According to this article in The Hill, Murkowski is supremely confident that once the ballots are all counted, she’ll emerge as the winner. Miller, on the other hand, needs a gigantic showing in the absentee balloting to come out ahead – which is still possible, but growing ever less likely. What is the best way to handle this?

For Miller, it is a matter of figuring out when to call it quits, if the initial count goes against him. If Miller gets reduced to arguing that “Murkonski” is unclear in voter intent, then he’ll only look like a petulant child who didn’t get his wish for Christmas. Any ballot that is obviously screwed up, out it goes – but any thing reasonably written on the ballot which indicates a candidate should not be disallowed.

Whatever one wishes to think about Murkowski (“contempt” is what mostly comes to my mind), she did a great job of hustling up votes – and those voters who cast ballots for her must have their will respected. Sure, it is likely that a lot of Murkowski’s votes were from Democrats who just wanted to poke a stick in the GOP’s eye, but votes are votes regardless of what motivates them. If Murkowski pulls off this unlikely victory, then that is good – for her.

For us Republicans it is another matter. What Murkowski did was turn a sure GOP victory in to a possible GOP defeat. This goes beyond the pale, as far as I’m concerned – and as she was rejected by the GOP base and given victory (if that happens) by virtue of Democrat votes, she’s not someone we can rely upon. In other words, if she wins, we don’t want her.

Kick her out of the caucus. If the Democrats want her, that is fine – they can have her (but, watch your backs, Democrats). The difference between 46 and 47 GOP Senators is trivial – especially as, back in our caucus, we can pretty much rely upon Murkowski cutting us off at the knees when the chips are down. Better to have her out and so not relied upon to begin with. Additionally, why clutter up committee seats with a disloyal RINO when we can have a conservative in there? Murkowski brings no benefit to the GOP caucus while bringing all sorts of risk – she turned on us, and we’d be worse than fools to say “come back in, all is forgiven” if she pulls it off in Alaska.

HAT TIP: The Other McCain

From Investors Business Daily:

…A majority of the public wants Washington to stop the spending that has exploded the budget deficit. In a listing of top priorities for Congress, cutting the deficit by cutting spending came in No. 1, cited by 53%. (Fully 73%, including a majority of Democrats, said this is a “high priority.”)…

Now, fellow conservatives, this isn’t a blank check – the Democrats and their lapdogs in the MSM will demonize any cuts proposed or made, and the public will fall for at least some of this, but there is a clear understanding among the public that spending is way out of control. What we have to do as we cut is first find the most ridiculous spending to frame the debate about cutting, in and of itself, and then ensure that as we cut we are also putting together positive proposals to relieve the pressure on the American people.

There is so much utter BS in government spending that we can find a half dozen absurd things and use them as the poster boys of government waste – keep hammering home that when Democrats oppose cuts, what they are doing is opposing cuts to this sort of profligacy. But we can just be out there saying, “no!”; we also have to find things to say, “yes”, to.

In this, I think that a judicious balance of tax cuts plus moving money from less popular programs to more popular programs can help. The tax cuts are obvious – someone who is hurting financially will appreciate a little less being taken by Uncle Sam…but then we can also take money from, say, the Department of Commerce (finding something really stupid they are doing to eliminate) and putting it in to things like school aid or relief for home owners under the gun due to unemployment.

We hit them with the one-two punch: here’s your idiocy, Democrats and here is the great thing we want to do. We can win the debate all down the line and essentially force them to go along with us or, even better, make them defend the Big Government waste they have created over the decades (as we look for the stupid things to cut, we should be looking in to things very much favored by some left wing base constituencies – this will put pressure on the left to save their bacon, and they’ll turn about and pressure Democrats to keep the gravy train flowing).

Once we get the ball rolling on spending cuts coupled with priority changes we can then build up a strong constituency for more of the same. We have to do this, good people – the United States is bankrupt. We have until about 2015 to get our fiscal house in order or we’ll be forced in to sovereign default. Make no mistake about it, it is that bad. While the people presiding over the disaster will relentlessly assert that there is no danger of default, the facts are otherwise – we either balance our budget, or we crash very hard.

