RNC Goes "All In" for 2010

Betting the farm on it, as it were:

The Republican National Committee (RNC) is going all in to win back control of the House and Senate.

RNC spokesman Doug Heye said committee chairman Michael Steele is committed to using most, if not all, of its cash on hand in this year’s midterm elections.

Steele’s decision means that the RNC is not going to hold back significant funds for the 2012 race for the White House.

If we win, then the surge of support will generate whatever money we need for th 2012 cycle – and so I agree with this. Raise as much as possible and spend every red cent in 2010. Spend it everywhere – even in places where it might look a little forlorn. A wave is building out there – but to ensure it develops, we have to put the resources in to it.

We have this grand chance to really reshape American politics in 2010. A chance to take back our Congress in preparation for taking back the White House and then restoring America to the Founders’ vision. We can’t let worries drive the cart – do what needs to be done today, and let tomorrow take care of itself.

Democrats are betting that the economy will turn around enough by November to convince people to forget about how angry they are in April. Maybe it will come out that way – I don’t see it happening, but anything is possible in politics. Our bet is that the passion will not just continue, but continue to grow. Even if the Democrats get another couple months of alleged growth, it won’t be enough to save them – not when people are as upset over government as they are now.

So, lets have at it – all in and fight it out to the last cent and last minute.

Obama Buddy's Bank Shut Down

Getting rather close to home for the President:

U.S. Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias, the Democratic nominee seeking the seat once held by President Barack Obama in Illinois, vowed to press on with his campaign after regulators seized the bank his family owns.

“My campaign for the United States Senate goes forward, with a renewed determination to turn Illinois’s economy around and to fix what’s broken in Washington, D.C.,” Giannoulias said.

The bank ties in with convicted influence-peddler Tony Rezko who, in turn, worked the crooked deal which secured Obama a swank home at a bargain price. Its all of a piece, this Chicago corruption – there is no isolating in. They are all in it, together.

And now Giannoulias’ bank has failed – while he’s running for Obama’s old Senate seat. Good news for the GOP, but bad news for the people who foolishly invested in the bank.

Now, just for a moment imagine this were 2008 and this bank had been owned by a friend of President Bush. Wonder what our liberals would have had to say about that?

The Economic Buzz Saw

Perhaps things aren’t as rosy in the economy as the banksters and Obama want us to believe?

…it’s hardly surprising that a massive debt-financed stimulus has led to an uptick in economic activity. The question is whether or not it will enhance long-term growth in light of the impact of a heavy public debt burden going forward. Has it moved the economy in the right direction by facilitating the liquidation of bad bets made during the housing boom, a process that might dampen GDP expansion in the short term while enhancing long-term growth? That is an entirely different question. As Jeffrey Sachs has argued, the United States has been engaging in extreme policy swings throughout the Greenspan era, veering from recession to bubble and back again. By running a double-digit budget deficit, we’ve severely limited our options in the face of the next economic crisis, all without making the painful adjustments—to tax rates, to spending, to the bloated financial sector—that would make another crisis less likely.

That’s my case for economic pessimism. I sure hope I’m wrong. But I get the distinct impression that we’re walking into a decade-long buzzsaw.

But that’s not all – Dollar Collapse has more:

* We’ve replaced the housing bubble with a government debt bubble, and there’s no way to transition back to private sector-led growth. The amount of debt needed to fuel an economy this unbalanced is simply too great.

* Some kind of serious negative event is virtually a lock in the coming year. It might be the spread of Wall Street lawsuits or a PIGS country default. Or the bond market might simply decide it’s eaten enough and get up from the table. No way to know what it will be, but we’ve created the conditions for another nasty “surprise”.

It ain’t over, not by a long shot. When will it hit? Beats all heck out of me. And, in fact, there can still be a lot of money made in this bubble by a savvy investor – but timing will be everything. How to predict just when we’re about to crash?

As I can’t do that, I’m staying out.

UPDATE: Alternately – as in “alternate universe” – the New York Times wonders if the “boom” will get bigger. You can bet with the NY Times, if you like. I won’t.

The Battle for Kandahar

Michael Yon’s latest:

The counteroffensive has begun. More accurately, it might be called a counter-counteroffensive. Close to a decade ago, we beat the Taliban and al Qaeda here. The Taliban regrew and waged an increasingly successful counteroffensive. And so our ninth year at war is the year of our counter-counteroffensive.

The most remarkable feature of our counter-counteroffensive likely will be the Battle for Kandahar, or BfK. Kandahar was the birthplace of the Taliban and Kandahar City is the provincial capital. The Taliban is succesfully wresting Kandahar back into their control. The BfK is likely our last effort to halt and reverse Taliban influence from spreading. The winner in the BfK will be set to eventually take most or all of the chips off the table, and so BfK is crucial to the outcome of the war.

