily – Banana Democrats

Wall Street Journal – Honduras Defends Its Democracy

The Enterprise Blog – Honduran Cowboy Falls Out of Saddle

Can there be any doubt abut the geopolitical impact of communications technologies?

Russian special forces dressed in Ukrainian Special forces uniforms are in Kyiv. Ukrainian militia have been instructed by the mayor to protect the people from the Russian troops. Ukrainian militia have established a hotline for Ukrainians to report any incidents with the Russians and pledged to protect Ukrainians. These Russians flew into Ukraine this morning. They’re now surrounding the administration buildings they say “to protect Kuchma (the outgoing president and his PM Yanukovich). Following is a chain of email messages I’ve been sending by blackberry. Please pass along to others. Bob Schaffer.