And this could actually get worse – via NRO:

Americans are extremely displeased with Congress, and there are already some signs that this could take a toll on the Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections. Currently, 37% express a favorable opinion of Congress, while 52% hold an unfavorable view. Positive opinions of Congress have declined by 13 points since April and are now at one of their lowest points in more than two decades of Pew Research Center surveys.

At the same time, intentions to vote Democratic in the next midterm election are markedly lower than they have been over the past four years. Voters are about evenly divided when asked how they would vote if the election for Congress were being held today: 45% say they would vote for a Democratic candidate in their district, or lean Democratic, while 44% say they would vote for a Republican or lean Republican. At about this point four years ago, Democrats led in the generic congressional ballot by 52% to 40% and went on to win a majority of the popular vote and regain control of Congress the following November.

Now, don’t any GOPers out there start breaking out the champagne – the GOP is gaining, but not that much because people are pretty disgusted with both parties, at the moment. What people should take away from this – as well as other polls also showing a complete collapse of support for Congress and those who run our government – is that a revolution is brewing out there. People really are mad as heck, and really aren’t going to take it any more.

If you ever had a thought of running for office – whatever office – then in 2010 you should do so. Even you liberals – unless you want to say that Pelosi and Boxer are the best you’ve got. It is time – the iron is hot: strike! Our future is to be decided in 2010 – and it will be your choice which decides it.

The whole, rotten edifice of modern, American government – built up since Woodrow Wilson took us to war and only slowed down a bit by Ronald Reagan and a few others – is crumbling. It has shot its bolt – its course of lies, funny money and usury; the magicians bag of tricks; is all played out. We can take the whole government back – if we just try.

You really want this, liberals?

Sentenced to death on the NHS

Patients with terminal illnesses are being made to die prematurely under an NHS scheme to help end their lives, leading doctors warn today.

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.

Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.

But this approach can also mask the signs that their condition is improving, the experts warn.

As a result the scheme is causing a “national crisis” in patient care, the letter states. It has been signed palliative (by) care experts including Professor Peter Millard, Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics, University of London, Dr Peter Hargreaves, a consultant in Palliative Medicine at St Luke’s cancer centre in Guildford, and four others.

“Forecasting death is an inexact science,”they say. Patients are being diagnosed as being close to death “without regard to the fact that the diagnosis could be wrong.

“As a result a national wave of discontent is building up, as family and friends witness the denial of fluids and food to patients.”

First off, a Christian society wouldn’t deny food and water to patients under any circumstances – that is how low we’ve fallen; we’ll look at someone sick and say, “don’t even give them a crust of bread, nor a drop of water”. That, my friends, is really advanced liberalism – which cares about humanity. You know, more than you do (unless you’re a liberal, of course).

Aside from that, “end of life” is inexact – my mother-in-law lived months longer than the doctors gave her, while my father had doctors convinced he had moths left a couple days before he died. We are not the masters here, boys and girls – God is, and He will decide when its time for us to go, not us. We’re like 5 year olds messing with nuclear weapons when we start making presumptions here.

Tax increases, naturally – from The New Editor:

Some Democrats and their key allies are pushing another old, discredited idea in order to raise more tax revenue for the federal government. According to The Hill, the AFL-CIO and some Democrats are pushing a new tax to be placed on every stock transaction.

AFL-CIO policy director Thea Lee is quoted by The Hill as saying of the proposed tax, “It would have two benefits, raise a lot of revenue and discourage speculative financial activity.”

It wouldn’t curtail speculative activity – the returns speculators are looking for are so high that whatever the transaction fee is, they’ll still do it. What it will do is push money out of the stock market and in to the bond market – making it easier for Uncle Sam to go further in to debt, but not doing much for the productive economy. Look, Democrats, we can’t tax our way to wealth – it really does have to be earned and the sooner we start earning it, the better off we’ll be. Schemes to prop up liberalism with another round of taxation will just bury us further.

It is like talking to a brick wall when we’re dealing with Democrats – doesn’t matter how many times we demonstrate conclusively the superiority or lower taxes, our Democrats always find a tax hike they can love. Ah, well – let them try. With Bush’s tax cuts set to expire, we’ll gladly accept yet another issue to hammer the Democrats on in 2010.

