“My Real Time With Bill Maher” is a brilliant call to arms by Andrew Breitbart. The media and educational establishments are controlled the leftists and they are ugly and intolerant bunch. These two characteristics have not been well illustrated to the general public. In fact, conservatives have often been painted with them. 

So to overcome the ignorance foisted by TV comedians, tenured professors and mainstream media “journalists” we must first show up, we must advance positive solutions showing the advantage of conservative values, and we must politely and respectfully engage or attempt to engage in intelligent discussion. If we get hammered, booed, shouted down, etc., all the better, for we will have won the first battle. 

Subsequent battles will be easier and will tend to be more focused on issues. It is there that the conservative appeal lies.

I’m reminded of the last scene of “Gran Torino” in which Clint Eastwood reaches for his cigarette lighter for the last time . As the audience wiped tears away, there was a collective sense that Clint had won. We can also win, if we engage.

Pretty much everyone I respect in media and politics recommended I not go on HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher.” But on Friday night, I defied that wisdom and had the time of my life.

I sparred with Mr. Maher, Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson and a MoveOn.org audience from hell that booed my sentences before they were completed. Unfortunately, my wife and in-laws, who watched from the green room, were not as enamored with the experience as I was.

Since the salad days of ABC’s “Politically Incorrect,” which minted countless right-wing pundits and best-selling authors, conservatives have rightly assessed the HBO version of the Maher show as R-rated and shockingly hostile to their worldview. So most opt out.

I totally see why. But I think that’s exactly the wrong strategy.

The problem with the withdrawal approach is that it cedes the popular culture debate to the other side. We figure talk radio, a certain cable news network and some independent Internet venues will allow for us to get our ideas out to the masses. Well, those few outlets are greatly outnumbered. They are also isolated and targeted for destruction by the activist left. The sitting president (using taxpayer money) is now leading the charge.

via RealClearPolitics – Articles – My Real Time With Bill Maher.

Tom Motherway

Is our president’s penchant for falsehood intentional or just a series of innocent mistakes?Charles Krauthammer’s column in Real Clear Politics pretty well sets it out. Obama is following Rahm Emanuel’s rule one, “you never want to let a serious crisis go to waste.” He and his Reid-Pelosi team are intentionally lying to the American public. The consequences will likely be horrific.

The logic of Obama’s address to Congress went like this:

“Our economy did not fall into decline overnight,” he averred. Indeed, it all began before the housing crisis. What did we do wrong? We are paying for past sins in three principal areas: energy, health care, and education — importing too much oil and not finding new sources of energy (as in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf?), not reforming health care, and tolerating too many bad schools.

The “day of reckoning” has now arrived. And because “it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we’ll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament,” Obama has come to redeem us with his far-seeing program of universal, heavily nationalized health care; a cap-and-trade tax on energy; and a major federalization of education with universal access to college as the goal.

Amazing. As an explanation of our current economic difficulties, this is total fantasy. As a cure for rapidly growing joblessness, a massive destruction of wealth, a deepening worldwide recession, this is perhaps the greatest non sequitur ever foisted upon the American people.

via RealClearPolitics – Articles – Deception at Core of Obama Plans.

This 1979 Friedman education of Phil Donahue is certainly on point given the liberal blather our socialist president is foisting on the American public:

NRO’s editorial today is titled “Intelligence Failure.” The reference is to intelligence in the security sense; it could just as easily be to intelligence in the IQ sense. Seems that our President will appoint Charles Freeman, a career diplomat, Saudi apologist, and avid critic of Israel who happens to believe that Beijing did not repress the Tiananmen Square protesters fast enough. Freeman will be appointed to head the National Intelligence Council. As such he will decide the specific intelligence briefed to the president on a daily basis.

Three of the major foreign-policy challenges the United States faces today involve the survival of Israel, the Saudis’ promotion of radical Islam, and the ambitions of China. To navigate them, Obama has chosen a fierce critic of Israel — our only reliable ally in the region where threats to the United States are most immediate — whose track record is one of kowtowing to our enemies in the Mideast and our rivals in Beijing.

Freeman has an irrepressible instinct for the appalling. In a public forum in 2002, Freeman decried “America’s lack of introspection about September 11.” What commanded Freeman’s attention was not the jihadist ideology that brought about the murder of nearly 3,000 of our fellow citizens, but what he described as “an ugly mood of chauvinism” in the United States. Americans, he maintained, “should examine ourselves” as we consider “what might have caused the attack.”

via Intelligence Failure by The Editors on National Review Online.

