Or money printing, as it really should be know – from the Wall Street Journal:

A group of prominent Republican-leaning economists, coordinating with Republican lawmakers and political strategists, is launching a campaign this week calling on Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to drop his plan to buy $600 billion in additional U.S. Treasury bonds.

“The planned asset purchases risk currency debasement and inflation, and we do not think they will achieve the Fed’s objective of promoting employment,” they say in an open letter to be published as ads this week in The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times…

And, of course, they won’t achieve their stated objective – ie, higher employment. But what if that is not the real objective? What if the objective is to just devalue our currency until the debt we have outstanding becomes next to worthless? Sure, this would ruin the middle class, but the rich would be fine, the poor would be no poorer than they are now and, most important, Big Government would be out of debt and thus able to resume growing.

Why think like that? Because I can’t imagine that Bernanke is really that much of an idiot. I mean, come on! He tried trillions of this last year and it gave us absolutely nothing. Europe is back on the cusp of sovereign default, China is getting hit with inflation as a precursor to their collapse, Australia’s housing bubble has finally burst…everything is going to heck in a hand basket, and Bernanke wants to print more money? What for? Even if it “worked” it wouldn’t work because the global economy is about to go in to a tailspin – and we already know by recent experience that it won’t work. And, so – I do wonder if the plan is just to get rid of debt by making US paper worthless…

I am glad that some GOP lawmakers are taking a hard look at Fed policy, but we’ll have to see if there’s any follow through. We must audit the Fed and, in my view, abolish it – but, at the least, audit it. Find out where the money has gone. And establish some Congressional controls over monetary policy (yes, I know; Congress is filled with idiots, too…but idiots we can fire every two years, unlike the Fed). We really need to get a handle on this – sincere belief in Keynesianism or sick plan to screw our creditors, the end result will be the same: utter disaster.

Seems that Bob “Who Are You?” Etheridge has, at long last, fallen to Renee Ellmers per Powerline:

…Ellmers now appears to have prevailed over Etheridge by 1,489 votes, and should be certified the winner by the North Carolina authorities on November 23. Etheridge has demanded a recount that would be completed before certification of the results takes place. In the meantime, Ellmers is planning to take office with the new Congress…

I guess bullying kids didn’t quite play as well as Etheridge might have liked. This victory, though delayed, is a bit sweeter than the rest as Etheridge, during his rage over the kids who dared to ask him questions, just showed the Ruling Class for the out-of-touch tyrants they are.

Talk about getting desperate – from USA Today:

In case you were wondering if President Obama will seek re-election: Top adviser David Axelrod confirmed today he will leave the White House in the first half of next year to start organizing Obama’s 2012 campaign.

“Sometime in the spring, late winter, early spring, I’ll be going back — coming back here — to Chicago and beginning to work on that project,” Axelrod told Fox News Sunday today…

Translation: “if we don’t do something quick, we’ll have Obama calling President-elect Palin by 8pm, Eastern on November 6th, 2012”.

A first term President always has an eye on the next election – its natural. But, usually, a President doesn’t start the ball rolling until, oh, October or November of the year before. Its not like a sitting President has to gear up for the primary season, right? Normally, that is a coast and you don’t start really putting your plan together until (a) you’ve got a fix on the condition of the country and (b) have a good idea of the two or three people you’re most likely to be fighting on the other side. Moving this soon signals that Obama and Co know that they’ve lost the country and need to essentially start from scratch on selling Obama to the American people.

It would be just too good to be true to think they’d try to run on Obama’s record. Leaving aside that sort of suicidal run, we have to expect that Obama’s plan will be to in some manner demonize the GOP. To do for the national GOP what Reid did to Sharron Angle here in Nevada…just rip and shred to the point where even a horrifically unpopular incumbent can come out on top. We already know that Obama’s people are muck-raking the possible GOP contenders – Axelrod’s job may be to set up a smear campaign against all of them, and then let it go once a real front runner emerges.

