And we GOPers better pay attention:

While the energy of the anti-tax and anti-Big Government tea party movement may yet haunt Democrats in 2010, the first order of business appears to be remaking the Republican Party.

Whether it’s the loose confederation of Washington-oriented groups that have played an organizational role or the state-level activists who are channeling grass-roots anger into action back home, tea party forces are confronting the Republican establishment by backing insurgent conservatives and generating their own candidates — even if it means taking on GOP incumbents.

“We will be a headache for anyone who believes the Constitution of the United States … isn’t to be protected,” said Dick Armey, chairman of the anti-tax and limited government advocacy group FreedomWorks, which helped plan and promote the tea parties, town hall protests and the September ‘Taxpayer March’ in Washington. “If you can’t take it seriously, we will look for places of other employment for you.”

“We’re not a partisan organization, and I think many Republicans are disappointed we are not,” added Armey, a former GOP congressman.

I’m not – I want the TEA Party and the GOP to remain separate – though, of course, I want my GOP to bid strongly for TEA Party support. It is what I intend to do – and I warn all my fellow GOPers that if we spurn these people and/or take them for granted, then we’ll pay a high price. But more important than the sheer political battle, the TEA Party offers us a chance for real reform.

P. J. O’Rourke wrote – only half-jokingly – after the 2008 election that we conservatives had blown it for good and all. We had the world at our feet, and we threw it all away. In a very real sense, we did – we forgot what we’re here for. Its not for tinkering around the edges of Big Government; its not to be a kind face for Big Corporation idiocy; its not to merely harp upon one-issue themes…it is to rescue our Republic from the leftists who seek our destruction. We are the party of Life; we are the party of Family; we are the party of Faith…but in order for us to defend Life, Family and Faith our first task is to bring government back under control. Our first task is to restore the Constitutional order…after that, the rest will fall our way of its own accord. If we can’t do this, then all our arguments against abortion, against gay marriage, in favor of family and faith are pointless…the left will just roll over us and take us down along with the economic conservatives. Divided we really do fall.

The TEA Party wants just this – government under control, out of the way and reduced to its proper functions. If we can demonstrate to the TEA Party people that we are serious about this, they’ll come out and vote for us in droves, and provide all the enthusiasm we need to sweep this nation. So far, I only see a few Republicans who are picking up on this – Sarah Palin is the most prominent, but most GOPers either are shying away, or are foolishly thinking of ways to get the support without carrying out the promise.

Barack Obama and his leftist Democrats have concentrated our mind – it is now time for us to put together the winning coalition; it can be done, it must be done. All it takes is a willingness to listen and then the courage to act.

Seek not what people say, but what people do. You can pay attention to the talk of a recovery, or you can take note of the fact that corporate insiders are bailing out of the stock market at a record pace. You can pay attention to the talk of recovery, or you can take note of the fact that vast numbers of merchant ships lay idle. You can pay attention to the talk of recovery, or you can run through Mish’s list of State after State suffering steep drops in revenue from income and sales taxes.

Its getting worse out there, not better – no matter what fool stats Obama and Co provide us for the third quarter.

From the BBC, of all places:

…For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on?

Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man’s influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming…

…Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the Sun increasing. After all 98% of the Earth’s warmth comes from the Sun.

But research conducted two years ago, and published by the Royal Society, seemed to rule out solar influences.

The scientists’ main approach was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature.

And the results were clear. “Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can’t have been caused by solar activity,” said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting, disagrees.

He claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures.

He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month.

If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject…

…So what can we expect in the next few years?

Both sides have very different forecasts. The Met Office says that warming is set to resume quickly and strongly.

It predicts that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record (1998).

Sceptics disagree. They insist it is unlikely that temperatures will reach the dizzy heights of 1998 until 2030 at the earliest. It is possible, they say, that because of ocean and solar cycles a period of global cooling is more likely.

One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say it is hotting up.

Seems that denying anthropogenic global warming isn’t the province of kooks on par with Holocaust deniers, after all. Any of you AGW zealots want to apologize?

To me, its pretty clear that the AGW theory was a hoax – not just a mistaken theory, but a slapped together set of false premises backed up by twisted data designed to force a course of action which otherwise would not have been followed. The people who propagated it should be charged with fraud – and forced to pay back all the money we’ve wasted on it. Of course, I could be wrong – if temps rise very fast over the next five years, then there might be something to AGW…but I’m not at all concerned that I’ll be proved wrong. All the science – hard science based on observed data rather than hocus-pocus climate models – indicates a period of cooling.

The lesson here is that we can’t trust anything asserted by anyone left of center – for two decades now they have been attempting to force us to modify our entire way of life based upon a fraud…and something which has been demonstrably a fraud for about five years now, and which was clearly questionable within a few years of it being advanced. This is the MO of the left – lie, lie and then lie some more. Whatever it takes to win – its all good, to the left, because they are trying to remake the world in to a better place, and if a few lies have to be told, the left is ok with it.

