Last week I posted on the violence in Greece due to the first signs of the collapsing of the Bismarckian welfare state, which has been the norm in Europe for a hundred years.  The significance of this and the rest of the PIIGS in Europe is that the trends facing Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain will affect the rest of the EU and eventually the USA as the bills for our entitlements outweigh our ability to pay for them.

Well, today there was some new insight into the violent protests in Greece and the protean unrest in Portugal.  Apparently, those funding and organizing the youth protests are labor unions with connections to the Communist Party of Greece.  It’s been said many times that while America’s unrest is focused against an out of control government, in Europe the unrest is focused on keeping big government strong enough to prop-up the special interests (the communist-leaning labor unions in the case of Greece).  That, at least, gives us a little hope.

Glenn Beck has been way ahead on the issue reviewing the radical book, The Coming Insurrection, last July which says that the capitalist system is dying and must eventually collapse through all means necessary, including street action and violence.  Sounds like the old communist mantra back during the early 1900s.  Here are excerpts from the official “Product Description” at Amazon (the bold words and phrases were altered by me), which struck me as very relevant given the recent events in Greece and the communist connections now coming to light:

The Coming Insurrection is an eloquent call to arms arising from the recent waves of social contestation in France and Europe…. One of its members more adequately described the group as “the name given to a collective voice bent on denouncing contemporary cynicism and reality.” The Coming Insurrection is a strategic prescription for an emergent war-machine to “spread anarchy and live communism.”

Written in the wake of the riots that erupted throughout the Paris suburbs in the fall of 2005 and presaging more recent riots and general strikes in France and Greece, The Coming Insurrection articulates a rejection of the official Left and its reformist agenda, aligning itself instead with the younger, wilder forms of resistance that have emerged in Europe around recent struggles against immigration control and the “war on terror.”

Hot-wired to the movement of ‘77 in Italy, its preferred historical reference point, The Coming Insurrection formulates an ethics that takes as its starting point theft, sabotage, the refusal to work, and the elaboration of collective, self-organized forms-of-life.

There could be a much larger problem on their hands in Europe than anyone thinks.

Where’s the modern day Paul Revere galloping through the towns this night shouting “The White Coats are coming!  The White Coats are coming!“?  Maybe Paul’s waiting to see how things shake out over the next few weeks.

As it turns out in a speech earlier today, President Obama decided that health care reform simply must be rammed through in an “up-or-down” vote the next few weeks regardless of what anyone thinks, inferring that the “reconciliation” process should be used in the Senate.  Yet, here’s a montage of what the President has said in the past about the “50-plus-1″ reconciliation-like approach to governing.   Here’s the President today:

“We can’t just give up because the politics are hard. I know there’s a fascination, bordering on obsession, in this media town about what passing health insurance reform would mean for the next election and the one after that. … I will leave it to others to sift through the politics. Because that’s not what this is about.”

Even though the President already won a Nobel Prize (cough), he seems convinced that what he’s doing is going to get him a chapter in some new Profiles in Courage one day.  Hypocrisy doesn’t seem to phase our “true-believer” President.  I don’t think this is merely about flanking himself with people in lab coats to convince a wavering public that Dear Leader is right.  The stagecraft is merely obligatory now.  The will of the public and the institutional Congressional process are against passage of any kind of bill like this, but when Chicagoland comes to DC, rue the day when one comes between this beast (the bill) and its prey (us).

That’s not how I think the system is supposed to work.

The Democrats have lost the health care reform debate:   that much is clear in the polling and by their actions.  However, the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Team are not ready to throw in the towel.  One just has to refer to last Thursday’s “bipartisan” Health Care summit to see that Obama and crew are still trying to rahm it through regardless of the short-term political costs.

So, as an attempt to look “bipartisan” the Obama Nation in Washington are now trying a re-re-re-REwrite of ObamaCare possibly including some of the GOP’s ideas floated last week, while eliminating some of those transparently terrible bribes included in the Senate bill.  If the bill were ONLY the Republican’s ideas then I’d say give it a go, but this is merely a transparent attempt to write in a few pandering paragraphs into the existing 2000-page monstrosity in order to convince a few fringe RINOs to vote for it.

