The British Conservative James Delingpole, with whom we usually agree, writes at the Telegraph about the dismal view he takes of the Republican Party candidates in this year’s presidential election.

His assessment of them is so dismal that he thinks that letting Obama, “the POTUS from hell”,  wreck the country for another four years would be a better choice than electing any of them.

We cannot wholly agree with him this time because we think no one on the political horizon could be worse for America than Obama, but we like his article and see his point:

Let’s get one thing clear: Obama unquestionably ranks among the bottom five presidents in US history. In terms of sublime awfulness he’s right up there with our late and extremely unlamented ex-PM Gordon Brown – which is quite some doing, given that Brown singlehandedly wrought more destruction on his country than the Luftwaffe, Dutch Elm Disease, the South Sea Bubble, the Fire of London and the Black Death combined.

Agreed: the damage President Obama has done to the US economy with everything from Ben Bernanke’s insane money-printing programme, to his cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline, to his ban on deep-water drilling to his crony capitalism hand-outs to disaster zones like Solyndra to his persecution of companies like Gibson is incalculable. And, of course, if he gets a second term the damage he and his rag-bag of Marxist cronies at organisations like the Environmental Protection Agency manage to inflict on the US small businessman trying to make an honest buck will make his first term look like Calvin Coolidge on steroids.

So why do I think this would be preferable to a presidency under Mitt Romney? Simple. Because I’ve seen what happens, America, when you elect yet another spineless, yet ruthless, principle-free blow-with-the-wind, big government, crony-capitalist RINO squish. His name is Dave Cameron – and trust me, the cure is far worse than the disease.

Of course it may not seem that way at first. You’ll be so busy dancing round in circles singing “Ding Dong the witch is dead!” that euphoria and relief will completely overwhelm your intellect and your powers of observation. You’ll read endless articles by David L Brooks, the New York Times’s pet pretend-conservative, telling you how Romney is just the kind of uniting, post-partisan, pragmatic POTUS America needed. And you’ll believe it because you’ll want to believe it. This may last for some considerable length of time. In Britain, many Cameroon conservatives … continue to perform this auto-lobotomisation even now.

But then, little by little, something rather unpleasant will begin to dawn on you. The label on the can may have changed but the contents taste remarkably similar. Similarly emetic, that is.

Yes, I know from the other side of the pond David Cameron may look just the kind of stand-up conservative you’d like running the US. But that’s only because the stories you hear about him are extremely selective. For example, I’m constantly surprised by US talk show hosts telling me how tough on militant Islam Cameron is because of some speech they heard Dave give once about the problems of multiculturalism.

But surely we should judge our political leaders by what they actually achieve rather than (Tony Blair-style) by what they tell us they are achieving.

Here are some of David Cameron’s achievements so far:

He has prolonged the economic crisis …

He has urged quotas for women in the boardroom, apparently in the belief that the State has either the knowledge or the right to decide how business conducts its affairs.

He has presided over a massive wind-farm building programme which, besides destroying the British countryside and enriching his father-in-law, is causing energy bills to soar to the point where old people are dying of hypothermia.

He has surrendered at almost every turn to the Carthaginian terms offered to Britain by the European Socialist Superstate.

He has proved himself incapable of expelling the Islamist hate-preacher Abu Qatada. [See our post The tale of a Muslim terrorist parasite, January 18, 2012.]

The list is by no means exhaustive. I would go on but, actually, this was never meant to be a “collected examples of the unutterable crapness of David Cameron” blog. Rather, it’s supposed to be a more generalised warning about the dangers of short-termist thinking.

Yes, of course, conservative/libertarian America, I fully understand how desperate you are to rid yourself of the POTUS from hell. But what you need to ask yourselves – and I don’t believe many of you are: you’re a bit like an hysterical woman who’s just had a tarantula drop on top of her in the bath, you just want to GET RID OF IT NOW! – is what ultimately you’re trying to achieve.

I’m presuming what you really want is stuff like: smaller government; a genuine – as opposed to an illusory, QE-driven – economic recovery; sensible environmentalism (ie conservation but not eco-fascism); liberty; an end of crony capitalism; a diminution of the power of Wall Street; a resurgence of American greatness; a renewed sense of confidence and purpose.

