It is what our ex-queen is blaming for her crushing, unbelievable defeat, but the facts don’t bear her out (as usual) – from the Washington Post:

…Overall, Democratic candidates in the 63 races that flipped to the GOP had $206.4 million behind them, a tally that includes candidate fundraising and spending by parties and interests. That compares to only $171.7 million for their GOP rivals.

The pattern appears to contradict widespread complaints from Democrats that they were being unfairly overrun by wealthy Republicans, many of whom donated money to conservative groups to spend on political races…

Outspending us heavily and with a lap dog MSM to get their message out, they were still crushed. They were beaten by the people, who have had quite enough of corrupt, Big Government liberalism.

But, hey, if Democrats want to believe it was money and lack of good messaging which beat them – and if they, further, want to re-enthrone Her Majesty as their leader, then don’t think we’re going to really spend a lot of time trying to convince them to see reason…

Some Democrats are kinda hoping to dump the President in 2012 – from the Washington Post:

…This is a critical moment for the country. From the faltering economy to the burdensome deficit to our foreign policy struggles, America is suffering a widespread sense of crisis and anxiety about the future. Under these circumstances, Obama has the opportunity to seize the high ground and the imagination of the nation once again, and to galvanize the public for the hard decisions that must be made. The only way he can do so, though, is by putting national interests ahead of personal or political ones.

To that end, we believe Obama should announce immediately that he will not be a candidate for reelection in 2012…

Which is a grand way of saying, “if the people know you won’t be around after 2012, we Democrats can salvage our party”.

The authors – Douglas Schoen and Pat Caddell – are smart guys and solid Democrats (Caddell was Carter’s pollster in 1980) and they can see utter disaster heading their way. Unless there is a massive turn around in the economy, Democrats face a brutal future in 2012. As the economy is expected, in the rosiest scenarios, to be only modestly better by 2012, Democrats face the prospects of losing the Senate, losing even more House seats, getting further clobbered at the State level and, as the final insult, losing the White House to anyone the GOP cares to nominate. If Obama is out, however, then the Democrats have a good shot at limiting their Congressional losses (though they’d probably still lose the Senate) and retaining the White House. Or, so goes the thinking here.

I’m not so sure that its going to matter – the people are on fire for a complete reform of government, and unless Democrats figure out that they’ve got to toss aside New Deal/Great Society paradigms, there isn’t much of a chance people will swing to them. There can be a liberal TEA Party, as it were, but it will have to be a party committed to personal freedom, balanced budgets and American exceptionalism. I doubt the current crop of Democrats – from Obama on down – can make the leap. It might be that the only way the Democrats can be rescued is to be so thoroughly trounced that new people and new ideas can rise.

We’ll see how this pans out, but it is clear that there are deep fissures in the Democrat party, and it will only take a bit more for the party to split before 2012.

Allahpundit notes that Cindy McCain – wife of Senator John McCain – has made an ad for the “No H8” campaign. “No H8” stands for “no on California’s Proposition 8”, which had banned same-sex marriage. Its a clever slogan, but also about the most stupid thing you can do – it is not the way to win friends and influence people.

You see, the presumption of “No H8” is that the people opposed to same-sex marriage or gays serving in the military are doing so out of hatred for gay people. Its an arrogant presumption of moral excellence on the part of the advocates of gay rights and an equally arrogant presumption of moral depravity on the part of those who dissent from it.

Let me clue everyone in on one thing: the opposition to gay marriage and gays in the military is not based, in whole or in part, upon hatred. To be sure, there are people opposed to gay marriage who, for whatever bizarre reason, hate gay people…but they are a tiny minority and don’t control anything. There are, in my view, more people on the pro-gay rights side of the argument who are motivated by hatred – hatred of Christians – than there are on the anti-gay rights side. The fundamental objection to gay marriage is upon the grounds that homosexual acts are inherently disordered and thus should not be accorded the same social approval as heterosexual acts. You are free to disagree with this proposition – to call it wrong – but you can only call it “hate” by lying.

If someone wishes to convince those who hold to the Christian view about homosexuality, then calling them haters is not the way to do it. In fact, all it does is make people dig in their heels…even I feel it. I’m well-disposed towards the idea of allowing openly gay people to serve in the military. But I’m far less well-disposed to act upon that view when people are slandering the side I agree with morally. It makes me want to dig in my heels and say, “nothing doing” until the “No H8” campaign is dissolved, and all the gay rights groups issue written apologies for ever daring to use it.

We on the conservative, Christian side of the aisle will put up with a lot. After all, we’re commanded to do so by Our Lord. We’re supposed to put up with it in joy, but even if we can’t swing that we’re still to attempt it as a duty. But while we will put up with a lot, there is no command for us to do something we don’t need to do, just to please those who are lying about us.

