Small business loans evaporate:

Eight months after President Obama began prodding the nation’s banks to increase their small business lending, the loan numbers continue to move in the opposite direction.

The 22 banks that got the most help from the Treasury’s bailout programs cut their small business loan balances by a collective $10.5 billion over the past six months, according to a government report released Monday.

They are taking our tax payer money and either hoarding it against the massive losses certain to hit in 2010, or using it to gamble on the current stock and commodities bubbles. This is what happens when you give money away – “free” money is never used as you would have wished. This is especially true if you give the money to the very same, irresponsible fools who screwed things up. If you’re not clear on this, give $100 to a teenager on the hope that he’ll buy books on mathematics and philosophy with it.

HAT TIP: Mish’s

By bribing wavering Democrats with your money. How else?

Counting two independents, Democrats control 60 Senate seats. Three moderate Democrats have been cagey about their intentions, although none of them has announced a plan to defect. Officials disclosed during the day that Reid had included in the bill a political sweetener for one of the three, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, in the form of $100 million to help her state cover health care costs for the poor.

One of the GOP points against the Reid bill is that it shifts costs to the States. Democrats say it won’t. Reid sends $100 million to Louisiana to cover the increased costs. Someone is lying. You get three guesses as to whom it is.

Outside of that dishonesty, this is how our liberals work. They know their plans aren’t popular. They know they won’t work. But the point of the plan is to gain control and they don’t care how they gain the control. As long as liberals end up with the power, how its actually done is trivial – and so bribing a Senator with taxpayer pork in order to secure her vote (and, think about it: she’ll then take that money and use it to bribe Louisianans to vote to re-elect her…so she can do them some more!) is a natural.

We can’t count on blue dogs or moderate Democrats – our only hope is to win so big next year that in order for Obama to govern at all, he’ll have to sign off on a repeal of this liberal-fascist power grab.

UPDATE: $850 billion? Try again – its $2.5 trillion.

Why do they? Hanson reviews:

The furor

The AP supposedly hired 11 fact-checkers to discredit Ms. Palin’s memoir (Did Fox News hire 11 to question the very questionable things found in the two Obama memoirs?)

Bloggers post on Palin’s live interviews minute by minute; few, if any, opponents of Barack Obama do the same.

Every statement she makes is parsed, to prove she is ignorant or parochial—though most of her so-called lapses are the sort of things Biden and Obama are accustomed to committing weekly.

So what?

The list could go on, but two fundamental questions arise:

1) What drives this fear and loathing?

2) How does one, then, assess the Palin phenomenon?

Question one is easy, and we can be systematic in our exegeses:

Read the whole thing.

My take: they hate her because she’s not one of them. Mostly on the left but with some on the right, the correct perception is that Palin doesn’t care what they think and is entirely uninterested in what they have to say. Failed people who consistently get things wrong are not to be listened to even if they have television shows, syndicated columns and a shelf of books to their name.

I’ll add: she’s also proving herself vastly smarter than her critics.

Doug Hoffman thinks so – and certainly wants to check carefully, just to be sure:

As evidence surfaces, we find out that reported results from election night were far from accurate. ACORN and the unions did their best to try and sway the results to Obamacare supporter Bill Owens.

I was forced to concede after receiving two pieces of grim news – – down 5,335 votes with 93 percent of the vote counted on election night – and barely won my stronghold in Oswego County. On Election Night, the information we received was far different from what we received this week!

Rest assured, they will not succeed, and I am therefore revoking my statement of concession.

That is why I am writing you today. Recent developments leave me to wonder who is scheming behind closed doors, twisting arms and stealing elections from the voters of NY-23.

I’m sure you are as dismayed as I am to learn of the mischief that took place in Oswego and neighboring counties. We know this would not be the first time for the ACORN faithful to tamper with democracy.

Now it’s time to actually count every legal ballot and I need your help to ensure the people of NY-23 get the Congressman THEY ELECTED. Please donate now to help me ensure every vote is counted!

Our Democrats are used to both stealing elections and having our side just quietly accept it. Its time for this to stop – our freedom is too important and, if we don’t fight back, the left will just press harder and harder with this. They have no problem with stealing the vote – to the left, we should be voting their way and thus their voter fraud is just correcting our error which we would correct ourselves, if we weren’t fools clinging to God and our guns.

Think of it as a war, my friends – they on the left want to win it all and win it for good, and if we don’t fight them all down the line, we’re just surrendering the field to them. Hit them back. Everywhere. All the time. With everything we’ve got.

Geesh – you’d think by now they’d vet a bit for this:

I previously blogged the tax problems of Lael Brainard, President Obama’s nominee to be Undersecretary of the Treasury for International Affairs. The tax problems are (1) twelve late payments of real estate and personal property taxes, and late payment of unemployment taxes; (2) failure to timely file employment eligibility verification forms for her household help; and (3) failure to substantiate home office deductions. Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus today annnounced that he would support the nomination and that the committee would soon vote on the nomination.

But, then again, if the Democrats are just going to keep approving the nominees in spite of incompetence and criminal activity, I guess it doesn’t matter – Obama should nominate a murderer, just to see how far he can go. The rest of us would like to know if there’s a limit to what Democrats will put up with…

Ben Nelson injects a note of reality in he Reid bill:

Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, and one of three Democrats who have said they might not be in favor of starting debate on the big health care legislation, issued a statement on Wednesday seeking to clarify his view on procedural votes.