You’re not going to get any of that from a Romney administration.

But you will, provided you’ve got the patience, get it in 2016 from President West or President Rand Paul or President Palin or President Ryan.

Only it might be TOO LATE.

(Hat-tip Andrew M)

What are “rare earths” used for?

Cell phones, computer hard drives, and MRI machines. Military applications include guidance and control systems, advanced optics technologies, radar and radiation detection equipment, advanced communications systems. Weapons and equipment that contain rare earths are: Predator unmanned aerial vehicles, Tomahawk cruise missiles, Zumwalt-class destroyers, night vision goggles, smart bombs, sonar transducers.

The point is, we need them, and at present are reliant on China to supply them.

This is from Wizbang:

China provides 97% of the world’s REE (Rare Earth Elements) production but … only has 48% of the world’s known reserves of rare earths. … China has been imposing export quotas on rare earths which has created two separate rare earth markets – an internal Chinese market and globally, pretty much everyone else. The Chinese export quota for the year sets the global supply and price of REEs. …What we [the US] and the EU are setting ourselves up for is the potential for China to hold us hostage for critical technology.”

Will the question of rare earth elements find their way into discussions with China’s Vice President Xi Jinping during this week’s state visit?

Sarah Wirtz of the American Resources Policy Network tells The Atheist Conservative: “We need to get our act together on these critical metals. Regardless of whether the issue will be touched on in the bilateral talks, we can’t wait for China – and shouldn’t assume that it would be inclined – to change its policies to suit our needs. We can and we must shape our own strategic and economic future, and maximize our own mineral resource potential, and it is about time Washington created a framework conducive to doing so, rather than adding additional barriers to the responsible exploration and development of the mineral riches we’re blessed to have.”

This is from Real Clear World:

[There are] 18 “mineral materials” for which U.S. manufacturers – commercial and military – are 100 percent dependent on foreign sources of supply. In the case of 9 of those 18 minerals or metals, the U.S.’s No. 1 or 2 supplier is China. Next comes a baker’s-dozen of metals and minerals for which the U.S. is 80 to 99 percent foreign-dependent, from the humble Antimony and Potash to exotics like Gallium, Germanium, Titanium and Rhenium. Some we buy from Canada, others from Kazakhstan. How sure we can be of our future supply is anyone’s guess.

And that’s the problem. It turns out, for all of our breezy pundi-fication about the U.S. being a post-industrial economy, we still build stuff out of things that have their origins in rock and dirt. The materials [we need]  are found in the electronic gadgets we use for play and work, the weapons our military uses to keep us safe …

That’s where the fear-factor kicks in, because … we’re more dependent on foreign sources for dozens of key resources than we’ve ever been dependent on OPEC for oil. We just haven’t realized it yet.

So, what do we do?

We can start by reading the global signals that suggest we’re heading into a period of resource scarcity.

There is a high probability that China will exhaust  its supplies of REEs with its own consumption.

Take the much-mentioned Rare Earths crunch. … [China’s]  break-neck GDP growth will consume all of the Rare Earths it sweats out of the ground, and then some.

Rare Earths may be getting the headlines, but there’s no reason to think things will prove much different for Fluorspar, Indium or Gallium. Shortages of any of those substances may not knock us out of our easy chairs, but translate them into the products they make possible: There go our flat panel TVs (Indium), our semiconductors (today), our fuel cells (tomorrow) – both Gallium – and our microscopes, telescopes and optical lenses (Fluorspar).

Glib comments that we can solve shortfalls by simply substituting for scarce raw materials in the manufacturing process deserve deeper examination. Substitution is not so easy. Take, for instance, Niobium (100 percent foreign-dependent, with Brazil our leading supplier), used in fabricating high-strength steel alloy. Instead of Niobium, you can substitute Vanadium as an alloying agent – and you’ll only be switching U.S. dependency from Brazil to China (100 percent foreign-dependent, leading Vanadium supplier).

Or take Indium (100 percent dependent; China the No. 1 supplier), an essential ingredient in solar cells and semiconductors. Gallium Arsenide can substitute for Indium in solar cells and in some semiconductor applications. But we’re 99 percent dependent on Gallium (China, No. 1 supplier) and 100 percent dependent for Arsenic (China again).