Time for some truth – time to end this Age of Lies.

Couldn’t say it better, myself:

President Obama’s decision is extremely difficult. Today, less than 50% of Americans support the war. No doubt even fewer Americans would be on the side of doing what Gen. Stanley McChrystal wants to do: temporarily increase the number of troops and dramatically change our strategy.

The way we have provided development assistance to the government in Afghanistan hasn’t improved the lives of the Afghan people. A cloud of illegitimacy hangs over President Hamid Karzai because of the recent election. Even friends of the Karzai administration have reported cronyism and corruption.

Yet despite these setbacks, our leaders must remain focused on the fact that success in Afghanistan bolsters our national security and yes, our moral reputation. This war is not Vietnam. The Taliban are not popular and have very little support other than what they secure through terror.

Afghanistan is also not Iraq. No serious leader in Kabul is asking us to leave. Instead we are being asked to withdraw by American leaders who begin their analysis with the presumption that victory is not possible. They seem to want to ensure defeat by leaving at the very moment when our military leader on the ground has laid out a coherent and compelling strategy for victory.

When it comes to foreign policy, almost nothing matters more then your friends and your enemies knowing you will keep your word and follow through on your commitments. This is the real test of presidential leadership. I hope that President Obama—soon to be a Nobel laureate—passes with flying colors. – Bob Kerrey

That is my hope, too – and what I’ll be praying for. I don’t envy Obama’s position. It is a difficult task. No matter what course he chooses, men will die. No matter what course he chooses, some people will dissent from it. No matter what course he chooses, friends and enemies will have negative things to say about it. But, also, if he chooses correctly then the men will die fighting for a better future. The dissidents will be proven wrong. Friends and enemies will, once again, know that America stands by her commitments.

I hope Obama chooses well.

The most mind-bogglingly stupid Administration, ever:

The Department of the Interior has frozen oil and gas development on 60 of 77 contested drilling sites in Utah, saying the process of leasing the land was rushed and badly flawed.

The 77 government-owned parcels, covering some 100,000 acres in eastern and southern Utah, were leased in the last weeks of the Bush administration. But the leases were immediately challenged by conservation groups…

“Rushed and badly flawed” means “Bush did it, and so we’re going to stop it, no matter what.” Even if they were rushed and badly flawed (something I very much doubt), we still need the dratted oil and natural gas and we can’t sit there waiting until all environmentalist groups are satisfied before we drill…because they never will be satisfied.

Want to know why you’re paying nearly $3 a gallon for gas during the worst recession since the 1930s? Because of idiot actions like this – actions which prevent drilling, transporting and refining oil and natural gas. Because of a few kooks who have the ear of the Administration, every single American – especially poor Americans – will pay a price.

Just disgusting.

The lesson from California:

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will know within a month whether a $1.1 billion drop in revenue collections is part of a growing budget shortfall or an isolated event, his budget spokesman said.

Revenue in the three months ended Sept. 30 was 5.3 percent less than assumed in the $85 billion annual budget, state controller John Chiang reported yesterday. Income tax receipts led the gap, as unemployment reached 12.2 percent in August.

“The culprit here appears to be estimated quarterly personal income tax statements,” H.D. Palmer, the governor’s budget spokesman, said yesterday. “The numbers are cause for concern, but the issue now for us is to determine if this is a one-time event or whether it has more long-term implications.”

To translate from the governmentese: “oh, shoot: this is falling apart faster than we expected!”.

The way a government should budget is this:

1. What were the actual revenues from two years ago?

2. Next year’s budget should spend 10% less than that.

3. If there’s a surplus – whoopee! You can spend it or rebate it.

4. If there’s a deficit – too bad, but at least you won’t have to borrow as much to cover it as you would have with a budget which presumes increased revenues.

Repeat each year.

Government is a lot simpler than we make it out to be – of course, those who run government make it as complex as possible? Why? Well…

1. A large portion of the people manning government simply don’t know enough to realize when they’re being rolled by professional bureaucrats and lobbyists.

2. Another large portion of such people know that the screwier they make it, the less likely they are to get caught in their grafting.

Meanwhile, the few who know what they are doing and are honest are left to issue repeated warnings, which are then calmly ignored. Think of it like this – in response to the various rip-offs by banks via credit cards and payday loans, Obama has proposed to add another layer of government bureaucrats to the mix. Much simpler to merely pass a law saying that no APR may be higher than 20% and that no APR may be increased by more than 1 percentage point per year – banks will stop loaning to the people they charge 29% to because people who have that sort of lousy credit won’t qualify for an APR less than 20% and, meanwhile, people who get in a bind won’t find their APRs jumping from 9.99% to 18.99% for being late, once. And we don’t need a single new bureaucrat to enforce such a thing – the current law enforcement agencies are sufficient to easily monitor this, and banks are highly unlikely to attempt to break such a law. The demerit in this, for government, is that it would be easy for everyone to understand – it’d also be fair to both banks and consumers and that right there would kill the deal.

New people are needed – new people with new ideas.

