BOOMING HOUSE MARKET: IS IT "THE AMERICAN DREAM" OR A BUBBLE?

Left-wing pessimist KRUGMAN pens ANOTHER negative column about the "housing bubble." It seems to Krugman that too many Americnas are buying and selling too many homes at too much profit. I guess he'd like to see prices drop or sales slow or fewer people able to afford a home. Maybe he'd like a "REAL ESTATE PRICE CONTROL BOARD" to regulate the sale of homes?

Seriously: I am old enough to remember a time when THE AMERICAN DREAM - the dream of of owning your own home - was embraced by Democrats, even Liberal ones! Now - as that dream comes true for more and MORE Americans (and as a result, there are more buyers than sellers, and prices are going up) - Lefties like Krugman seem to be wishing it collapses merely to show that Bush is a bad person.

Well, all the BIG BUBBLES we've suffered from recently: the "New Economy"/NASDAQ/Telecoms/Fannie Mae etc bubbles - and ALL THE BIG CORPORATE MALFEASANCE SCANDALS (ENRON/TYCO/Arthur Andersen, AND the "Fake Calfornia Energy Crisis" took place on Clinton's watch; they were BUBBA'S BUBBLES. And the foul mess that resulted (because BUBBA and Rubin allowed it to go on in the CORRUPT financial industry and the CORRUPTED markets) is being CLEANED UP ON BUSH'S WATCH!

Krugman, the Democrats and the Left have let BDS - and their adherence to a completely discredited ideology: socialism - destroy their objectivity. One should no more give any credence to what Krugman writes than to Chomsky or al Jazeera (or Dan Rather or Jayson Blair or Newsweek!).

BBC: BRIT DOCTORS TO PROPOSE "KNIFE CONTROL"

After a spate of knife attacks in Great Britain, I wrote about "KNIFE CONTROL" on 2/9/05.

I suggested this SARCASTICALLY in order to demonstrate the IDIOCY of GUN CONTROL; gun control can NEVER reduce violent crime because guns are (like all weapons) merely tools that cannot be blamed for what humans do with them, and because if a person wants to harm you - or themselves - they will find an available tool to do it.

Well, reality once again proves that socialists (statists who believe in using the power of the State to achieve what's in THEIR MIND "utopianist" social aims) know NO BOUNDS when it comes to their elitist goals (and it's why their ideology ALWAYS amounts to nothing more than an inexorable march toward tyranny). According to the BBC, doctors in Great Britain will soon be proposing that the government limit the sale of knives!

Sheesh. What do these Lefties think, that they can ban all sharp implements - and even "sticks and stones" - and that violence will cease!? This is the same illogic that led the Left to favor unilateral disarmament of the USA during the Cold War. It is bad-thinking and bad policy and must be fought.

If doctors in Great Britain wanted to seriously reduce violent crime in Great Britain they'd support mandatory carry law!

(PS: DRUDGE AND KJ OF NRO BOTH LINK TO THIS BBC ARTICLE.)

OVERDUE: A PALESTINIAN "OPERATION THUNDER" (in Gaza, for starters)

Abbas has NOT done enough to disarm the neojihadists. The Iraqis are doing what they can; they just announced a HUGE anti-terror operation, dubbed OPERATION THUNDER. It's time to pressure Abbas to have his own Operation Thunder in Gaza. Until Abbas actually starts to disarm the neojihadists, he shouldn't be to rewarded as Bush did by meeting him in the Oval Office and by giving him MILLIONS of dollars of TAXPAYER MONEY. This is NOT CONTROVERSIAL or "anti-Arab": just as the IRA must be disarmed before they can have any role in self-rule of Northern Ireland, so too must the Palestinian Arab neojihadists be disarmed. (Ditto Hizballah in Lebanon: before they can run any candidates in the upcoming Lebanese elections, they should be forced to disarm.)

More on WHY ABBAS IS MORE LIKE ARAFAT THAN IRAQ'S ALLAWI OR JAFARI HERE.

IT'S TIME TO NUKE SENATE DEMS

Well, the Leftie Dems are filibustering Bolton (see stories HERE and HERE). That means it's time to change the filibuster rules. WHY?! Excepting for reasons of malfeasance, the president should be allowed to pick ANYONE HE WANTS to be his own/executive branch subordinates. Bolton was approved by the Senate for his current job, and ALL of the allegations against him are for stuff he ALLWEGEDLY did BEFORE that. So they're irrelevant - he performed his current job EXCELLENTLY, and the pres wants to promote him. It's time we made the Lefties irrelevant: by changing the cloture rules! NOW! MICHELE has more.