What we can do to work through a resource shortage differs, metal by metal and country by country. After all, there’s nothing a nation can do if it drew the short straw in the sub-surface minerals lottery. But when a nation does have untapped resources, it needs a policy to address surety of supply. That means mining more if you’re geologically blessed, keeping on friendly terms with like-minded governments that have resources you lack and diversifying away when possible from regimes likely to use their resource leverage against you in some future crisis or conflict. …

For U.S. policymakers, the looming resource crunch seems to be one more crisis that they’re not ready to cope with right now. With trillion-dollar deficits and a debt-clock ticking down to doomsday, that’s fair enough. But once Congress and the White House get the budget straightened out, it’s fair to ask: What’s our strategy for feeding our high-tech economy the metals and minerals it needs to grow? What’s our national plan to cope with the coming Resource Deficit?

Who doubts that Obama and his highly informed White House advisers have anticipated the problem, and at this very moment are working out a strategy to solve it, starting with a discussion of rare earth minerals with Xi Jinping?

We do.

*

Question: Are there sources of REEs in the US?

Answer (from Wikipedia): In 2010, the United States Geological Survey released a study which found that the United States had 13 million metric tons of rare earth elements.

Two British voices – Nigel Farage and Godfrey Bloom – cry out against the undemocratic EU’s destruction of Greece and a repeat of the subprime conspiracy of politicians against people.

Who’s listening? Hardly anyone in the joke of a “European parliament”. But millions on the Internet.

Learn more here.

Obama’s 2010 health-care law was a levelling, socialist, collectivist, wealth-redistributing, government-enlarging measure. It was a power-grab, in the name of “compassion” as always –  the pretence by the left that the governing elite has nothing so much at heart as the welfare of the poor. The poor must have free stuff. Everyone must have free stuff so that no one is any different from anyone else – except of course the power-elite (what they called the “nomenclatura” in Soviet Russia).

But stuff does not come free. If some are getting something without paying for it, someone else is giving to them – involuntarily, in the collectivist state. “Free” means the state pays. The state gets its money from – well, from the people actually. The socialist, collectivist, redistributing state robs Peter to give free stuff to Pauline.

Among the free stuff Pauline must have is health-care. Obama’s health-care law requires contraception and sterilization to be included in all health insurance policies. There must be “free” contraceptives available to all women. They must be able to copulate without fear of conceiving. To have a baby is a “punishment” according to Obama. If conception accidentally happens, they must be able to have a “free” abortion. Copulating is good but conceiving is bad. Babies are bad for women’s health. And, besides, having a baby or an abortion is much more expensive than contraception.

Of course if every man and woman paid for their own health care just as they pay (or as most of them still do in America) for their food and shelter and clothing, the budgeting choices would concern nobody else. But freedom for the individual to make his and her own choices is precisely what the all-controlling, levelling, collectivist state is ideologically against. To prevent such freedom was the real reason why “Obamacare” was enacted.

To achieve their aim, Obama and cronies must ignore the Constitution. In any case it’s an outdated document, they say. As is stated in the official organ of the Dark Side, the New York Times:

The Constitution is out of step with the rest of the world in failing to protect … entitlement to food, education and health care.

By “the rest of the world” is meant places like Greece which recognize – to their financial embarrassment – that there’ s an entitlement to health care and everything. That’s the nub of the Obama collectivist ideology. All are entitled to have it, so some must pay for everyone to have it. Even if it brings the country to economic ruin.

However, those who pay must not be allowed to buy it for themselves. What selfishness! Private purchase is forbidden.

A Wall Street Journal editorial reports this and comments:

The HHS [Department of Health and Human Services] rule prohibits out-of-pocket costs for birth control, simply because Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s regulators believe no woman should have to pay anything for it. To take a larger example: The Obama Administration’s legal defense of the mandate to buy insurance or else pay a penalty is that the mere fact of being alive gives the government the right to regulate all Americans at every point in their lives

But there was a small difficulty, a minor nuisance. Some religions do not think of reproduction as a punishment and actually forbid contraception and abortion. They don’t see the question as one of health as the state pretends it is, but of morals. So the administration will allow an exception. Churches that object to birth control and abortion need not offer cover for them to their employees, and the employees may claim these “free” services directly from the insurers.

