It was, after all, just a matter of time:

Quinnipiac’s second eye-opening poll of the day:

For the first time, Republican Rob Portman is inching ahead of the two Democrats in the 2010 race for Ohio’s U.S. Senate seat, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. Also for the first time, Ohio voters disapprove 50 – 45 percent of the job President Barack Obama is doing, down from his 53 – 42 percent approval September 16 and 49 – 44 percent approval July 7.

Unless Obama pivots quickly and starts governing like Clinton post-1994, the Democrats are going to be in deep trouble next year. Socialism, gay marriage, federally funded abortion, weak national defense, political correctness, Chicago corruption…just not wanted, I’m afraid. Sorry, Democrats, but you’re going to have to try something different.

Discuss how stupid AG Holder’s decision to try the terrorists in New York really is. Consider the following:

1. What if some or all of them walk on a technicality?

2. What if a New York jury decides to acquit because they hate Chimpy McSmirk BusHilter and think that is what liberalism demands?

3. How much will it cost to bring these terrorists to trial?

4. How much will taxpayer’s pony up to provide lawyers?

5. How many years between today and actual trial date?

6. What will be the effect of these men being able to make Islamist statements inside a US court, for Al Jazeera to broadcast around the world?

7. Is Eric Holder the primary idiot, here, or is it Barack Obama?

Just in October:

The U.S. budget deficit for October surged to $176 billion, a record for the month, the Treasury Department announced today.

During the month, the government racked up $311 billion in outlays compared with $135 billion in receipts.

The October numbers mark the first month for the new fiscal year after the U.S. wrapped up the 2009 fiscal year that ended on September 30 with a record-high $1.4 trillion budget deficit due to increased government spending to stop the recession and the financial crisis. The final deficit for the 2009 fiscal year was equal to 10 percent of the nation’s GDP…

Just glad we did it ’cause it stopped us from having unemployment rise above 8%…

How’s that “hope and change” thing working out for you, liberals?

UPDATE: But don’t worry! The President is going to talk about it, some more.

From the Office of Personnel Management:

Beginning January 1, 2010, agencies must seek prior approval from OPM before they can appoint a current or recent political appointee to a competitive or non-political excepted service position at any level under the provisions of title 5, United States Code. OPM will review these proposed appointments to ensure they comply with merit system principles and applicable civil service laws. I have delegated decisionmaking authority over these matters to career Senior Executives at OPM to avoid any hint of political influence.

But, what this is for is to weed out anyone in the bureaucracy who worked for President Bush.

Now, when we come back in to power on January 20th, 2013, I do hope that every liberal hired or promoted under the Obama Administration has his or her bags packed…

As sure as night follows day:

For a long time I have been saying (along with a lot of other people), that Hugo Chavez was running his country into the ground. He diverted investment funds from PDVSA, Venezuela’s state-run oil company, into social programs. As long as the price of oil kept rising, he could do that. Unfortunately, Venezuela’s sour, heavy crude is particularly hard to get at and refine, and requires a high rate of investment in order to keep production up. As a result, the number of barrels per day (bpd) that Venezuela produces has declined pretty sharply since he took office in 1999.

As a consequence, the money that Chavez used to paper over the cracks in his socialist paradise has vanished, and the cracks are deepening:

President Hugo Chávez has been facing a public outcry in recent weeks over power failures that, after six nationwide blackouts in the last two years, are cutting electricity for hours each day in rural areas and in industrial cities like Valencia and Ciudad Guayana. Now, water rationing has been introduced here in the capital.

The deterioration of services is perplexing to many here, especially because the country had grown used to cheap, plentiful electricity and water in recent decades. But even as the oil boom was enriching his government and Mr. Chávez asserted greater control over utilities and other industries in this decade, public services seemed only to decay, adding to residents’ frustrations.

Nothing is free. Everything has to be paid for. Pay attention, liberals – for the last time, will you please understand that government can’t get it right? That the more you turn over to government, the worse things get? There was a joke during the Cold War perhaps you younger people don’t remember:

What happens if the communists take over the Sahara desert?

Nothing for ten years. Then there’s a shortage of sand.

It might make you liberals feel good that Chavez talks about social justice, but all he’s really about is megalomania. He wants power for himself and simply to have it. He tried to gain power by a coup. When that failed, he took up the populist cudgels and managed to win the Presidency – and since that time he’s called upon paid thugs, again and again, to intimidate people in to giving in to his rule. And now he’s just shy of Stalinist in his control – and the Venezuelan economy is collapsing.

So, too, it would be in the United States, if we turned over more and more things (such as health care) to the government. Government cannot do other than get it wrong whenever it steps outside its proper bounds.

