Much has already been said about this excellent article. Rush Limbaugh devoted an entire show to it, and bloggers across the spectrum are posting about it. It may be one of the more important articles to come along in a few years.

If you haven’t read it, I strongly suggest you stop surfing, click here, and read. If you lack the time, print it, and read it when you get home. It’s about the morally and financially bankrupt people populating our “ruling class.” When you are done, please come back and read the rest of this post. I have some questions for you.
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This article says it all. Is there an honest one in the whole bunch?

Ex-Florida GOP Chairman Arrested

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement took Jim Greer, 47, into custody at his Orlando-area home. He is charged with one count of organized fraud, four counts of felony grand theft and one count of money laundering, said William Shepherd, Florida’s statewide prosecutor.

Mr. Greer funneled party money to a company called Victory Strategies that he controlled and concealed his relationship with, investigators said. On Mr. Greer’s orders, the Republican Party of Florida paid Victory Strategies for campaign work, much of which was never performed. That was in addition to a 10% cut of major donations to the party that Mr. Greer took along with his top assistant, Delmar Johnson, Shepherd said.

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Mr. Greer’s steep descent from party chairman to pariah could drag down Gov. Charlie Crist’s bid for U.S. Senate. The two are longtime allies, and Mr. Crist backed Mr. Greer until the day he stepped down.

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Mr. Rubio, a former state House speaker, charged nearly $110,000 to a party-issued card. Among the charged items were repairs to Mr. Rubio’s family minivan, grocery bills, plane tickets for his wife, and retail purchases, including one from a wine store.

Crist or Rubio in the Senate? Geez. They both suck! It isn’t as if either of these two will do much of anything positive. They are typical of the hacks that populate the political class. There are two parties in America. The Patronage Party, which helps itself to everything we produce, and the rest of us, who have a few representatives hiding in the back benches.

What a pile of Crud.

How amazing that our “strategic competitor,” China, would undertake a study to understand what made western culture strong. What is even more amazing is what they found.

The key to our civilisation
The Chinese have recognized Christianity’s importance in Western culture, says Cardinal George Pell, so why don’t we?

Paradoxically, modern China can help us understand Western life today. Not because China must achieve economic supremacy (20 years ago we were ascribing that honour to Japan), but because this radically different culture is now searching for the secrets of Western vitality to provide a code for decency and social cohesion compatible with sustainable economic development.

In 2002 a member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences described their attempts to account for the pre-eminence of the West. Originally they thought the main reason was more powerful guns. Then it was Western political systems, followed by the Western economy. Their final conclusion, however, was this: ‘In the past 20 years, we have realised that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity… The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this.’

Zhao Xiao, an official economist in China, also published an article in 2002 titled ‘Market Economies With Churches and Market Economies Without Churches’. It made the obvious points that market economies promote efficiency, discourage laziness, force competition. They work and produce wealth. But, he pointed out, a market cannot discourage people from lying or causing harm and indeed may encourage people to harm others and pursue wealth by any means.

Zhao is critical of the corruption and exploitation in Chinese economic life.

As I’ve posted on this site before, America is the continuation of the social project melding of Athens (civic government) with Jerusalem (JudeoChristianity). Fascinating that those who wish to emulate our success “discover” this while our schools, media, and other “institutions” do all they can to weaken (and then destroy) the one foundation that makes us succeed.

Case in point is the recent financial meltdown. As I’ve also posted on this site, the crisis (and the recession it caused) is a moral crisis, not a financial one. Corruption will kill America sooner than Mexicans or Chinese.

There is no “Peak Energy.”

Tech-Driven Natgas Boom Shifts Energy Balance Of Power To U.S.

A new technique being used to drill through a type of rock known as shale has led to a surge in domestic natural gas production over the last three years and enabled the United States to overtake Russia recently as the world’s No. 1 producer of natural gas.

As a result, we are seeing a remarkable turnabout in energy geopolitics: as U.S. natural gas reserves have soared thanks to advanced drilling methods, Russia’s goal of establishing a world gas cartel patterned on OPEC has collapsed.

How big of a development is this?

Think back to 2003, when America’s demand for natural gas was outpacing supply. Production from gas wells on the Outer Continental Shelf had fallen by 50%, and there was no surplus capacity in the U.S.

Gas prices had doubled in less than a year, and scores of petrochemical companies, in need of cheaper gas, closed their U.S. plants and reopened abroad. Alan Greenspan, then-Federal Reserve chairman, warned that natural gas shortages could harm the U.S. economy.

To make matters worse, Russia began flexing its political muscle, using a dispute over gas prices with Ukraine as a pretext for curtailing natural gas shipments to Western Europe. And Russia, in cahoots with several other major gas-producing countries such as Iran and Algeria, opened a global office for natural gas.

U.S. experts saw the move as the first step toward creating an OPEC-like natural-gas cartel.

Now, fortunately for the U.S. and European countries that rely on Russia’s natural gas, the situation has changed dramatically for the better.

Foot-stomping and caterwauling are so much easier than actually accomplishing something.

America On The Rise

For much of the past decade, “declinism”–the notion that America is heading toward a deadly denouement–has largely been a philosophy of the left. But more recently, particularly in the wake of Barack Obama’s election, conservatives have begun joining the chorus, albeit singing a somewhat different variation on the same tune.

In a recent column in TheWashington Post George Will illustrates this conservative change of heart. Looking over the next few decades Will sees an aging, obsolescent America in retreat to a young and aggressive China. “America’s destiny is demographic, and therefore is inexorable and predictable,” he suggests, pointing to predictions by Nobel Prize economist Robert Fogel that China’s economy will be three times larger than that of the U.S. by 2040.

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Rarely mentioned in such analyses is China’s own aging problem. The population of the People’s Republic will be considerably older than the U.S.’ by 2050. It also has far more boys than girls–a rather insidious problem. Among the younger generation there are already an estimated 24 million more men of marrying age than women. This is not going to end well–except perhaps for investors in prostitution and pornography.

In the longer term demographic trends actually place the U.S. in a relatively strong position. By the end of the first half of the 21st century, the American population aged 15 to 64–essentially your economically active cohort–are projected to grow by 42%; China’s will shrink by 10%. Comparisons with other competitors are even larger, with the E.U. shrinking by 25%, Korea by 30% and Japan by a remarkable 44%.

People are the only real resource on earth folks. Please try to understand that.