Interesting:

Illinois Rep. Mark Kirk penned a memo to Republican poobah Fred Malek hoping to secure an endorsement from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for his Senate candidacy, according to a copy of the memo obtained by the Fix.

After noting that Palin will be in Chicago later this month to appear on “Oprah”, Kirk writes that “the Chicago media will focus on one key issue: Does Gov[ernor] Palin oppose Congressman Mark Kirk’s bid to take the Obama Senate seat for the Republicans?”

Kirk goes on to write that he is hoping for something “quick and decisive” from Palin about the race, perhaps to the effect of: “Voters in Illinois have a key opportunity to take Barack Obama’s Senate seat. Congressman Kirk is the lead candidate to do that.”

Malek confirmed the authenticity of the memo in an e-mail exchange with the Fix.

Kirk’s memo is tangible evidence of the power of Palin’s endorsement in a Republican primary. Kirk, a moderate by voting record in the House, is clearly very concerned about the negative impact a Palin endorsement of one of his primary opponents could have on his chances at being the party’s nominee for the seat being vacated by appointed Sen. Roland Burris (D).

Just the first instance of this, boys and girls – without TEA Party (and Sarah Palin is a TEA Party hero) support, any moderate to RINO GOPer out there might have a lot of trouble both getting nominated, and then winning in the Fall. Combinations and calculations are adjusting out there.

To Nevada Republicans, especially, but to all Republicans who are crowing loud today – Don’t get too confident.

Discuss last night’s GOP triumph; GOP prospects for 2010; how depressed liberals must be…anything that comes to mind.

UPDATE: For you Dems out there trying to spin the Owens win as some sort of counterbalance to NJ/VA:

You should pay attention to the fact that the Democrats weren’t just beaten in VA, but crushed…this was a blowout of historic proportions.

For you Dems out there trying to spin the Hoffman loss as a repudiation of Palin:

She locked down TEA Party support; mission accomplished.

UPDATE II: Pelosi thinks Democrats won. We’ll try to give her more such victories.

Russian saber rattling:

The timing here is beautiful. The exercises reportedly transpired during the 70th anniversary of the Russian invasion of Poland… also the same day that President Obama killed plans for Polish based missile defense.

The [Russian] armed forces are said to have carried out “war games” in which nuclear missiles were fired and troops practised an amphibious landing on the country’s coast. Documents obtained by Wprost, one of Poland’s leading news magazines, said the exercise was carried out in conjunction with soldiers from Belarus.

Russian general says Poland a nuclear ‘target’ The manoeuvres are thought to have been held in September and involved about 13,000 Russian and Belarusian troops.

Poland, which has strained relations with both countries, was cast as the “potential aggressor”.

Poland is scared, and for good reason. After decades of repressive Soviet occupation, the Poles invested everything in tightened defensive ties with NATO and the United States. Now the Russian Bear is once again pounding down their door, and — after Poland loyally committed whole battalions to both Afghanistan and Iraq — America is nowhere to be seen.

This is how Putin operates. He messages with force. These exercises could have been held anywhere in Russia’s yawing territorial expanse. Poland was chosen with reason, as it serves as a bulwark of freedom and Western values in an area Russia still considers its own.

Will Russia fight? Only if we make it 100% clear that we won’t stop them – right now, Russia is barely kept afloat by relatively high oil prices. Other than that, Russia’s got nothing going for it…and tyrannical regimes with not much going for them do often cast about for a foreign enemy to distract and unify the people. Now Obama’s craven abandonment of Poland is exposed.

Poland has been a bulwark of the West for a thousand years – an outpost of our civilization. To abandon Poland, as the West did in the past, is to abandon the lynch pin in that area of the world. Obama, ignorant of the most basic facts of history, doesn’t understand this – and thus he’s thrown Poland to the Russian bear in hopes that the bear will make nice with him.

Thank you, Obama and co:

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is directly to blame for taxpayers’ loss of $2.3 billion in the CIT bailout, says professor William Black of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law and a former federal bank regulator.

“We put ourselves on the hook in a completely inept way where we lose first. We lose entirely as the taxpayers.”

