From the comments over at Just One Minute:

…I think our side ought to make a good faith effort to show we’re open to tax increases of some kind. My suggestion is that the Republicans propose an end to a tax break for fat cats that reduces federal revenue by millions of dollars a year. I am speaking of the deductibility of state income tax. I think this would be a very popular proposal, because it would show the Democrats how committed we are to bipartisanship, it would give the patriotic citizens of places like New York and California and Massachusetts the opportunity to send more money to the government without just doing so voluntarily, and it sure wouldn’t bother anybody in places like Texas or Florida.

I can’t think of any objection to this proposal. Can you? I mean, it is just perfect – as well as being a heck of a lot of fun.

Just like my proposal for a “wealth tax“, this proposal would box the Democrats in – they would either have to go along with it, and harm their own constituents, or be revealed as the utter hypocrites they are. It is a win/win for us.

HAT TIP: PJ Tatler

From The Hill:

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will demand a seat in the table for the final talks on the national debt limit, putting a strong liberal voice in the room.

Pelosi and House Democrats were left out of the negotiations between President Obama and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) last year that extended nearly all of the Bush tax rates though 2012.

Pelosi didn’t participate in the final high-level talks over fiscal 2011 spending levels either…

I can’t imagine anything which would help the GOP better than to put Pelosi as the face of the Democrat party in the budget battle. Nothing like a corrupt, failed, liberal hack to set all things in focus – the GOP is for America, the Democrats are for the dying, destructive system. So, yes, by all means – give Pelosi a seat at the table. In fact, put her front and center. Make sure the cameras are always on her so that not a word of her wisdom is lost to the American people…

Venezuela News and Views retails a theory:

…Apparently the “knee” problem was a way to hide the prostate surgery which today can be dealt well enough in a couple of weeks. But if we are to believe Gustavo the post biopsy was not encouraging and they decided to do some advanced body scans which in Venezuela can only be done in a couple of private clinics. Not only Chavez entourage would not trust the discretion of private clinics but it would have been also an admission that the “socialist” care was not as performing as the “capitalist” care since the regime had not been able to match the equipment of the private sector for “el pueblo”. Thus the trip to Cuba. One caveat here: where would have Chavez got prostate surgery in full discretion? Has he set an O.R. inside Miraflores or Fuerte Tiuna?

Before, for show, Chavez stopped in Brazil and Ecuador and that must have been a mistake because he got a post op infection. And also some people found him walking strangely well for someone with an alleged serious knee injury. Arriving in Cuba he got feverish soon and they had to drain the abscess. That would have been the real “emergency” part. In a way that was a convenient excuse to justify Chavez stay while the real stuff was being done, namely the body scans.

He seems to have recovered well enough form his infection but apparently the scans were not good and they decided to start radiotherapy…

Before anyone breaks out the champagne to celebrate the imminent demise of a tyrant, keep two things in mind:

1. There is no real way to test this theory. Chavez keeps tight control over his own nation and Cuba is even tighter than Venezuela. Getting the truth out of either place is very difficult.

2. As the reports goes on to note, if Chavez were to die suddenly he could easily become a mythical hero of sorts, thus keeping alive his band of socialist totalitarianism. Remember, the best thing that ever happened to Stalin was that Lenin died…it allowed Stalin to use the image of Lenin to legitimize his own tyranny.

Still, the removal of a tyrant is always a good thing, over all. It is a pity, however, that Venezuela may never get a chance to overthrow this tyrant and put him on trial for his crimes.

From the Des Moines Register:

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann sit atop the standings in the year’s first Des Moines Register Iowa Poll on the Republican presidential field.

Romney, the national front-runner and a familiar face in Iowa after his 2008 presidential run, attracts support from 23 percent of likely Republican caucus-goers. Bachmann, who will officially kick off her campaign in Iowa on Monday, nearly matches him, with 22 percent…

I’d have to rate Romney’s support as soft – the sort of support you get for being around and not doing anything to make yourself actually unelectable. It is the sort of support which can easily be lost when someone better comes along – and right now, it appears that Iowa Republicans are starting to think that Bachmann is better.

To be sure, poll strength is not decisive in Iowa – that is all about the ground game at Caucus time, and if Romney’s caucus effort out here in Nevada in 2008 is any indicator, he’ll have a first class campaign for Iowa (Romney’s people simply steam rollered our caucuses…there was never a chance he wouldn’t win them). It now remains to be seen whether Bachmann, or anyone else, can out hustle Romney.

John Tamny over at Zero Hedge says, “no“:

…no doubt most in the media worship President Obama, and because they do they’ll strive mightily to create the impression that all is well, or at the very least that the economic malaise isn’t Obama’s fault. They would have a point, though for reasons none could articulate…

…Basically the Bush bailouts of banks and car companies “in the name of free markets” disallowed the initial economic cleansing necessary for a massive snapback, and then once in office, Obama’s economic team poured gasoline on the fire; most notably with policies meant to mimic the Bush economic disaster in the form of nosebleed spending and an even weaker dollar. The economy is weak, its weakness by definition has Washington and the Obama administration’s fingerprints all over it, and no matter how the media spin that which isn’t working, Obama is in serious trouble…

Much as I hate to say it, the author is right that the bailouts which started late in the Bush Administration were the first shot and borrowing and spending out way out of the crisis. Of course, President Bush was acting upon expert advice…and only a very few people raised their voices in objection at the time. Most people, even is wary, were willing to try just about anything to avert complete collapse. And, of course, it did avert complete collapse…for about three or four months, by which time Obama was in office.

