Corruption walking around daring us to challenge it – they think we won’t or can’t do anything about it:

The Louisiana senator who secured a $100 million bonus in Medicaid payments for her state in the proposed Senate health care bill will host a fundraiser for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid next month in New Orleans, the Times-Picayune is reporting this morning.

Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office told the paper the event was planned “several weeks ago.”

Which is either entirely BS, or it just means that Reid’s bribe to Landrieu was set in motion weeks ago.

This is the sort of nonsense we have to get rid of if we are to save our nation – they are wrecking the land patriots died for just to keep themselves in the lap of luxury and at the levers of power.

That this passed out of a Democrat-controlled committee shows that a lot of Democrats are looking towards 2010 and seeing doom in their future if things don’t change:

In an unprecedented defeat for the Federal Reserve, an amendment to audit the multi-trillion dollar institution was approved by the House Finance Committee with an overwhelming and bipartisan 43-26 vote on Thursday afternoon despite harried last-minute lobbying from top Fed officials and the surprise opposition of Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who had previously been a supporter.

The measure, cosponsored by Reps. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), authorizes the Government Accountability Office to conduct a wide-ranging audit of the Fed’s opaque deals with foreign central banks and major U.S. financial institutions. The Fed has never had a real audit in its history and little is known of what it does with the trillions of dollars at its disposal.

The Frank switch is no surprise – like all Democrat leaders, he talks a great game about being with the people, but he’s actually just a tool of the elite. He does what he’s told and when he’s told to do it. When the Fed audit was no more than the quixotic effort of Ron Paul, it was ok to make noises in its favor – once such an audit becomes a possibility, everyone who is in the hip pocket of the Fed and banks has to fall in to place. Frank had a choice – do the right thing, or do what helps him maintain his seat-for-life (as long as he obeys): it was never in doubt.

As long time readers know, there is not a lot of respect on my part for Ron Paul – he tends towards the kooky and consorts with people I consider a bit unsavory. On the other hand, he’s an excellent gadfly and does tend to at least get people thinking and talking. This move to audit the Fed is the best idea to come out of DC in decades, and I wish to congratulate Rep. Paul not just on the idea, but on the dedication he has shown in advancing it. As long as Paul is pushing this audit, he can rely upon my ardent support.

The fact that we even have such a powerful agency un-audited after nearly a century of existence shows how bad its become in the United States. Our ancestors would be disgusted with us if they were brought back to the life of this world. Since when do Americans allow something like the Fed to exist? Whence comes this power to print money in whatever amounts it wants? This power to make back room deals with foreign princes and potentates? This power to decide what interest rates will be?

Audit the Fed – because that will show just how bad it is, and that will give us the political power to disband it. Of course, that means that the current power structure – led by liberal Democrats – will fight tooth and nail against this happening. Lets see if we can get this to the House floor – if we can do that, then we’ll have won a real victory.

Small business loans evaporate:

Eight months after President Obama began prodding the nation’s banks to increase their small business lending, the loan numbers continue to move in the opposite direction.

The 22 banks that got the most help from the Treasury’s bailout programs cut their small business loan balances by a collective $10.5 billion over the past six months, according to a government report released Monday.

They are taking our tax payer money and either hoarding it against the massive losses certain to hit in 2010, or using it to gamble on the current stock and commodities bubbles. This is what happens when you give money away – “free” money is never used as you would have wished. This is especially true if you give the money to the very same, irresponsible fools who screwed things up. If you’re not clear on this, give $100 to a teenager on the hope that he’ll buy books on mathematics and philosophy with it.

HAT TIP: Mish’s

By bribing wavering Democrats with your money. How else?

Counting two independents, Democrats control 60 Senate seats. Three moderate Democrats have been cagey about their intentions, although none of them has announced a plan to defect. Officials disclosed during the day that Reid had included in the bill a political sweetener for one of the three, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, in the form of $100 million to help her state cover health care costs for the poor.

One of the GOP points against the Reid bill is that it shifts costs to the States. Democrats say it won’t. Reid sends $100 million to Louisiana to cover the increased costs. Someone is lying. You get three guesses as to whom it is.

Outside of that dishonesty, this is how our liberals work. They know their plans aren’t popular. They know they won’t work. But the point of the plan is to gain control and they don’t care how they gain the control. As long as liberals end up with the power, how its actually done is trivial – and so bribing a Senator with taxpayer pork in order to secure her vote (and, think about it: she’ll then take that money and use it to bribe Louisianans to vote to re-elect her…so she can do them some more!) is a natural.

We can’t count on blue dogs or moderate Democrats – our only hope is to win so big next year that in order for Obama to govern at all, he’ll have to sign off on a repeal of this liberal-fascist power grab.

UPDATE: $850 billion? Try again – its $2.5 trillion.

Why do they? Hanson reviews:

The furor

The AP supposedly hired 11 fact-checkers to discredit Ms. Palin’s memoir (Did Fox News hire 11 to question the very questionable things found in the two Obama memoirs?)

Bloggers post on Palin’s live interviews minute by minute; few, if any, opponents of Barack Obama do the same.

Every statement she makes is parsed, to prove she is ignorant or parochial—though most of her so-called lapses are the sort of things Biden and Obama are accustomed to committing weekly.

