Crucial to the debate over Obamacare:

For an uneducated, unsophisticated rube and former governor from a backwater state, Sarah Palin sure can drive a debate. With prospects for passage of his sweeping overhaul of the American health care delivery system fading with every speech, President Barack Obama is making it increasingly clear that Palin will be recognized, for good or ill, as perhaps the most prominent single political figure responsible for stopping it in its tracks.

It’s a remarkable story. A failed vice-presidential candidate and resigned governor — unfairly viewed by many as a cruel joke – reached from beyond the political grave her elitist critics prematurely dug for her and her political future to thwart a popular president prematurely regarded by the same elite that shunned her as perhaps the most gifted politician this nation has ever produced. If Sarah Palin were a sitting governor, a failed presidential candidate, or even a state legislator, her influence in the health care debate would not be as unexpected. It is the fact that she is a private citizen, completely out of politics save for a small political action committee, that makes this story unique.

How did she do it? That’s where the story gets even more remarkable.

There were no public appearances or speeches, no glitzy ad campaigns, no publicity tours, no interviews in the mainstream press or any new media outlet. Sarah Plain killed health care reform with a posting on her Facebook page, an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, and an exquisite sense of timing.

“Death Panels” did it – and I know our liberals still yank their hair in frustration…there was no such thing, they assert. After all, you can comb through the whole series of proposals and never find the phrase “death panel” mentioned. And that, to the liberals, is the end of it…its sort of like their assertion that no one is pro-abortion because no one actually says they are pro-abortion. But just as there are pro-abortion people, so were there “death panels” in the health care reform proposals, disguised as various commissions and committees which would oversea what coverage plans were to provide. And Sarah Palin’s phrasing was crucial to turning the debate firmly against Obama and his Democrats.

Now, the Palin might be out of the running for President – the left smeared her as a dunce, much as they once smeared Dan Quayle as a dunce, even though he was vastly smarter than Al Gore; and that smear might stick. Its hard to overcome public prejudices – it can be done, but its hard. The best person at it, ever, was Ronald Reagan. We’ll have to see if Palin can develope Reaganesque ability to re-shape public perceptions. But, be that as it may, Palin has shown why she rose so far and so fast – and still has a shot at the White House in 2012: she’s very, very smart.

And she’s made the left jump to her tune – that, in and of itself, will provide satisfaction when set against the slanders the left has launched against her.

Doesn’t surprise me at all:

Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday has been in the media game for a long time now. He’s reported good news and bad news about both Democratic and Republican presidents, and the White House staffs took most of the bad news in stride. They knew Wallace was just doing his job.

Not Barack Obama and his White House. The president snubbed Wallace and Fox News in his flurry of visits to Sunday news shows tomorrow, and last night, Wallace told Fox colleague Bill O’Reilly that Obama’s team is just as petty as their boss.

“These guys, everything is personal. I gotta tell you, everything,” Wallace said. “They are the biggest bunch of crybabies I have dealt with in my 30 years in Washington.”

It was all supposed to be so easy for them – Obama in the White House, large Congressional majority, a cheer leading MSM, leftist groups being put on the government dime…the opposition was not supposed to be able to do anything. We haven’t stopped them, of course – and, in fact, we can’t stop them: we don’t have the votes…but we have caused them serious pain and the longer this goes on, the worse it gets for them. Remember, if the big ticket items aren’t done before Thanksgiving, they won’t get done before January of 2011 because no one in the House, especially, is going to want to vote on controversial issues next year (and, in fact, they’re already afraid of voting on them, this year).

And now we get Wallace saying they are taking it personal – which is a sure sign of both executive weakness and lack of ability to figure out what to do, next. No one is really minding the store over at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave: the President seems fixated on endless campaign stops interspersed with flying visits to foreign lands to denounce America; the First Lady is acting like an Empress; the staff seems to be heading in six directions at once…the change from Bush to Obama is quite stunning. Heck, even Clinton’s relatively slip-shod operation is looking like a model of efficiency compared to Obama’s crew.

Can they pull it together? Perhaps – but by the time they do, the damage might already be done.

Maybe the mattress is the best place for money, after all?

The chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. says she is “considering all options, including borrowing from Treasury,” to replenish the dwindling fund that insures bank deposits.

“I never say never,” FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair told an audience at Georgetown University Friday.

Bair’s remarks go beyond what she said just three weeks ago when asked about tapping the Treasury after the fund that insures regular deposit accounts up to $250,000 hit its lowest point since 1992, at the height of the savings-and-loan crisis. “Not at this point in time,” she said on Aug. 27.

The FDIC estimates bank failures will cost the fund around $70 billion through 2013. Ninety-two banks have failed so far this year. Hundreds more are expected to fall in coming years largely because of souring loans for commercial real estate.

The FDIC’s fund has slipped to 0.22 percent of insured deposits, below a congressionally mandated minimum of 1.15 percent. The $10.4 billion in the fund at the end of June is down from $13 billion at the end of March, and $45.2 billion in the second quarter of 2008.

More failures and less payments in to the fund – the FDIC, of course, only works as long as only a few banks per year fail. As we’ll probably have more than 100 fail this year, and probably as many next year, this is the “push comes to shove” time for the FDIC…and it has failed.

Jim Treacher has tracked down the most important story of 2009 – just who is the Boob Czar?

I’m kind of out of position until Saturday afternoon, or so – have at it while I’m gone…and remember, trolls, the Monitors are still on the job.