It was a certainty that a liberal, Democrat President working with a liberal, Democrat Congress would try a round of spending to get things moving. It is built in, as it were – they really believe that it was government spending which solved the Great Depression, and so were certain a bit of it would solve the Great Recession. We can’t blame the liberals for doing it – it is what they do, and they had just won an historic victory. But that still doesn’t mean it was good policy – in fact, when coupled with Bernanke’s massive money printing, it became economic suicide.

By now, the fat is in the fire. Liberals can comfort themselves that some polls still show more people blaming Bush for the economy…but I caution against this. Such polls may only reflect the reality that the recession did, indeed, start when Bush was President. But such a poll does not mean “I don’t blame Obama”. Now that we’re two and a half years in to Obama, it is becoming increasingly difficult (and soon will become impossible) to pin the mess on Bush…at least in such a way as it helps Obama to get re-elected. Obama and his Democrats, in spite of their stout resistance, are being forced to own the economy. And as the linked article notes elsewhere, the most positive media spin in the world simply will not make people forget lost jobs, foreclosed homes, reduced pay and higher prices. The MSM spin for Obama will be astounding – more nakedly partisan for Obama than 2008; in fact probably the most partisan MSM reporting ever seen. But it won’t work – unless the real economy gets better, no amount of spin will change minds.

This doesn’t mean Obama is a sure loser – it just means that the MSM will not be able to carry him over the finish line. The MSM can help (and they will help Obama every chance they get) but it can’t decide…the nation is already too far gone in to revolutionary sentiment to fall for MSM propaganda.

This is a “let’s go to DC and clean up the mess” statement…the statement of a man who wants to switch his arena from New Jersey to Washington…we’ll see.

Gotta hand it to him – he does know the mechanics of politics. In this case, he’s just taking his fellow socialist Stalin’s advice: doesn’t matter who votes, it only matters who counts the votes. From the Washington Times:

A small tax-exempt political group with ties to wealthy liberals like billionaire financier George Soros has quietly helped elect 11 reform-minded progressive Democrats as secretaries of state to oversee the election process in battleground states and keep Republican “political operatives from deciding who can vote and how those votes are counted.”

Known as the Secretary of State Project (SOSP), the organization was formed by liberal activists in 2006 to put Democrats in charge of state election offices, where key decisions often are made in close races on which ballots are counted and which are not.

The group’s website said it wants to stop Republicans from “manipulating” election results…

By “manipulating” these liberals mean “only ensuring that legitimate votes are cast”. You see, to a liberal an election is “manipulated” every time a Republican wins a close contest. All such races are supposed to go to liberals because liberals are experts at stuffing the ballot box with illegal votes. It is very annoying to them when we start bringing all that tedious bit about laws and citizenship…like it matters that we have a clean, legitimate vote when liberals know full well that only the result counts. As long as a liberal wins, it is a good thing, don’t you know?

In this case here, I think Soros and the liberals got a step ahead of us – and we need to counter with efforts to defeat liberal ballot box-stuffers. We’re winning the fight to ensure that voter ID is required, but if we’re not careful then the liberals will get around that by having the people who count the votes just “find” as many as they need for the liberal to win.

Not just the Secretary of State, but all officials who ensure the legitimacy of the vote must be, as far as possible, Republicans and conservatives. Only thus can we have a shot at ensuring that only citizens vote and that each of them only votes once. Democrats by their routine resort to voter fraud are undermining the entire American political system – Soros’ effort here is to cement that fraud and make sure that it is built in to the system. It must be stopped.

From Post Politics:

At last weekend’s Netroots Nation gathering in Minneapolis, liberal activists expressed frustration that they lacked the political power or media focus given to the conservative tea-party movement. Former White House environmental official Van Jones is hoping to change that with a new political effort dubbed “The American Dream Movement.”

Organizers are hoping to emulate the the success of the tea party, which became a significant force in the 2010 midterms…

I know that our liberals like to believe that the TEA Party was created by the Koch brothers and isn’t grass roots, but the facts are otherwise. No one person or group can be said to have started the TEA Party – and no one person or group speaks for it. As someone with a pretty good knowledge of history, I have never seen anything quite like it. Mass movements we’ve had a-plenty, but none arising so spontaneously from the people and so entirely resistant to central control. The leadership of the GOP and conservatism is still struggling to keep up…and to keep up not in line with taking over, but only of remaining at the forefront of organic, American political development.

Van Jones doesn’t understand this – he looks around and wonders why there isn’t a liberal TEA Party and so sets out to create one. But it can’t be done…you can’t create a spontaneous movement. For there to be a liberal TEA Party there would have to arise among liberal-minded people first a willingness to act without orders (liberals are the most unthinking and regimented people imaginable, when you get down to it…only a very few ever dare stray from the party line); secondly, there would have to be a conviction that liberalism, as such, is both vital and under existential threat. After Wisconsin a lot of liberals are still feeling the threat, but it is hard to consider liberalism vital in the sense of something to die for. The TEA Party feels that if it doesn’t win then the men who fought at Bunker Hill, Gettysburg and Normandy will have died in vain…liberalism works out to a whine about how life isn’t fair.

Van Jones is free to try his effort, but he won’t be able to do anything other than duplicate what liberalism already has – ponderous groups of liberal special interests who, in the end, are just bitching and moaning about the taxpayer not paying them more money. Meanwhile, the TEA Party will move on from victory to victory because it isn’t fighting for the special benefit of TEA Party activists, but for the whole of the United States of America.