So what?

The list could go on, but two fundamental questions arise:

1) What drives this fear and loathing?

2) How does one, then, assess the Palin phenomenon?

Question one is easy, and we can be systematic in our exegeses:

Read the whole thing.

My take: they hate her because she’s not one of them. Mostly on the left but with some on the right, the correct perception is that Palin doesn’t care what they think and is entirely uninterested in what they have to say. Failed people who consistently get things wrong are not to be listened to even if they have television shows, syndicated columns and a shelf of books to their name.

I’ll add: she’s also proving herself vastly smarter than her critics.

Doug Hoffman thinks so – and certainly wants to check carefully, just to be sure:

As evidence surfaces, we find out that reported results from election night were far from accurate. ACORN and the unions did their best to try and sway the results to Obamacare supporter Bill Owens.

I was forced to concede after receiving two pieces of grim news – – down 5,335 votes with 93 percent of the vote counted on election night – and barely won my stronghold in Oswego County. On Election Night, the information we received was far different from what we received this week!

Rest assured, they will not succeed, and I am therefore revoking my statement of concession.

That is why I am writing you today. Recent developments leave me to wonder who is scheming behind closed doors, twisting arms and stealing elections from the voters of NY-23.

I’m sure you are as dismayed as I am to learn of the mischief that took place in Oswego and neighboring counties. We know this would not be the first time for the ACORN faithful to tamper with democracy.

Now it’s time to actually count every legal ballot and I need your help to ensure the people of NY-23 get the Congressman THEY ELECTED. Please donate now to help me ensure every vote is counted!

Our Democrats are used to both stealing elections and having our side just quietly accept it. Its time for this to stop – our freedom is too important and, if we don’t fight back, the left will just press harder and harder with this. They have no problem with stealing the vote – to the left, we should be voting their way and thus their voter fraud is just correcting our error which we would correct ourselves, if we weren’t fools clinging to God and our guns.

Think of it as a war, my friends – they on the left want to win it all and win it for good, and if we don’t fight them all down the line, we’re just surrendering the field to them. Hit them back. Everywhere. All the time. With everything we’ve got.

Geesh – you’d think by now they’d vet a bit for this:

I previously blogged the tax problems of Lael Brainard, President Obama’s nominee to be Undersecretary of the Treasury for International Affairs. The tax problems are (1) twelve late payments of real estate and personal property taxes, and late payment of unemployment taxes; (2) failure to timely file employment eligibility verification forms for her household help; and (3) failure to substantiate home office deductions. Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus today annnounced that he would support the nomination and that the committee would soon vote on the nomination.

But, then again, if the Democrats are just going to keep approving the nominees in spite of incompetence and criminal activity, I guess it doesn’t matter – Obama should nominate a murderer, just to see how far he can go. The rest of us would like to know if there’s a limit to what Democrats will put up with…

This was amusing, does anyone really believe that Obama is angry about the leaks of his alleged Afghanistan deliberations?

“I think I am angrier than Bob Gates about it, partly because we have these deliberations in the Situation Room for a reason – because we are making decisions that are life-and-death, that affect how our troops will be able to operate in a theater of war. For people to be releasing information during the course of deliberation — where we haven’t made final decisions yet — I think is not appropriate.” – Barack Hussein Obama

Ben Nelson injects a note of reality in he Reid bill:

Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, and one of three Democrats who have said they might not be in favor of starting debate on the big health care legislation, issued a statement on Wednesday seeking to clarify his view on procedural votes.

In his statement, Mr. Nelson repeated his longstanding position: He wants to read the bill that is now being completed by the majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, before he decides how he will vote on a motion to bring the bill to the Senate floor.

“As I’ve said many times before I won’t decide how I’ll vote on the motion to proceed until I know what I’m voting on,” Mr. Nelson said.

Which will shock and anger all good liberals – because if you take the time to read the bill the Republicans will find out what’s in it and then they’ll tell the people and before you know it, there’s massive opposition to the bill scaring off vulnerable Democrats. Much better if you just take Harry’s word that it’s a good bill.

But, good for Nelson – at least one Democrat doesn’t want to walk the plank for Obama, Reid and Pelosi.

I keep reporting this because it is becoming astounding:

Republican candidates maintain a six-point advantage over Democrats in the latest edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 44% would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate while 38% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent.

In my political experience – which goes back more than two decades – I’ve never seen the GOP leading in the “generic ballot” either by such a wide margin, nor over such a long period of time. The normal expectation is for a bit of flux in such matters – especially at a time like this when everything is up in the air and the GOP lacks firm leadership – but all we’re seeing for months now is the GOP maintaining an edge. And do keep in mind that these polls usually understate GOP strength.

Of course its still way early and of course 2010 can turn on a lot of different things – but right now I’m beginning to wonder if we should start thinking in terms of a big victory? It’ll have to be fought for, and fought for very hard…but if we do fight hard, why can we not score a victory of historic proportions? Perhaps the tide is not just turning in our favor, but that a GOP wave is building?

Time – and our actions – will tell.

UPDATE: And even liberal pollsters are picking up on Obama’s decline.