Perhaps our new president has forgotten that one of his duties is commander in chief.

Tom Motherway

Well, the same folks who got us–hell, got the world–into this mess are at it again. House Majority Leader Hoyer announced today that the “cram-down” bill may be headed for a vote this week. That’ the bill that allows bankruptcy judges to change mortgage promissory note terms; yes, that’s right, lengthen terms, cut principal payments and lower interest rates. In essence, secured lenders holding the first trust deed would no longer be able to foreclose and sell the property to pay off the defaulted loan. The rule of law which the lender relied on in making the loan would be abrogated. The rule of law is at the very core of our republic. If the Democrats can abrogate the rule in this instance, what will be next?

Let’s try to understand the effects of this: From a real estate market perspective, there has been no “market clearing” price established for the collateral; the price that would have been established through foreclosure is barred by law. So, similar homes in the same subdivision being valued for sale, resale or refinance will need to be valued on some proxy basis. Sellers, and borrowers refinancing will likely get less because those proxy evaluations will of necessity be conservative.

Looked at from the real estate lending perspective, the government will become the lender of first resort and the lender of last resort. Private capital will no longer enter into secured lending where the security can be stripped at the discretion of some bankruptcy judge, a judge most likely to have been appointed by Obama! If lenders did engage in mortgage lending, it would be on severely restrictive terms, including high interest rates and additional security.

So when Barney Frank, Maxine Waters and Chris Dodd rebuffed warnings several years ago that Fannie and Freddie were out of control they were keeping the government spigot turned on full blast. They continued to foster the sub-prime loans that were highly leveraged into the world markets as mortgage backed securities. Alan Greenspan provided the liquidity, Barney Frank provided the device that brought the world to its knees.

Each step that the Democrats take on the mortgage crisis drives us farther away from a market economy, farther away from the rule of law, and closer to the centrally planned socialism that they so desperately want.

Why our president today decided to add “investment advisor” to his job description:

“What you’re now seeing is profit and earning ratios are starting to get to the point where buying stocks is a potentially good deal, if you’ve got a long-term perspective on it,” Obama said at the White House today while meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on battling the global recession.

Let’s see, is he a value investor or a momentum guy? One thing for sure, he’s a pretty savvy analyst, since those earnings ratios are on a steep spiral downward and likely to stay there, he was wise to qualify his recommendation to those with a “long-term” perspective. Very long term! But, then again, he should have cautioned against anything having to do with mortgage backed securities! Ironically this is the very thing the Democrats profess to fix!

Tom M.

Here’s an articulate up and comer for the Republicans. He’s telegenic, conservative and a winner. He bested his Democratic opponent 64% to 35% in Wisconsin’s 1st District in the 2008 election. His article in yesterday’s WSJ shows that he recognizes the problem and provides intelligent solutions.

The budget the president released last week, however, does provide some certainty about where we are headed: higher taxes on small businesses, work and capital investment.

Add to this the costly burdens of a cap-and-trade carbon emissions scheme and an effective nationalization of health care, and it is clear that the government is going to grow while the economy will shrink. In a nutshell, the president’s budget seemingly seeks to replace the American political idea of equalizing opportunity with the European notion of equalizing results.

via Opinion: Republican Road to Recovery – WSJ.com.

Scott Walker is refusing “free money” from the stimulus plan. State pols are mad at him; soon national pols will be mad at him. He’s the rare guy on he street that refuses the drug pusher. He knows the consequences are bad; he probably knows they are not “unintended.” See the weekend WSJ for this great piece.

Third, if we grow government rather than private-sector jobs, we will not help the economy. Strong leadership, honest budgeting and tax cuts would do a lot more.

This burst housing bubble that led to the recession was created when millions of people were allowed (or encouraged) to spend borrowed money on homes they couldn’t afford and were later forced into foreclosure.

Apparently Washington politicians learned nothing from this process. They rushed to spend $787 billion of borrowed money on new government programs in the name of economic stimulus. But even this loan of taxpayer money — essentially the largest mortgage in history — will come due. When it does, our children and grandchildren will pay for this imprudence.

As popular as the federal “stimulus” package is with Washington politicians, it is more popular among state and local politicians who view federal money as a cure for their fiscal woes.

via Scott Walker Refuses Stimulus Money for Milwaukee – WSJ.com.