Of course they cannot and will not be free.

This is from PowerLine:

First, there is no possible constitutional basis on which the federal government can order insurance companies to provide specified services for free. Second, the idea that the cost of contraception and abortion services will be borne by insurance companies is absurd. Obviously, insurance companies will quote premiums based on the total cost of the coverage in the proposed policy. If the policy includes contraception and abortion, those costs will be included in the premium, regardless of whether those particular services are designated as “free” to the employee and/or the employer. It is the employee, of course, who ultimately bears the cost.

We’ll all ultimately bear the cost, which is our freedom.

Freedom itself, not health or religious doctrine, is the vital issue.

We are not enamored of Mitt Romney (though he’d be a vast improvement on Obama if he became president).

But we are against the left’s attack on him for paying, they say, too little in taxes. He’s obviously paying far too much.

We take the position that in principle taxation is theft. Every penny that goes to a government should be grudged.

We also insist that wealth is not a problem. Poverty is the problem. And it is a really bad idea – a Christian one – that to be poor is ipso facto to be virtuous.

On the subject of Romney being under-taxed, here’s an opinion from the Heritage Foundation:

How many times should your money be taxed? One time? Two times? Three times? Four? Sounds like a ridiculous proposition, but that’s the true story of capital gains taxes in America, and it’s one that’s not being told in the continuing debate over Governor Mitt Romney’s taxes.

For more than a week, the media has focused on the subject of just how much Romney pays in taxes. On Tuesday, the governor released his tax returns indicating that he paid about 15 percent in taxes last year. At first blush, that sounds like a low rate, especially considering that Romney is admittedly worth millions. But as with all things in politics, there is more to the story.

As most Americans know, marginal individual income tax rates in America range between 15 and 35 percent. However, Americans making money from investments typically earn dividends. They face a lower rate to reduce the tax barrier to investing and growing businesses. For Americans in the lowest two income brackets, the tax rate on dividends is zero. For all the rest, the dividend tax rate is 15 percent – hence Romney’s rate.

Why do dividends face lower rates than wages or interest income? Because dividends have already faced one full level of tax at the corporate level.

But that’s income tax. Americans making money from investments also typically pay a capital gains tax at the same lower rate as for dividends. Income and capital gains are very different. Income is what is generated from using resources, as wage income is generated by providing labor services, whereas a capital gain results from an increase in an asset price. Capital gains face a lower rate to reduce the tax barrier to investing, especially in high-risk, high-return, job-creating, business-growing investments.

So right off the bat, Romney is paying what is legally required of him – and even when compared to the average federal income tax burden in America of 9.3 percent, he’s paying more. There’s still more to the story, though.

When Romney pays 15 percent to Uncle Sam, that’s not the first time that money was taxed. … Romney’s money has likely gone through four levels of taxation, meaning that the level of taxation was at 50 percent and likely much higher:

At the very least, he paid nearly 45 percent, but a chunk of this tax was collected before he even saw the remainder. Income from capital gains and dividends means the income was first earned by businesses, most likely corporations which paid tax at 35 percent. So Romney paid his 15 percent only after the government had taken its 35 percent cut. That leaves Romney with a combined tax of 45 cents on the dollar of corporate earnings.

So that’s two levels of taxation – the corporate rate and the capital gains rate. But there’s more. Foster explains that Romney’s cash was likely subject to taxes on capital income repeatedly in the past. Few investments are one and done; rather, most are earned taxed dividends and capital gains over extended periods that are reinvested and taxed again and again. This is a third “level” of taxation. And then Romney was also taxed at the individual rate as wage or salary income–a fourth level. And that’s how you get above 50 percent in taxes. …

Are four levels of taxation, topping out at 50 percent “fair” enough for the left? Unfortunately, the truth about capital gains taxes don’t fit as neatly into a headline as ‘Millionaire Only Pays 15% Tax Rate,’ but Americans deserve to know the truth — and they also deserve to be able to save, invest, spend, and contribute the money they have earned without it being confiscated by progressive politicians seeking a “fair” redistribution of wealth ushered in by a growing federal government.

