I happened to come across this poll over at Rasmussen on the Maryland Senate race:

…The latest Rasmussen Reports statewide telephone survey of Likely Voters shows Mikulski picking up 54% of the vote, while Wargotz earns 38% support. Four percent (4%) prefer some other candidate in the race, and another four percent (4%) are undecided…

So, done deal, right? Wargotz hasn’t got a chance – and, indeed, Rasmussen considers this race “Solid Democrat”. But a bit further in the poll results is this:

…Wargotz holds a 10-point lead among voters not affiliated with either major political party…

10 points! That is a lot – and even in deep Blue Maryland, you do need Independents to cobble together a majority. Meanwhile, a search of the past showed that in 2006 Mikulski picked up 65% of the general election ballot. She’s back 11 points from her last outing, and trailing among Independents. This race has not been put to bed, yet – and Wargotz is just our kind of guy:

…Like you, I am outraged by career politicians who care more about their political lives than those of the folks who elected them. Our government, founded in our U.S. Constitution, provides the means by which we can and will correct this. The line has been drawn and “We the People” is the battle cry for election 2010. All of us have had more than enough of “business as usual”…

Anyone who can help Wargotz out, should – there is much to draw our attention these days, but we must leave no stone unturned in fighting against Obama and his liberal Democrats. Especially if you live in a State with no Senate race, or your GOP candidate is cruising to victory, this is the time to stand up and be counted. A little bit now could be a lot, later.

If you do want to help out, you can go to Wargotz’ website.

The Democrats are resorting to acts of desperation:

The Florida Democratic Party sent out a mailer last week detailing Republican congressional challenger Allen West’s 2005 tax lien and court orders to pay delinquent credit card bills. West is challenging Democratic U.S. Rep. Ron Klein.

The mailer includes a reproduction of the $11,081 tax lien filed against West in Marion County, Indiana, and paid off four months later. The document, pulled from public records, includes a column titled “Identifying Number” that shows West’s nine-digit Social Security number…

A tax bill paid five years ago being dredged up to try and prove that West is some sort of shifty character…and they are doing this against a man who has served our nation in the military, and is of a family where three of the last four generations have offered military service. He’s a retired Lt. Colonel awarded the Bronze Star and holder of the Air Assault Badge. You Democrats are going to try to make out that West is dishonorable because of a tax bill he paid five years ago? And in doing this, you’ve gone and sent out his SSN to 10,000 Florida homes?

Goodness, this is a Ruling Class in complete melt-down…and this is the sort of dirty trick used in the last weekend of a close election to tip it slightly to one side. That this is coming out in mid-September means they’ve done their internal polling, know they are losing and trying to find some means of shaking up the race.

You’re toast, Democrats – get used to the taste of defeat.

Read it and weep, Democrats:

Since upsetting party-backed Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) in Delaware’s GOP Senate primary Tuesday, Christine O’Donnell has raised nearly $2 million online.

A source with knowledge of the campaign’s online fundraising operation said that not only is the money is coming in as fast as it did for Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) ahead of his special election, but that O’Donnell’s raising money online at a pace that’s two to three times faster than Sharron Angle in Nevada after her win in the primary…

O’Donnell’s people are saying the number of donors is about 30,000 – so, about $67 per donor. This is the people showing the Ruling Class that they are not intimidated.

This is, as I’ve said, a revolution – throw out the rule books. Don’t think that Delaware if Ever Blue and O’Donnell can’t win. Sure, its an uphill battle for her – but in 2010, literally anything is possible, and the fact that it was she, and no one else, who propelled a gigantic increase in GOP primary turnout and has now raised millions from average Americans shows that O’Donnell’s election is a strong possibility.

All we can really do at this point is just see what happens. Work for our side, do our bit – and let things come out as they will. But I think that 2010 will become a watch word in politics…a century from now, people will be asking at times of political crisis, “is another 2010 coming?”.

That is going to leave a mark.

Recovery Summer Update: Reno’s housing depression.

The Christine O’Donnell/Jimmy Carter quiz. Careful who you think is a kook, liberals.