To paraphrase our own President:  “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.”  Wobbly Republicans need to take care not to be lured into this ruse by the Dems — let the Dems hang by their own rope.  “Bipartisan” statism is still statism, regardless of who votes for it.

British patriot Daniel Hannan, the hands-down best member of the EU Parliament, is speaking at a UK-style Tea Party in his home town of Brighton tomorrow!  Hannan rejects that the “Taxed Enough Already” concept over here in the States is unique to the Red White and Blue — he notes a sparse history of the British people getting upset over taxes (one recently over poll taxes) and thinks the Brown Government’s economic debacle is the perfect setting for an anti-tax revival.  On top of Brown’s failures, Hannan believes that the old American cry “No taxation without representation!” is slowly happening to the UK as the EU keeps positioning itself to interfere with its host nation’s taxes.

I’d love to see how this all pans out:  if the Tea Party’s message ignites a popular movement in the UK as it has over here and raises awareness of the dangers of out of control big government in the nation which invented class warfare.

If you haven’t heard about the acronym “PIIGS” yet, I’ll let you in on it:  PIIGS stands for Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain — countries in the European Union on the verge of economic collapse.  Of the five nations in trouble, Greece is the closest to collapse and the youth in the streets have made their ire known for a while now.  In fact, Germany is mulling the perhaps necessary bailout of the small Mediterranean nation which is about to default on its national debt and shows no signs of changing its behavior.  About 67% of Germans don’t want to do it.

The problem is, of course, big government.  Many European governments have promised too many goodies to their nanny state constituents over the years and the bills are coming due.  To paraphrase the great Margaret Thatcher:  the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.  The EU PIIGS are running out of money (and are asking for other nations to bail them out), are in too much debt to spend their way out (that’s the phase we’re currently in), and have choked their youth into finding no alternative than low-grade street violence.

Why we should worry about the PIIGS was the topic of Glenn Beck’s show last Thursday.  The Obama Administration has chosen the path of structural deficit spending along with the expansion of the American nanny state –  that will not end well.  We need only look to the PIIGS to foreshadow the problems of an unchecked Liberal government here in America.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s “big” proclamation which was supposed to scare the pants off the West happened to be a pretty predictable one.  Iran is now in possession of some highly-enriched uranium with the capability of enriching higher.  You need 90% enrichment for weapons, but Mahmoud admitted their capabilities range from 20-80%.  Meaning, not much has changed from yesterday to today, except the admission that the process is well under way to getting a bomb within months.

While not a good development, who can really say that this was a surprise?  I’m sure the IAEA is preparing a strongly-worded letter, the US is preparing to enforce new sanctions announced yesterday (whoopie!), and Israel is fueling up the jets for their increasingly inevitable attack.

With nothing else on our whittled options list, our President (if he had any guts) would give an unambiguous speech today promising complete political solidarity with the Iranian street.  External pressure has done nothing but isolate and embolden Mahmoud, so maybe some real internal pressure might make him sweat.  Like all good administrations, Obama could look back at American history and see that over the last sixty years America has supported democratic movements all over the globe.  Solidarity with this student uprising would be consistent with our history and might give us an edge in this latest crisis.  Something new would be silence — certainly “change”, but not a lot of “hope” for Iran’s street should the President remain quiet.

A couple of stories that have surfaced today make me wonder if something is brewing in Iran.  First, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced yesterday that Iran would “deliver a harsh blow to the ‘global arrogance’ on this year’s anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.” The anniversary, which takes place on February 11, marks the beginning of the Islamic Jihadist movement in the middle east in 1979.

By itself, this story may not be of too much note.  Ahmadinejad has a history of shooting his mouth off and making statements that consist more bravado than substance.  Yet a second story that I came across made me wonder.  It was learned today that the U.S. is rushing to deploy missile defenses to the region, as well as deploying several warships to the area.  The move is said to  be in response to the failure of negotiations, and also to dissuade Israel from a preemptive strike.

