Interesting:

On its face, the probability of the U.S. defaulting on its spiraling debts seems highly unlikely. But that’s not what the markets think. The price of insurance against such a default—using derivatives known as credit default swaps—has jumped by more than 50% in the private market in recent months. According to CMA DataVision in London, a specialist in these contracts, it will now cost you 0.34% of the principal per year to buy default insurance on U.S. government bonds. If you held $1 million in Treasurys, insuring against default would cost you $3,400 for the year. A few months back, insuring those bonds would’ve cost less than $2,000.

Not exactly a vote of confidence in Uncle Sam. Now, as the author of the linked piece goes on to note, an actual default on US bonds is highly unlikely – but there’s nothing stopping Obama and the Fed from forcing in a round of inflation, thus making the bonds we currently hold functionally worthless, and thus easy for the government to pay back. For as long as the US has issued bonds, our bonds have been the gold standard – the “risk free” investment. But, are they really?

I will review my decision to go in to bonds – perhaps I’ll find somewhere else to park my money.

I think we’re pretty much wide awake now – the Obama glow is gone and people realize that we’ve been had:

President Obama hopes to use money still unspent from the $787-billion economic stimulus plan to fight the nation’s 10% unemployment rate, and one of the ideas on the table is to channel money to states to keep them from laying off public employees.

But a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 22% of Americans favor providing federal bailout funds to states with serious financial problems. Fifty-eight percent (58%) oppose giving bailout money to financially troubled states.

On top of that, 56% of Americans oppose the passage of another economic stimulus package this year. While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other congressional Democrats are hoping to spend more to combat unemployment, just 33% favor another stimulus plan.

As Lincoln said, you can fool some of the people all of the time; all of the people some of the time; but not all of the people, all of the time. The only people still fooled by Obama are his hard core, leftist supporters who simply will not look at the facts and realize their worldview is based upon a series of false assumptions. But outside of those precincts, people fully realize that Obama’s rhetoric of 2008 was just so much BS to get him past election day.

Obama, of course, will try to re-capture the center in 2010 and, especially, 2012 but I don’t think he’ll be able to fool a majority a second time. Only a miraculous turn-around in the economy – made ever more impossible with each new dose of Obama policies – would give him even a shot at suckering a majority in to granting him a second term. But, where does that leave us, today?

We’re stuck with him – and his Congress, at least until January of 2011 (and the way the electoral math goes, we have to presume on, at the very least, a Democrat Senate majority until 2013). Matt pointed this out after Sotomayor was confirmed – this is the wages of being upset with the GOP for not nominating a candidate conservative “enough”. Regardless of what one thinks of McCain, we can rest assured that he wouldn’t be burying us in debt and corruption like Obama is. Next time, hopefully, we’ll have learned our lesson – better even a RINO we can pressure than dimwit liberal we have no control over (this applies only to Presidential contests – in House and Senate contests, especially when a GOPer is in the White House, better a Democrat than a RINO – and if we sift out the RINOs in State and Congressional races, we’ll have that much less chance of a RINO Presidential nominee. Ya dig?). Of course, a true conservative would be better – and that is what we should shoot for.

It is time for us to adhere to core, conservative principles – defense of the family, balanced budgets, low taxes, strong national defense and American exceptionalism. We can do much to derail the worst aspects of Obama’s policies, but we cannot stop them, altogether – especially as Obama has no problem with end-runs around the US Constitution, such as the EPA act on CO2. But we can offer a stark – and hopeful – contrast to the morass of Obama’s liberalism. Provide that clear divide – make ourselves clearly not part of what is going wrong, and we’ll reap the electoral reward. Perhaps enough by 2012 to have the power to really reshape American government.

Feeling down about America and our prospects? Don’t.

We cannot escape our destiny, nor should we try to do so. The leadership of the free world was thrust upon us two centuries ago in that little hall of Philadelphia. In the days following World War II, when the economic strength and power of America was all that stood between the world and the return to the dark ages, Pope Pius XII said, “The American people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish actions. Into the hands of America God has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind.”

We are indeed, and we are today, the last best hope of man on earth. – Ronald Reagan

I believe, indeed, that God has placed in our hands the responsibility for protecting right and decency in a world gone mad – we are very imperfect in this and it is a wonder, at times, that God would so entrust us…but, then again, God has long been known for picking out the oddest people to do His will. We are temporarily partially afflicted with the madness which is consuming the rest of the world, but the events of the past year show that deep inside America, the spirit of 1776 still lives – that this people will fight for freedom and decency.

We will overcome – this, too, shall pass. We’re Americans, so I’m sure of it.

A pack of lies, of course:

Nobel Laureate Al Gore Wednesday called former Alaska governor Sarah Palin a “global warming denier.”

