From The New Editor. Why are they doing it? Because they’re nasty:

Time magazine’s Jay Newton-Small just told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Hardball that “aides in the Democratic Party House leadership’s office” are sending out to the press personal dirt on US House Rep. Parker Griffith, who yesterday announced that he was switching form the Democratic Party to the Republican Party.

Time’s Small postulated that this was an effort to scare other House Dems who likewise considering a jump to the Republicans.

If the guy really was dirty, Democrats, then why did you keep him on? You either were being disgusting by protecting a corrupt politician, or you’re being disgusting now by lying about someone. Which is it?

Very strange:

Politico’s Mike Allen and Alexander Trowbridge have some bad news for Democrats, especially in the Senate, where Harry Reid has kept the chamber locked in battle over ObamaCare for weeks in an attempt to hit the finish line by Christmas. Barack Obama plans to put the health-care overhaul on the back burner until after the State of the Union address, pushing any conference between the House and Senate off until February. Instead, Obama plans a “hard pivot” towards jobs and the economy…

Was this a complete surprise to the Senate Democrats? If it was, then Obama just evaporated whatever good will remained for him in the Senate…and the House, for that matter. These people went to the mat for ObamaCare – have risked their re-election efforts and already have the “he voted for The Bad Thing” ads waiting for them at election time – and now Obama is putting it off until February?

I admit to being astounded by this – unless Nancy and Harry told him that they can’t reconcile right now given the fissures in the Democrat party. Or, they have done all their internal polling and realize that ObamaCare is the kiss of death. This is a possibility – but, really, the damage is already done.

This will make for an interesting Christmas.

Or under “jobs saved” or “jobs created”:

Layoffs are a fact of life in this economy, but there are humane ways to do it. Then there’s the Arrow Trucking method.

The Tulsa, Okla., trucking company stopped payment on the gas cards of its drivers, leaving some of them stranded Tuesday around the United States, miles from home. No explanation on the website. No one at the company answering phones.

The 200 or so employees at Arrow Trucking’s headquarters were told to pack up their belongings and go home Tuesday morning, according to the Tulsa World.

The only acknowledgement was a brief recorded message on the company’s main phone number, asking drivers of its Freightliner and Kenworth trucks to turn their rigs in to the nearest dealer and to call a special hotline to arrange for a bus ticket home. Drivers of the company’s Navistar trucks were told to call back for more information.

But don’t worry, boys and girls, Barry, Timmy and the boys are telling us the economy is getting better…

How’s that whole “hope and change” thing working out for ya?

Main Street has had a tough year, losing jobs and seeing little evidence of the economic revival that experts say has already begun.

But K Street is raking it in.

Washington’s influence industry is on track to shatter last year’s record $3.3 billion spent to lobby Congress and the rest of the federal government…

Good job, Barry – here are some more jobs you’ve “saved or created”…

Mish’s has the full story stemming out of the possible bankruptcy of YRC Worldwide, America’s largest trucking company (which, by the way, is yet another indicator of just how bad the economy really is). Here is the crux of the matter:

Rep. Earl Pomeroy, North Dakota Democrat, is drafting legislation that would amount to a massive, employer-crippling bailout for struggling union pensions. The congressman is trying to spin this as a cheap, proactive way to shore up said pensions. He claims that his bill is a response to an “urgent plea [from employers] for manageable and predictable pension funding rules as the nation works [its] way back to recovery.”

In reality, the bill as currently drafted would be a costly sop to unions, which have done so much to get Mr. Pomeroy elected. (Twelve out of his top 21 donors are unions, according to opensecrets.org.) It would allow the unions, which have badly mismanaged pension funds in the past, to make new companies liable for the pension obligations of workers at other companies, in other industries. It also would create an explicit taxpayer guarantee if it all comes crashing down.

The devil is in the details of the draft, the text of which can be found on the congressman’s Web site. The changes it introduces are chilling.

The draft would allow union-controlled multiemployer pension plans to form alliances with one another. It also would create something known as a fifth fund that the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp., with taxpayer help, would use to prop up failing union pension plans.

Multiemployer union pension alliances might sound innocent enough, but consider what that actually means. Moody’s Investors Service recently warned of a vast underfunding problem with multiemployer pensions. Many employers fear being shackled into them. Even though the funds are controlled by unions, employers are liable not just for their own employees, but for every worker in the plan regardless of how the plan is managed or mismanaged.

The so-called last-man-standing rule holds that if every other company in a multiemployer pension plan goes bankrupt, closes or pulls out of the plan, the one survivor is responsible for every single employee covered by the plan, even those who never worked for him. UPS paid $6.1 billion in withdrawal fees just to escape the Teamsters Central States pension fund.

The “last man standing” under Pomeroy’s plan is you, dear taxpayer. Pomeroy, of course, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Big Union and as the unions have saddled corporations with crushing pension plans, it is natural that, instead of getting rid of the burden, the unions are casting about for a way to make everyone pay for their profligacy. Its in the nature of things that a Democrat falls easily in to line with this.

As we can see, the Democrats’ seem bent on putting as much of their constituency on the public dime as possible. They want ACORN using tax payer dollars to do the ballot box stuffing Democrats used to have to pay for on their own – why not also have the taxpayer fund the pension funds of those unions which provide so much cash to Democrat campaigns?