Instead of eating the rich and burning down their mansions, Congress should find ways to make it easier for Americans to keep their money, invest it, and become more prosperous.

“Find ways”?  There’s only one way to take less.

Take less.

How happy could I be with either

Were t’other dear charmer away.

                                                                       – John Gay: The Beggar’s Opera

*

Keystone XL is a TransCanada pipeline project to bring Canadian oil to the US.

TransCanada says of it:

The U.S. consumes 15 million barrels of oil each day and imports 10 to 11 million barrels per day.  Industry forecasts predict oil consumption will continue at these levels for the next two to three decades, so a secure supply of crude oil is critical to U.S. energy security. …

TransCanada is poised to put 13,000 Americans to work to construct the pipeline – pipefitters, welders, mechanics, electricians, heavy equipment operators, among other jobs – in addition to 7,000 manufacturing jobs that would be created across the U.S.  Additionally, local businesses along the pipeline route will benefit from the 118,000 spin-off jobs Keystone XL will create through increased business for local goods and service providers.

Rich Trzupek comments at Front Page:

Not only would Keystone XL generate tens of thousands of new jobs, both in terms of construction jobs and in terms of a myriad of employment opportunities down the supply chain, it would also take a huge bite out of overseas oil imports. At full capacity, Keystone XL would provide about ten percent of America’s crude oil demand, without the slightest risk of a foreign tyrant cutting off production or closing a supply route. 

But there is opposition to the project by environmentalists, who have been allowed to become all too powerful. Trzupek praises Prime Minister Stephen Harper for standing up to them:

Last week Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper demonstrated that he’s more than willing to do that which his counterpart in the White House is unable or unwilling to do: display a little backbone when dealing with radical environmentalists and their pet causes. Harper’s administration both commenced hearings on an alternative pipeline that would be used to ship Canadian crude to China, as well as putting the “green movement” on notice that extremism masquerading as environmentalism will no longer be tolerated in the Great White North.

President Obama, however, is a fully committed member of the green movement. So he’s against the project. But the trade unions, which he likes to please, are of course for it, so he wants to be for it too. He’d be happy with either, if only the other weren’t there.

Unfortunately, the combination of green fear-mongering and President Obama’s predictable dithering has put approval of Keystone XL in doubt. Per his deal with Congress the President has until February 21 to approve the pipeline project or to explain his refusal to do so. Yet, even if the President does approve the project and risk annoying those among his supporters who worship planet earth even more than they do him, there is no guarantee that construction of Keystone XL would start anytime soon.

As Harper is aware, the United States is as litigious a society as there is on earth and – thanks to themany misguided decisions made in the pursuit of environmental purity by both parties – the massive statutory and regulatory infrastructures that have been constructed in the name of protecting mother earth practically guarantee that environmental groups could tie up an approval of Keystone XL in the courts for years. It would be silly to put all one’s eggs in one basket in any case, but given the dysfunctional manner with which America addresses environmental issues and energy issues, Harper would be worse than foolish to assume that Canada’s best energy customer will continue to be so.

So, the Harper government opened hearings on the Northern Gateway pipeline, an alternative route that would send crude from Alberta to Kimat, British Columbia, where it would be loaded onto tankers and shipped to energy-starved China. To be sure that pipeline faces opposition and its own bureaucratic obstacles as well, but with hundreds of billions of revenue at risk it is clearly well worth the effort to move forward on both tracks. Keystone XL is surely the preferred – and sensible – way to get Alberta’s crude to market, but Northern Gateway will do just fine if the United States is too stupid to approve a project that is so clearly in our national interest. …

That the Harper government is savvy enough to pursue a second pipeline option is testament to its wisdom, but the fact that it also called out (finally!) the environmental movement for its unrestrained, unscientific extremism speaks volumes about its courage. In an open letter published at the Financial Times, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver put environmental groups on notice last week, letting them know that their tawdry little games would no longer be tolerated in Canada. He called them out in no uncertain terms:

“These groups threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda. They seek to exploit any loophole they can find, stacking public hearings with bodies to ensure that delays kill good projects. They use funding from foreign special-interest groups to undermine Canada’s national economic interest. They attract jet-setting celebrities …  to lecture Canadians not to develop our natural resources. Finally, if all other avenues have failed, they will take a quintessential American approach: Sue everyone and anyone to delay the project even further. They do this because they know it can work. It works because it helps them to achieve their ultimate objective: delay a project to the point it becomes economically unviable.”