As of a few minutes ago, I am midway through chapter 10 in Decision Points, by President Bush. I’m not gonna talk much about my thoughts on the memoir until I have finished, but I will say it’s a great read, and I encourage our readers (even the liberal ones) to read it. Even Bill Clinton has praised the memoir.

While an in depth review is coming soon, I would like to hear from those of you who are in the process of reading it, and to give your initial thoughts.

California is double plus bankrupt. But don’t worry, its not like they’d elect a 72 year old former hippie and failed governor…oh, wait…

Democrats having trouble deciding on their House leadership. No worries, there’s no chance they’d choose a filthy rich, elitist 70 year old who led them off a cliff…oh, wait…

An increasingly grim electoral map for Obama in 2012.

Memo to Joe Miller: time to concede. Yes, it was lousy of Murkowski to mount a write-in effort after you beat her fair and square in the primary, but it looks like she’s pulled if off. Arguing now just makes you look weak and will kill your chances in later years. Memo to Senate GOP: kick Murkowski out of the caucus so she can’t back stab us, again.

Government salaries skyrocket under Obama. Neat first thing to do – a 20%, across-the-board reduction of all non-active duty, non-armed law enforcement salaries. Let the bureaucrats know there’s a new game in town, and they’re not in it.

We nailed 2.5 of them in the Senate this year (looks like we won’t end up taking the trash all the way out in Alaska – but, we still put the fear of TEA in to the Ruling Class) – and Politico notes that other RINOs are feeling the heat:

Another bloody Republican Senate primary election season is taking shape for 2012, with potentially serious intra-party challenges percolating in close to a half-dozen states.

Polls indicate that at least two veteran GOP senators are highly vulnerable to challenges on their right flank — Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch and Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe – and there are rumblings about potential GOP bids against Nevada Sen. John Ensign, Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar as well…

It is still to be hoped that Ensign, out here in Nevada, will grab a clue and not seek re-election, but that prospect does seem to be fading away. Now that Ensign’s good buddy Harry Reid has been safely re-elected (and we do note that Ensign wasn’t exactly active in campaigning against him), Ensign might figure if we’ll re-elect that creep, one more will slide down quite easily. Mark it here and now – if no one else takes Ensign on, I will. I don’t care how quixotic the effort might be, Ensign will not be un-challenged in the 2012 GOP primary.

Democrats – and especially Harry Reid – are hoping that a bloody GOP primary season in 2012 might allow them to cling to their majority for one more cycle. And, so it might – and, big deal. Some people are still carping that the O’Donnell nomination cost us a Senate seat, and may have set the stage for the Democrats to hold the Senate. As I said when O’Donnell won the primary – I’d rather lose with her than win with a RINO. RINOs do us no good – they do the Ruling Class well, but they always, always cut the people off at the knees when the chips are down. I’d rather lose to a solid, Democrat Senate majority than lose because some people on my own side knifed me in the back.

In the end, this is how we hold their feet to the fire. We let them know that we will challenge them in the primary – and 2010 showed that complete unknowns can still raise the enthusiasm and the money to knock off incumbents. It is what we must do – because if we let up on the pressure for a moment, we’ll have our RINOs “reaching across the aisle” to sell us out to Obama’s liberalism in a heartbeat.

Keep fighting. Never, never, never give in!

It ain’t over – from Bloomberg:

Irish government bonds tumbled for a 13th day on mounting concern that the nation will be forced to restructure its finances.

Spanish bonds also headed for a 13th day of declines as data showed the nation’s economic growth stalled. French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said yesterday that investors must share in the cost of safeguarding sovereign debt. German bunds advanced on demand for the safest assets, while Portuguese debt recovered from earlier losses. Italian bonds fell.

“Lagarde’s comments mentioned restructuring, and that’s another nail in the coffin” for so-called peripheral nations’ debt, said Steven Major, global head of fixed-income research at HSBC Holdings Plc in London. “There’s still a big constituency of investors and traders who have not recognized until now that restructuring could happen.”…

If that last bit is true – that a lot of investors have not recognized the prospect of restructuring (ie, default) – then we’re in a lot more trouble than I thought. Anyone who has looked at the so-called “PIIGS” (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain) nations and not seen “utter freaking catastrophe” just must be blind, or stupid (and, unfortunately, is probably working for the United States Federal Reserve). These nations went on a massive borrowing spree and simply do not have the money to pay back the debt – and I mean, not ever: all of them are entering terminal population decline and so even if the economy improves, there won’t be enough surplus wealth to pay back all the debt.

And, of course, the economy is not improving – not in those specific countries, and not around the world. We got a year of “growth” as a result of central banks printing up vast sums of money and shoving it through the economy, but that didn’t get us what we need – a vast increase in wealth in order to service a debt burden far beyond the capacity of current wealth to pay. In my view, we never really will – default is the only way out. How that default will play out should be our focus – instead, we’re trying to pretend we won’t have to default, at all.

