The troops are in the thick of it:

In a summer of suffering, America’s military death toll in Afghanistan is rising, with back-to-back record months for U.S. losses in the grinding conflict. All signs point to more bloodshed in the months ahead, straining the already shaky international support for the war.

Six more Americans were reported killed in fighting in the south — three Thursday and three Friday — pushing the U.S. death toll for July to a record 66 and surpassing June as the deadliest month for U.S. forces in the nearly nine-year war…

Keep them in your prayers – always remember that while we are safe here at home, the best of America is overseas, fighting for us.

Pajamas Media has the run-down on the absurd reasoning from Senator Leahy.

What is happening here is a desperate attempt by Democrats to make this go away – everything is falling apart for them and they don’t want to have a case which promises to upset their own side if pursued – they need donation and as much enthusiasm as they can get from their base. This would be eroded greatly if they went after the truth about the NBPP.

And so, law and justice will be set aside – Democrats have more important hings on their mind…such as their own power and wealth.

This is Obama’s America. How do you like it?

From Rasmussen:

…A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 68% of U.S. voters now believe the United States should continue to build a fence on the Mexican border. That’s up nine points from March when the Obama administration halted funding for the fence and the highest level of support ever.

Just 21% oppose the continued building of the border fence.

Support for the fence is strong across all demographic groups. But while 76% of Mainstream voters think the United States should continue to build the fence, 67% of the Political Class are opposed to it…

Not much more be said than that – the people who presume to rule in our name are, once again, completely off the ranch. Remember, even people like me who do favor a path to citizenship for illegals and a guest worker program are in favor of strict border security. It takes a complete out-to-lunch elitist to be opposed to border security.

And thus the real battle of 2010 – not so much Republican vs Democrat, but People vs Powerful. In this year, the GOP is just the convenient vehicle of popular discontent. And if the GOP doesn’t understand that they are being sent do DC to do the people’s will, then they will be in their turn tossed out.

It is time for we, the people to completely reclaim our government – to make it our servant, not our master.

UPDATE: Amnesty without a vote?

Because they just can’t stand the thought of having one less pro-abortion vote in the Senate:

…pro-life views run counter to the way in which Boxer has defended everything from taxpayer funding of abortions to partial-birth abortions in the Senate, refusing to vote for or allow even the most modest abortion limits most Americans support.

Kathy Kneer, president of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, told the Associated Press today that her group believes Boxer will come out on top in November because polls show a majority of California residents back legalized abortions.

But the victory she assuredly believes Boxer will win won’t come without a hefty pricetag: one million dollars…

Boxer’s opponent points out that her mother in law was advised to obtain an abortion – which would have meant no husband for Carly Fiorina. That is an important point to make – behind each “choice” is a dead human being, a life cut short – love and devotion for others removed from the world. Abortion is an act of despair which lasts as long as this world will last – we can never repair the mutilation of our society represented by the tens of millions of abortions. Love was given to the world, and it was taken away – and it cannot be made good, ever.

Abortion is also an act of enslavement for women, in to the bargain. A woman who chooses abortion has not made a stand for independence but has instead turned her body in to the merest implement for the pleasure of the most unworthy of men – those men who would see their own child aborted rather than exerting themselves to care for both mother and child.

There is no good in abortion – it is a wicked, inhuman practice. But it does have its defenders, such as Barbara Boxer. And the people and groups who rake it in off despair and death – such as Planned Parenthood – don’t want their gravy train interfered with. And so, they’ll spend bags of money backing their kept Senators – and, dear Americans, it is really your tax dollars at work here. Planned Parenthood is subsidized in part by taxpayers – and that frees up funds for PP to use in politics. Keep that in mind as this election season goes on – any such PP action in politics is your hard earned money.

It won’t work – the Culture of Death is on its last legs. Barbara Boxer is doomed. She is doomed by the utter failure of liberalism in California. Doomed by the rank corruption of the Democrat Party. Doomed by the worthlessness of the Culture of Death.

An unanswerable argument against the Democrat moves to pass a failed, rejected agenda through a lame duck session.

From Ramussen:

The Wisconsin Senate race is still a toss-up, with Republican Ron Johnson and incumbent Democrat Russ Feingold in a near tie.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Wisconsin shows Johnson with 48% support. Feingold, a member of the Senate since 1993, again picks up 46% of the vote…

This is pretty much unchanged from the last poll two weeks ago – but the really important thing here is that Feingold should be having a walk over in this race. This is his fourth run – he’s been a popular Senator in tune with the Wisconsin electorate. If Feingold is in trouble – and he is – then the entire Democrat party is on the brink of disaster.

From The Hill:

The House ethics committee announced 13 charges Thursday against Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), who is accused of breaking House rules as well as federal statutes.

If he were a Republican, the GOP would be calling for his resignation – as he’s a Democrat, that won’t happen unless his trial starts to adversely affect Democrat chances in November.