How refreshing it is to hear a leader of a representative form of government speak in such a clear, uncompromising manner. Oliver’s words are a reminder why plain-spoken leaders like Reagan and Christie are so well-received: they are remarkable because they are so rare. And surely Oliver is correct on all counts. For what are massive, well-heeled environmental groups like the Sierra Club and NRDC if not special interests? What are rich, finger-wagging Hollywood celebrities like Streisand, Cameron and DiCaprio if not hypocrites? What is the reason behind the numerous, pointless lawsuits that greenies file if not to obstruct and demoralize those who seek to create wealth?

A little more than a month from now, President Obama will be forced to do something he hates to do: make an actual decision, all the more so because if he approves Keystone XL he will upset his green base, while if he kills it he will annoy his union base. History suggests he’ll look for a new way to waffle – perhaps by killing the project for now, while promising to revisit it in 2013 – but no matter what happens it’s clear that Canada is determined to find a way to sell its riches to someone. It ought to be us, yet perhaps this too is just another sign of the way power is shifting in the world today. For not only are China and India showing more leadership than Obama’s America, it seems that even Canada is too.

Friends of the Earth are, expectedly, among the complaining environmentalist groups. Their case against the pipeline and against the means used to extract the oil may be found here  –  a howl of distress against what they consider a dirty and dangerous project. This is one of their complaints:

Northern Alberta, the region where tar sands oil is extracted, is home to many indigenous populations. Important parts of their cultural traditions and livelihood are coming under attack because of tar sands operations. Communities living downstream from tailing ponds have seen spikes in rates of rare cancers, renal failure, lupus, and hyperthyroidism. In the lakeside village of Fort Chipewyan, for example, 100 of the town’s 1,200 residents have died from cancer.

So about 8% of this village’s deaths have been due to cancer. Over what period is not given.

According to this official source, 24% of Canadian women and 29% of Canadian men will die of cancer. So the number of cancer deaths downstream from the extraction operations in Northern Alberta would seem to be exceptionally low. 

The rest of the Friends of the Earth’s arguments may be assessed as valid or invalid according to your investigation or your bias.

Our investigation of just the one argument, but mostly our bias, puts us firmly in favor of the project.

P.S. Obama has made a decision about Keystone XL. He’s decided against it.

The Greeks’ last stand: abandon the children, feed the pedophiles.

What is happening in Greece as the welfare state collapses perfectly illustrates the logic of politically correct policies – or in one word, socialism.

This is from the MailOnline:

Children are being abandoned on Greece’s streets by their poverty-stricken families who cannot afford to look after them any more.

Youngsters are being dumped by their parents who are struggling to make ends meet in what is fast becoming the most tragic human consequence of the Euro crisis.

Athens’ Ark of the World youth centre said four children, including a newborn baby, had been left on its doorstep in recent months. One mother, it said, ran away after handing over her two-year-old daughter Natasha. Four-year-old Anna was found by a teacher clutching a note that read: “I will not be coming to pick up Anna today because I cannot afford to look after her. Please take good care of her. Sorry.”

And another desperate mother, Maria, was forced to give up her eight-year-old daughter Anastasia after losing her job. She looked for work for more than a year, having to leave her child at home for hours at a time, and lived off food handouts from the local church. She said: “Every night I cry alone at home, but what can I do? It hurt my heart, but I didn’t have a choice.” She now works in a cafe but only make £16 [$25] per day and so cannot afford to take her daughter back.

Centre founder Fr Antonios Papanikolaou [said]: “Over the last year we’ve had hundreds of parents who want to leave their children with us… They say they do not have any money or shelter or food for their kids, so they hope we might be able to provide them with what they need.”

There are, however, some deserving citizens who will go on being supported by the state to the bitter end. While children are left on doorsteps to live or die, their molesters will start getting welfare checks.  