Is it possible that Obama has learned that negotiations with a madman such as Ahmadinejad do not work, and that there is intelligence saying that something is indeed being planned for February 11?  If so, I don’t expect Israel to wait around and do nothing.

It’s too bad it took until now for Obama to realize this.  When the Iranian elections happened in June, the President could have stood up for the freedom movement there.  Instead, he attempted to remain “neutral” which basically meant that he was quietly backing Ahmadinejad.  It has been learned since that it was because at the time, Obama was just beginning negotiations with Ahmadinejad and he didn’t want something like a pesky freedom movement to mess up those negotiations.

In any case, I hope that Ahmadinejad’s threat is all talk and no action.  The last thing this world needs is another terrorist attack man-made disaster which could lead to a third world war.  If something does happen, however, I sincerely hope that, all partisanship aside, our President is up to the task of defending this nation.

I didn’t like it.

Pretty succinct, huh?!

Aside from the obvious liberal crap and fake platitudes, here’s what I really didn’t like:  Obama’s Chavez-like qualities shown through a few times last night.  The way he immaturely called out the Supreme Court with a poor, populist, and inaccurate argument, knowing they couldn’t respond lest Joe Wilson-like “You Lie” sound-bytes canvas the airwaves at SCOTUS’ expense was a new low. Instead of being the new Joe Wilson, Justice Alito gave his best impression.

Also, when the Republicans laughed (I was laughing too by the way) over the climate change dribble, Obama looked mad at them — as if scolding them for being so unenlightened.  In that moment I still heard echoes of the typical Liberal notion that “getting along” or “bipartisanship” simply means agreeing with and/or capitulating to Liberals.  Actually, I had that sense many times last night.

Truthfully, I got the impression that the entire 70-minute speech could have been summed up easily:

“OK, maybe I wasn’t clear enough, Jerks (that would be us):  you want this stuff I’ve been shoving in your face this past year.  Even if you don’t know it yet, it’s good for you.  I am The OBAMA.  I have Spoken!”

But Barry loves to hear himself talk.  The whole affair last night was about him telling you that YOU don’t get it and despite what anyone else thinks, he’s going to do what he likes with his lap-dog Congress.  OK, this may be a little geekish, but with Nancy Pelosi getting goosed so often last night and the Dems chiming in to ovate with glee to so many bad and harmful policies, I was reminded of this moment from Star Wars:

OK, maybe a bit much, but last night’s speech was definitely not a politically expedient one, rather it was the speech of a bully doubling down for another round at getting your lunch money.

Yesterday, I was watching Beck when he made an interesting point about moving forward from Scott Brown’s glorious election in Massachusetts yesterday.  Run-of-the-mill Democrats would know how to react to Brown’s victory; they’d run to the middle and try to depict themselves as reasonable moderates who went astray and now got the message.  However, we may not see this from today’s Progressive/Liberal Democrat leadership going forward.

Here’s the intro from Beck’s show yesterday.

But the next segment is more critical to watch.  He makes a strong point about Progressives being the real danger we have to watch in the Obama Nation, and Scott Brown isn’t going to bother them one bit.  It’s definitely something to think about.

Iran is on the verge of developing a nuclear bomb, and all we’ve been doing for the past 11 months of the Obama Administration is trying to talk without preconditions.  Well, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton now admits that talking has basically yielded jack:

Now, to be fair, the Bush administration wasn’t doing much more than talking.  The Bush administration, however, wasn’t presented with the opportunity that the Obama administration had when the people rose up against the Iranian elections.  The administration could have propped up the protesters, gave them encouragement, and covertly helped them to topple the Iranian regime.  Had they done that, even I would have praised the administration.  Instead, the administration thumbed there nose at the protesters and supported the Iranian regime and election results, because they had high hopes for their “talks.”

One only hopes that there are some grownups in the State and Defense departments who can work to avert a disaster before Iran becomes really dangerous.  If not, our best hope lies in Israel (H/T: The Patriot Room) and the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu.  Somehow, I have more faith in Bibi’s leadership than I do in our own government’s ability and will to tackle this problem, and that fact, while comforting in some ways, also saddens me.