Very interesting in an election year:

In December, the number of Americans identifying themselves as Democrats fell to the lowest level recorded in more than seven years of monthly tracking by Rasmussen Reports.

Currently, 35.5% of American adults view themselves as Democrats. That’s down from 36.0 a month ago and from 37.8% in October. Prior to December, the lowest total ever recorded for Democrats was 35.9%, a figure that was reached twice in 2005.

The people dis-affiliating with the Democrats are not going to the GOP, but seem to be showing up in the Independent number. What this means is that they are up for grabs, with the GOP having the advantage because it hasn’t so recently disillusioned these people. If the GOP can craft a good message for the campaign season and stick to its guns then there is a chance for a major, long-term shift in American politics.

To take advantage of this will require the GOP to go a bit revolutionary for 2010. The people are, by and large, tired of business-as-usual politics. The reason Obama won back in 2008 was because he presented himself as the antidote for our sick politics. The facts about him where then with held from the American people by a combination of MSM devotion to Obama crossed with McCain’s unwillingness to really engage on that level. This, though, has worked out in the long run very badly for Obama and the Democrats – by deceiving their way to victory in 2008, they’ve now shown the American people that they’ve been had. And the people don’t like that. A bit of honesty in 2008 and Obama still might have won, although by a much narrower margin…but now the fat is in the fire for Obama and his Democrats.

Can we do this? Can we Republicans and conservatives take advantage of what is being offered to us? Only time will tell.

And this if from the New York Times! When they take exception to an Obama policy, you gotta know it stinks:

The Obama administration’s $75 billion program to protect homeowners from foreclosure has been widely pronounced a disappointment, and some economists and real estate experts now contend it has done more harm than good.

Since President Obama announced the program in February, it has lowered mortgage payments on a trial basis for hundreds of thousands of people but has largely failed to provide permanent relief. Critics increasingly argue that the program, Making Home Affordable, has raised false hopes among people who simply cannot afford their homes.

As a result, desperate homeowners have sent payments to banks in often-futile efforts to keep their homes, which some see as wasting dollars they could have saved in preparation for moving to cheaper rental residences. Some borrowers have seen their credit tarnished while falsely assuming that loan modifications involved no negative reports to credit agencies.

Some experts argue the program has impeded economic recovery by delaying a wrenching yet cleansing process through which borrowers give up unaffordable homes and banks fully reckon with their disastrous bets on real estate, enabling money to flow more freely through the financial system.

All of which, in one form or another, has been said by the critics of the program since day one. Long term readers know that my plan has been (and remains) to “cram down” mortgage balances in line with current market values. Our particular situation was a new departure. We’d had housing bubbles before, but none quite so widespread, so overheated and with such a rapid and deep decline in home prices. Once it happened, there was no way out of it save by just allowing the system to completely collapse or to essentially put the American housing and home mortgage markets through a bankruptcy reorganization. Rather than take either of these courses, the Obama Administration opted for a program which, in effect, had us standing about, hoping that something would turn up to relieve us of the need to pay a price for our profligacy. Continue reading →

Long time passing – interesting article over at First Things on the connections between American communism, folk music and other cultural events of the mid 20th century.

Interesting:

…The special election will take place on January 19. It’s accepted political wisdom now that, despite the rush to vote before Christmas in the Senate, the conference and reconciliation between the House and Senate versions of the national plan cannot occur in time to allow a vote on the reconciled bill prior to February. That means that a referendum in Massachusetts on the subject could have an interesting effect on wavering votes in both the House and the Senate. There is no margin for error in the Senate, where the health care bill got exactly the sixty votes needed to pass, and a slim one in the House.

If a Republican running against ObamaCare managed to pick up the seat of Ted Kennedy, or even come close to doing so, it would be a political earthquake of Richter 8+. What would that say about the popularity of the bill if it wasn’t even a winning issue in the state that had the most first-hand experience with it, not to mention in the election to replace the senator who had been a leading proponent of it?…

A GOP victory would be an absolute game-changer in American politics – but if the GOP even comes close, its going to be a major warning shot across the bow, as it were. Massachusetts is very blue and Democrats pretty much run the whole show. If public anger over ObamaCare can propel a GOPer to victory – or even close to it – in a State like Massachusetts, then only a complete reversal of course by the Democrats will spare them a drubbing in November.

Here is Scott Brown’s website. Donate if you can. If you live in the area, volunteer. Lets see if we can bury ObamaCare in Ted Kennedy’s back yard.

Not to be a total downer here at the start of the year, but there are some issues we need to pay attention to. Mish gives a quick list:

Global Imbalances Mount

* Global imbalances are cropping up like weeds in places like Greece, Iceland, Vietnam, Latvia, and Lithuania.