This is by StevenPlaut, from Front Page:

The government of Greece [decided] a few days ago to start funding pedophiles. No, that is not a spoof and not a misprint. … The Greek government has just recognized pedophiles as a population of the “disabled,” entitled under law to governmental disability compensation and added to the country’s welfare roll. The children who are the victims of those pedophiles evidently are not.

Pedophiles are not the only folks being added to the growing lists of those who may enjoy free handouts and disability income from the Greek government. (Notice I did not say benefits “paid for by the Greek taxpayer,” since so much of the Greek national budget is not covered by them these days.) Exhibitionists and kleptomaniacs were also just added to the welfare roll list that already includes pyromaniacs, compulsive gamblers, fetishists and sadomasochists. Under the new Greek “disability” rules and categories, pedophiles will get larger welfare checks than people who have undergone organ transplants. Peeping Toms will enjoy a higher level of support than diabetics.

Now we know – as if we didn’t always know! – for whom the Left’s heart bleeds.

America is confronted with an existential choice. If it can no longer afford both strong defense and social welfare – which seems to be the case ever more compellingly – which will it choose? A strong defense ensures survival. Welfare guarantees decline and fall.

Earlier this month, Obama announced his plan for weakening America.

We quote from an article by Arnold Ahlert at Front Page:

The scope of the divestment is daunting. The additional $500 billion in new spending cuts come on top of the $480 billion this president cut out of the military budget his first three years in office. Neither of these cuts reflect the possibility that an additional $500 billion in possible cuts will kick in next January, under “sequestration.” And since the 2012 budget request already calls for the reduction of 27,000 soldiers and 20,000 Marines over the next four years, it is likely those numbers will increase as well.

Critical technology has also [been targeted and], may get axed as well. The Airborne Laser, a project aimed at destroying enemy missiles soon after they blast off was killed 2010, along with the Future Combat Systems, a program deigned to coordinate mobile forces and unmanned vehicles. The latter was killed with the promise that modernization resources would go directly to the Army and Marines. So far it hasn’t happened, and now it may not. The Navy’s hypersonic electromagnetic rail gun, a project designed to intercept anti-ship missiles–like those that could be aimed at our carriers in a fight with Iran or China–lost funding in 2011. Cutbacks could also include the F-35 fighter plane, despite its radar-evading stealth technology that would allow us to maintain our dominance in the air.

Why? Incredibly, the president claimed “the tide of war is receding.” No doubt that would be news to Iraqis who are enduring large-scale attacks and the possibility of a civil war, due primarily to our premature withdrawal. So too for the Afghans, who must now contemplate the return of the Taliban, with whom the Obama administration has seen fit to negotiate, using Islamic cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi as a “key mediator,” despite [no, because of  – JB] rabid anti-Semitism and his issuance of a fatwa urging the killing of American troops. No doubt Iran, fresh from conducting military exercises in the Strait of Hormuz last week, and further maneuvers near the Afghan coast on Saturday, would be equally surprised. And then there’s the multiple threats the Islamist uprisings, nostalgically referred to as the “Arab Spring,” have the potential to engender as well.

[The] administration [is] projecting military budget outlays of 2.7 percent of GDP by 2021. That number is comparable to our military outlays in the year 1940–one year before America’s fatal flirtation with both isolationism and peace literally blew up in our collective faces at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

As always, this chain saw approach to the military is what every military cutback has been about for progressives: maintaining the inviolability of the welfare state, for which spending is set to hit nearly 11% of GDP by 2020, before the projected $2.6 trillion slated for ObamaCare – a number that will undoubtedly rise – is factored in. Yet this is where that inviolability inevitably leads:

“Entitlements now account for around 65 percent of all federal spending and a record 18 percent of GDP. The three largest entitlements – Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid – eclipsed defense spending in 1976 and have been growing ever since. If future taxes are held at the historical average, these three entitlements will consume all tax revenues by 2052, leaving no money for the government’s primary constitutional obligation: providing for the common defense.”

