Amazing one one gets in the mail – especially if a friend of yours is registered as an Independent in Nevada.

Someone else picks up on it – only a short 16 months after I first noted this:

The Internet is a large-scale version of the “Committees of Correspondence” that led to the first American Revolution — and with Washington’s failings now so obvious and awful, it may lead to another.

People are asking, “Is the government doing us more harm than good? Should we change what it does and the way it does it?”…

Or, as I put it:

… We don’t want our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor destroyed to placate the false gods of group-think, environmentalism and grievance-mongering.

Liberalism won the 2008 election, but it did not win the right to dictate to the whole nation how it shall live…we didn’t vote once and for all for Obama’s vision of America…

The fundamental flaw in the Obama Administration – and liberalism as a whole – was the presumption that the 2008 result was definitive. They really thought that the majority had voted for liberalism. The fact of the matter is that the people who gave Obama his victory voted not for liberalism, but against a worn-out GOP and in favor of fundamental change in the way government does business.

“Change” didn’t mean “spend even more money on a failed governing theory”. It also didn’t mean “in the first non-white Administration, harp endlessly upon racism”. It further didn’t mean “hey, now we can be even more corrupt than before!”. Most importantly, it did not mean “the people a ticked off about Bush’s TARP, so lets do even more of it!”.

It is our good fortune – such good fortune as can easily be classed as God’s grace – that our Founders set up a system where by even in our current condition, we can have a revolution at the ballot box. And we will have one – its starts this November, and it will go on for a generation. We will restore America – we will be free, now and forever.

So, what does having a root canal have to do with either the price of tea in China or whether or not you get a good blog entry for the AM? Nothing with the former; for the latter, it just means my jaw hurts and I’m tired – so no good entry.

On the other hand, there were a lot of great subjects to cover:

FDIC Friday – bank failures hit 106 for 2010.

Democrats are raking in lobbyist cash.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) joins Rangel in ethics hot water.

59% still back the Arizona immigration law.

And Iowahawk takes on that creepy birthday card for the President thing.

From CBS:

While BP took a $17 billion loss in the second quarter, the financial news isn’t all bad for the beleaguered oil giant.

That’s because the amount the oil company set aside to cover the costs of the oil spill will end up saving the oil giant $10 billion in U.S taxes, according to an msnbc.com report…

This just goes to my point about corporate taxes – they are utterly pointless. Corporations don’t pay them – even if you manage to get a dollar from a corporate bank account in to the Treasury, it is just going to be taken out of the pockets of consumers or employees, or both. Better to just give it up and seek revenues elsewhere.

This should make our liberals have a hissy fit – both in the fact that its humorous as well as having a kindness to Sarah Palin they are incapable of:

The troops are in the thick of it:

In a summer of suffering, America’s military death toll in Afghanistan is rising, with back-to-back record months for U.S. losses in the grinding conflict. All signs point to more bloodshed in the months ahead, straining the already shaky international support for the war.

Six more Americans were reported killed in fighting in the south — three Thursday and three Friday — pushing the U.S. death toll for July to a record 66 and surpassing June as the deadliest month for U.S. forces in the nearly nine-year war…

Keep them in your prayers – always remember that while we are safe here at home, the best of America is overseas, fighting for us.

Pajamas Media has the run-down on the absurd reasoning from Senator Leahy.

What is happening here is a desperate attempt by Democrats to make this go away – everything is falling apart for them and they don’t want to have a case which promises to upset their own side if pursued – they need donation and as much enthusiasm as they can get from their base. This would be eroded greatly if they went after the truth about the NBPP.

And so, law and justice will be set aside – Democrats have more important hings on their mind…such as their own power and wealth.

This is Obama’s America. How do you like it?

From Rasmussen:

…A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 68% of U.S. voters now believe the United States should continue to build a fence on the Mexican border. That’s up nine points from March when the Obama administration halted funding for the fence and the highest level of support ever.

Just 21% oppose the continued building of the border fence.

Support for the fence is strong across all demographic groups. But while 76% of Mainstream voters think the United States should continue to build the fence, 67% of the Political Class are opposed to it…

Not much more be said than that – the people who presume to rule in our name are, once again, completely off the ranch. Remember, even people like me who do favor a path to citizenship for illegals and a guest worker program are in favor of strict border security. It takes a complete out-to-lunch elitist to be opposed to border security.

And thus the real battle of 2010 – not so much Republican vs Democrat, but People vs Powerful. In this year, the GOP is just the convenient vehicle of popular discontent. And if the GOP doesn’t understand that they are being sent do DC to do the people’s will, then they will be in their turn tossed out.