Representative Eric Cantor (R-VA), warns of the dangers should the Democrats attempt to ram through Obamunism between November and January:

…In the wake of the November election, the Democratic majorities of 2008 will be frozen in place until a new Congress is sworn in at the beginning of 2011. It appears likely that scores of defeated Democrats will head back to Washington to serve out their terms with nothing to lose. And with President Obama’s promises of tax increases, cap-and-trade, card check, and immigration reform left unfulfilled, what’s to stop Speaker Pelosi and Leader Reid from using the lame-duck session to pass the remaining parts of their agenda that their so-called moderates are currently too jittery to support?…

Not much – in a more rational time, we could rely upon good sense, good manners and a sense of patriotism to prevent a lame duck Congress from enacting an agenda just rejected at the polls. Trouble is that our Democrats have no sense, no manners and a highly atrophied sense of patriotism. Quite honestly, all that stands between us and a lame duck revolution are those Democrat Senators up for re-election in 2012 and already starting to look over their shoulders.

But Democrats will do such a thing at their extreme peril. The American people have a highly developed sense of fair play – indeed, it is some times a bit over-developed and leads to giving a someone a break who really doesn’t deserve it. But that is ok – if we are to err, then better to do so on the side of mercy and generosity. But the flip side of this is a white hot anger when someone really takes advantage of a generous heart.

There is a revolutionary ferment in America today – people are furious with a corrupt and out of touch Ruling Class. This looks as though it will strongly advantage Republicans in November. Not so much because everyone has falling back in love with the GOP (far from it), but that there is at least a perception that the GOP has learned some lessons and, at any rate, they aren’t the guys screwing things up at the moment. If the American people troop to the polls and return a GOP majority – or even just a strong GOP minority – then the expectation on the part of the people will be a strong modification in the course being pursued. If Democrats try to ram through the agenda which has failed, then a revolutionary ferment will explode in to revolutionary demands.

And it would not quiet down. It would not abate and become a non-issue by 2012. It would just mount higher and higher – at the end of the road for the use of a Lame Duck is the Democrat party being a dead duck. We’ll see what happens – but let no Democrat say they weren’t warned.

Mish points out just how out of whack the experts are getting – a whole pack of them predicted durable goods orders to rise:

Individual Forecasts 1.5 Percent or Greater

* Barclays Capital +1.5%

* BNP Paribas +4.0%

* Citi +1.6%

* Desjardins Group +2.0%

* High Frequency Economics +2.0%

* J.P. Morgan Chase +1.7%

* Janney Montgomery Scott +3.2%

* Landesbank Berlin +2.8%

* Nomura Securities Intl. +3.0%

* PineBridge Investments +2.5%

* Raymond James +2.0%

* RBC Capital Markets +2.3%

* Ried, Thunberg & Co. +1.5%

* Thomson Reuters/IFR +2.9%

* Wrightson Associates +1.5%

I’m sure that even the most financially uninstructed recognize a lot of those names – JP Morgan, Barclays, Citi. These aren’t just odd analysts out there no one listens to. This is the cream of the crop – the people who are supposedly really tuned in to what is going on. On the advice of such people, literally hundreds of billions of dollars will move this way or that.

And, so, what actually happened?

New Orders

New orders for manufactured durable goods in June decreased $2.0 billion or 1.0 percent to $190.5 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau announced today. This was the second consecutive monthly decrease and followed a 0.8 percent May decrease…

This is not just being a bit off. This isn’t predicting a 1.5% increase and having it come in at 1.3%. This is black and white – this is people who, for whatever reason, haven’t the foggiest notion of what is going on out there. Anyone who listened to the experts and acted accordingly got burned. You literally would have been better off just automatically doing the opposite of whatever they said.

It is my opinion that the elite of our economy are entirely out to sea – they were raised on fake money, usurious interest rates and Keynesian economic theory. Now that its all come a cropper, they simply don’t know what to do. They plug their data in to their Keynesian models and its supposed to come out This Way, but then it comes out That Way, instead. They are flabbergasted – FDR cured the Great Depression using the same policies as Obama and the Fed. Why isn’t it working?

I don’t think any of them will ever figure it out – that a line of economic nonsense was propagated for decades and no one really checked in to it (except a few stalwart followers of Hayek, who are now being vindicated all to heck and gone). What they’ll keep doing is just more of the same – there are rumors of another large “quantative easing” in the works. That is elite-speak for “fire up the printing presses, Benny, we need to have government take more lousy assets off our hands!”. If Democrats thought they could get away with it, they’d pass another trillion dollar stimulus bill. They aren’t stuck in a rut – they are shacked to an economic corpse.

Only a complete overturn of the Powers That Be offers a chance to change course and get us on track to real economic revival. Keep these clowns in power, and they’ll bankrupt us completely and still never figure out what went wrong.

No doubt about it, we’re in a fix as far as housing goes. While some short sighted analysts are pumping up recent data alleging a growth in home sales, the fact of the matter is that in raw numbers of houses sold, we’re clearly in a housing Depression. Prices continue to drop, foreclosures continue at a rapid pace, and the incidence of strategic default (ie, people walking away from homes they can afford because the market value is so much less than the mortgage balance) continue to rise. Rosy housing scenarios have us maintaining prices right about where they are now, but I fully expect major reductions in home prices unless we some how change the dynamics of the market.

Here is the terrible scenario – we’re already in the dumpster on home prices and as this dumpster spreads, it pushes more and more people “underwater” on their mortgages, thus stressing their willingness to keep up consumption and/or making them more likely to just walk away from their homes…

Read the rest over at Noonan for Nevada.