Pope Benedict and Schroeder: WILL THERE BE AN ELECTORAL EFFECT?

Pope Benedict has made it clear that he recognizes that a major enemy of the West is relatvism and socialism - IOW: he gerhard Schroeder camp. WIll the Pope weigh in on the lection in some way? Or will his mere presence have an effect?

I think so. I predict a RESOUNDING victory for the Christian Democrats (who are led by Angela "the German Maggie Thatcher" Merkel. I predict that this defeat will be the beginning of what I will call "The Benedict Effect" -- or the beginning of the end of the West's post-modern self-loathing. Here's why - from NO PASARAN:

The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne writes of Pope Benedict XVI, nee Joseph Ratzinger:

[PB16] developed a mistrust of the left because of the student revolt of the 1960s. He once said that "the 1968 revolution" turned into "a radical attack on human freedom and dignity, a deep threat to all that is human."Addressing fellow cardinals, Dionne reports Cardinal Ratzinger saying: "We are moving," he declared, toward "a dictatorship of relativism …that recognizes nothing definite and leaves only one's own ego and one's own desires as the final measure."The modern world, Ratzinger insisted, has jumped "from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, up to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism* and on and on."

Gerhard Schroeder and his partner Joschka Fisher are BOTH children of the "1968 revolution" and the current leaders of the parties which are the main promulgators of the evil ideologies which PB16 has stated he must defeat. He will - with Angela Merkel's help!

FACTS ABOUT THE FURTIVE FOURTEEN

The FURTIVE FOURTEEN - THAT'S 14 out of 100 - Senators who brokered their own PRIVATE BACKROOM DEAL are themselves nothing more than a self-annointed minority who are blocking the will of the majority. They are obviously and MERELY only 14% of the US Senate, yet they are effectively DICTATING how judical nominees may be confirmed.

To give you a better idea just how UNREPRESENTATIVE these FURTIVE FOURTEEN REALLY ARE, here are the FURTIVE FOURTEEN listed with their states population ranking and total:

John McCain (Arizona) #18 - 5.7 million
John Warner (Virginia) #12 - 7.5 million
Lindsey Graham (South Carolina) #26 - 4.2 million
Susan Collins (Maine) #40 - 1.3 million
Olympia Snowe (Maine) " "
Lincoln Chaffee (Rhode Island) #43 - 1 million
Mike DeWine (Ohio) #7 - 11.5 million

Democrats:

Ben Nelson (Nebraska) #38 - 1.7 million
Robert Byrd (West Virginia) #37 - 1.8 million
Joseph Lieberman (Connecticut) #29 - 3.5 million
Mark Pryor (Arkansas) #32 - 2.7 million
Ken Salazar (Colorado) #22 - 4.6 million
Daniel Inouye (Hawaii) #42 - 1.3 million
Mary Landrieu (Louisiana) #24 - 4.5 million

TOTAL POPULATION REPRESENTED BY THE FURTIVE FOURTEEN SENATORS: 51.3 million PEOPLE. Or, ONLY 15% OF THE TOTAL POPULATION OF THE USA. (Except for DeWine of Ohio, NOT A SINGLE SENATOR COMES FROM A "TOP TEN" STATE.)

When elected leaders of 15% of the people dictate their policies to the other 85%, well... it can hardly be called democratic. These 14 weenies not only subverted the Constitution, they undermined the very ESSENCE of democratic rule: MAJORITY RULE.

The GOP has a majority in the House and the Senate and has the White House because the MAJORITY of Americans support them and their policies. When a minority in one body holds a gun to the head of another branch, it is UNDEMOCRATIC and IMMORAL and BAD.

A POX on all 14 of the FURTIVE FOURTEEN. I hope they ALL go down to primary defeats!

Paul over at POWERLINE agrees, and adds this SAGE OBSERVATION:

As a general matter, I think that the deal helps show why no sitting U.S. Senator has been elected president since 1960. Senators value arcane and democracy-curbing traditions. They come across as members of a secret club or cult. They pride themsevles in being less pragmatic than other public officials. They pride themselves, period. Usually, none of this plays very well outside of Washington and other MSM strongholds. This deal will confirm the perception that Senators are clubby, timid, and self-congratulatory. In fact, most Senators on both sides weren't clubby or timid this time. But I don't think that will matter.