Speaking with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Gore also repeated his false claim about ClimateGate e-mail messages obtained from Britain’s Climatic Research Unit: “the most recent one is like ten years ago.”

As Andrew Bolt reported Wednesday at Australia’s Herald Sun, the most recent e-mail message obtained from CRU was sent less than a month ago on November 12.

Unfortunately, much like his appearance on CNN earlier in the day, Gore was playing fast and loose with the facts.

Read the whole thing over a Newsbusters.

Al Gore is the Con Artist in Chief of anthropogenic global warming. He has no scientific training, but he has become an “expert” about climate change. Why? Because he’s successfully pushed the agenda – and made a bundle of money in the process.

Gore is now in damage control mode – his fat paychecks are dependent upon AGW continuing as a “crisis” and, of course, the US government passing cap and trade so that he and his fat cat buddies can rake in even more money. “Climategate” has proven, conclusively, that AGW not only isn’t true, but that it was never even a likely theory – they faked the reports and destroyed the underlying data. You can walk around like an idiot and believe the scammers who are selling a story about just why they’d do this other than the obvious explanation that they’re frauds – you can, if you want to be a fool.

UPDATE: More verification of Gore’s lies. It seems to me that Gore and the AGW have settled on a talking point – we’re to ignore “Climategate” because its old news. Well, (a) its not old – some of the e mails are from 2009 – and (b) even if the e mails were all from ten years ago, they still show that data underpinning AGW is fraudulent.

UPDATE II: Owellian science; 2 + 2 = 5

Entirely unsurprising:

A contract worth nearly $6 million in stimulus funds was awarded by the Obama administration to two firms run by Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton’s pollster in 2008.

Why? Because Penn is connected and Hillary had debts and when liberals are in charge they don’t think of taxpayer funds as being the property of the taxpayers.

As I’ve said before, once we pull the lid off this Administration, I bet we’ll find it to be the most relentlessly corrupt in history.

According to an Obama nominee, it does:

Does “sexual liberty” trump the Constitutional right to religious liberty? Chai Feldblum, President Obama’s choice for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, believes so. This week a senate committee will vote on her nomination to this important commission that rules on issues of “discrimination” in America’s workplaces.

Feldblum is the primary author of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill designed to give preferential consideration to homosexuals in the workplace. She noted, “We want to change the American workforce and revolutionize social norms. … Our current public policies undermine the moral and political unit of same-sex couples and families and that’s a moral wrong that needs to be rectified.”

She also said, “Marriage is not the only worthy form of family or relationship, and it should not be legally and economically privileged above all others.”

Wendy Wright, President of Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee (CWALAC), sent a letter to senators today opposing Chai Feldblum’s appointment. It notes:

“Chai Feldblum has a long history of radical ideology which would negatively shape the EEOC and its decisions. She flagrantly disregards the Constitutional right of religious liberty and attempts to replace this foundational freedom with her bizarre view of ‘sexual liberty.’

The worry is that the EEOC will go after religious employers – most notably places like Catholic hospitals and religious schools, though you can bet they’ll turn a blind eye to Moslem institutions; PC has its odd rules, ya know? – and force them to accommodate actions held to be immoral. No one disputes the right of a gay person to do as he wishes in the privacy of his own home – but if a gay person wishes to do that, and make it public, then religious institutions must be allowed to discriminate based solely upon theological grounds.

In other words, if the organization is headed up by, run by, supported by a religious group and that religion holds that homosexual sex is immoral, then that organization must have the right to deny employment – and all other forms of access – to homosexuals. Or, for that matter, adulterous heterosexuals or, indeed, for pretty much any reason a religious body decides. In our faith we must have no government oversight – that is the true meaning of separation of Church and State: that the State may not interfere with the religion (though, sorry liberals, the religion may interfere with the State…as all parts of the body politic may do).

As for me, I’ve had quite enough of liberal attempts to denigrate and attack my religion: we must have a religious liberty restoration amendment to the Constitution which clearly spells out that the First Amendment prohibits government restrictions on religious practice, in the private as well as in public.

Which will make our liberals shake with fear:

Sarah Palin has erased her drop in the polls that followed her resignation as Alaska governor, according to new national survey.

But when it comes to opinions of Palin, a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released Monday suggests a partisan divide and a gender gap.

The survey indicates that Americans are split on Palin, with 46 percent saying they have a favorable opinion of her and an equal amount saying they have an unfavorable view of last year’s Republican vice presidential nominee.

Which approval rating, by the way, is very close to Obama’s right now…and he’s on the way down.

Methinks the demonization of Palin just went too far – she’s really just an all-American girl who represents what is best in our nation: our faith in God; our faith in our people; our can-do spirit. She’s hated on the left – and on the elite right – because she is just one of the people…and that scares the living daylights out of some people. They know darn well that if she were to get in to the White House, they would have no hold over her – no way to hold her down and make her compromise with the sick, nauseating mess in DC.