* There are massive property bubbles in China, Canada, the UK, and Australia.

* Japan is in a foolish fight against deflation and sinking further in debt

* Commercial real estate in the US is on the verge of bringing down hundreds of regional banks.

* Cities in the US are under massive pressure because of unsustainable pension plan promises.

* Global terrorism is on the rise

How long this mess hangs together without a huge crisis in a major currency is the question everyone should be asking. Sadly, most are oblivious to the widening structural cracks.

I’ve heard it said that some are predicting that fourth quarter 2009 GDP growth will be about 4%. If we see such a number, it is because the government is flat out lying to us about what is going on in the economy.

This economy is so bad that Nevada has lost 1% of its population – which is unheard of for us. Once upon a time, 6,000 people a month were moving in to the Las Vegas area. I’d guess that thousands are moving out, now. The school district had a shortage of teachers two years ago – now we’re sitting with empty class rooms. My commute time has gotten faster.

There’s just nothing here – to no fanfare at all, our final monument to profligacy (City Center) opened up in December and I’m wondering if anyone is making book on when it will file for bankruptcy (my guess: by June). A family in my neighborhood has been trying to short sale their house for 8 months – they’ve sold it three times, but each time the appraisal has come in lower…and the bank appears to prefer non-paying residents to selling the house at an ever increasing loss. My guess is that my one-time $400,000.00 house is worth $110,000.00, at best. I’m betting its just as bad in California, Florida and Arizona and heading that way just about everywhere else.

The structural problems all stem from fiat money and usury-based finance. The whole world has bought this poop sandwich and now everyone’s going to have to take a bite. The longer our government and governments around the world put off the day of reckoning, the worse it will be when it finally arrives. And it will arrive, sooner or later.

Yes, indeed:

When freedom does not have a purpose, when it does not wish to know anything about the rule of law engraved in the hearts of men and women, when it does not listen to the voice of conscience, it turns against humanity and society. – John Paul II

Interesting:

Fifty-eight percent (58%) of U.S. voters say waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques should be used to gain information from the terrorist who attempted to bomb an airliner on Christmas Day.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 30% oppose the use of such techniques, and another 12% are not sure.

Men and younger voters are more strongly supportive of the aggressive interrogation techniques than women and those who are older. Republicans and voters not affiliated with either major party favor their use more than Democrats.

Ok, liberals, you claimed that we needed to elect Obama in order to remove the stain of the evil Chimpy McSmirk BusHitler – including his heinous “waterboarding”, which you on the left actually consider to be torture. What say you to a strong majority of your fellow Americans figuring that we should go right ahead and do it? Are we all evil, too?

Or is there any chance you out there will realize that the whole waterboarding issue was manufactured? You know – liberal leaders needed something to get your juices up about – get you donating, get you willing to back Democrats, that sort of thing – and so worked up a physically harmless but rather effective interrogation technique as if it were something right out of the Nazi/Communist play book. That is what this was, dear liberals – just a technique to get very hardened terrorists to come clean on information we needed. It was used very sparingly and only against the worst of the worst of our enemies.

Do you feel like a bunch of suckers, now?

Just amazing what a liberal can accomplish when you allow him to cling on to power for 40+ years.

Good news

Tests that were performed on Rush Limbaugh after he was admitted to a Hawaii hospital for chest pains “found absolutely nothing wrong,” the conservative talk show host said Friday.

“It was a blessing,” Limbaugh told reporters at The Queen’s Medical Center where he was admitted Wednesday.

Doctors gave Limbaugh an angiogram Thursday that revealed no evidence of arterial or coronary disease, he said. The cause of his pain – which he called “very real” – has not been determined.

Liberals will be disappointed.

UPDATE: And President Obama starts off 2010 -18 in the polls.

The idiocy of liberalism gets worse and worse:

…logic is hard to come by in skin-deep-only-diversity-obsessed bureaucracies.

… Berkeley High’s School Governance Council, a body of teachers, parents, and students, proposes to eliminate before- and after-school science labs at Berkeley High School (BHS)… According to the East Bay Express, an alternate parent representative on the council said “information presented at council meetings suggests that the science labs were largely classes for white students,” although black students take science classes. One teacher said she has 12 black male students in her Advanced Placement classes, and black and Hispanic students account for a third of her four environmental science classes.

BHS purportedly has the widest racial academic achievement gap in California, which the council deemed “unconscionable.” Depriving students of science lab instruction because the labs benefit mostly white students apparently isn’t unconscionable.

What is unconscionable is our continued willingness to allow liberals to have any say, at all, in education.