I’m in for it.

Haven’t seen it better explained than this:

To say that antipoverty programs in the United States are perverted may be an understatement. When you take into account the loss of means-tested benefits (e.g., cash assistance, food stamps, housing subsidies, and health insurance), and the taxes that people pay on earned income, the return to working is essentially zero for those in the lower two quintiles of the income distribution.

For many of the working poor, the implicit marginal tax rate is greater than 100 percent. The long-run consequence of undermining the positive incentive to work is, of course, the creation of an underclass acclimated to not working; the supplement of cash and noncash benefits with income from crime and the underground economy; and the government resorting to negative incentives such as mandatory work programs.

And ObamaCare is perfectly designed to bring the 3rd quintile in to this system. Not by entirely destroying our incentive to work (that was necessary to create a poor, dependent underclass), but by taking so much of our money that we can’t live without government subsidies. By the time Obama and his Democrats are done, those of us in the middle class who work will be taxed at rate which makes it impossible for us to give up the government benefits – we’ll be mortgaged to the liberal super-State. And, my friends, that is precisely what they want.

Our liberals are tired of dealing with us – they hate the fact that we are clinging to God, guns and the Founder’s vision of the United States. All we’re doing is getting in the way – they are astounded that they still have to argue over such entirely settled (in liberal minds) issues such as global warming, gay marriage and federally funded abortion on demand. To them, such things are the mere basics of a normal society, as liberals define it. And so they press hard for ObamaCare…because that is the lynchpin of making us dependent with increasing dependence generation after generation until we’re entirely servile, as a majority of the European population is.

This is the crucial time – this is the crucial battle. We win this, and we’ll restore the America our Founders intended and our grandfathers lived in. Lose this, and our nation will be as set on a course to death as the European nations are today.

Bubbles, bubbles everywhere – and here’s one more popping:

“A crisis of unprecedented proportions is approaching” in the U.S. commercial real-estate market, according to Randall Zisler, chief executive officer of Zisler Capital Partners LLC.

The CHART OF THE DAY displays quarterly returns on commercial property — apartment buildings, hotels, industrial sites, offices and stores — as compiled by the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries. Returns were negative for the past five quarters, the longest streak since 1992.

Property prices have fallen by 30 percent to 50 percent from their peaks, Zisler estimated yesterday in a report. The plunge has wiped out the equity in most real-estate deals that relied on debt financing since 2005, he wrote.

Only two left to go – our stock bubble and China’s real estate bubble.

Can’t have it both ways – you either are, or you aren’t Catholic:

Bishop of Providence Thomas J. Tobin has responded to Rep. Patrick Kennedy’s contention that his dissent from Catholic teaching on abortion does not make him “less of a Catholic.” Saying that such dissent renders the lawmaker’s communion “flawed,” he urged Kennedy to become a “profile in courage” and to defend the unborn.

Rep. Kennedy (D-R.I.), the son of the late U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, had accused the Catholic Church of fanning “the flames of dissent and discord” because of the Catholic bishops’ opposition to proposed health care reform that does not explicitly prohibit funding of abortion.

Bishop Tobin responded critically to the congressman and asked for an apology.

A meeting had been scheduled between the prelate and the politician, but a Tuesday statement from the Diocese of Providence said it had been postponed…

Kennedy is trying to straddle the fence – and it just can’t be done. Catholics – like all Christians – adhere to the belief that life is a sacred gift from God, and that life begins at conception. If an abortion is sought, it is wrong. The only time an abortion is not inherently evil is when it happens as a result of some other good desired – such as, for instance, a surgery to save the life of the mother which as an unintended result causes an abortion. The only time it is ever licit to kill is in defense of others – and even then, it is not a good thing that the killing is done. It is, some times, a sad necessity – but there is never a necessity for elective abortion.

And it is high time that the Kennedy family be called to account for itself. For decades the Kennedy’s have played upon their alleged Catholicism in order to both garner votes and give a patina of decency to some rather questionable life stories. Ted Kennedy got away with it, but we daren’t let the next generation do it. Patrick Kennedy is free to believe as he wishes – but if he’s to be Catholic, there are certain things he must believe.

Can you feel that warm glObama?

U.S. job-market optimism has reached a new low, with only 8% of Americans saying now is a good time to find a quality job — the lowest level since Gallup began tracking this measure in August 2001. Americans’ optimism about this had begun to diminish even before the recession began to unfold two years ago, when 38% in November 2007 were optimistic, and there has been essentially no improvement since February of this year, when 9% held this view.

If Obama were to start giving FDR-style fireside chats, the fire would go out…