In his statement, Mr. Nelson repeated his longstanding position: He wants to read the bill that is now being completed by the majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, before he decides how he will vote on a motion to bring the bill to the Senate floor.

“As I’ve said many times before I won’t decide how I’ll vote on the motion to proceed until I know what I’m voting on,” Mr. Nelson said.

Which will shock and anger all good liberals – because if you take the time to read the bill the Republicans will find out what’s in it and then they’ll tell the people and before you know it, there’s massive opposition to the bill scaring off vulnerable Democrats. Much better if you just take Harry’s word that it’s a good bill.

But, good for Nelson – at least one Democrat doesn’t want to walk the plank for Obama, Reid and Pelosi.

I keep reporting this because it is becoming astounding:

Republican candidates maintain a six-point advantage over Democrats in the latest edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 44% would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate while 38% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent.

In my political experience – which goes back more than two decades – I’ve never seen the GOP leading in the “generic ballot” either by such a wide margin, nor over such a long period of time. The normal expectation is for a bit of flux in such matters – especially at a time like this when everything is up in the air and the GOP lacks firm leadership – but all we’re seeing for months now is the GOP maintaining an edge. And do keep in mind that these polls usually understate GOP strength.

Of course its still way early and of course 2010 can turn on a lot of different things – but right now I’m beginning to wonder if we should start thinking in terms of a big victory? It’ll have to be fought for, and fought for very hard…but if we do fight hard, why can we not score a victory of historic proportions? Perhaps the tide is not just turning in our favor, but that a GOP wave is building?

Time – and our actions – will tell.

UPDATE: And even liberal pollsters are picking up on Obama’s decline.

The sad tale of a man who’s only interest – per his own words – is re-election:

House Democrats debated ways to address job creation at a caucus meeting Monday night, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has promised colleagues the chamber would take up a jobs measure after it completes its health care overhaul bill. That makes it unlikely to pass into law this year.

Why is ObamaCare more important than jobs? Because getting Americans back to work doesn’t provide campaign donations while getting ObamaCare through ensures that leftist moneybags keep the big bucks flowing in. Reid has said that his every move since being re-elected in 2004 has been geared towards his re-election in 2010…and that means that Reid doesn’t have time for such trivial matters as rising unemployment.

And neither, of course, do the rest of the Democrats – in fact, I think that the Democrats kinda like the rise in unemployment. After all, people on unemployment are dependent upon government, and thus will look kindly upon whomever promises to extend and/or increase benefits. Where’s the upside, to a Democrat, in getting people back to work? Especially if its work in the private sector entirely disconnected from any government activity?

Do keep in mind that if your goal is power, then you’ll do a lot of things which don’t make sense to people who have goals other than power. A politician who cared about Americans would do his best to get the private sector rolling again. A politician who cares about power calculates what is most likely to retain and expand his personal power. Some times the two things – power and people – can mesh in a happy equilibrium, but most of the time they are in direct conflict, and thus we see our liberals – from Obama, Reid and Pelosi on down – continually cutting the United States off at the knees. There’s no benefit, for them, in a strong, vibrant American population – but plenty for them in a crushed, demoralized America dependent upon government hand-outs.

Becoming the longest serving public nuisance in American history:

The Senate is a resolutely superlative place, so it was resolved that the august body on Wednesday will open its session by saluting Sen. Robert C. Byrd, Congress’ longest-serving member…

…Here are some of Byrd’s statistics: He was already married to his beloved Erma for nearly four years when Thanksgiving was deemed a federal holiday in 1941. He began his political career four years later as a member of West Virginia’s House of Delegates. He remains the only member of Congress to earn a law degree while a member of the federal legislature, according to his Web site.

He’s a complete horror, I’m afraid – he’s got federal tax dollars appropriated to build monuments to himself. Just completely entrenched; dug in tighter than a tick on a dog. The best argument yet in favor of term limits. Had we had a limit of three Senate terms, Bryd would have been forced out when I was 12 – instead of hanging around when I’m nearly 45.

The Culture of Death keeps trying to hide itself:

In a bizarre move that will cost British taxpayers thousands of dollars, the government has sued itself in order to hide the number of abortions done on babies with very mild physical disabilities. The pro-life movement in England has been trying to force the government to reveal the number of those abortions.

Last month, the Information Tribunal issued a landmark Freedom of Information Act ruling upholding a previous ruling by the Information Commissioner in favor of the Pro-Life Alliance’s bid to disclose the abortion figures.

Now, the Department of Health is taking the Information Tribunal to court in an attempt to prevent the publication of stats on babies who are aborted, such as those who merely have a cleft palate.

Julia Millington of the Pro-Life Alliance told the London Telegraph last week, “It is a reprehensible waste of public money and court time to continue a fruitless battle to hide this information.”

It is simply shameful that any child is aborted for something like physical defects – its eugenicist nonsense; anti-human cruelty. But, hey, if its save the NHS a pretty penny, then it must be good, right? Can you imagine how much it would cost NHS to fix a cleft palate? Goodness, start doing things like that and there won’t be sufficient pay raises for the unionized employees…