Iowahawk does it again.

Per Rasmussen, at any rate:

Voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats on six out of 10 key issues, including the top issue of the economy.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 45% now trust the GOP more to handle economic issues, while 39% trust Democrats more.

This is the first time in over two years of polling that the GOP has held the advantage on this issue. The parties were close in May, with the Democrats holding a modest 44% to 43% edge. The latest survey was taken just after General Motors announced it was going into bankruptcy as part of a deal brokered by the Obama administration that gives the government majority ownership of the failing automaker.

People forgot, I think, just what it was that Reagan rescued us from. Obama is reminding them. Its going to be a hard lesson, but hopefully we’ll learn it this time for good.

A word to the wise about those who want us to compromise with the left in order to be more “moderate”:

There are still people in my party who believe in consensus politics. I regard them as Quislings, as traitors… I mean it. – Margaret Thatcher

One wishes this was a parody:

Inmates aren’t allowed to have cell phones in any US prison, let alone on death row. But the 21st century’s ubiquitous communications tools are nonetheless turning up by the thousands in lockups not just in Texas but across the US and around the world. Last year alone, officials confiscated 947 phones in Maryland, some 2,000 handsets and accessories in South Carolina, and 2,800 mobiles in California.

The presence of cell phones is changing the very meaning of imprisonment. Incarceration is supposed to isolate criminals, keeping them away from one another and the rest of us so they can’t cause any more harm. But with a wireless handset, an inmate can slip through walls and locked doors at will and maintain a digital presence in the outside world. Prisoners are using voice calls, text messages, email, and handheld Web browsers to taunt their victims, intimidate witnesses, run gangs, and organize escapes—including at least one incident in Tennessee in which a guard was killed. An Indiana inmate doing 40 years for arson made harassing calls to a 23-year-old woman he’d never met and phoned in bomb threats to the state fair for extra laughs.

“Cell phones,” says James Gondles, executive director of the American Correctional Association, “are now one of our top security threats.”

Talking to his own security threat, Whitmire stayed calm, hearing out the prisoner’s complaints. He noted Tabler’s number, then promptly called John Moriarty, the Texas prison system’s beefy, mustached inspector general, asking how the hell an inmate had gotten hold of a cell phone in what is supposed to be one of the state’s highest-security lockups.

Moriarty’s people subpoenaed the records for the phone that had dialed Whitmire. They were astonished by what they found: The device had logged more than 2,800 calls and text messages in the preceding month. At least nine other prisoners had used it, investigators say, including members of such notorious gangs as the Aryan Brotherhood and the Crips.

In response, on October 20, Texas governor Rick Perry ordered every one of the state’s 112 prisons locked down and all 156,000 inmates searched. Officials found 128 phones, including a dozen on death row, as well as scores of chargers, batteries, and SIM cards. That brought the total number of phones and related items confiscated from Texas prisons in 2008 to more than 1,000.

We know that in our prisons all sorts of crime goes on – drugs, prostitution, rape, murder…it all happens in the places in America which are supposed to be the most controlled. It is becoming entirely clear that our prisons are run by the prisoners, and its time we stop this – not just because of the threat to people outside prison, but because we have a moral responsibility to ensure the safety of those we incarcerate.

Prisons should be changed from the places they are now into places which are (a) safe and (b) places no one wants to go for any reason. Not only should there not be cell phones, there shouldn’t be any phones…or television, or radio, or snack foods…there should be a cot, a can, bars, beans and bread…miserably boring work and only Sunday’s “off” in the sense that you don’t have to do the miserably boring work on that day. Prisoners should be monitored – from remote sites no accessible to the prison personnel – by audio and visual sensors 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with the recordings kept for years. Not one moment of privacy, not one word un-recorded, not one chance for the prisoners to plan anything.

This would, of course, suck – but prison isn’t supposed to be anything other than bad…and it would stop prisoners from being able to harm others or themselves while incarcerated.

Though, of course, its not being reported like that:

Eager to show action on the ailing economy, President Barack Obama promised Monday to speed federal money into hundreds of public works projects this summer, vowing that 600,000 jobs will be created or saved.

Its really about “save” more than “create” at this point – unless Obama and Co get Johnny-on-the-spot on getting the various infrastructure programs moving, a very large number of workers in that industry will be let go as summer fades towards fall…what Obama doesn’t need is a huge spike in unemployment. What he needs even less than that is for the unemployed to be dues-paying union members who are thus part of the backbone of Democrat political fundraising. Now, will it come out the way Obama wants?