More inspiration:

…The Creative Society, in other words, is simply a return to the people of the privilege of self-government, as well as a pledge for more efficient representative government–citizens of proven ability in their fields, serving where their experience qualifies them, proposing common sense answers for … problems, reviewing governmental structure itself and bringing it into line with the most advanced, modern business practices. Those who talk of complex problems, requiring more government planning and more control, in reality are taking us back in time to the acceptance of rule of the many by the few. Time to look to the future. We’ve had enough talk–disruptive talk–in America of left and right, dividing us down the center. There is really no such choice facing us. The only choice we have is up or down–up, to the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down, to the deadly dullness of totalitarianism. – Ronald Reagan, 1966

Yes, he is the inspiration – and he should be inspiring all of us to do our best, in whatever we are called to do.

They are talking up Joe Kennedy to replace Ted. Mark Tapscott demolishes this concept. I hadn’t know that Joe got an annulment by claiming mental deficiency…though, that does explain a lot of things.

Some people are questioning his willingness to carry on to victory:

Obviously, Obama gets to make his own call here. All one can do is guess. But if you look at the dynamics as they are shaping up, it’s difficult to predict that Obama opts to see Afghanistan through as a full scale war.

The newly appointed head of NATO and U.S. forces is said to urge an expansion of Afghan security forces and a revamped counterinsurgency strategy that focuses on making Afghan citizens feel safer.

The changes called for here are so significant, if Obama signs on, Bush gets removed from the equation and this completely becomes Obama’s war. Think about how the Democrat Party is aligned. That’s a big, big deal…

… does a very liberal Obama with a very liberal domestic policy he desperately wants to see enacted feel like carrying a potentially very unpopular war on his back at the same time? To get away with that, he’d need to find somewhere else to give concessions to the more liberal Dems in Congress and on the street.

Given the way liberals operate, we must keep open this question – that Obama might ditch Afghanistan (with some face-saving formula) in order to get out of war and get back in to socializing America. I hope it doesn’t turn out this way – winning in Afghanistan is far more important, in the long run, than any aspect of Obama’s domestic legislative agenda. There is much that I, as a conservative, would be willing to give up in order to win in Afghanistan – is Obama willing to give anything up?

Time will tell – but we must never, ever have a situation where Americans are fighting and dying for something other than victory. We will watch Obama and see what he does – support for victory, condemnation for anything less.

Some people are – very correctly – advocating keeping the kiddies out of The One’s propaganda mill on September 8th:

…I wouldn’t have such a problem with the Department of Education were this presented in a non-Orwellian fashion. Oh yes, it is, as the lesson plan directs, to listen to what the president, the mayor, et al. says, to respect their “authoritah” , but there is no emphasis in here on why the president and other elected officials should listen to US. The focus is solely on authority. There is no consideration given to the authority of the American people. That’s what concerns me.

There is this mindset that those in Washington are the “elite,” that we should mind our Ps and Qs and blindly follow their directives. That’s not the manner of governance upon which this country was founded…

Indeed – let Dear Leader speak to empty seats. Obama has no right and no business doing this – and the school systems which are laying down under this are failing decisively in their duty to make citizens out of our children.

Well, so do I. And nothing will be more revolutionary, at the moment, than to replace the archetype of all that is wrong with American politics, Harry Reid, with someone who comes out of nowhere to shake the powerful to the core.

I’m going to run for Nevada Senator – first working to ensure that the GOP nominee honored with sending Harry back to Searchlight is a rock-ribbed conservative and, second, doing the actual sending.

I attended a seminar this past weekend where a fine, young man from GOPAC laid out just what needs to be done to run a campaign. This won’t be easy. In fact, it’ll probably be the hardest thing I’ve ever done – just winning the GOP nomination will be hard, and then I get to go after Harry Reid, arguably the most ill-tempered, mean-spirited partisan Nevada has ever seen. And he’ll have upwards of $25 million dollars – a war chest designed to provide blanket slanderization of whomever the GOP selects. Let him try – I don’t give a rat’s rear what anyone says about me, and as I have no power, wealth or position on the line, I’ve got nothing to lose. Being a citizen of Nevada and the United States of America is honor enough, and Reid can’t take that away from me no matter how much muck he throws. In fact, being the brunt of a Reid slander would be a badge of honor for me.