Whether she’ll end up running in 2012 is still an unknown – also unknown is whether I’ll back her or, indeed, anyone in the GOP primary for that year (as a good Republican, I’ll support the eventual nominee, but I’m not inclined, at the moment, to commit myself to any particular candidate); its all very much up in the air and, of course, the 2010 results will play a large role in who chooses to run and what they’re prospects really are. But regardless of what the future holds, Sarah Palin has shaken up American politics (and let us remember to thank John McCain at least for this) – the Powerful know that the people are angry and willing to storm the barricades of complacent, corrupt DC politics-as-usual. Palin may not end up leading the charge, but the charge will be done.

Why we are wary of Obama and the various utopian ideas of liberalism:

If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind? – Frederic Bastiat

Unless you think you’re perfect, then you have to immediately understand that Obama is just as lousy as you are – and thus just as likely to screw up on any given issue – and thus it is best that those in charge have as little power as possible…because one man ruining his own life is one thing, one man ruining everybody’s life is quite another.

From The Nation:

Obama also spoke on how it will be crucial for the federal government to continue helping state and local governments facing deficits that are forcing them to slash jobs and services, and to make “investments in infrastructure, in education, in clean energy.”

“Now’s the time actually to make sure that we’re prioritizing properly and pushing even harder on that front,” said Obama.

It’s in vogue in DC these days to treat the deficit as if it is a sign of the End of Days. It seems the President was, in fact, significantly more rational in taking on job creation than the media coverage would have you believe.

One has to ask: spend what money? Where is there actual money to spend? Who can we really borrow it from? I don’t think our liberals are really grasping the fact of national bankruptcy. Even if one wants to believe that you can borrow via government and create net wealth, the fact remains that we are so far in the hole that no conceivable level of government-created growth will exceed the level of total debt repayment. If we were sitting with a balanced budget right now and/or little or no government debt, there might be something to be said for deficit spending – but that isn’t the case.

For just a moment, lets all realize where we are: we’re broke. It could very well be that our national wealth is less than it was 30 years ago, when you think in terms of what we make, mine and grow. But even if you wish to believe that our net wealth is greater than it was, say, 30 years ago you can’t escape the fact that we’re massively more in debt than before. Some calculations of total US debt reach $70 trillion dollars – if you count the unfunded mandates of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. This is not the time to spend more – it is time to create wealth and pay down debt.

Now, how do we do this? Lots of ways – but most importantly, not by increasing government debt. The best way would be to remove the obstacles to the creation of new wealth in the US – the wall of taxes, regulation and NIMBYism which essentially forbids us to use vast amounts of our land and materials for the creation of wealth. Remove these obstacles, and the seed money necessary to create the wealth will come pouring in – from both American and foreign sources. Once we start creating wealth, we can start paying off debt – and it is vitally important that we pay off our debt and never, ever allow ourselves to get in to this state again.

But our liberals don’t even want to listen to this – because they simply don’t understand what wealth is. When Obama said he wanted to spread wealth around he was thinking like a typical liberal – that the fake money we have in our wallets is wealth. Its not – its just money and its worthless as it isn’t backed by anything. You can spread trillions of it around and you won’t do any good – but allow someone to get to work making a new farm, new factory or new mine, and you’ll have created some new wealth.

We’re in for a very bad time, because Obama and his liberals really do seem to be bent on ever more spending. Each new dollar borrowed or printed just puts us further in the hole and will make it harder to get out. While the free flow of fiat dollars might pump up the economy and give some positive GDP numbers, it is and will remain nothing but smoke and mirrors. And it will come crashing down – I’m still expecting this around March, but it could go on for even a year or two from now. But the crash will come – and it will be catastrophic. Hopefully, we’ll have then learned our lesson.

This will certainly make things interesting:

The Senate narrowly rejected an amendment that would have restricted abortion coverage in the pending health-care bill, leaving in question whether Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) has the 60 votes needed to move the bill toward final passage.

The measure, which failed 54-45, addressed the scope of restrictions on coverage of abortion services for people who receive subsidies to buy insurance. The outcome was expected, but could cost the support of Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who has threatened to filibuster the $848 billion bill unless abortion restrictions are tightened.

Pro-life or pro-choice, a majority of Americans has consistently opposed federal funds for elective abortion.

Question: Does this kill the bill? Can Reid get 60 votes for cloture without a ban on abortion funding? If he can swing it, are there 218 votes in the House to pass a health care bill without an explicit ban? That 54 voted against the ban shows that the pro-abortion fanatics are pressing hard for this – we’ll have to see how this comes out.