Yep:

Who appointed over 40 ambassadors on the sole basis of campaign contributions, or has as many lobbyists in government as did any President in memory? And who releases touchy news—whether increased unemployment or trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in civil courts—on Friday nights, or wants his Democratically-controlled Congress to debate unpopular legislation on Saturday nights?

You see where this is going. Prophets fall harder than normal politicians. When you claim that seas recede and planets cool before your presence, and that Latin mottos, new presidential candidate seals, neo-classical victory trophies, and faux-Greek temple sets are the appropriate backdrops for Your speeches, then you raise the bar a bit high. Obama is not necessarily any more partisan than a Nixon or Reagan or Bush, only just as partisan—but when he claimed something quite different.

You’ve been had, liberals – We Republicans (a few week kneed members, aside) figured it out right away. Centrists started waking up to it a few months back. Where are you liberals? Still hoping your tin-plated, false god will pull the rabbit out of the hat?

At best, Obama is the blind tool of corrupt interests. At worst, he’s an active abettor of corrupt interests. No matter how you slice it, liberals, your only hope is to ditch him, fast.

Of course, I don’t expect you to do so – servile as you are, you’ll just keep swallowing whatever Obama feeds y ou.

I don’t watch the show anymore, but I am glad to see they are starting to use their skits to call attention to his incompetence and poor judgement.

http://widgets.nbc.com/o/4727a250e66f9723/4b0b3923c720ae04/4b0a7ace1bcb4969/74eefc46/-cpid/d71db494133f3a25

To the public option:

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, speaking in that trademark sonorous baritone, utters a simple statement that translates into real trouble for Democratic leaders: “I’m going to be stubborn on this.”

Stubborn, he means, in opposing any health-care overhaul that includes a “public option,” or government-run health-insurance plan, as the current bill does. His opposition is strong enough that Mr. Lieberman says he won’t vote to let a bill come to a final vote if a public option is included.

We’ll have to see how firm he stands – after all, the left has been after his scalp for a while and might force Reid to threaten Lieberman’s committee assignments if he doesn’t toe the line. On the other hand, Lieberman just might figure that any loss of committee will be temporary – either the Democrats will win a reduced, need-Lieberman-majority after 2010, or the GOP will have won a narrow, better-make-sure-of-Lieberman majority. We’ll have to see – but, meanwhile, this does bode well for our ability to prevent the liberals from forging the shackles of slavery for us…

Politico reports on the recent Republican Governors Association meeting:

While Republicans posted two hard-fought gubernatorial victories on Nov. 3, McDonnell’s path to victory is the one that most encourages the GOP, a remarkable case of a social conservative who made his name in politics as an abortion opponent yet managed to reverse a Democratic trend in Virginia and shellack his opponent by nearly 18 percent while largely steering clear of cultural issues.

As rejuvenated GOP governors gathered at a resort outside Austin for their annual strategy session there was little doubt who they wanted to spotlight. McDonnell was shown off at nearly every public event, paraded before the reporters, consultants and lobbyists here as the example of how Republicans can find swing state success in the Obama era.

There are two lessons we can take out of the McDonnell victory:

1. Run away from social issues and talk up the economy.

2. Remain firm on social issues but also hammer the Democrats on the economy and government reform.

If we take “1”, we’ll lose. While some people of RINOish tendencies might want to pretend they can win without social conservative support, the plain fact of the matter is that McDonnell won his crushing victory because he had on board social conservatives, economic conservatives and independents who don’t feel strongly either way, but who like to vote for people who appear trustworthy – had McDonnell abandoned his social conservatism, he might not have won at all, and if he did win, it would have been by a narrow margin.

So, there is a “McDonnell Path” to victory for the GOP – but it requires courage; the courage to stand fast for what one believes is right while also working hard to appeal to people who might not be with you on all issues, but are open to supporting you because of the plans you bring to the table.

Gee, I wonder if anyone out there saw this?

The other big story for the week could be the revision to third-quarter growth figures. Last month, the Commerce Department said real gross domestic product grew at a 3.5% annualized rate, the first gain in a year. On Tuesday, that figure is likely to be revised to about 2.8%.

