Formal Cooperation with Evil

President Obama to deliver Notre Dame’s Commencement address.

The cooperation of the Notre Dame faculty with the culture of death, by providing its current champion a platform from which to obfuscate, scandalise and confuse the faithful is duly noted--can anyone stop them?

For the Love of Heaven, Let Them Die

Rattner: GM, Chrysler May Need 'Considerably' More Govt. Money

Ailing Detroit automakers GM and Chrysler may need “considerably” more government bailout money than they've already asked for, said Steve Rattner, Treasury's de facto "car czar."

So far, GM and Chrysler have asked for $21.6 billion. But Rattner said that figure could go as high as $30 billion or $40 billion, according to an interview earlier today on Bloomberg TV, The Post's Kendra Marr reports.

There's no evidence that any amount of money is going to solve GM and Chrysler's problems, which are entirely wrapped up in outrageous and unsustainable labour costs. GM has basically staked its survival on hikes in federal gas taxes to keep gas at about $4 a gallon to force consumers to buy their alternative fuel automobiles. For the sake of the transportation industry and the U.S. economy in general, these two corporate vampires need to be staked and buried at a crossroads.

Is Anyone Who Can Add REALLY Surprised?

From The Washington Post:

U.S. Federal Deficit Soars Past Previous Estimates

"Deteriorating economic conditions will cause the federal deficit to soar past $1.8 trillion this year and leave the nation wallowing in a sea of red ink far deeper than the White House had previously estimated, congressional budget analysts said today.

"In a new report that provides the first independent analysis of President Obama's budget request, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted that the administration's agenda would generate deficits averaging nearly $1 trillion a year over the next decade -- $2.3 trillion more than the president predicted when he unveiled his spending plan just one month ago. "

Here's your change.

"Great Job, Brownie"

Obama to Leno: Geithner doing 'outstanding' job
By MARK S. SMITH – 4 hours ago

BURBANK, Calif. (AP) — President Barack Obama says his embattled treasury chief, Timothy Geithner, is doing an "outstanding job."

Philo-Junius will say it first:

"President Obama just don't care about taxpaying people."

Letting the Contempt Show

Steve Pearlstein of The Washington Post evidently got his bailout talking points today:

There's nothing remotely fair about using taxpayer money to rescue a free-market financial system from the mistakes of the financiers. But the reality is that we can punish the bankers or we can save the banking system, but we can't do both at the same time.

Philo-Junius invites Mr. Pearlstein to demonstrate this contention which, despite being noticeably repeated by many usual suspects of the media establishment, has never actually been proven.

The key to every con is to appeal to the mark's fear or greed and force them to make a quick, unthinking decision. Pearlstein and his ilk are merely running the same racket.

If Sarah Palin Is the Answer, Could You Please Repeat the Question?

Bad news for the Palindrones in the latest poll numbers released today. Yet a 35% plurality of conservative bloggers polled say she's their first choice for the nomination at this point.

Still, we'll see if she has anything new or interesting to say at the NRCC/NRSC dinner in June, if her staff can indeed see to it that she makes it there.

Geithner and Obama

It is fairly well known that Timothy Geithner's father, Peter Geithner, worked extensively with Barack Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, through their common projects in Asian microfinance under the auspices of the Ford Foundation from the 1970s into the 80s.

What might not be as well known is the ongoing role of the Ford Foundation, after its capture by left-establishment figures such as McGeorge Bundy in the 1960s, in influencing the direction and development of African-American political developments from that period to the present day. A 2007 article in the Journal of Urban History sheds significant light on those ties, and, coupled with other studies of Obama's meteoric ascent through the Chicago African-American community--without benefit of any clear consitutency there--strengthens Philo-Junius' contention that it is not President Obama who indeed oversees Tim Geithner and his associates, but the other way around.

It is therefore Philo-Junius' contention that Geithner will indeed weather the current storm over the piddling $170 million in AIG bonuses--the ongoing devaluation and debasement of the U.S. dollar is a hugely more significant undertaking, one which so far has passed without any mainstream media concern.

"Of Course the Fundamentals Are Sound...

...now that WE'RE in charge."

From Fox News today--just connecting a few dots:

"Stubborn."

"Out of touch."

"Incapable of understanding" the economic crisis.

That's how Barack Obama and his presidential campaign team described John McCain last year when the Republican candidate famously said "the fundamentals of our economy are strong."

But now President Obama and his advisers are adopting similar rhetoric as they try to build public confidence in an economic turnaround.

"Of course the fundamentals are sound," Obama economic adviser Christina Romer said Sunday.

The Obama Administration's presumption of the average American's stupidity is astonishing.

Of course, we ARE the ones holding the bill for trillion dollar stimulus packages, so maybe we shouldn't argue with the assessment, now that it's out in the open.

Declaring Victory in the Culture Wars

New York Times columnist Frank Rich crowed victory atop the dungheap yesterday, declaring that the right's anemic response to Obama's various leftist movements on social policy represent the capitulation of the right on most social issues.

Unfortunately, recent experience leads Philo-Junius to concur. The ongoing soap opera of Bristol Palin, coupled with such past episodes as the shameful case of Mark Foley, David Vitter and Larry Craig have demonstrated that most rightists will in fact overlook or forgive nearly any moral transgression as long as they believe it advances their overall political interests. The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer had this to say about the willingness to presume upon God's forgiveness:

"Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like a cheapjack's wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut-rate prices. Grace is represented as the Church's inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost! And the essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing. Since the cost was infinite, the possibilities of using and spending it are infinite. What would grace be, if it were not cheap?

...In such a Church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin. . .

Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before.

...Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, (it is) baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate."

Cheap grace was always the preserve of the 60s-era leftists who have come to dominate the Democratic Party; it now seems that the gangrene has become politically systemic.

The ability of a free people to maintain self-rule has always hinged upon the ability of the self-governing people to restrain themselves: if cheap grace is indeed now the political consensus we cannot expect self-government long to endure. If the Republican Party can no longer credibly enunciate a compelling case for traditional morality coupled with the clear belief that its own standard-holders are to be held to an especially high standard, its appeals to dedicated social conservatives will inevitably be exposed as mere opportunism.

Rich argues that taking sides in the culture wars has reduced the Republican Party to the party of the Bible Belt. Philo-Junius argues that abandoning the culture wars will reduce the Republican Party to risibility, but that the Republican leadership must acknowledge and repair their badly damaged credibility as standard-bearers on these issues.