Yet it is more than just a desire to expand the welfare state that drives this president and his administration. Mr. Obama is a dedicated progressive who cannot hide his disdain for American exceptionalism. The Hoover Institution’s Shelby Steele explains:

“[The American left] seeks to trade the burdens of greatness for the relief of mediocrity. When greatness fades, when a nation contracts to a middling place in the world, then the world in fact no longer knocks on its door… To redeem the nation from its supposed avarice and hubris, the American left effectively makes a virtue of decline  …”

How far is Mr. Obama willing to go in that regard? His administration recently acknowledged that it is pursuing a policy aimed at giving Russia detailed information about the performance of our offensive and defensive missile capabilities. Ostensibly this will be instrumental in breaking the deadlock in missile defense talks with Moscow, in that it will assure the Russians we mean them no harm. Yet section 1227 of the defense law prohibits spending on such a measure, until Congress receives a report on the numerous details involved. Furthermore, the president is required to certify to Congress that Russia will not share the secrets with other nations, or “develop counter-measures” to U.S. defenses. [Trust thine enemy?}

[But] Mr. Obama kicked section 1227 to the curb. In a signing statement, he said he considered the restrictions “non-binding.” …

Are Americans willing to completely abandon this nation’s role as the “last best hope of mankind” for a welfare state that will consume 100 percent of government revenue forty years hence?

For those who can’t work out in theory that the welfare state is unsustainable – to use one of the favorite words of the left  – there is the model of Europe to prove it, as one after another the socialist heavens come crashing down.

We would like to see all entitlements abandoned. Let’s have very low taxes instead, allotting the government enough revenue to maintain an extremely strong defense capability and a reliable justice system so that the only necessary function of government, the defense of the nation’s liberty, is thoroughly fulfilled;  allowing it nothing to squander on frivolous and counter-productive extravagances such as welfare and foreign aid.

We expect this opinion of ours will provoke the usual question: if the government stops being the welfare-provider for the nation, how will those who cannot support themselves survive? The answer: on the munificent charity that those who ask the question will not hesitate to provide.

Greed is not a vice.

Envy is a vice. Envy is the besetting sin (in a secular sense) 0f the Left.

But greed is a virtue.

Walter Williams explains:

What human motivation gets the most wonderful things done? It’s really a silly question, because the answer is so simple. It turns out that it’s human greed that gets the most wonderful things done. When I say greed, I am not talking about fraud, theft, dishonesty, lobbying for special privileges from government or other forms of despicable behavior. I’m talking about people trying to get as much as they can for themselves. Let’s look at it.

This winter, Texas ranchers may have to fight the cold of night, perhaps blizzards, to run down, feed and care for stray cattle. They make the personal sacrifice of caring for their animals to ensure that New Yorkers can enjoy beef. Last summer, Idaho potato farmers toiled in blazing sun, in dust and dirt, and maybe being bitten by insects to ensure that New Yorkers had potatoes to go with their beef.

Here’s my question: Do you think that Texas ranchers and Idaho potato farmers make these personal sacrifices because they love or care about the well-being of New Yorkers? The fact is whether they like New Yorkers or not, they make sure that New Yorkers are supplied with beef and potatoes every day of the week. Why? It’s because ranchers and farmers want more for themselves. In a free market system, in order for one to get more for himself, he must serve his fellow man. This is precisely what Adam Smith, the father of economics, meant when he said in his classic “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” (1776), “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” By the way, how much beef and potatoes do you think New Yorkers would enjoy if it all depended upon the politically correct notions of human love and kindness? Personally, I’d grieve for New Yorkers. Some have suggested that instead of greed, I use “enlightened self-interest.” That’s OK, but I prefer greed. …

Prior to the rise of capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving one’s fellow man. Capitalists seek to discover what people want and then produce it as efficiently as possible. …

Free market capitalism has … enemies — mostly among the intellectual elite and political tyrants. These are people who believe that they have superior wisdom to the masses and that God has ordained them to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Of course, they have what they consider to be good reasons for restricting liberty, but every tyrant who has ever lived has had what he considered good reason for restricting liberty. A tyrant’s agenda calls for the attenuation or the elimination of the market and what is implied by it — voluntary exchange. Tyrants do not trust that people acting voluntarily will do what the tyrant thinks they should do. They want to replace the market with economic planning and regulation.

The Wall Street occupiers and their media and political allies are not against the principle of crony capitalism, bailouts and government special privileges and intervention. They share the same hostility to free market capitalism and peaceable voluntary exchange as tyrants. What they really want is congressional permission to share in the booty from looting their fellow man.