Good News: China Now Buys as Much Crap as We Do

China Ends US Reign as Largest Auto Market

This looks like more bad news about America's decline, but it's actually good news.

China is running surpluses because it has basically been a Commie-capitalist slave labor camp for the past decade.  Money goes in and it gets stored up instead of going to the dirt poor workers keep the factories churning.  But even a Chinese Communist knows you can't deny the worker the fruits of his labor forever.

Building a Middle Class Ain't Cheap

Chinese workers have seen the future and are no longer satisfied to go around in pajamas and sandals and live in flintstone houses and cramped barracks.  The state has heard their cries and is now allowing them to amass middle class accoutrement like cars and TVs.

Meanwhile Americans tighten their belts...  
Bringing China's masses into the modern age costs money, so the stack that China sits on will get smaller, and much will flow back to the US as they purchase stuff from us that they can't yet make themselves.  That is how global economic imbalances get corrected.

Now, if we can just get the bloated pigs wallowing in the DC sewer to stop gorging on our hard earned money, we just may be able to turn this country around...

A 2010 Prediction

I don't know who will win the Super Bowl or the World Series.  I imagine the economy will remain flat, struggling under weighty government regulation and taxation with uncertainty added in for good measure, but I really don't know.

This I do Know:  The liberal establishment will do their damnedest to splinter us

It's the only shot liberals have at stopping the conservative onslaught.  The press will shine a white hot spot spot light upon every microscopic crack and fissure within the conservative movement.  These minuscule differences will be played up into grand canyons and unbridgeable chasms. 

Liberals will be driving wedges anywhere they see an opening, hoping to spawn rightwing third-party, fourth-party, Neo-Whig Constitutionalists, John Galt Objectivist Libertarian Party movements, whatever.  Anything to fracture the hated anti-government, pro-liberty opposition and guarantee continued democratic dominance. 

Elites Left and Right Will Never Understand The Tea Party Movement 

Establishment chatterers like David Brooks describe the tea party movement in unflattering or negative language:

The tea party movement is a large, fractious confederation of Americans who are defined by what they are against.

They are against the concentrated power of the educated class. They believe big government, big business, big media and the affluent professionals are merging to form self-serving oligarchy — with bloated government, unsustainable deficits, high taxes and intrusive regulation.

My response?  Hell Yeah!  And we're angry. And we vote!  

And we won't be voting for liberals or squishy moderates.  And what's so bad about being "against."  I'll bet every single one of these whiny liberals are "against" being poked in the eye with a stick, so drop the BS already!

We are Conservatives, We don't need leaders to tell us how to think 

We are conservatives; we don't need to roll ourselves into one tight stinking, collectivist ball like the libs do.  We don't need a community organizer to bribe us with hooch and smokes to go to the polls.  We don't need a leader to tell us what to think.  This is unimaginable to collectivist huddled masses on the left.

We will argue with one another over Sarah Palin; cultural conservatism versus libertarianism; and a thousand other flash points, but we won't take our ball and go home.  We will vote conservative in November because we are 100% united in complete opposition to the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Socialist-Statist agenda.

2010:  The year we burn their ACORNS so bad they won't be worth pulling out of the fire!

Drones Over Pakistan: Don't! Stop! ... Don't Stop!

Pakistan is a Perfidious Partner

It's no secret that Pakistan's military and intelligence organizations are double-dealing bastards.  I'm not blaming them, they live in a dangerous neighborhood and you gotta protect yourself...

I saw their duplicity and perfidy up close when I was stationed in Afghanistan back in 2005.  A massive earthquake devastated the Kashmir region, and we offered unqualified assistance:  tents, meals, communications, medical, whatever the victims of this tragedy needed.

The answer?  "Yes, send it, but drop it anonymously, no US markings, no US personnel on the ground.  Help us, but don't let the people know you are helping us."

No skin off my nose. I didn't want to go to their s#*t-smeared hell hole anyway.     

We first joined forces with Pakistan to dislodge the Soviets from Afghanistan
The Russians ran and the Mujaheddin morphed into the Taliban with assistance and encouragement from our Pakistani "friends."  They still can't let go of their Taliban; parting is such sweet sorrow for these sentimental softies.  

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Orders More Bombings!
But some of their little pet snakes are now rising up to bite them, so we bomb the lawless tribal areas (FATA) with their tacit approval while they loudly and publicly protest it all.  We hear of the extreme hatred flaring out of control at us over our slaughter of Pakistani innocents.

Pakistani Tribal Outrage "A Myth"

This myth was recently exploded by Farhat Taj in her article ‘Drone attacks: challenging some fabrications’, published recently in a national daily. Dr Taj is an academic at the University of Oslo, but more importantly, she comes from the region and has a degree of access to tribal Pakhtuns that is rare.

...ordinary people in Fata are delighted that at least somebody is killing the ruthless thugs who have seized control of their villages and their lives...

“The people of Waziristan are suffering a brutal kind of occupation under the Taliban and Al Qaeda. It is in this context that they would welcome anyone, Americans, Israelis, Indians or even the devil, to rid them of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.  (Dawn)

I take anything and everything coming out of that part of the world with a grain of salt, but I don't know why this woman would lie.  She is a professor in Oslo, and this is her homeland getting pounded.  Anyway, it's a refreshing take we would never hear from the Western press.