Stop the fighting – we’re against the Democrats: “The object is to win fairly, by the rules – but to win.”

Cantor: Standing firm against tax increases.

The plan: Starve the beast of Big Government of funds.

Least surprising news of the day: Obama and Co to launch new attacks against TEA Party. Because the earlier attacks worked so well.

At times, it does seem that people can get more stupid by the day. The “de-baptism” craze in Britain is a case in point..its sort of a “I want to die” pledge not so much by people who wish to affirm their atheism, but by people who think that nonsense is good.

IMAO: “O’Donnell does seem like a complete nut so I don’t expect her to win by more than a couple percentage points.”

We hear the stories all the time – the dark hints that people on the right are just boiling on the edge of violence. As it turns out, of course, almost all such stories are false. Here is another example of this:

A recent Oklahoma abortion clinic bomb scare turns out to have been a false alarm…

…After an investigation from the Tulsa Police Department bomb technician, it was discovered that the package was not a bomb. Moreover, Linda Meek, the 63-year-old director of the abortion clinic, admitted to planting the “bomb” herself and reporting it to police. She is no longer employed at the facility and faces a federal lawsuit for intentionally giving “false and misleading information.” The media hammered on the story for hours before the truth came to light…

The narrative of the left is that we’re violent – and if we won’t conveniently confirm the narrative, they’ll just make it up. In this case, by planting a fake bomb and hoping to get the media to make a big issue of it. The MSM is usually willing to go along. Taking the very few acts of violence done over the years as a hook, they puff up any accusation of violence as “proof” of the liberal narrative.

The world we live in is simply full of lies – and not like it always has been. We’ve always had liars to contend with, but now they are woven in to the fabric of our society so that even people who should know better are often fooled by them. This state of affairs is no surprise as liberalism, itself, is based on a lie and can only be sustained by lies – as we are living now in the tail end of a dying liberal dominance, lies are found everywhere. From stories such as this all the way up to accusations of inherent American racism to frauds about the imminent death of the world – all lies, all designed to serve a lie, and all of them deforming the public debate.

In order to cure this we’ll have to be diligent in punishing those who lie. This particular lady is going to feel the heat, but the larger, societal liberalism will not, unless we change things, be called to account for their lies. We must hold them accountable as it is the only way the truth can emerge and become a guide in our decisions.

Perhaps – Marianne Moran in the Richmond Times-Dispatch discusses:

…A healthy government can only remain healthy when the people have more power and control over their lives and money, as they do in state government.

Our Founders anticipated a time in our nation where the federal government’s power would become out of balance — that time is now. However, the Founders, in their wisdom, did not leave the states powerless. They did provide a proper check and balance.

The Founders paved a road for the states to cross when Congress fails to represent the people. That road was paved in Article V of the U.S. Constitution, which expressly empowers states to call for a convention to propose a specific amendment…

And, indeed, it does:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress…

It would take application by 34 States – and from what I can tell, it doesn’t require the executive in any State for this to happen as the application is to be by the State legislatures (it would be an interesting case if popular referendum were used to make the application – in case some States proved unwilling while their people were). At any rate, it is just one of many mechanisms the Founders placed in the Constitution to provide a corrective to an overbearing central government.

Calling a Convention is a risky business – it should be kept in mind that while such a thing may be called for one purpose, it may decide to do something else, entirely…as long as the results are ratified by the States, the results stand. We could, if we wanted, re-write the whole thing. But I don’t think that would be necessary.

As noted in the linked article, the problem is not one of Democrats or Republicans so much as a a problem of power – the federal government has too much of it, and has consigned too much of it to the un-elected bureaucracy. We need to identify the best means of immediately stripping the federal government of power without causing too much disturbance in the system.

My favored approach would be forbid the writing of regulations by any other body than the legislature along with setting a time when the federal government will be forbidden from incurring debt. It’d be nice if we could also enforce a sound money policy, but I think that the first two things would go a long way towards the goal of redressing the imbalance of power.

A federal government where the legislators actually have to write every last bit of the bill rather than crafting vague directives for bureaucrats to flesh out would ensure that laws are more clear and direct in purpose and scope. Forbidding the issuance of government debt means that government will have to live within its means – politicians will be forced to either spend less, or directly burden the people with heavy taxes which would cause a political revolt at the polls.