In a lot of this is getting entertaining to watch. Sickeningly entertaining, at times, like a wild roller coaster, but entertaining all the same. We’re watching the fiat-money, usury-based global economy unravel. The people who run it are trying one desperate expedient after another to save it. Mindless “investors” (really, gamblers) move their money from one thing to another, mostly when cued up by the banksters to do it. This goes up, that goes down, talking heads proclaim…and in the background, the real economy grinds to a halt, and won’t start growing again until we admit we’re broke, and just get back to work.

2011 will be an interesting year – and I mean in the sense of the Chinese curse, “may you live in interesting times”.

HAT TIP: Mish’s

From the Center for Immigration Studies:

The Treasury Department reports that illegal immigrants filing tax returns using the Individual Tax Identification Number are receiving more than $1.5 billion each year from the federal government through the Child Tax Credit and the Additional Child Tax Credit…

Thus the insanity of our government. We’re bankrupt, but we’re still sending out checks to illegal immigrants – and we’re sending out these checks to people in conformity with our tax law, which ignores the fact that the people in question wouldn’t be here but for law-breaking. Meanwhile, if you or I, dear legal citizen, mess up on our taxes the heavy hand of government will drop on us like a ton of bricks.

Ultimately, we need a full review of all our laws – a re-codification, as it were. Its not as odd as it sounds – nations which exist for a period of time tend to need such a re-working of laws to ensure consistency, fairness and relation to current reality. One new committee in Congress I’d like to see is a body to look over our laws and regulations and figure out what needs to be changed and what needs to be eliminated…though they can start with eliminating the requirement to send money to people who, legally, aren’t even here.

From NRO’s Battle 10:

Allen West is under no illusion as to the fragile nature of the GOP’s coming House majority.

“The thing that you don’t want to see happen is that the Republican Party gets thrown on the ash heap as well, in 2012. Not a lot of patience out there right now,” West told Battle ‘10. “As I tell people, if the pendulum swings back to the other side — same old players, same old actors — that’s going to cause people to say, ‘here we go again.’”…

West goes on to note that the vote on November 2nd provides a chance for the GOP – a chance, that is, for us to really show we’re on the side of the people. If we blow it, then we might be done for as a party – and that is for good (Democrats will cling to their party for a while out of their slavish devotion to their leaders, of course).

While the Democrats seem set to re-install the exact, same leadership which lead them off a cliff, the new GOP must put some new faces up there. Allen West is the logical choice to be one of the new spokesmen of the GOP – not just because he’s telegenic and a phenomenal speaker, but because he understands just what has happened…understands, fundamentally, the dynamic which elevated him to office.

If we do the right thing, we’ll obtain a generation of power and be able to reform our nation – to rescue our nation from liberalism. I hope to goodness they are listening in DC – West clearly is; we’ll see how the rest do.

Here is the actual report (PDF). I have to say, its not as horrible as I thought it would be; I was figuring it would be nothing more than a plea for higher taxes and only modest cuts. As it turns out, its a plea for some higher taxes and semi-big cuts in spending – and it has its share of completely impossible things, such as an end to mortgage interest deduction. You’ll never get that past the American taxpayer.

The proposals don’t put in place a balanced budget until 2037 – 27 years from now. I don’t think we’ll be able to get away with that. Long before then, I think the world will demand much more fiscal sanity from us…plus, when you put things that far out, its easy for Congresscritters to cease being mindful of the problem and start putting more spending back in. Just a little here and a little there, to begin with. Balancing the budget can’t be something to happen when my grand-daughter is 32…it must be an axe to fall on the head of Big Government before she gets to middle school. The budget should be balanced by 2015.

Our budget crisis is acute (the report does clearly state that, and that is a good service, in and of itself), but the report still tries to soften the blow. By so doing, however, they’ve set their own plan up for failure. A century of fiscal idiocy has now to be paid for – there is, as the report notes, no painless way out of it. More to the point, there is no way out of it which won’t be very, very painful. The authors of the report, however, still live in enough of the Big Government dream world that they imagine we can get out of this without agony. Might as well bite the bullet and have done – if we balance the budget by 2015, we’ll have one or two really bad years, but then ever better years thereafter. The proposals here are basically a means of spreading out the pain so that things never get horribly bad, but also never get terribly good.

All in all, it is the plan of the Ruling Class to save itself from its fiscal irresponsibility. We should use it as a basis for discussion rather than a blue print for action. As this was set up by Obama and the Democrats, we can hang on to the good bits and dare them to defy their own creation – meanwhile and all the while trying to inject even stronger and deeper reforms to fundamentally end the era of Big Government.

UPDATE: Bryan Preston over at Pajamas Media dissects the plan.