This is, as Yon says, crucial. Do read the whole article.

Always keep in mind that while we sit here safe and dry, better men and women than us are risking their all in Afghanistan, and elsewhere around the world. I have absolute confidence our men and women will be crowned with victory – as long as we sustain them here at home.

Yon is reader-supported, so don’t forget to drop a dime in the bucket.

Out and About on a Sunday Morning

“Frankenstein Derivatives” at Goldman. Mish has the details.

Liberal hate on display in Oregon. Seems that Sarah Palin just brings out the foaming-at-the-mouth lunacy on the left.

Hip and edgy self censorship.

They keep clearing those Navy SEALs of all charges and before too long we might start to think that the prosecutors just have it in for the troops.

Black and Right: Absolutely refusing to kowtow to liberalism on the matter of the TEA Party.

Why does God create? As really good answer to the question.

Challenging the Powerful on Their Home Turf

Just getting more and more of this all the time:

Rep. David Obey has won 21 straight races, easily prevailing through wars and economic crises that have spanned presidencies from Nixon to Obama. Yet the discontent with Washington surging through politics is now threatening not only his seat but Democratic control of Congress.

Obey is one of nearly a dozen well-established House Democrats who are bracing for something they rarely face: serious competition. Their predicament is the latest sign of distress for their party and underlines why Republicans are confident of big gains in November, and perhaps even winning back the House…

..”It’s not a lifetime appointment,” said Sean Duffy, a Republican district attorney here in the north woods of Wisconsin, where he has established himself as one of the most aggressive challengers to Obey since the Democrat went to Washington in 1969. “There are changes in this country going on and people aren’t happy.”…

And that, my friends, is the attitude sweeping the nation. And I don’t think it will cool off by November. In fact, I think its just going to get stronger.

It is an absurdity that Obey is still in the House, at all. He was first elected shortly before my fourth birthday. I’m 45. Three or four terms is about as long as anyone should serve in the House, but here’s this barnacle from the Age of Aquarius still hanging ’round.

No politician should go unchallenged – not in the general election, and not even in the primary. Over in Arizona, John McCain is enduring a primary challenge – and that shows that at least on the GOP side, people are getting it. This is not an endorsement of Hayworth (McCain’s opponent) nor a condemnation of McCain (a man I admire), but it is a fact that it is on the Republican side we see this willingness to challenge the establishment.

The results in November will, I think, astound us. No career politician is completely safe.

A corrupt and incompetent ruling class is on the defensive – people like Obey who have tended to think of their seats as life-appointments are finding out that the people rule this country. And that is a good and healthy thing for a democratic republic.

Sarah Palin Attacks "Crony Capitalism"

From her Facebook page:

In the wake of the recent financial meltdown, Americans know that we need reform. Not only have many individuals learned lessons about personal responsibility through this, but we’ve been able to engage in a discussion about government’s appropriate role.

The current debate over financial reform demonstrates what happens when political leaders react to a crisis with a raft of new regulations. First off, the people involved in writing government regulations are often lobbyists from the very industry that the new laws are supposed to regulate, and that’s been the case here. It should surprise no one that financial lobbyists are flocking to DC this week. Of course, the big players who can afford lobbyists work the regulations in their favor, while their smaller competitors are left out in the cold. The result here are regulations that institutionalize the “too big to fail” mentality…

…J.P. Freire notes that President Obama received about seven times more money from Goldman than President Bush received from Enron. Of course, it’s not just the donations; it’s the revolving door. You’ll find the name Goldman Sachs on many an Obama administration résumé, including Rahm Emanuel’s and Tim Geithner’s chiefs of staff.

We need to be on our guard against such crony capitalism. We fought against distortion of the market in Alaska when we confronted “Big Oil,” or more specifically some of the players in the industry and in political office, who were taking the 49th state for a ride. My administration challenged lax rules that seemed to allow corruption, and we even challenged the largest corporation in the world at the time for not abiding by provisions in contracts it held with the state. When it came time to craft a plan for a natural gas pipeline, we insisted on transparency and a level playing field to ensure fair competition.

Reform, if its to be worth anything, at all, must ensure that everyone can enter the market and have the truth available to them. If we do that, then its fair and even if a company fails, it won’t be because someone was gaming the system. What blindsided us was that a few big, politically connected players were doing things which no one understood. This is what we must prevent in the future.

We had a grand opportunity in 2008 and 2009 to clean up the mess – had we let the “too big to fail” entities fail. We could have cleared out the corruption in the market simply by letting the corrupt players collapse. Instead of doing that, we rescued them with taxpayer money and now we’re writing regulations essentially at the behest of the people who created the problem in the first place. This just ensures we’ll have a repeat of the financial crash.