The revision comes from more complete data. In the first go-around, the government statisticians must estimate many of the key inputs for September, including foreign trade, inventories and construction spending. Now that those data have been released, it’s clear the first estimates were too big.

I’ll bet it eventually goes down even further than that. Its all smoke and mirrors, good people. And, liberals, don’t think I’m just blaming Obama – the whole world went off on a case of the stupids. If you think we’ve been purblind idiots, well we’ve got nothing on the Chinese! They have been printing up a storm and forcing banks to make bad loans and generally doing everything they can to make believe that they aren’t in a complete economic collapse. They are aided and abetted by non-Chinese investors who are running around the world talking up how great the Chinese are doing and how wealth is switching from West to East and that China is the engine of global growth (they have a per-capita GDP in line with such economic powerhouses as Albania and Turkmenistan).

So, there is plenty of blame to go around – but, people, we need to wake up here. We’ve been taken for a ride by bankers and bureaucrats and their hope is that things will recover by magic before the majority figures it out and gets the tar and feathers ready. We are still – by far – the richest and most powerful nation on earth. We have the labor, skills and materials to entirely dominate the global economy as we have from 1945 until now. All we have to do is get to work – making, mining and growing our own things; we do that, and we’ll simply leave the rest of the world in the dust…but, even so, benefiting the world because an America growing richer is an America with markets for foreign goods and wealth to invest in foreign enterprises (as opposed to now, when we invest make-believe money in return for phony-baloney profits to propel mythical GDP growth).

Its our choice – as Lincoln said a century and a half ago, the only people who can destroy the United States are we Americans. We can either revive ourselves or be the author of our own destruction.

Never quit:

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same. – Ronald Reagan

It can all be lost, good people: if we don’t fight for it, right now, then American liberty will become a relic of the past.

Who really thought that KSM and the like would ever show up in a US court?

On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee met to question Attorney General Eric Holder about his decision to prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others in criminal courts rather than military tribunals. As the father of Todd Beamer, who died on United Airlines Flight 93, I was able to attend that hearing…

…The committee, chaired by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.), displayed the division in our country not only visually—the Democrats were seated on the left and the Republicans on the right—but in every aspect of the proceedings. I expected that some members would agree with Mr. Holder and that others would have challenging questions about his decision. What I did not anticipate was the level of partisanship showed by the majority party. It seemed clear to me and other family members of victims that party loyalty is trumping concern for America’s security interests…

…During the proceedings a young lady, dutifully attentive, sat with a stack of paper about 15 inches high on her lap. The papers contained names, single spaced, of some 100,000 people who signed a letter in opposition to this decision. This young woman, Jill Regan, lost her dad, Donald J. Regan, FDNY of the Bronx, who died trying to save others on 9/11. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Al.) asked that those names be entered into the record at the end of the session. It was agreed, but by that time the chairmen and most of the Democrats were already gone. I grieved for her—and for all of us—anew.

Why are we doing this? To placate the left. The kook left has made it clear that they want this because it will, in their mind, allow them to put President Bush and the United States on trial. Normally, such asinine views are shunted aside, but Holder is a kook leftist, himself, and thus found merit in the idea. Meanwhile, the Democrat party simply will not call their own to account – rather than cause a moments discomfort to Obama and his Administration, Democrats go along with the worst decision this Administration has made.

Such have we come to – that the enemies of America will be helped by the American government to attack America.

Catholic, Orthodox and Evangelicals come together to commit to core principles regarding human life, the family and rendering unto God and Caesar:

…We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them. These truths are:

1. the sanctity of human life

2. the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife

3. the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

Inasmuch as these truths are foundational to human dignity and the well-being of society, they are inviolable and non-negotiable…

If you are interested in knowing more, and in signing the Declaration, go here.

They’ve just made things worse:

…Our fiscal situation has deteriorated rapidly in just the past few years. The federal government ran a 2009 deficit of $1.4 trillion—the highest since World War II—as spending reached nearly 25% of GDP and total revenues fell below 15% of GDP. Shortfalls like these have not been seen in more than 50 years.