Betsy's Page agrees too: "...it still stinks to have fourteen senators get together and swap and trade judicial nominations amongst themselves as if they should be the Fabulous Fourteen who get to decide who becomes a judge and who doesn't. There is the real minority rule that is now running the Senate on judicial nominations."

HOPEFUL NEWS ITEMS... we'll wait and see...

1 - Germany's Christian Democratic Union has a 17 percentage-point lead over Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats before an election later this year, an opinion poll showed.

2 - WASHINGTON - President Bush will insist at a White House meeting with Mahmoud Abbas this week that the Palestinian leader dismantle all terrorist networks in Palestinian areas, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday.

3 - TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's hardline Guardian Council watchdog on Tuesday reversed its ban on two reformists excluded from presidential elections on June 17, defusing a row which had sparked some calls for a boycott of the vote.

4 - Polls show that the French "no" vote grows to 53%!

These four AIN'T "good news"... YET! Schroeder MUST lose; Abbas MUST disarm the neojihadists; the Iranian people must democratically overthrow their theocratic totalitarian regime; and France must vote down the EU "Constitution."

It might be more likely that someone find the Ark of the Covenant than ALL these four things happen. I'll pray for ALL FIVE!

SLIMY SMARMY BACKROOM DEAL YIELDS FILIBUSTER FOLLIES FINALE

The so-called "moderates" made a deal - and it sucks. WHAT ARE ELECTIONS FOR, ANYHOW, IF A BUNCH OF MIDDLE-OF-THE-ROAD WEENIES CAN GUM UP THE WORKS AND PUT THE KIBASH ON A TRUE AND JUST CONFRONTATION!?

This is a case of 14 Senators caring and doing more for their own turf and aggrandisement than for the voters. McCain and Snow and DeWine are the kind of weenies I'd expect this from; I'm VERY disappointed in Warner - especially for the praise he heaped on that senile KKK member Byrd who said they'd just "SAVED THE REPUBLIC!" BULLSHIT!

The judiciary is meant to be populated by picks of the president as specified under Article II - the PRESIDENT'S SECTION of the Constitution; the Senate is to merely give advise and THEN CONSENT by a simple majority. What the Senators did was SUBVERT the Constitution in order to retain an arbitrary institutional filibuster option which is NOT in the Constitution.

SHAME ON THEM. Not a single of the 14 Senators - of both parties - WILL EVER SEE A PENNY FROM ME! What they demonstrated was not a profile in courage; it was a blatant BACKROOM deal. THAT AIN'T DEMOCRACY! We'll take care of them at the ballots next time, and VOTE OUT the slimy backroom dealmongers and replace them with some reliable, true conservative GOP Senators with REAL INTEGRITY!

GERMAN PEOPLE SPEAK: SOCIALISTS SUFFER HUGE LOCAL DEFEAT!

BBC:

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder says he wants a general election this autumn - a year early - after his party lost a key powerbase in local polls. Mr Schroeder made the announcement after his Social Democrats (SPD) lost the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, which they had held for 39 years. [...] Mr Schroeder's Social Democrat-led government not only lost its traditional powerbase on Sunday, but it now has so few seats in the upper house of parliament that its ability to actively govern is massively diminished, our correspondent says.

The Socialists are losing because running on anti-Americanism can only take you so far. And their socialist policies have, of course, FAILED to accomplish what they set out to; in fact they've only made things WORSE.

If the Germans bring back the Christian Democrats to lead the national government - and if France defeats the EU constitutional referendum (as is now likely), and if Pope B16 can revitalize Christianity in Europe - then there is hope for Europe.

TEHRAN'S TYRANTS SUBVERT FREE ELECTIONS

BBC:

Iran's election watchdog has disqualified all but six of more than 1,000 candidates for the presidential election, state television reports. Among those eliminated are Mostafa Moin, who was the choice of the country's largest reformist party. Elections for the presidency will be held on 17 June.

That AIN'T DEMOCRACY! The Mullahs are afraid - VERY AFRAID; they should be: they KNOW that the IRANIAN PEOPLE WON'T EVER CHOOSE THEOCRATIC TYRANNY!