Why me, instead of anyone else? Here’s why – from my website, Noonan for Nevada:

I have no fame. No wealth. No position of authority. I work for a large, faceless corporation. I’m a small time blogger with one minor book to my name. So, what is so special about Mark Noonan?

Nothing – and that is the point.

For too long our nation has been over run by professional politicians, lobbyists, faceless staffers and bureaucrats who twist and warp our government to suit their own needs, rather than the needs of the people…

…Citizen-legislators/leaders will be interested in serving the people and then going back to live among them, under the laws they helped enact. Senator Reid, in spite of his lowly background, has become a creature of power. He is desperately afraid of losing it, because in his view it is only his power which makes him anything important. The offices of husband, father, friend and citizen have become meaningless for the likes of Harry Reid. And that is a sad thing, and it is something we need to end. Only someone deathly afraid of being a mere citizen would raise $10 million for his re-election bid, and pledge to raise up to $25 million…this is a man who will do just about anything to hold on to office. And that, in turn, makes him an easy mark for those powerful interests who appear to be able to help Reid, if he’ll help them in return….

My first task will be fund raising. Getting the money I need to first make an impact, and then parlaying that impact in to votes. The chances are slim. The odds are stacked against me. And I’m going to do it – my State and our Nation needs people to stand up to the powerful and call them to account. I’m no one special, but I will fight and fight and fight – and then, when knocked flat, I’ll get up and fight some more. Anyone who wants to join me in this fight, please, come along. I need everything – prayers, most of all.

(Ed. Note: This is just me, Mark Noonan, putting the word out where I’ve blogged for 6 years – the owner of this blog is making no endorsement of my candidacy.)

A little inspiration:

…the time has come to see if it is possible to present a program of action based on political principle that can attract those interested in the so-called “social” issues and those interested in “economic” issues. In short, isn’t it possible to combine the two major segments of contemporary American conservatism into one politically effective whole?

I believe the answer is: Yes, it is possible to create a political entity that will reflect the views of the great, hitherto [unacknowledged], conservative majority… We can do it in America. This is not a dream, a wistful hope. It is and has been a reality. I have seen the conservative future and it works. – Ronald Reagan, February 6th, 1977

Been done before, will be done again.

I honestly thought he’d be climbing out of it, at least a bit, by now:

Public disapproval of the job Barack Obama is doing as President reached a new high of 42.4% in the RCP Average today…

…On the flip side, Obama’s approval rating of 51.2% matches his all time low in the RCP Average. Taken together, Obama’s approval-disapproval spread is also at it’s lowest point to date of +8.8 points. That is down from a +43.3 point spread at the beginning of Obama’s term.

Presidents have ups and downs, of course, and we must expect that at some point Obama will rebound – but I don’t think Obama will ever again have the aura he had on January 20th. He blew it in a series of rankly partisan, hopelessly corrupt government moves (you know, Barry, we really did need to read the Spendulus bill before you signed it…). He will rebound. He might be re-elected in 2012, but that chance Obama had to really ram home the leftism is fading fast – and anything he fails to get done in September will continue to be undone throughout Obama’s term.

This is because of the permanent campaign – by October 1st, Congressional Democrats will be far less interested in Obama than in their own political hides. After the election of 2010, whatever the result, everyone will be keying in on what will happen in 2012. Obama will wield immense authority and as long as he has a Congressional majority, he’ll be able to enact many laws…but he won’t be able to abracadabra things like he did from January to June.

And you liberals have none but yourselves to blame for this – it was you who inserted nastiness in to our politics with Bork (well, strictly speaking, you did it when you slandered McCarthy all to heck and gone, but that is very old news); it was you who insisted we have permanent campaigns; it was you who made this situation where there are no second chances. You made the soup, now how does it taste?