Our best defense against this is to settle on our nominee fairly quickly. We’ll have to see how that comes out – a lot of people want a crack at Obama. And that is fine – but we rank-and-filers should be exerting pressure on all the GOP prospects to hold fire on each other and reserve that for Obama and the Democrats. GOP to GOP, it should all be kept on a high road, and let the primary electorate decide. Once a few primaries have come and gone, if there’s a front runner, then all the rest should gracefully bow out.

Outside of the nominee, conservative groups should look to hammer Obama in independent expenditures starting in December of 2011. This should be done for two reasons – to remind people just how lousy Obama has been, and to force him to expend resources defending himself, as opposed to attacking Republicans. Pressure must be kept up on the Democrats while we Republicans determine whom are nominee will be – we can’t leave the field clear for the Democrats as that allows them to define us, perhaps disastrously.

Still and all, it is a clearly much weaker Obama heading in to 2012. We must have no illusions – beating a sitting President is extraordinarily hard and we must work on the assumption that Obama will be re-elected in 2012. We can, however, beat him – and beat him very badly, if we keep stout hearts, lay aside internecine bickering and remember that we’re doing this for America, not for the Republican party.

From Politics Daily:

North Carolina Rep. Heath Shuler said Sunday he would challenge House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the leadership of the Democratic minority in the next Congress although he acknowledged that he does not have the votes to win.

“We’ve just come off the largest … loss for the Democratic Party in almost a century,” Shuler said on CNN’s State of the Union. “And to be able to put Speaker Pelosi as minority leader is truly … unacceptable for our party.”

“If she doesn’t step aside then … I’m going to press forward,” he said…

Which is honorable and, unfortunately, pointless. To be sure, Democrats are absolutely insane to think of re-installing Nancy Pelosi as leader. I can only figure they are either so insulated from reality – or so afraid of crossing her – that they can’t think straight. It isn’t just words when we Republicans say we’re delighting Nancy will remain – its a gift which will keep on giving for us. It makes it almost a certainty that we’ll retain the House in 2012, even if the economy turns around and Obama is re-elected…no one is going to vote for people who will put Pelosi back in the Speaker’s chair, and there’s an end on it.

Really, what Democrats with any sense have to do is walk out – form a new party. As long as the power dynamic within the party is such that Nancy Pelosi can be leader, there will be no reform which will make Democrats palatable to the broader electorate. If Shuler wants to do something useful, he should lead this walk out. Taking a quixotic stand against Pelosi, and then calling it a day, will be, at best, just a worthless gesture…at worst, it will be something done mere to make himself electable in 2012.

The far left owns the Democrat party – they and their fat cat sponsors like George Soros. There’s no place there for people who want what is best for America.

Seems that Charlie raided his own PAC stash:

Congressman Charles Rangel, whose ethics trial starts tomorrow, appears to have improperly used political-action committee money to pay for his defense.

Rangel tapped his National Leadership PAC for $293,000 to pay his main legal-defense team this year. He took another $100,000 from the PAC in 2009 to pay lawyer Lanny Davis.

Two legal experts told The Post such spending is against House rules.

“It’s a breach of congressional ethics,” one campaign-finance lawyer said…

But it doesn’t matter – Rangel was re-elected, and the House Democrats will dispose of his case before the GOP gets in. So, its all good, you see? Corruption? That isn’t important! What is important is that a tool of the special interests remains in office so that taxpayer cash can continue to flow. Geesh, do we have to draw you a picture here?

From James Pethokoukis over at Reuters:

…Palinomics, embryonic as it is, seems to be rooted in “free-market populism,” a version of conservative thinking that is pro-market rather than pro-business. It says the role of government is to help markets function more fairly and efficiently for everyone, encouraging competition and “creative destruction” (which Palin specifically mentioned in her book). Pro-business policies, by contrast, can end up subsidizing favored companies, raising barriers to entry and otherwise entrenching the status quo.