The free market is the only way to rationally determine the use of capital, labor and materials. Any attempt by a third party to decide for others how such things are to be used ends in disaster. But a free market is only free as long as people are free to do the right thing – as soon as people are free to do the wrong thing, then the system is corrupted, it is no longer free and the resultant misallocation of resources will guarantee a crash.

At this point its not so much about fixing the market as in re-creating it. Over the past 70 years we have massively skewed the system away from doing anything good. This is why our factories are in China, our farms are in Mexico and our mines are in Chile. It is why we have a glut of home-grown pornography but can’t seem to even make a pair of shoes here in the United States.

Our market is made for the corrupt – the corrupt in business and in government. Reform must make it for honest people – and we won’t get that if the industry lobbyists and their kept politicians in Congress write the rules.

Tax Revolt in New Jersey. New Jersey? Yes, New Jersey!

The revolution spreads:

New Jersey voters just sent another loud reminder of their disgust with out-of-control taxes.

Of 537 school budgets up for a vote in the Garden State, 315 — a whopping 59 percent — went down in flames Tuesday.

That’s more than the state’s seen in decades.

Why so many rejections?

Because some 80 percent of those budgets sought property-tax hikes.

As if Jersey isn’t already a national leader in property taxes.

As if ObamaCare, the stimulus and Washington’s trillion-dollar deficits hadn’t sent actual taxpayers into a lather.

Homeowners, in particular, have had enough.

Yes, they have – and with Governor Christie leading the way, the people of New Jersey are finally demanding real change. Not liberal spend-more-and-call-it-change sort of change, but real change which will improve things for the people.

There is a massive, revolutionary wave building in America and as time goes on, it just rises higher. People are furious with government and want the nonsense stopped. We’re broke, the people realize it and are demanding that government act accordingly.

Unfortunately, our liberals are partying like there is no tomorrow – just spend, spend, spend and then spend some more. As if money grows on trees and there is an endless supply of it. The people are advising the liberals of a new reality. And they’re not listening.

Well, they’ll have to listen in November.

Did GM Really Pay Us Back?

I suspect not:

A top Senate Republican on Thursday accused the administration of misleading taxpayers about General Motors’ loan repayment, saying the struggling auto giant was only able to repay its bailout money by dipping into a separate pot of bailout money…

…Sen. Chuck Grassley’s charge was backed up by the inspector general for the bailout — also known as the Trouble Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Watchdog Neil Barofsky told Fox News, as well as the Senate Finance Committee, that General Motors used bailout money to pay back the federal government.

“It appears to be nothing more than an elaborate TARP money shuffle,” Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a letter Thursday to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner…

When I first saw the “we paid it back” GM ad, I smelled a rat. After all, GM is still losing money, so the only way they could possibly pay us back was by not paying someone else. Didn’t think they’d have the nerve to use government money to pay the government back, but that might well be what happened.

But even if it isn’t, it still stands that GM hasn’t paid anything back. After all, GM only exists because Obama forced through a screwing over of GM’s creditors while cutting sweat heart deals for the UAW. The whole thing with the money makes Enron look honest – Madoff is wishing he had just hung around long enough to be “too big to fail”.

We can expect more of this as time goes on – the Obama Administration is shot through with the rankest sort of political dishonesty and they will continue to pull fast ones.

UPDATE: Obama orders government to buy more GM cars!

Just What is in That ObamaCare Bill?

Well, among many other things, 500 lost jobs – and the imposition of tyrannical rule:

Sallie Mae’s decision to close its call center in Killeen, eliminating 500 jobs, left employees News 10 talked to Thursday wondering what they will do next…

…Sallie Mae announced Wednesday it will close the Killeen facility and another in Panama City, Fla. as part of a restructuring plan aimed at trimming 1,200 jobs companywide this year and 1,300 jobs next year…

…The company attributed the restructuring to legislation approved in March that ends the bank-based system of distributing federally subsidized loans to students.

The change was part of the reconciliation bill that also included health care legislation changes that the president signed at the end of March.

This stuff is coming out in dribblets – and no body knows 100% of what is in there, or what a bureaucrat might say is in there, or what a judge might interpret as being in there.

Tyranny is not a harsh code of laws – tyranny is when no one knows what the law is. Arbitrary rule if the hallmark of tyranny. When you have a system where no one knows for sure on a day to day basis what is legal or illegal, then you are under tyranny. You are afraid to move without explicit government permission because you fear that any move you make might be ruled as illegal by some apparatchik.

ObamaCare has brought tyranny to America in a way not seen since we were under British rule. Obama and his Democrats want to continue and expand this with changes to the clean water act, cap and trade legislation and comprehensive immigration reform. Pass large, nebulous bills which will have unknown effects and are thus things which the executive and judicial branches can interpret any way they like.

We must end this – we simply must win in November in order to end tyranny and restore American liberty.