I doubt it – you see, money is fungible…you hand over ten billion to the New York State government for public works projects, and you might very well find them using that money to cover the shortfall in the public sector pension plans, or some other non-build-a-bridge program. Right now, the States are bleeding cash – and the States bleeding the most are those States with the most liberal governments, the most unionized workers and the most pull in a liberal, Democrat Congress. So, look for only pennies on the dollar to wind up where its supposed to.

Liberals – you can’t spend your way to prosperity; you can’t forever buy power with taxpayer funds; you can’t forever pull the wool over everyone’s eyes.

Exceptionally interesting:

Republicans appear to have retaken control of the state Senate this afternoon after two dissident Democrats crossed the aisle in a parliamentary coup.

“An historic change in leadership is taking place at this moment and a new bipartisan, coalition is being established that is bringing real reform to the Senate RIGHT NOW,” according to a news advisory sent out by the GOP.

The Associated Press reported that two Democrats — Hiram Monserrate of Queens and Pedro Espada, Jr. of the Bronx — are poised to announce that they have decided to caucus with the GOP out of anger at Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith.

The flip gives Republicans a 32-30 edge in the chamber…

Democrats are naturally seeking to go to court over this – this in line with Democrat thinking that it is illegal for the GOP to be in power, I guess. Are we at the edge of a historic meltdown of the left in the United States?

Its happening in Europe, why not here?

UPDATE: Matt, a New York resident, posted his thoughts here.

Liberalism in action, on a lot of different levels:

He was a courtly State Department intelligence analyst from a prominent family who loved to sail and peruse the London Review of Books. Occasionally, he would voice frustration with U.S. policies, but to his liberal neighbors in Northwest D.C. it was nothing out of the ordinary. “We were all appalled by the Bush years,” one said.

What Walter Kendall Myers kept hidden, according to documents unsealed in court Friday, was a deep and long-standing anger toward his country, an anger that allegedly made him willing to spy for Cuba for three decades…

…”Anyone who knows him finds it baffling and finds this completely out of character,” said David P. Calleo, director of European studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, a friend of Myers for nearly 40 years. “He has this amazing intellectual curiosity. He is open to all kinds of ideas.”

In liberalese, “open to all kinds of ideas” means “open to whatever is the liberal party line of the day” – because I assure one and all that the idea of conservatism being something worth while never entered into his little, liberal head…

For health care, ostensibly, but really to shore up our bond rating:

President Barack Obama wants Congress to consider taxing the wealthy instead of workers to pay for a health-care overhaul, as House Democrats discuss a plan to require health insurance for most Americans.

The Obama administration stepped up efforts to influence health-care legislation today as advisers David Axelrod and Austan Goolsbee appeared on television talk shows to discuss the issue.

The president is trying to avoid broad-based levies such as a Senate proposal to tax some employer-provided health benefits Axelrod said. Instead he is urging lawmakers to reconsider limiting all tax deductions for Americans in the highest tax brackets.

When you’re set to add $10 trillion to the US debt, what matters if you add another trillion or two? Nothing – unless your masters in China are saying they won’t buy more US debt unless the tax take is increased both to ensure sufficient funds to pay ever higher interest as well as soak up the money the Fed is printing as a means of heading off hyper-inflation. Its all good, except for us…because “wealthy” doesn’t mean “Jay Rockefeller” but, instead, “small business owner” who has a net worth of $2 million with a gross annual income of $300,000…thus making him “wealthy” and a fit target for punitive taxation.

Tax and spend, borrow and spend, tax and spend…it all has to end, somewhere; lets hope it doesn’t end with 20% unemployment, interest rates and inflation.

Feeling unhappy? Want some joy in your life? Well, there’s only one place to go:

God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing. – C. S. Lewis

Like I said:

In his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo, President Barack Obama claimed: “As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. It was Islam — at places like Al-Azhar University — that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing.”

Obama is not much of a “student of history” if he believes this. Almost every advance he attributes to the Muslims was due to someone else.

The non-Muslim Chinese invented the magnetic compass and printing (Gutenberg invented not printing, but movable type). The non-Muslim Hindu Indians invented algebra and the decimal numbering system. The non-Muslim European Christians invented the university.

I can’t address advances in medicine, but I have studied the history of astronomy and physics. The Muslims contributed nothing.

Islam walked into the vacuum of exhausted Byzantium and simply took over some of the most advanced and wealthy places on Earth…and then negligently allowed it to decay over the centuries until what had been at the forefront in the 8th century was hopelessly behind as early as the 13th. The grandeur of Islam was a fading flower planted by others and merely exploited by Moslem rulers. Obama’s grasp of history wouldn’t matter, except that he’s President of the United States and he’s repeating to the world the leftist and Islamist lies about the development of civilization. There is no need to insult Islam, but there is no need to play a “self esteem” game and try to puff them up, either. Truth is what is needed in this world, not lies; even well meaning lies.