TROLLING!!!

A trolling we will go!  A Trolling we will go!  Hi ho the Dairy-O a trolling we will go!

Amid much fanfare, I am proud to announce the newest wing of Western Hero:  Go Trolling!  It's a blog roll of lefty bloggers, a liberal Hall of Shame, if you will. 

I got the idea when I ran across some liberal nutbags who, like pigeons hovering over a statue, left their droppings at Bonsai From The Right.

So what did I do?  Like any military veteran worth his retirement check, I tracked the stinking rats back to their fetid lairs and pulled the pin.  (I do not rant at them.  I confuse them with reason and logic devoid of the foul language they are so accustomed to.)

My First Strike
My first high value target was a rubber-gloved TSA inspector who blogs when he's not wanding crotches, surfing full body scan porn and sniffing travelers' underwear.   He lays down some pretty funny foam-at-the-mouth liberal rants over at Disaffected.

He has an affinity for certain cuss words, using them over and over.  And he uses amusing nicknames for conservatives like "Racist Limbaugh."  HA HA HA!!!  Get it?  He replaced "Rush" with "Racist!"  Because Rush, like all conservatives is racist!  HA HA HA!!! Get it???

He may also work for Keith Olbermann on the side...

Anyway, avail yourself of the list (it's down to the right), and engage targets at will.  Be careful with Fabius Maximus,  and be respectful of Serving Patriot.  Neither are your average slobbering BDS socialist. 

Fabius bills himself as a libertarian-liberal.  He is wickedly smart, has interesting and informed commentary, and will smack you down if you get stupid.  Serving Patriot is a well-reasoned man who shares much of our disdain for government and crony capitalism, just from the other side.

Have fun! 

Government Gangrene

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” -- John Adams

Articulate liberal James Fallows  has written a long piece entitled "How America Can Rise Again."  I don't agree with his conclusion, but he's a great writer and his assessment of our current situation is an entertaining think piece.

The Choice:  More Government (Big Enough to Finally Succeed) or Less Government (decommission a failed enterprise)

For tomorrow, we really have only two choices. Doing more, or doing less. Trying to work with our flawed governmental system despite its uncorrectable flaws, or trying to contain the damage that system does to the rest of our society. Muddling through, or starving the beast.

Dutiful progressive that he is, he picks the wrong option:

Readers may have guessed that I am not going for the second option: giving up on public efforts and cauterizing our gangrenous government so that the rest of society can survive.

He then constructs a strawman to advance his case:  Conservatives, like a third-world rabble, want to abolish all government.  Having unfairly smeared us, he then scolds us to look at what that has done to the world's failed societies:

But the lack of corresponding public virtues—rule of law, expectation of physical safety, infrastructure that people can enjoy or depend on without owning it themselves—made those societies more hellish than they needed to be.

No small government conservative in his right mind would advocate a complete withdrawal of government from public life.  That's anarchy!  

Conservatives Understand, Government is a Necessary Evil

"Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil" -- Thomas Paine

We love our infrastructure and rule of law, but most of us wouldn't mind seeing the feral government burn a few libraries worth of nanny state, liberty-killing regulations.  Does congress really need to hold hearings on professional sports and regulate flush toilets? 

Fallows predictably advocates for more government action, citing John Quincy Adams' construction of lighthouses as an example of proto-big government.

He should have looked to the constitution and the Federalist Papers.  There he would find government as the impartial referee and the blind judge, steered only by the God-given rights of man and the light of our founding document.  Where the federal behemoth no longer casts a shadow, a million flowers will bloom.

"cauterize our gangrenous government so that the rest of society can survive."

Yes.  That's more like it...

Life is Better--Why?

Christopher Caldwell has written an amusing article for those of us old enough to remember the 70's, when consumer products were more dangerous and our homes were not yet jammed with an overabundance of electronic gadgets. 

Why has life gotten better, cheaper and safer?  Is it free-market capitalism?  Or is it due to liberal nanny-state overregulation? 

Is it that Reagan put an end to screw-you socialism, with the shoddy workmanship that was its hallmark?

Or is it that those hippies who now design our appliances and clog our statute books with regulation put an end to soulless, every-man-for-himself capitalism?

Is it that our own culture is, actually, deep down, as anti-humanistic as people used to say, and that the Chinese, even in the aftermath of Maoism, have a better sense of human needs?

Or are today's appliances designed for the benefit of those who lost a limb on older models back in the 1970s? (TWS - Rage Against the Machine)

Conservative Alternative Medicine

We've all suffered it in opposing the Democrats' centrally-planned, politburo-worthy health care "solution:" 

"Oh, yeah?!" Slobbers a lefty defender, "what's your idea?  Stop being the party of No and start providing solutions!"

Well, the GOP has been trying but the press ignores them like a liberal protester avoids bathing.   

Peter Suderman has written an article in Reason Magazine, linking to many alternate ideas.  It is a useful reference.  Read up so that the next time you're challenged, you can tell that lib to put down the hopium pipe and listen up!