Now, to work.

From the Wall Street Journal:

An inflationary tide is beginning to ripple through America’s supermarkets and restaurants, threatening to end the tamest year of food pricing in nearly two decades.

Prices of staples including milk, beef, coffee, cocoa and sugar have risen sharply in recent months. And food makers and retailers including McDonald’s Corp., Kellogg Co. and Kroger Co. have begun to signal that they’ll try to make consumers shoulder more of the higher costs for ingredients…

We’re in a deflationary spiral due to the economic collapse but our Keynesians from the Federal Reserve on down are determined to spark inflation – because, seriously, they believe that this is a good thing. That it is, actually, a massive tax which hits the very poorest people hardest (and, most incredibly, transfers their paltry wealth to the richest among us) entirely escapes the Keynesians. While the Keynesians aren’t getting what they want out of monetary policy and all the borrowing and spending (ie, increased employment), they are going to get at least part of the inflation.

Here’s why: when you print up all these trillions of dollars, those who hold the most dollars become determined to preserve the real value of their wealth. This translates in to such people moving their wealth from dollars to commodities. Gold is the most noticeable item – and you’ll note that it has skyrocketed to a ruinous level – but all such things of real value have also risen in price. At the end of the day, those who actually need these things to produce goods are forced to transfer the additional cost to the consumer – so, get ready for a bout of retail price inflation.

The squeeze is being placed on the average, working man and woman – in order to prop up a dead financial system our wealth is being handed over to the banksters who are then turning around and using it to push up the price of things we need to live.

If we don’t end this cycle soon then we will get a replay of the late 1970’s – “stagflation”. This,for you youngsters out there, is where we get what Keynesian theory says is impossible: economic stagnation coupled with high inflation. That it already happened once before should have driven the nail in Keynes’ economic coffin, but it didn’t…and now slavish devotion to these stupid theories is going to put us right back in to 1979’s economy. Welcome back, Carter, indeed.

From CNS News:

Once Republicans take control of the House of Representatives this January, even minority Democrats will be able to offer amendments to reduce spending for all spending legislation that comes before the chamber — something that was not allowed under House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

This promise was reiterated on Thursday by Rep. Greg Walden(R-Ore.), who has been put in charge of the G.O.P House transition team, which will oversee the transfer of power from the Democrats to the Republicans…

While the natural inclination is to just stick it to the Democrats as bad as they stuck it us under the Pelosi regime, the better long term move is to free up the House and allow more open debate and voting on the floor. It is even ok if, from time to time, a Democrat amendment makes it in to the final bill because of this. Better to demonstrate to the American people that there’s a new and better way of doing the peoples’ business in DC.

We should never be afraid to argue our positions in open floor debate and then allow an up or down vote – our ideas are better and far more popular so we’ll very much more often win than lose…and by doing it this way, we’ll earn the respect of the American people.

From The Hill:

Soon-to-be Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) is being pressed by taxpayer groups to slash the salaries of House lawmakers.

Cutting member pay would show voters the new GOP majority in the House is going to lead by example in their efforts to rein in spending and start with their own wallets, say officials with three prominent taxpayer advocacy groups in Washington, D.C…

I can see no objection to this – even a symbolic 10% or so pay cut for elected officials would be good. A way of expressing solidarity with the people who are hurting so much due to the economic mess. I hope the House GOP runs with this.

From Twitter:

Driven by the urgency of creating jobs & protecting #hcr, #wsr, Social Security & Medicare, I am running for Dem Leader.

The gift that keeps on giving! Thank you, Nancy – nothing could please us more than having you to kick around for a little while longer.

This is the arrogance of power, my friends – utterly crushed and rejected by the American people, Pelosi can’t think of any other response than to try and worm her way back in to power. That she’s led her party off the cliff doesn’t even register – Pelosi wants power, and so she’s going to go for it.

