A $14 billion emergency bailout for U.S. automakers collapsed in the Senate Thursday night after the United Auto Workers refused to accede to Republican demands for swift wage cuts.

The collapse came after bipartisan talks on the auto rescue broke down over GOP demands that the United Auto Workers union agree to steep wage cuts by 2009 to bring their pay into line with Japanese carmakers.

Tonight, the Senate Republicans– with ten, very ugly exceptions– have taken a stand for free markets and economic liberty in their defeat of the bailout of the automotive industry. Of course, its never too late for Democrats and “compassionate conservatives” to work together to subvert the democratic process:

Majority Leader Harry Reid said he hoped President George W. Bush would tap the $700 billion Wall Street bailout fund for emergency aid to the automakers. General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC have said they could be weeks from collapse. Ford Motor Co. says it does not need federal help now, but its survival is far from certain.

Barring any such abuses of executive power, it is difficult to say whether GM will now file for bankruptcy– a move that should have been made months ago– or if they’ll try to remain afloat until January when the new Congress comes into session, at which point they’ll have another go at brandishing their sores and tears, attempting to trade them for stolen assets. Most likely the latter.

For now, though, it is nice to know that while I am going to sleep happy– or at least momentarily satisfied– Congressman Harry Reid is “terribly disappointed that we are not able to arrive at a conclusion.” I hope that bloodsucker tosses and turns all night.

Time to suit up for next month.

It appears that The Economy™ is in some trouble.

Everyone (all of you) seems to be telling me that if The Economy™ had been more regulated by the government, there wouldn’t be a problem. If you believe that, I have a bridge to nowhere I want to sell you. In short, the problem is not that we have too little government interference, the problem is that we have too much. Please heed this.

Where do you get this idea that politicians, people who not have to do anything of value in order to earn money, have the incredible economic foresight and knowhow to enact the perfect regulations on The Economy™? Most of the men (and Nancy Pelosi) who are brokering The Failout are career politicians, who have no understanding of how the free market works, who have never run a business, or even worked for one for any considerable amount of time. These are the people you are entrusting to fix everything. 

Ladies and gentlemen, I have news for you.

If you honestly believe that our present situation is the result of the unrestrained “greed” of men on wall street (notice how its always men on wall street; of course, there are no greedy women), and that the government needs to step in and save us from them, then you deserve to lose your home and to be poor. 

Any group of people that honestly believes that The Economy™ is suffering because of productive individuals and needs to be saved by unproductive ones, who nominates Barack Obama to be head of state with John McCain as the conservative alternative, deserves to suffer their own contradictions, which means:

America, you deserve to be poor.

But ignore me. Let’s put every CEO and every member of every Board of Directors of every Fortune 500 company in prison tonight, after the debate, with Barack Obama at the head of the mob (John McCain can shoot any that try to escape). After all, they are all greedy, self-interested bastards who contribute nothing to the economy, right? They are only out for themselves, and in today’s economy, we can’t afford anyone who isn’t out to serve the greatest good.

Ever since clinching the nomination, McCain has been hit by Democrats with allegations that his presidency would be nothing more than “Bush’s third term,” labeling him John McSame, and challenging people to find differences between the policies of the two Republicans. Looking only at the George Bush’s abysmal approval rating, McCain has spent a large portion of his time distancing himself from the President.

But in doing so, McCain is only digging himself into a hole. Infamously, Governor Mark Sanford was unable to show any significant differences between the economic polices of George Bush and John McCain.

Here’s what people are missing with this video: like it or not, George Bush has had some solid economic policies, especially in the areas of tax cuts and free trade. But they haven’t worked, you say. The economy is terrible, you say. You’re wrong. The economy is bad, but its not terrible– we’ve been much worse off. Take the Carter administration for example.

But the economy is declining, and thats because Bush has been far-from-perfect economically. Look, for example, at his federal spending record:

In February, Bush sent a 3.1 trillion dollar budget to congress: hardly conservative. Just yesterday, Bush authorized a bill that will send $48 billion American taxpayers’ dollars to Africa for AIDS relief. Over all, Bush has shown an utter reluctance to veto anything, much less spending, during his administration, which has made for an out of control federal deficit.

George W. Bush is proof that tax cuts alone are not enough– without tandem cuts in spending, they hurt, rather than help the economy. John McCain has stated this problem explicitly, and he says he will be fixing Bush’s error here.

This is the single, most important difference between Bush and McCain: and McCain never mentions it. Why does he think the American public is so dumb? We can understand that just because the two men have similarities, they aren’t the same; we aren’t two-year-olds. He’s gotten so wrapped up in distancing himself from the President that he’s become reluctant to defend what works, and as a result he’s drifting further and further left. Is it so hard to say: “Yes, George Bush supported it, but it is right.”?

John McCain is supposedly Mr. Straight Talk; so why can’t he look into a camera and tell me: “Look, George Bush and I have a lot in common, but in the places where we differ, it makes all the difference.” Now thats some straight talk I can get used to.