It is time for we, the people to completely reclaim our government – to make it our servant, not our master.

UPDATE: Amnesty without a vote?

Because they just can’t stand the thought of having one less pro-abortion vote in the Senate:

…pro-life views run counter to the way in which Boxer has defended everything from taxpayer funding of abortions to partial-birth abortions in the Senate, refusing to vote for or allow even the most modest abortion limits most Americans support.

Kathy Kneer, president of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, told the Associated Press today that her group believes Boxer will come out on top in November because polls show a majority of California residents back legalized abortions.

But the victory she assuredly believes Boxer will win won’t come without a hefty pricetag: one million dollars…

Boxer’s opponent points out that her mother in law was advised to obtain an abortion – which would have meant no husband for Carly Fiorina. That is an important point to make – behind each “choice” is a dead human being, a life cut short – love and devotion for others removed from the world. Abortion is an act of despair which lasts as long as this world will last – we can never repair the mutilation of our society represented by the tens of millions of abortions. Love was given to the world, and it was taken away – and it cannot be made good, ever.

Abortion is also an act of enslavement for women, in to the bargain. A woman who chooses abortion has not made a stand for independence but has instead turned her body in to the merest implement for the pleasure of the most unworthy of men – those men who would see their own child aborted rather than exerting themselves to care for both mother and child.

There is no good in abortion – it is a wicked, inhuman practice. But it does have its defenders, such as Barbara Boxer. And the people and groups who rake it in off despair and death – such as Planned Parenthood – don’t want their gravy train interfered with. And so, they’ll spend bags of money backing their kept Senators – and, dear Americans, it is really your tax dollars at work here. Planned Parenthood is subsidized in part by taxpayers – and that frees up funds for PP to use in politics. Keep that in mind as this election season goes on – any such PP action in politics is your hard earned money.

It won’t work – the Culture of Death is on its last legs. Barbara Boxer is doomed. She is doomed by the utter failure of liberalism in California. Doomed by the rank corruption of the Democrat Party. Doomed by the worthlessness of the Culture of Death.

An unanswerable argument against the Democrat moves to pass a failed, rejected agenda through a lame duck session.

From Ramussen:

The Wisconsin Senate race is still a toss-up, with Republican Ron Johnson and incumbent Democrat Russ Feingold in a near tie.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Wisconsin shows Johnson with 48% support. Feingold, a member of the Senate since 1993, again picks up 46% of the vote…

This is pretty much unchanged from the last poll two weeks ago – but the really important thing here is that Feingold should be having a walk over in this race. This is his fourth run – he’s been a popular Senator in tune with the Wisconsin electorate. If Feingold is in trouble – and he is – then the entire Democrat party is on the brink of disaster.

From The Hill:

The House ethics committee announced 13 charges Thursday against Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), who is accused of breaking House rules as well as federal statutes.

If he were a Republican, the GOP would be calling for his resignation – as he’s a Democrat, that won’t happen unless his trial starts to adversely affect Democrat chances in November.

Representative Eric Cantor (R-VA), warns of the dangers should the Democrats attempt to ram through Obamunism between November and January:

…In the wake of the November election, the Democratic majorities of 2008 will be frozen in place until a new Congress is sworn in at the beginning of 2011. It appears likely that scores of defeated Democrats will head back to Washington to serve out their terms with nothing to lose. And with President Obama’s promises of tax increases, cap-and-trade, card check, and immigration reform left unfulfilled, what’s to stop Speaker Pelosi and Leader Reid from using the lame-duck session to pass the remaining parts of their agenda that their so-called moderates are currently too jittery to support?…

Not much – in a more rational time, we could rely upon good sense, good manners and a sense of patriotism to prevent a lame duck Congress from enacting an agenda just rejected at the polls. Trouble is that our Democrats have no sense, no manners and a highly atrophied sense of patriotism. Quite honestly, all that stands between us and a lame duck revolution are those Democrat Senators up for re-election in 2012 and already starting to look over their shoulders.

But Democrats will do such a thing at their extreme peril. The American people have a highly developed sense of fair play – indeed, it is some times a bit over-developed and leads to giving a someone a break who really doesn’t deserve it. But that is ok – if we are to err, then better to do so on the side of mercy and generosity. But the flip side of this is a white hot anger when someone really takes advantage of a generous heart.

There is a revolutionary ferment in America today – people are furious with a corrupt and out of touch Ruling Class. This looks as though it will strongly advantage Republicans in November. Not so much because everyone has falling back in love with the GOP (far from it), but that there is at least a perception that the GOP has learned some lessons and, at any rate, they aren’t the guys screwing things up at the moment. If the American people troop to the polls and return a GOP majority – or even just a strong GOP minority – then the expectation on the part of the people will be a strong modification in the course being pursued. If Democrats try to ram through the agenda which has failed, then a revolutionary ferment will explode in to revolutionary demands.