Worse, for the Democrats, is the fact that she likely wouldn’t have done this if she hadn’t already lined up majority support for her effort in the House Democrat caucus…which means that the survivors of the Democrats, at least a majority, cannot think of anyone better in their caucus than Pelosi! The “fresh faces” of the Democrat Party in 2011 will be….Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, with dynamic, new support from the likes of Barney Frank, Charles Rangel, Jerry Brown and Andrew Cuomo.

We couldn’t write a better script if we tried…

UPDATE by Matt Margolis: What I find interesting about this is that this move tells us, the the very least, she isn’t retiring, as previously theorized. And what I particularly like about that is that the Republican Majority can now open up an ethics investigation into her abuse of military planes for personal travel.

From CNN:

Keith Olbermann, MSNBC’s primetime firebrand host, has been suspended indefinitely for violating the ethics policies of his employer earlier this year when he donated to three Democrats seeking federal office, MSNBC announced Friday.

“I became aware of Keith’s political contributions late last night. Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay,” MSNBC President Phil Griffin said in a statement…

Ok, so is MSNBC trying to keep up some sort of pretense of objectivity? I mean, come on – Olberman is a sock puppet for the DNC, so what is the harm of him kicking a few bucks their way? This just seems silly to me – firing Olberman makes sense on a lot of levels (he’s insane, his ratings are lousy, that sort of thing) but to fire him for giving what is actually a fairly small amount of money to Democrats? Absurd.

UPDATE: On Twitter, suggestions for a replacement host.

A video retrospective on Olberman’s career:

Noted over at Zero Hedge:

The inverse silver lining to today’s jobs report that will be lost in the shuffle of what is perceived as a good NFP (despite consistent initial jobless claims of around 450K, which means that either there is a massive data error, or the rate of job creation has somehow surged) is that labor force participation has now dropped to the lowest rate it has been since 1984, at 64.5%…

The upshot of all this is that if we had labor force participation at the levels of a couple years ago the unemployment rate would be about 11.6%, rather than the official rate of 9.6% announced today. It is also a bit odd that we got this number of private sector job growth when new claims for unemployment have remained in the 450,000 range for so long – but, whether data is being manipulated or not, the harsh facts on the ground are that things are pretty lousy.

Real job creation will not resume until we set in place policies which allow for the creation of new wealth – ie, the process of making, mining and growing things. Hopefully the new Republican House will be able to force through such policies, but we’ll be forced to fight through the blank incomprehension of this by Senate Democrats and President Obama. In other words, don’t look for any significant improvement for a while.

From MSNBC:

President Obama is open to the idea of discussing an extension of Bush-era tax cuts for all income levels, which one trader said could prevent massive year-end tax selling by investors…

The thing to keep in mind here is “2012 Democrats”. These are Senate Democrats who were elected in the 2006 Democrat victory and now face the music in 2012…with the economy likely to still be sluggish (at best) and Obama likely engaged in (once again, at best) a difficult fight for re-election, these Democrats will want to bring home some “TEA Party” votes to insulate themselves from the Democrat party, as a whole. The reality is that even though there will be only 42 Republican Senators in the “lame duck” session there are enough “2012 Democrats” to put an extension proposal over the top. If Obama is serious about this, he’s just acknowledging harsh reality.

As it is, this the best thing we can do immediately for the economy – give people and businesses the certainty that in 2011 their taxes will not go up. That, in and of itself, will inject a bit of confidence and might even get us back on a genuine growth track by the second half of 2011. Strong growth – ie, growth good enough to get unemployment down to 8% or below – probably can’t come before 2012 (we’ve a very deep hole to dig out of), and won’t come even then unless the new House GOP can force through additional tax cuts, as well as very large spending cuts.

This, however, is the first fruit of victory – there will be more, provided we don’t compromise with Obama and his Democrats. It is Democrats and their liberal, Big Government programs which are supplicants before us – they have to give, and give in a lot, on taxes and spending and only after they do that can we consider going along with anything they might desire. To the victors go the spoils – and in this case, the spoils of political war is getting to set the legislative agenda.