From Hot Air:

…According to new e-mails uncovered by the committee, her (Waters’) chief of staff directly coordinated with other members of the House Financial Services Committee on behalf of OneUnited:

A newly discovered exchange of e-mails led the House ethics committee on Friday to delay its trial of Representative Maxine Waters, a California Democrat accused of helping steer bailout money to a bank in which her husband owned shares.

The e-mails are between Mikael Moore, Ms. Waters’s chief of staff, and members of the House Financial Services Committee, on which Ms. Waters serves. The e-mails show that Mr. Moore was actively engaged in discussing with committee members details of a bank bailout bill apparently after Ms. Waters agreed to refrain from advocating on the bank’s behalf…

This, then, may drag in other Democrats – in this deal, for those who need reminding, Waters got a lot of TARP money for a bank she held a strong financial interest in. Its the really bad sort of political corruption.

Waters, herself, has never been more than a place holder for liberalism in the House. She just parrots whatever she’s told and votes as instructed – but she seems to have taken this to mean that as long as she does as she’s told, she can get away with pretty much anything she wants. This might have been true in the past, but in the TEA Party-influenced present, that sort of thing won’t be tolerated.

There must be a complete investigation of this no matter where it leads – all of those who in any way, shape or form influenced government policy for personal profit must be made to pay the price. Corruption eats at the heart of democracy, and it is long past time that we really did drain the swamp.

The New York Times – probably trying to buck up sagging liberal spirits – has an article which features the 2012 prediction of a Yale economist: Landslide win for Obama. How so? Well, “it’s the economy, stupid”. The Yale economist – Ray C. Fair – plugs in to his election model a GDP growth rate of 3.69% and, presto, people vote Obama ’cause he’s done such a good job.

Is this valid? Certainly, as far as it goes – if the economy improves and we really get growth significantly above 3% for some an extended period of time before November, 2012, then unemployment will go down, wages will go up and people will feel that things are getting better. Even if they are not back to where they were pre-Obama, there is a strong chance that in such a scenario, Obama gets re-elected. The key, though, is to have that level of growth for a long enough period of time to matter.

Are we likely to get such a thing? Fair thinks so – probably because he’s got a Keynesian model some where which says that if you do X amount of stimulus you’ll get Y amount of growth over a period of time. Of course, if Keynes was wrong and you don’t really get that kind of growth, then things might not work out so well for you. But even if Keynes is wrong (and he is) there still could be a bit of alleged growth coming from stimulus such as the Fed’s quantitative easing and continued borrow-and-spend by Treasury – after all, a trillion dollars or so of stimulus got us “growth” in 2010. Bogus growth, but growth none the less.

Keep in mind that the flip side of Fair’s theory holds true – if the economy is going well, Obama has a very strong chance of being elected; if, on the other hand, its in the tank, then he’s probably going to lose. And in both cases it is not absolutely important whom the GOP nominates (some can make it easier or harder, but the best candidate will have a hard time winning in prosperity, the worst will have a hard time losing in recession). Obama and Co are not entirely stupid and so probably realize this – how the economy is in 2012 will go a very long way in determining if Obama wins re-election.

Given this, there is every chance in the world that Obama, his Administration and the financial industry led by Bernanke will do what they can to prop up the economy. They can’t get new spending out of the incoming GOP House, but there is still plenty they can do. And they will do it – and it won’t matter if its legal or not. This is a Ruling Class facing political Armageddon – they won’t go out quietly. The economy really is Obama’s only hope; it is in the tank right now, Obama’s policies will likely put it even more so by 2012…but this won’t stop Obama and Co from trying and trying and trying their liberal prescriptions to try and get it off the ground (it won’t occur to them that they are just wrong; in other words, they are very unlikely to embrace conservative economic ideas – they haven’t the wit to make such a shift).

Could be an interesting two years – and, once again, I mean in terms of the Chinese curse, “may you live in interesting times”.

From Zero Hedge:

With Ireland now a lost cause, the next country which will see its bond yields surge to new records is Portugal. And just so vigilantes don’t miss the hint, the Portuguese opposition party has stated that the country’s budget deficit and public debt are “higher than those reported by the government.” The claim is that Portuguese debt is about 30% higher than claimed by official statistics: instead of 82% of GDP, it is actually 112%. With bankrupt Greece having lied about virtually every aspect of its comatose economy, it is not as easy to dismiss the announcement as merely political bickering, and is sure to leads to at least a modest double digit basis point jump in Portuguese spreads…

Which means that Portugal will find it increasingly hard to finance its debt, which will lead to even more financial stress and, of course, the EU/IMF working out some sort of fiscal papering over the cracks. Eventually, good people, this does stop working. With Greece, Ireland and Portugal, we’re talking about some of Europe’s smaller economies (none of these three nations has has even 12 million people, as compared to the 60, 64 and 82 million of Europe’s big boys, Britain, France and Germany) – but looming in the background are the highly stressed economies of Italy and Spain (60 and 45 million people). There simply isn’t enough money in the world to backstop all that debt.