Of course, nothing will ever be perfect – but I think it is time we gave serious consideration to a Convention, even if it does end up re-writing the whole thing.

I had linked to the Monty Python “Witch” scene for a bit of comic relief – but it seems to have been slowing down the blog in a really bad way – so, I took it down.

UPDATE: O’Donnell deftly turns aside the whole witch issue:

…”How many of you didn’t hang out with questionable folks in high school?” she asked fellow Republicans at a GOP picnic in southern Delaware on Sunday.

“There’s been no witchcraft since. If there was, Karl Rove would be a supporter now,” O’Donnell jokingly assured the crowd…

President Obama has a little trouble with the Declaration of Independence:

Uh, Barry, the word your searching for there is “Creator” – as in: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Is it really so hard to say that? That we have a Creator? That our rights come from Him? Or is it that you really figure that rights come from government?

We should also pay a bit of attention to where the President was – at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute…in other words, at a event based upon the separation of human beings by their ethnicity. A group which primarily judges people by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character. Given this, its not really surprising that Obama either doesn’t know or chooses not to acknowledge that God gives us our rights.

The Other McCain discusses the latest liberal attack on Christine O’Donnell – a clip from Bill Maher from 1999 which has O’Donnell stating that she dabbled in witchcraft some years prior – meaning, prior to 1999, and that means more than 11 years ago.

The usually smart John over at Powerline opines that this video clip completely kills off O’Donnell’s career. This is an odd statement to make as it is conventional wisdom that her career is already over. Remember? We’ve been told for a while now that O’Donnell has no chance, at all, of winning this race. What does a video clip of dabbling in witchcraft make a difference? If you’re already dead, then being shot doesn’t matter.

Unless, of course, there is this sneaking suspicion on the part of O’Donnell’s detractors that she can win and so we’d better find some way to ensure she loses, or we’re all going to look like idiots on November 2nd. Remember, it won’t be Democrats with egg on their faces if O’Donnell wins – it will be the GOP establishment plus that part of right blogosphere which is “realistic” and figures that we should tolerate the odd RINO in order to ensure, I guess, that Republicans hold the Senate committee chairmanships.

I’m figuring that in their heart of hearts, these people have noted the vastly increased GOP turnout in the primary over previous years and realize that they’ve got a genuine grass-roots movement going on in Delaware and, perhaps, that the whole concept of tolerating RINOs may be proved spurious…that we can, if we really want to, run conservative outsiders not just in deep red States, but everywhere.

Both McCain and Michelle Malkin dispose of the particular charge against O’Donnell – that a video statement of dabbling in witchcraft kills her chances. It is clear that the originally released video clip doesn’t put it in to context.

What seems to have happened is a discussion of Halloween in which O’Donnell has issues with Halloween and brings out her youthful experiences with witchcraft to buttress her case against it. How this is supposed to make her look like a lunatic is beyond me – sounds to me like she’s a person who has learned from her past and now uses her wisdom to make correct judgments. In other words, precisely what we need throughout government, and especially in the Senate.

Which of us, after all, have never dabbled in occult practices? Guess what, if you’ve ever read a horoscope and took it all all seriously, you have. Here at the age of 45, I summarily reject all of it – that which isn’t purely a scam is purely wicked. Meaning, it isn’t true – and if it is true, then you’re consorting with powers of evil which you should flee from. But waaaay back when, I felt the pull – including to using the ouija board and other idiocies. Am I to be held forever responsible for doing dumb things? If that is the case, then I want a full accounting of everyone else’s dumb actions and everyone to agree that even one, stupid mistake forever bars a person from holding a position of responsibility.

To me, this is all about the Establishment – and selected hangers-on who do buy the notion that conservatism is only true in certain red States – seeking a means of derailing the TEA Party – to keep it from becoming too large a success. Their long term hopes are that it will fade away before it conducts a revolution. They will be disappointed in both cases.

CROSS POSTED: at Noonan for Nevada.