Palin is also familiar with one of the champions of free-market populism, the University of Chicago’s Luigi Zingales, linking to his writings from her Facebook page. It’s easy to imagine her campaigning against corporate tax breaks, say, or in favor of limiting the size of banks under the belief that as long as they are ginormous, government will find a way to bail them out. That agenda might not attract much campaign cash from Manhattan bankers or Washington lobbyists, but it could be a compelling formula in the new Tea Party-infused Republican party…

Indeed – and, in fact, it is the only way for us to win in 2012. Reagan manfully tried to break the link between the GOP and Wall Street, but was stymied by the way Wall Street manages to get its hooks in to everyone. After Reagan left office, there was not much effort to really challenge the banksters. And don’t any of you liberals out there think you’re off the hook – while the establishment GOP has been too influenced by Wall Street (such as in President Bush’s stout – and entirely mistaken – assertion that TARP saved the economic day), the Democratic party has been, for at least the last 20 years, a wholly owned subsidiary of the banksters – with George Soros nearly dictating liberal policy these days. Now, in 2010 and heading towards 2012, the people are in no mood for anyone who is too connected with the financial nitwits who led us off the cliff.

Sarah Palin – who is smarter than anyone else in politics, just as Reagan was in his day – sees this, understands this, and knows that both in purely political as well as economic terms, it is time to break the banks as well as the bureaucrats. To battle, that is, with Big Government and Big Corporation in favor of the people – and the small and mid-sized business which are the back bone of America. America’s economy is stifled under taxes and regulations which work out to protection and subsidy for those already on top, who keep the bribes flowing to the political class to keep things as they are. In order to get a real, expanding American economy, these fetters must be broken.

And so, to battle – a battle which, so far in the GOP 2012 ranks, only Sarah Palin is engaged. I’m engaged in it, too, but as I’m just a little blogger, I don’t carry too much weight. Those who have been reading my stuff over the past couple years know that I’ve had it in for the banks, and that my economics are Distributist. I’ve no more use for a Wall Street nimrod than I do for a Ivy League Marxist – we need to get back to work making, mining and growing things and we won’t be able to do that while politicians are bribed by corporations to allow them to ship our factories to China, our farms to Mexico and our mines to Chile.

Sarah Palin understands. And if she goes in to 2012 as the only candidate understanding this, then she will win it all.

“Miss me yet?” on steroids – from Toby Harnden in the Telegraph:

…Whereas Obama was glum, wondering aloud whether 9.6 per cent unemployment might be “the new normal” and griping that as US president “you’re held responsible for everything but you don’t always have control of everything”, Bush used his interviews to display an almost giddy insouciance.

On the Oprah Winfrey Show, Bush charmed the woman who had proclaimed Obama as “the One” and hailed his “tongue dipped in unvarnished truth” in Iowa back in 2007.

“When it [the presidency] was over, I knew I’d given my heart and soul, I’d poured everything I had into the job and was grateful for the opportunity to serve,” Bush said.

With his characteristic corny self-deprecation, Bush said he had enjoyed the writing process. “I know full well it’s going to come as a shock to some people. A lot of people didn’t think I could read, much less write.” Boom boom…

I had thought it would take 20 years for time to rub off the edges of hatred and bitterness directed towards President Bush. As someone of historical bent, my belief is that President Bush will be remembered as one of our strongest and most influential Presidents. Not in the top five (Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, Reagan), but in the top ten. Little did I suspect how absolutely terrible Obama would be as President – rehabilitation for President Bush has taken less than two years.

What we miss in President Obama is first and foremost that confidence in America. Even when Obama says words about a confident America, it seems like rote recitation – like something his speechwriter threw in because its just part of a Presidential speech. With President Bush, no one could ever have any doubt that he really believes in American exceptionalism and our ability to overcome all obstacles. Obama is floundering like Carter not just because, like Carter, he’s been dogged by bad economic times but because, like Carter, he isn’t acting like President of the United States of America…he’s acting like he our Professor in Chief; our Grand Lecturer.

Obama does need policy modifications in order to win re-election in 2012 – but he also needs to convince the American people that he’s really interested in America being the most powerful and greatest nation in the world. That is how we view ourselves (entirely correctly, by the way), and it is how we want our leaders to behave. Until Obama can manage that trick – which, for Bush, was effortless and natural – he’ll never get our trust back.