Here’s the bottom line: McCain and Bush are similar, very much so, but their similarities are good.  But McCain is obsessed with being a non-conformist, and in his attempt to distance himself from the President, he has ended up downplaying his strengths and playing up his weaknesses. Way to go, maverick.

There are other issues out there; issues that are more pressing, that affect our country and our world much more directly– like Iran’s nuclear program, or the fact that they’ve been launching test missiles capable of striking Israel. But so often I choose to write about the Environmentalist Movement over other things for a very specific reason, which is:

The choice to accept environmentalism or not is the choice between industry and inactivity, civilization and primitivism, comfortability and suffering; it is the choice between life and death. Many may disagree with this claim, citing the good intentions of the environmentalists: taking care of the earth couldn’t be bad, could it? After all, not all environmentalists are nut jobs like Eric Pianka, a noted ecologist who wants to kill off 90% of human life; most are in fact quite moderate, and simply believe that humans have a responsibility to look after the earth.

Such people are not evil, but they are misguided. They accept the two basic premises of environmentalism: that the environment is good because it is the environment, and that the smallest human interference in the natural ecological structure is a desirable goal. The logical conclusion of these premises, of course, is that human activity must be restricted as much as possible in order to prevent such interference. If you accept these premises, chances are good that you would not be in favor of a mass culling of the human population. The danger is that men like Pianka also accept them, and they desire to see their logical ends carried out. Since you’ve already accepted their premises, they can use the power of guilt to get you to accept a gradually more oppressive environmental policy. Case in point:

Yesterday, the leaders at the G8 Summit agreed to cut their countries’ carbon emissions by 50% by 2050, a radically anti-industrial move that will dismember the economy and stunt the standard of living for the global population. No one can claim that such an act was motivated by anything other than a hatred for mankind. Last week, a measure was put up for conideration in the British Parliament that would institute a personal cap-and-trade policy for every resident of England. Was this act considered because its proponents love the earth, or because they hate humanity? You be the judge.

With the basic premises of environmentalism so common today, it won’t be long before such cap-and-trade proposals are made in the United States. Do you really believe that such a measure would be beyond the scope of a Barack Obama environmental policy? Maybe not now, but what about four years from now? This is why the environmentalism issue is so important to me.

But there is another reason I frequently choose environmentalism over other topics. Throughout history, the war against man’s productive faculty has been waged under the banner of countless different names and movements; tribalism, monarchism, feudalism– more recently communism, socialism, and fascism– and of course, there’s always been the monstrosity that is organized religion. All of these have been a part of an overarching war on Individualism and a hatred of humanity; environmentalism is no exception here– it is merely the newest leader in the same war, the latest manifestation of the same hatred. However, environmentalism is different from its ideological ancestors in one, very important way.

In the past, movements that sought to destroy humanity (the modern ones anyway) have disguised their hatred for man’s virtues, proclaiming them to be the immoral while holding up their own standards as the moral alternative. With the broad base of society accepting altruism, their unpracticeable moral code, they guilted people into embracing their own self-destruction in the name of the love of mankind. Environmentalism is different because it makes no attempt to disguise its contempt for humanity.

Now, I won’t run through my whole spiel on environmentalism again because I’ve already blogged on it and have stated my opposition to it in as clear terms as I can, both here and in other places. But I will say this:

“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”

-Barry Goldwater

The reason we cannot win this war is simple; it results from our inability to name our enemy. Thus far, we’ve called it a war on terrorism.

But terrorism is a tactic; the United States cannot win a war on a tactic. In World War II, we did not fight a war on Kamikaze pilots; we did not fight a war on blitzkriegs; we fought fascism and totalitarianism– ideologies. In the Cold War, we did not fight a war on espionage; we fought Communism– an ideology. You see, a tactic implies a tactician; a tactician with certain motives, beliefs, and goals.

But for some reason, we are unable to state the motives, beliefs, and goals of our enemy. We are unable to do so much as name him. This is the direct result of our low moral self esteem. There is such a cult of moral grayness in the west that any proclamation of moral superiority is immediately taken to be naive and immoral. Didn’t you know that whats wrong to you may not be wrong to someone else? The only people worse than those who preach this tripe are those who know it to be misguided but appease the people preaching it anyway. It is these kinds of people that are running the war. Instead of standing up and proclaiming moral superiority over the enemy, Islamic Fundamentalism, they appease the liberal intellectuals and call it a War on Terrorism.

I couldn’t invent a better example of such appeasement than this. A US military sniper was using the Qur’an for target practice; the wrong people found out, and he got arrested. Not only was he arrested, but George Bush officially apologized, and

U.S. military commanders in Iraq held a ceremony to formally apologize and presented a new copy of the Qur’an to tribal leaders in the area where the incident took place.

When your military commanders are presenting tribal leaders with a copy of the book that inspired the death of nearly 3,000 of your fellow citizens as an apology for an act of desecration taken against that same book, you’ve lost the war that you’re fighting, and you aren’t going to win.

If we are unable, as a country, to proclaim our moral superiority over Islamic Totalitarianism, then we can’t win, and we should end the war and come home.