And it would not quiet down. It would not abate and become a non-issue by 2012. It would just mount higher and higher – at the end of the road for the use of a Lame Duck is the Democrat party being a dead duck. We’ll see what happens – but let no Democrat say they weren’t warned.

Mish points out just how out of whack the experts are getting – a whole pack of them predicted durable goods orders to rise:

Individual Forecasts 1.5 Percent or Greater

* Barclays Capital +1.5%
* BNP Paribas +4.0%
* Citi +1.6%
* Desjardins Group +2.0%
* High Frequency Economics +2.0%
* J.P. Morgan Chase +1.7%
* Janney Montgomery Scott +3.2%
* Landesbank Berlin +2.8%
* Nomura Securities Intl. +3.0%
* PineBridge Investments +2.5%
* Raymond James +2.0%
* RBC Capital Markets +2.3%
* Ried, Thunberg & Co. +1.5%
* Thomson Reuters/IFR +2.9%
* Wrightson Associates +1.5%

I’m sure that even the most financially uninstructed recognize a lot of those names – JP Morgan, Barclays, Citi. These aren’t just odd analysts out there no one listens to. This is the cream of the crop – the people who are supposedly really tuned in to what is going on. On the advice of such people, literally hundreds of billions of dollars will move this way or that.

And, so, what actually happened?

New Orders

New orders for manufactured durable goods in June decreased $2.0 billion or 1.0 percent to $190.5 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau announced today. This was the second consecutive monthly decrease and followed a 0.8 percent May decrease…

This is not just being a bit off. This isn’t predicting a 1.5% increase and having it come in at 1.3%. This is black and white – this is people who, for whatever reason, haven’t the foggiest notion of what is going on out there. Anyone who listened to the experts and acted accordingly got burned. You literally would have been better off just automatically doing the opposite of whatever they said.

It is my opinion that the elite of our economy are entirely out to sea – they were raised on fake money, usurious interest rates and Keynesian economic theory. Now that its all come a cropper, they simply don’t know what to do. They plug their data in to their Keynesian models and its supposed to come out This Way, but then it comes out That Way, instead. They are flabbergasted – FDR cured the Great Depression using the same policies as Obama and the Fed. Why isn’t it working?

I don’t think any of them will ever figure it out – that a line of economic nonsense was propagated for decades and no one really checked in to it (except a few stalwart followers of Hayek, who are now being vindicated all to heck and gone). What they’ll keep doing is just more of the same – there are rumors of another large “quantative easing” in the works. That is elite-speak for “fire up the printing presses, Benny, we need to have government take more lousy assets off our hands!”. If Democrats thought they could get away with it, they’d pass another trillion dollar stimulus bill. They aren’t stuck in a rut – they are shacked to an economic corpse.

Only a complete overturn of the Powers That Be offers a chance to change course and get us on track to real economic revival. Keep these clowns in power, and they’ll bankrupt us completely and still never figure out what went wrong.

No doubt about it, we’re in a fix as far as housing goes. While some short sighted analysts are pumping up recent data alleging a growth in home sales, the fact of the matter is that in raw numbers of houses sold, we’re clearly in a housing Depression. Prices continue to drop, foreclosures continue at a rapid pace, and the incidence of strategic default (ie, people walking away from homes they can afford because the market value is so much less than the mortgage balance) continue to rise. Rosy housing scenarios have us maintaining prices right about where they are now, but I fully expect major reductions in home prices unless we some how change the dynamics of the market.

Here is the terrible scenario – we’re already in the dumpster on home prices and as this dumpster spreads, it pushes more and more people “underwater” on their mortgages, thus stressing their willingness to keep up consumption and/or making them more likely to just walk away from their homes…

Read the rest over at Noonan for Nevada.

Tfmo is doing his latest installment – click and listen.

A few quotes:

“This fight is far from over. In fact, it is just the beginning, and at the end of what is certain to be a long legal struggle, Arizona will prevail in its right to protect our citizens.”
– Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer in her official statement to the press…

…”We are deeply disappointed in the court’s ruling today and disagree with the court’s opinion that the Arizona’s law will unduly ‘burden’ the enforcement of federal immigration law. Instead of wasting taxpayer resources filing a lawsuit against Arizona and complaining that the law would be burdensome, the Obama Administration should have focused its efforts on working with Congress to provide the necessary resources to support the state in its efforts to act where the Federal government has failed to take responsibility.”
– Joint Statement by U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz…

…”Today’s ruling does not strike down SB1070. Her ruling only puts a hold on a few parts of the new law. That’s why her actions today are called a preliminary injunction. Those who are here in this state illegally, my deputies will still ask about their status in this country and will arrest on existing state and federal immigration violations. State violators will be booked into my jail and federal violators will be turned over to authorities.”
– Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio

It is just mind-numbingly stupid to strike down this law – it is the merest enforcement of already existing federal law. Federal law, by the way, which the Obama Administration is refusing to enforce. I understand the judge was a Clinton appointee – if that is the case, then that is all that need be said; a Democrat ruled the way Democrats desires, law be darned.