They keep sticking fingers in the dike, and then another leak springs up…how long can they keep it up? Beats all heck out of me – but they can’t keep it up forever.

If you can honestly answer, “yes”, then you are doing great…if you can’t, then its time for some self-examination.

From C-Span via Instapundit:

There’s no possibility that I would ever go to a debate and have Olbermann or Chris Matthews asking questions. I watched the debate a couple of years ago and it was an embarrassment because they were so relentlessly hostile and they were so left-wing that every question they asked of the Republicans was designed to embarrass and divide the Republicans. And every question they asked the Democrats was designed to make them look good. Well why would we participate in that?

Precisely – why would be do that? We have to just fully admit that the MSM is the merest arm of the DNC. While its ok to go on their shows, there is no sense in just putting ourselves at their mercy.

How this will work out is that we can’t set the 2012 debates with an allegedly impartial MSMer calling the shots. Whatever the DNC/MSM brings to the table must be countered by one of ours – and no kook lefties like Matthews or Olberman anywhere near the place.

Of course, the best way to have a debate is to have the candidates ask each other the questions – without any advance notice and only with someone around to keep time. The Democrats like talking points and taking cheap shots – our path to victory lies in explaining how we’re different from the Democrats. The more there is real debate, the better we do.

Junk touching update.

Britain aborts her future.

Old women do absurd thing, show themselves up as people who have never grown up, never will.

Sarah Palin offer an excerpt from her new book.

The Other McCain warns us against allowing pinko groups to stampede us in to certain actions. In this case, the Southern Poverty Law Center is trying to scare the GOP off of voting for Saul Anuzis as new RNC chair. Pinkos are trying to slander Anuzis – likely because Anuzis would be effective, and the left doesn’t like that. We must never listen to the left – even if an iota of truth comes out of them, it is just in the service of another liberal lie.

EPA over-reach? Of course – we’ve got an ultra-liberal President who has let environmentalists run wild.

The Other McCain says it may be so:

As noted in my last update about Renee Ellmers’ victory in NC-2, Republicans are now at 240 House seats and they haven’t had 241 seats since 1949. And Sam Foster at Left Coast Rebel reports that Ann Marie Buerkle is 411 votes ahead of Dan Maffei in NY-25 after the count of absentee ballots from Onondaga County.

The Buerkle campaign says victory is a “mathematical certainty,” and the Lonely Conservative headlines it: “Buerkle Lead Can’t Be Beat.”

C’mon, Ann Marie. This one’s for the history books, sweetheart…

It might be a mathematical certainty, but Democrats cheat – so it might be a fraudulent uncertainty. Still, it does look good for 241 Republican House members – making 24 the magic number the Democrats would have to win in 2012 to get Nancy back in the Speaker’s chair. This isn’t impossible, but it is unlikely given (a) re-districting will heavily favor the GOP and (b) voting Democrat would put Nancy back in the Speaker’s chair (thanks, Democrats, for keeping her on!).

Not just finding ballots, but discovering entire voting machines – from Legal Insurrection:

We all have heard of ballots being found in the trunks of cars, and elsewhere during recounts. In a hotly contested race for the State Senate in New York, Democrats have gone one better, and found two new (and uncounted) voting machines…

Democrats are at risk of losing the State Senate – and with it their ability to have New York’s redistricting entirely in their hands. Things are already looking pretty grim around the country for Democrats and I guess they want to squeeze out what they can from New York. Trouble is, if they lose the Senate, they’ll have to contend with Republicans in carving up the electoral map.

This long after the vote, it would be hard – even for Democrats – to manufacture believable votes to tip races to their side…so, the new gambit appears to be in “finding” whole voting machines. And how much do you want to bet that there will be just enough votes in there to give the Democrat the win?

Just more proof that we really need to go after this. A very large number of Democrat officials need to go to jail over the rampant voter fraud committed by Democrats. We know they’re doing it, but we don’t really do anything about it. We have to press hard on this issue – starting with House investigations where we can force people to testify. While Holder is in charge of Justice there simply won’t be any moves to prosecute…but we can at least set the stage, and hope that in 2013 we have an AG interested in enforcing the law. One thing certain, if we don’t forcibly stop the Democrats from cheating, they’ll keep doing it, and that puts our whole democratic form of government at risk.