From Krauthammer:

…When the world’s expert on this type of counterterrorism warfare recommends precisely the opposite strategy — “counterinsurgency,” meaning a heavy-footprint, population-protecting troop surge — you have the most convincing of cases against counterterrorism by the man who most knows its potential and its limits. And McChrystal was emphatic in his recommendation: To go any other way than counterinsurgency would lose the war.

Yet his commander in chief, young Hamlet, frets, demurs, agonizes. His domestic advisers, led by Rahm Emanuel, tell him if he goes for victory, he’ll become LBJ, the domestic visionary destroyed by a foreign war. His vice president holds out the chimera of painless counterterrorism success…

There is a great deal of truth in that, especially as it relates to the sort of political advice Obama is getting. Given that Obama’s military knowledge is nil and his knowledge of Vietnam colored by the tenured radicals who educated him, Obama may find that the leftist advice he’s getting makes sense. To Obama, the story that LBJ was undone by war makes sense – but while LBJ was undone by Vietnam, he wasn’t undone for the reasons liberal think. To liberals – and thus to Obama – it was war, in and of itself, which doomed LBJ. The truth of the matter is quite different – it was failure to win the war which doomed LBJ.

For all the talk of the anti-war movement’s effect on the 1968 election, the fact of the matter is that all three major candidates (Nixon, Humphry, Wallace) were pledged to victory in Vietnam, by one means or another. The overtly anti-war candidates (Romney for the GOP, McCarthy for the Democrats) were trounced by their respective party nominees – neither of them ever really had a chance of being nominated. While it was anti-war McCarthy’s strong showing in New Hampshire which convinced Johnson to back out, the fact that Johnson’s pro-victory Vice President won the nomination indicates that the vote was more anti-Johnson than anti-war. Had Johnson secured victory – or at least seemed to be fighting for victory – then he probably would have been easily re-nominated, and almost certainly re-elected. Obama is drawing the wrong lesson – he needs to learn that he should fight to win, but what he’s getting is “don’t fight/don’t lose” – the very same advice which lost us Vietnam, and lost Johnson the Presidency.

Again and again I go back to the refrain – MacArthur’s “in war, there is no substitute for victory.” I keep saying it because it is absolutely true. A hard war doesn’t cause trouble; a long war doesn’t cause trouble – a war which is being lost causes trouble…and in a democracy, anything short of “clearly winning” translates in the public mind as “lost”. More than ever, what Obama needs is advice to keep fighting – to send the requested troops, to often visit the troops (here and in Afghanistan), to repeatedly state that victory is the goal. To nutshell it, Obama needs to become exactly like President Bush…clear, convincing and unflagging. If Obama does that, he’ll have a victorious war to his credit in 2012 – if Obama takes the advice he’s currently getting, he’ll have a lost war or a long, drawn out blood bath to his discredit in 2012. Fight and win, or wimp out and lose – and not just for himself, but for America and the world.

Be careful of what you say and do:

Brothers and sisters:

Indeed the word of God is living and effective,

sharper than any two-edged sword,

penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow,

and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.

No creature is concealed from him,

but everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of him

to whom we must render an account. – Hebrews 4:12-13

Everything has to be accounted for – remember that.

Don’t break out the champagne, yet, but things are looking good:

Republican Robert F. McDonnell has taken a commanding lead over R. Creigh Deeds in the race for governor of Virginia as momentum the Democrat had built with an attack on his opponent’s conservative social views has dissipated, according to a new Washington Post poll…

…The poll indicates that the GOP is well-positioned to emphatically end a recent Democratic winning streak, with Republicans Bill Bolling and Ken Cuccinelli each holding identical 49 to 40 percent leads over Democrats Jody Wagner and Steve Shannon for lieutenant governor and attorney general.

On the other hand, the race for NJ governor is very tight. In the end, I expect we’ll win – but New Jersey has shown itself again and again to be a State which will vote Democrat no matter what. In a year of high unemployment and a very unpopular, incompetent Democrat governor, this might prove enough to convince even New Jersey that the GOP might be the better option.

Be that as it may, the fact that we’re surging so strongly in Virginia shows, I believe, that the effects of our 2006-08 losses have faded…we’re getting back on track. Of course, we’re being fabulously helped by the Democrats being more incompetent and corrupt than even we figured they’d be – but even taking in to consideration that help, its clear that the messages of low taxes and balanced budgets are once again winners for the GOP.

Here is someone else who was nominated for the Nobel this year:

An attorney who is one of several human rights activists in China working with Chen Guangcheng against forced abortions is one of the nominees who lost the Nobel Peace Prize award to pro-abortion President Barack Obama. The committee awarded the prize to Obama after his serving just 11 days in office.

Hu Jia, an activist on other issues, is an attorney for Chen and an outspoken critic of the Chinese government in part because of the forced abortions and sterilizations that occur in its one-child family planning campaign.

But the Nobel Committee was smart enough to pass over this nobody who’s done nothing and give the prize to the really deserving.