This will not stand – in fact, this ruling just makes it more likely that the political will to secure our border will rise to power.

From Gay Patriot:

Last week, I jumped the gun (as did many others) in taking what was a complex story and boiling it down to an video clip without its proper context. I apologized to my readers and to Shirley Sherrod.

I hereby withdraw the apology to Mrs. Sherrod.

As I noted at the time, this was a very complex story and I had a pretty good hunch that Mrs. Sherrod was not the angel she appeared to be. I am correct. She is a picture perfect product of the liberal policies that make African-Americans dependent on the Federal Government and foster a victimization mentality…

He goes on to note Shirley Sherrod’s claim that Breitbart wants to bring back slavery, and Mr. Sherrod’s assertion that we have to stop whites and Uncle Toms from stealing elections.

Discuss.

An interesting proposal:

An anti-immigration group is calling on the Obama administration to ensure a smooth exit for illegal immigrants who are trying to leave the U.S. due to the weak economy and Arizona’s strict new immigration law.

Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC) is urging U.S. citizens to pressure the White House and the Homeland Security Department to establish “safe departure” border checkpoints along the U.S. border for illegal immigrants so they can leave without fear of being detained or prosecuted for immigration crimes…

Makes sense – voluntarily turn yourself in at the border, and out you go with no questions asked. The only problem I can see is if a violent offender on the lam tried to take advantage of such a program. We should have protections against that – but other than violent offenders, anyone who wants to self-deport should be afforded all possible conveniences – we can even help defray travel expenses as that will still be a lot cheaper than either having them stay or arresting them in the interior.

Such a program would probably induce several million to head home. The economy here isn’t in very good shape and its highly likely that illegals have borne a large measure of things such as the home building crash. It might be that a large number are willing to head back home but both lack the means and have the fear of getting tangled up in America’s immigration laws.

From Huffington Post:

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell predicted on Tuesday that if the president escalates America’s military involvement in Afghanistan he could very well face a primary challenger in 2012…

Which is both typical of liberal Democrat politics, and a continuing reminder of just how pathetic liberals are. Boiled down, what Rendell is saying is that if Obama responds to changing circumstances in Afghanistan and sends more troops (or, presumptively, if he just refuses to draw down after July of 2011), then there could be a primary challenger to him. Shades of Bobby Kennedy against LBJ in 1968!

While it should be kept in mind that Rendell was a Hillary backer in 2008, it cannot be ignored that he represents a significant portion of the Democrat coalition on this. And the fact that he’s airing this in public shows the level of dismay Obama is generating on the left. There is clearly a growing level of anger out there over the fact that the new, liberal dawn hasn’t come about as expected on election night, 2008.

I will have to rate the emergence of a serious primary challenger to Obama as a 1-100 shot. But this is still vastly different from “absolutely impossible”, which would have been my judgment even a couple weeks ago. Its still not at all likely because, quite simply, any Democrat who did challenge Obama would be doomed politically, even if they snatched the nomination away from him – there is no way that the broad mass of African-Americans would forgive the Democrat who ousted Obama;come November after that, black voters would stay home in droves, thus assuring not just a GOP Presidential win, but also a massive win in House, Senate and other down-ballot contests (Democrats are extraordinarily dependent upon high black turnout voting 90% Democrat). The Democrat who brought this about would be utterly finished in politics.

And so, I don’t think any of the potential serious challengers would do it. For instance, Hillary ages, but she is also in good health and 2016 is not too long from now. Why end all chances of it in 2012 when a mere four years later she’d have a chance of grabbing the brass ring?

On the other hand, if 2010 turns out badly for the Democrats and the economy slips deep in to recession/depression in 2011, then the choice for the Democrats may come down to figuring out how to save the party. Staying loyal to Obama won’t be much worth if by January 2013 they’re facing a GOP President backed by 300 House and 60 Senate Republicans. With that, in just two years all of Obamunism can be undone and great strides made in dismantling the entire Democrat power structure.

We’ll have to see how it comes out – but clearly things are not rosy in Democrat-land at the moment.