At least, not in any sort of realistic time frame – Dian L. Chu over at Zero Hedge:

…According to a new paper by two researchers at the University of California – Davis, it would take 131 years for replacement of gasoline and diesel given the current pace of research and development; however, world’s oil could run dry almost a century before that…

…By incorporating market expectations into the model, the authors, Nataliya Malyshkina and Deb Niemeier, indicated that based on their calculation, the peak of oil production could occur between 2010 and 2030, before renewable replacement technologies become viable at around 2140.

The estimates not only delayed the alternative energy timeline, but also pushed up the peak oil deadline. The researchers suggest some previous estimates that pegged year 2040 as the time frame when alternatives would start to replace oil, could be “overly optimistic”…

And do remember this all includes all the government grants, subsidies and mandates for green energy. Even with that, it won’t work – we won’ t be able to replace fossil fuel before fossil fuel runs out. Not by a century – and that means that even if we subsidize and mandate even more, we still won’t be able to do the trick.

So, what does this all means? I means we need a genuinely comprehensive energy policy – the exploitation of all energy resources, all at once, as we go forward and eventually do replace fossil fuels with renewable energy. “Drill, baby, drill” really does have to be part of any energy plan we develop.

As always, the government “experts” can never get it right. This is because no matter how smart they are, they can never obtain sufficient information to know what, exactly, is happening out there. Obama and Co are trying to tell us they know what needs to be done – but they don’t know, and can’t know. Only a full fledged, do everything you can program can work – because that means that people will make their own decisions based upon their own needs, and thus provide whatever energy is needed.

The only place for government in energy policy is to clear the path – to get rid of taxes and regulations which hamper the natural development of both traditional and green energy. Free markets will do what we need, if we just get government out of the way.

Goodness, this didn’t take long – from Vegas Happens Here:

News just broke that R-J publisher Sherm Frederick is stepping down as publisher of the newspaper and as CEO of Stephens Media and Thomas Mitchell is out as editor. And yet, there’s even more to it than that.

Not in their story? Allan B. Fleming, the Review-Journal’s general manager, is also out. And Mitchell is getting a new gig created for him, some sort of senior editorial page editor role…

…An extremely knowledgable source at the paper called this move a “shakeout” and a “head slap” from the top, meaning the owners back in Arkansas. He reminded me that the Stephens family are big Washington D.C. players, with banking interests and other issues to deal with in Congress. They may have supported Republican candidates, but the over-the-top efforts by Sherm Frederick and Thomas Mitchell to support Sharron Angle and unrelentingly beat up on the Senate Majority Leader was exceptional. It was nasty and personal and harmed the reporters’ ability to have their work taken credibly, but even more importantly, if the Stephens clan wanted to make nice with Harry Reid, the only way to do it was to get rid of Frederick and Mitchell…

I wouldn’t classify the R-J’s coverage of Reid as over-the-top; there was a lot of anti-Reid stuff in the editorial page, but the news coverage was pretty much typical, MSM “lets always be nice to Democrats” coverage. Regardless of that, however, the paper was clearly against Reid and for Angle…and Reid is well known in Nevada for getting back at anyone who crosses him. The owners of the R-J are aware of this, and acted accordingly.

As I said before the election – when it looked like Reid would lose – the best thing about a Reid loss would be the ending of a poison in Nevada politics. Reid and his cronies have their claws deep in this State and use it as the merest implement for power and self enrichment. Reid is corrupt and corrupting – and he’s now got Nevada’s largest newspaper to roll over for him, which means there will be even less MSM criticism of his corruption than before.

Now, more than ever, it is important that outside groups look in to the Reid campaign lawbreaking on voter turnout. We know that the Reid campaign and Harrah’s illegally coordinated efforts to get out the vote. In order to expose this – and allow Nevada to breath a bit after Reid has been knocked down – the only path open is House hearings. I do hope that the whole issue of illegal donations and voter fraud is brought up next year – not just with Reid, but if it is done at all, it will help weaken Reid, and strengthen the people of Nevada.