We’ll have a lot of repealing to do…

Lo, how the mighty have fallen:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 25% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-six percent (46%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -21 That’s the lowest Approval Index rating yet recorded for this President…

Gatewaypundit says that Bush’s strongly disapprove was at 43% at the end of his term.

UPDATE: And the GOP holds an 8 point lead in the “generic” ballot.

UPDATE II: And Dick Cheney is named Conservative of the Year – Gay Patriot nominates for Conservative of the Decade.

As I told you it would be:

Estimated GDP growth for the third quarter has been revised downward again, to 2.2% from an initial estimate of 3.5% (it was also revised downward last month). That means that the Cash-for-Clunkers program accounts for most of the growth:

Motor vehicle output added 1.45 percentage points to the third-quarter change in real GDP after adding 0.19 percentage point to the second-quarter change. Final sales of computers subtracted 0.08 percentage point from the third-quarter change in real GDP after subtracting 0.04 percentage point from the second-quarter change.

Take away that 1.45 percentage points and you get 0.75% growth – anyone want to bet me that other government spending accounted for most or all of that? I’ll bet dollars to donuts that the private, productive economy contracted in the third quarter – and is continuing to contract right now.

Its all smoke and mirrors, as I’ve said. It will come crashing down. Will it crash by March as I expect? No one can say for certain – but crash it will. Bank on it.

Interesting:

In the end, Connecticut Democrats can’t make Sen. Chris Dodd choose to retire. They can go to him and urge him to think about the joys of an ambassadorship, or teaching, or heading up some organization and raking the cash in by the bucketload. They could publicly endorse a serious primary challenger.

A former state party chair talking about how someone ought to urge him to retire is probably giving Democrats the worst of both worlds. Dodd isn’t likely to take the advice, and Connecticut voters notice, “Wow, even Democratic party officials are sick of this guy.”

This isn’t confirmation that the “Torricelli maneuver” — a last-minute, not-entirely-voluntary candidate switch — is coming down the pike, but clearly some Democrats in that state have thought about it.

And Connecticut is a rather blue State, isn’t it? And yet here is a long term, Democrat incumbent who is, to put it mildly, on thin electoral ice. If voters in Connecticut are angry enough to toss out a senior Democrat, how mad to you think the voters in the red States are? Especially in those GOP districts currently held by Democrats?

Getting a net gain of 41 House and 11 Senate seats is an exceptionally tall order for the GOP (11 in the Senate because if its 50/50, VP Biden breaks the tie and Democrats remain in control) – but, clearly, winning big is not out of the question.

Our problem, as GOPers, is twofold:

1. To craft a revolutionary message which will resonate with voter anger over the disgusting sewer which is American government.

2. Figuring out a way around the myriad ways Democrats will attempt to cheat in order to limit losses. The removal of Torricelli in NJ wasn’t just non-voluntary, it was entirely illegal, in to the bargain. Democrats will stick at nothing – I really can’t imagine anything they wouldn’t do in order to win.

But if we craft the message and carry it home against all vulnerable Democrats, then even with Democrat cheating, we still stand to make big gains next year – and, just perhaps, gains which will astound the world.

This isn’t the sub-prime stuff, good people – these are the loans made to well-qualified people:

Serious delinquencies among U.S. prime mortgages rose nearly 20 percent in the third quarter from the prior quarter, as the percentage of current and performing mortgages fell for the sixth consecutive quarter, banking regulators said on Monday.

The report by the Office of Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision, which are part of the Treasury Department, covered about two-thirds of all U.S. mortgages.

It found 3.6 percent of prime mortgages — those made to the most credit-worthy borrowers — were seriously delinquent in the third quarter. That was more than double the year-ago quarter and up nearly 20 percent from the … second quarter.

The report defined “serious delinquencies” as those loans 60 days or more past due…

It isn’t getting better out there – not in the least. And with all the bubbles being built up by the Fed and central banks around the world (especially China) its just a matter of time before the second crash hits. To be sure, the fools who got us in to this mess can continue to play fast and loose with the money supply and, perhaps, keep the ball in the air for even as much as a year or two, but without wealth creation, we’re doomed to another crash. And the bad news is we can’t create wealth if governments are printing and borrowing like mad (any real gains in wealth will be wasted effort as money and debt rise faster).

Only a complete reversal can save the situation – we have to stop borrowing, stop printing and clear the decks to allow a bit of wealth creation and “clearing the decks” means, among other things, allowing “too big to fail” corporations to do just that.

HAT TIP: Mish’s

The news:

One is a former vice presidential candidate who has been vilified in much of the press. The other is a former two-term vice president who has been celebrated in much of the press. So which is more respected by the public at large?

In the Wall Street Journal/NBC poll released a few days ago, pollsters Peter Hart and Bill McInturff asked, “I’m going to mention some people who have served in public life at some point in the past decade. Please tell me which one or two of these people, if any, you have the most regard and respect for.” The list was filled with the predictable answers. The president was on top, named by 28 percent of respondents. Colin Powell was also way up there. But the striking thing is that Sarah Palin, after all the criticism that has been directed at her, finished tied for sixth place, respected by 13 percent of respondents, and Al Gore, after all the praise that has been directed at him, was in eighth place, respected by eight percent. (The poll was taken just before the global warming fiasco in Copenhagen, which seems unlikely to have a positive effect Gore’s ratings.)

Caveat: being better respected than Al Gore is akin to being better respected than a crazed chimpanzee – but, hey, the MSM is what set up this contest.