The story – from The Washington Examiner:

Reuters reports an interesting nugget in the wake of President Barack Obama’s decision to grant Vladimir Putin his wish and kill the Eastern European missile shield:

Shortly after the pullback on the shield programme was announced, Russia’s government said Prime Minister Vladimir Putin would meet several U.S. executives on Friday from firms including General Electric, Morgan Stanley as well as TPG, one of the world’s largest private equity firms

General Electric may be the company with the closest ties to the Obama administration (if not, GE is second only to Goldman Sachs), and here we see the company benefiting from an abrupt foreign policy change made by President Obama. But GE isn’t the only company benefiting. Reuters paints the broader picture:

“U.S. companies have arguably lost out to some European companies in joint ventures, and better diplomacy will likely improve the chances for investors in the strategic sectors of the Russian economy,” said Carlo Gallo, senior Russia analyst at London-based consultancy Control Risks.

GE CEO Jeff Immelt sits on Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, and GE owns MSNBC, the network famously friendly to Obama.

Obama got some ‘splainin’ to do…

Do keep in mind that I’m predicting the government will tell us that we’re in positive growth for Q3, 2009 – and I expect this to continue at least through Q2, 2010…with an outside chance it might go all the way through Q1, 2011. But I’m also saying that its complete BS – its just shuffling money around. Here’s an excellent take which tracks with my views:

…We see more than 100% of GDP growth as completely dependent on government(s) spending.

The Federal Housing Administration has issued more than a trillion dollars in mortgages this year, picking up where Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac left off (they really haven’t stopped either). Delinquency rates are approaching 17%.

Real GDP may be positive for the quarter, but when the government is involved there are lots of shenanigans.

For example, we’ve heard it plans to deduct the cash rebate for cars from the sales price, thus lowering the GDP deflator and artificially raising the reported real GDP number.

Senseless…

…When the market realizes that the Fed can’t create inflation (a full monetization of the majority of debt; something that would make even Ben blink), it’ll see that the S&P 500 is really trading at 20 times earnings that are not growing.

It’ll realize that all we’ve done is actually increase the overall debt in the system with massive stimulus and spending.

It’ll see the risk in stocks as extremely high.

Its what I expect, too – and my prediction is March of 2010 is when the proverbial poop will hit the fan. It might come sooner than that – the upcoming Christmas shopping season looks to be a disaster, and as that bad news comes home it might start the renewed slide in stocks right after Thanksgiving. On the other hand, Obama and Co might manage to weave and dodge (and borrow and print) their way through for a while longer…but eventually the truth comes out: we can’t spend our way to wealth, and when you’re broke the worst thing you can do is borrow more money.

Credit is contracting; incomes are falling, home prices continue to slide (in spite of some alleged stats to the contrary…my house is probably worth $153,000.00…three months ago, it would have fetched about $187,000.00; all around the country, this is what is happening…especially in FL, NV, CA and AZ), corporate insiders continue to bail out of stocks, unemployment continues to grow…its called a Depression. It can be fixed – but not by Obama’s warmed over New Deal.

Why wars start:

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap. – Ronald Reagan

And Obama is telling Iran and the rest of our enemies that the price of aggression is very, very low.

First, the attention grabbing, please-every-liberal-out-there opening paragraphs:

U.S. states whose residents have more conservative religious beliefs on average tend to have higher rates of teenagers giving birth, a new study suggests.

The relationship could be due to the fact that communities with such religious beliefs (a literal interpretation of the Bible, for instance) may frown upon contraception, researchers say. If that same culture isn’t successfully discouraging teen sex, the pregnancy and birth rates rise.

But then, on starting on paragraph 16:

Other factors that may have been important to consider include ethnic backgrounds of state residents, according to Adamczyk, the City University of New York sociologist.

“We know that African American women on average tend to underreport their abortions, which means they could also underreport the likelihood that they got pregnant,” Adamczyk said. “If you’re dealing with states with a high number of African American women, you might run into that problem.”

Adamczyk’s own, separate research has shown a nearly opposite correlation, at the individual level. “What we find is that more religious women are less likely to engage in riskier sex behaviors, and as a result they are less likely to have a premarital pregnancy,” Adamczyk said during a telephone interview. But for those religious teens who do choose to have premarital sex, they might be more likely to ditch their religious views and have an abortion, she has found.

Since we have a noted and respected sociologist who came to the conclusion that Christianity leads to sexual morality, why not write that as the story? Because its not what liberals want to hear – its really nothing more than that. But the real kicker, here, is that if you take a look at the graph which allegedly shows the correlation between a State’s religiosity and teen pregnancy, you’ll find that only five of the top ten teen pregnancy States are also top ten religious States. How can you get correlation from something like that? While Mississippi is rated number one in both categories, number two in teen birth rates is New Mexico, rated 22nd in religiosity.

The study is bull – but its put out there and you can bet that for years now we’ll have liberals linking to it claiming that it proves Christianity to be a crock. This is how liberals are sustained – fools fed lies.

First, some quotes from the old gal:

“Bush is an incompetent leader. In fact, he’s not a leader. He’s a person who has no judgment, no experience and no knowledge of the subjects that he has to decide upon.”

“He has on his shoulders the deaths of many more troops…”

“They’ll take food out of the mouths of children in order to give tax cuts to the wealthiest.”

And now:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “I have concerns about some of the language that is being used because I saw … I saw this myself in the late ’70s in San Francisco,” Pelosi said, choking up and with tears forming in her eyes. “This kind of rhetoric is just, is really frightening and it created a climate in which we, violence took place and … I wish that we would all, again, curb our enthusiasm in some of the statements that are made.”

Nancy – go jump in a lake.