Going forward, there is no relief in sight, as spending far outpaces revenues and the federal budget is projected to be in enormous deficit every year. Our national debt is projected to stand at $17.1 trillion 10 years from now, or over $50,000 per American. By 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) analysis of the president’s budget, the budget deficit will still be roughly $1 trillion, even though the economic situation will have improved and revenues will be above historical norms…

…Mr. Obama and his advisers say they understand these concerns, but the administration’s policy choices are the equivalent of steering the economy toward an iceberg. Perhaps the most vivid example of sending the wrong message to international capital markets are the health-care reform bills—one that passed the House earlier this month and another under consideration in the Senate. Whatever their good intentions, they have too many flaws to be defensible.

First and foremost, neither bends the health-cost curve downward. The CBO found that the House bill fails to reduce the pace of health-care spending growth. An audit of the bill by Richard Foster, chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, found that the pace of national health-care spending will increase by 2.1% over 10 years, or by about $750 billion. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s bill grows just as fast as the House version. In this way, the bills betray the basic promise of health-care reform: providing quality care at lower cost.

And where are we, right now? Well, our policy makers are desperately trying to stave off the inevitable:

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reports Core deflation in the US continues to gather pace

Core inflation for factory goods in the US fell to minus 0.6pc in October from a year earlier, edging the country closer towards Japanese-style deflation despite massive monetary stimulus.

Janet Yellen, the head of the San Francisco Fed, said emergency measures had prevented the US economy from sliding into a “black hole of deflation”, insisting that it is still far too early to talk of tightening policy.

We’re in a depression and the government is desperately trying to prevent the price and wage deflation necessary as part of the process of getting out of this mess. They want people to maintain their current wage levels (even though unemployment is going through the roof); they want people to maintain their current mortgages (even though housing prices are dropping like a rock); they are printing money like mad in hopes that it will keep prices high. And all of it won’t work – it can’t work. There isn’t in the United States the actual wealth to justify the pre-depression prices of goods, services and labor. The sooner we let the crash finish its business, the sooner we can all get back to work rebuilding our wealth.

All the Democrats are doing is putting off the day of reckoning – and ensuring that when it comes, it will be worse than it had to be.

In the form of hacked e mails and documents:

The UK-based Hadley Climate Research Unit (CRU), at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, is reported to have {suffered} a security breach which has resulted in many confidential emails and files being uploaded to the internet.

A 61MB zip file containing information stolen from one of the world’s leading climate research {centers}, was posted onto an anonymous FTP server in Russia, accompanied by a note saying:

We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps.

We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents

In total it is believed that the unknown hacker accessed 1079 emails (some of which are marked as “Highly Confidential”) and over 3800 documents. A spokesman for the Climate Research Unit confirmed the hack to the BBC.

The big news?

Some of the most embarrassing e-mails are attributed to Philip Jones, the Director of the CRU; Keith Briffa, his assistant; Michael E. Mann of the University of Virginia; Malcolm Hughes at the University of Arizona; and others. One such e-mail makes references to the famous “hockey-stick” graph published by Mann in the journal Nature:

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline…

The defenders of AGW are saying that the e mails and documents are not representative of all the data; that they are being taken out of context; that they are being misinterpreted…but if you go through the links and read for yourself, I think you’ll conclude – as I have – that the AGW were deliberately lying at least as early as 1999 in the data they presented to buttress their case. Since then, its only gotten worse – they were hiding a decline in the rate of temperature increase in 1999…since then, temps have remained flat or gone down.

Temperatures do appear to have risen in the last third of the 20th century. From what I can gather, it seems that the rise was natural, cyclical and is now receding. The theory of antrhopogenic global warming was cooked up by alarmists to sell books and garner donations and grants – it became so large and entrenched over time that politicians decided to join in rather than oppose, it being easier to make noises about environmentalism and appropriate money than to go through the tedious process of actually finding out what is going on.

It has been the largest and most expensive hoax in human history and every person who was responsible for advancing it should be heavily fined in order to pay back the costs incurred – Al Gore, we’re especially looking at you.

UPDATE: Bishop Hill has a list running of the e mails and what they contain. Sample:

Tim Osborn discusses how data are truncated to stop an apparent cooling trend showing up in the results (0939154709). Analysis of impact here. Wow!