You can read it here – to nutshell: roll back spending to 2008 levels, freeze it there and allow no tax increases. Given CBO numbers, this balances the budget by 2015 (though a liberal quibble about it would put off the balanced budget to 2017). Do read the whole thing – it is the sort of fiscal thinking we need to get out of this hole.

As for me, I’d roll FY 2012 spending back to FY 2004 levels and just balance the budget right away. This would be painful, but it means that by FY 2013 we’re running a surplus and starting to pay off debt – and that, in and of itself, would provide massive stimulation to economic activity. Couple this with regulatory reforms to take away all the Big Government/Big Corporation roadblocks to new, small and mid-sized business and we’d be back in an economic boom by 2014…and completely cured of the past century’s idiocy by about 2030 (ie, debt paid off, US back to a manufacturing/mining/farming powerhouse, liberalism de-funded and no longer bothering us, big banks a long dead nightmare from the past).

We can get out of this. It will be very painful at first. It will take a lot of hard work. It will take genuinely shared sacrifice (not, as our liberals would have it, sacrifice on the part of the middle class while Big Government/Big Corporation skates). But it can be done – the missing ingredient to date has been the courage to act. Unfortunately, we aren’t likely to see it in President Obama, though we might see some of it in the new House GOP. In the end, we might just have to try and find someone in 2012 who is perfectly willing to risk being a one-term President and will just do it, regardless of the 70% disapproval rating it might generate.

This will be “What Media Bias? Part 182.

In a new book about Pope Benedict XVI, he is asked about the Church’s stance on the use of condoms as a means of slowing the spread of AIDS. Here is how the MSM – in this case, the New York Times – covers it:

Pope Says Condoms to Stop AIDS May Be Acceptable

Pope Benedict XVI has said that condom use can be justified in some cases to help stop the spread of AIDS, the first Vatican exception to a long-held policy condemning condom use…

Now, what did the Pope actually say? Fortunately, the good people over at The Catholic World Report got the excerpt in question:

…As a matter of fact, you know, people can get condoms when they want them anyway. But this just goes to show that condoms alone do not resolve the question itself. More needs to happen. Meanwhile, the secular realm itself has developed the so-called ABC Theory: Abstinence-Be Faithful-Condom, where the condom is understood only as a last resort, when the other two points fail to work. This means that the sheer fixation on the condom implies a banalization of sexuality, which, after all, is precisely the dangerous source of the attitude of no longer seeing sexuality as the expression of love, but only a sort of drug that people administer to themselves. This is why the fight against the banalization of sexuality is also a part of the struggle to ensure that sexuality is treated as a positive value and to enable it to have a positive effect on the whole of man’s being.

There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.

Are you saying, then, that the Catholic Church is actually not opposed in principle to the use of condoms?

She of course does not regard it as a real or moral solution, but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality…(emphasis added)

In other words, condoms don’t really stop the spread of AIDS; harping upon condom distribution likely just makes things worse – but in some cases, for some people, the use of a condom may be the first step towards a moral attitude about sex – and, of course, the development of sexual morality is the only 100% sure way to stop AIDS. So, no actual change in Church position – in fact, not even the slightest modification of it – but because the Pope didn’t explicitly condemn condom use, the MSM is having a field day with a “Pope says condoms ok” meme. Look for them to wonder in editorials if this means that ordination of women and gay marriage are right around the corner.

The problem for a Catholic dealing with liberals – or, indeed, any Christian in dealing with anyone on the left – is that you’re dealing on the left with un-thinking people who are astoundingly ignorant of Christianity. If any one on the left would just spend some time reading Christian writing rather relying on third-hand anti-Catholic propaganda, we’d get a lot further.

In this whole debate – since the 1980’s – the left has held to a stupid idea that if we just pass out condoms, we’ve got the whole AIDS issue licked. As if the technique of immorality can be changed to make it harmless. Sorry, liberals, but doing things wrong is doing things wrong. While it is, obviously, better if an AIDS infected person uses a condom, it is 10,000% better if such a person just doesn’t engage in sex, at all. AIDS and every single sexually transmitted disease in the world can be eliminated in a generation if everyone, for the next 20 years, just follows Christian sexual morality.

Because people won’t do it doesn’t mean we stop urging it – because if we can just get one person to adhere, then we might save a thousand lives over the years, as a whole string of people never get ill, and never have their hearts ripped to shreds by sexual immorality spreading from one person to another. Ours is the counsel of life and hope – theirs is the counsel of death and despair; and its a pity that some people with bone headed stubbornness just refuse to see it.