Black specifically faults Geithner for negotiating an arrangement in which CIT can repay its senior creditors 70 cents on the dollar in bankruptcy, but taxpayers are completely left out in the cold for their investment.

When Geithner pumped taxpayers’ money into CIT this summer, “it’s like he burned billions of dollars again in government money, our money, gratuitously,” Black said.

What I’ve heard on the effect of CIT bankruptcy: a lot of small and medium sized firms might be forced in to bankruptcy because they’ve lost the lines of credit they need to operate on a day to day basis.

This is very ugly – and all that is wrong with politics and business in America.

Have at it folks… Feel free to posts your thoughts, predictions, insights, and results here.

UPDATE: You’ll see updates on the 2009 Election via Twitter in the ticker at the bottom of screen. The ticker is following the #ny23 #njgov #vagov and #election09 hashtags.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: NRO’s Final Countdown has early MSM pre-spin about how today’s voting is no reflection on Obama. You Democrats just go on believing that.

UPDATE II, by Mark Noonan: Now Larry Sabato seems to be expecting a Democrat meltdown in VA tonight.

UPDATE III: How come I’m hearing talk of the contest in CA-10: that should be a sure thing for the Donks. Its Bay Area and 47% Democrat registration. Someone out there know something?

UPDATE: Republican Bob McDonnell wins VA GOV race.

UPDATE: Live Results of the NJ GOV race.

UPDATE VI, by Mark Noonan: In a small but sweet victory, GOP wins mayor race in Stamford CT first time since 1991.

UPDATE: Republican Chris Christie wins NJ GOV race.

UPDATE: Bottom line … Obama got bitch-slapped tonight.

It appears that Americans are waking up to the fact that electing Obama was a big ass mistake. A new Rasmussen poll shows that if the election were held today, a plurality would vote against him.

Americans are a little less enthusiastic about the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama this time around.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 45% of adults say they would be at least somewhat likely to vote for Obama if he was up for reelection right now. Forty-nine percent (49%) say they would be unlikely to vote for the president’s reelection.

Thirty-four percent (34%) would be very likely to support Obama, while 40% say they would be not at all likely to do so.

This is encouraging, and give me hope. Last year, I was so worried that people would be forever blinded by Obama that they’d never see the light. But now, it appears that Americans are realizing very quickly that Obama was the wrong choice. His approval rating has been dropping like a rock. No matter how you look at the numbers, Obama is clearly positioning himself firmly in the FAIL column.

This, admittedly, makes me feel conflicted. I am happy that the country is now more aware of what Obama really is, but had the media done its job in 2008, we wouldn’t be in this situation right now. Obama is letting Afghanistan turn into a quagmire as he plays golf and postpones his decision on whether to send more troops over there. People are dying, and the economy is getting worse thanks to Obama’s incompetence, inexperience, and pretentiousness. This moron is more concerned with the perks of his job than his actual job.

You know, I’ve always maintained that history will look favorably on George W. Bush’s legacy. I guess with three years left to live with the Obama mistake, Bush’s legacy will be looked upon much more favorably more quickly.

All that talk of GDP growth and corporate profits? Well, I’ve been telling you guys for months now not to believe it. Its all so much smoke and mirrors – the government fudging its numbers while corporate America plays fast and lose with its accounting. Here’s a bit about how one expedient is to rob the future in order to boost the current quarter’s profits:

…The trouble is that those GDP and productivity growth figures could be significantly overestimated—perhaps by one percentage point or even more.

That’s because the official statistics are not designed to pick up cutbacks in “intangible investments” such as business spending on research and development, product design, and worker training. There’s ample evidence to suggest that companies, to reduce costs and boost short-term profits, are slashing this kind of spending, which is essential for innovation. Without investment in intangibles, the U.S. can’t compete in a knowledge-based global economy. Yet you won’t see that plunge reflected in the GDP and productivity statistics, which are still too focused on more traditional sectors, such as motor vehicles and construction…

…Here’s a sobering sign that companies are robbing the future to pay for short-term profits: Over the past year, U.S. employment of scientists and engineers—the people who create the next generation of products and make the U.S. more competitive over the long term—has fallen by 6.3%, according to a BusinessWeek tabulation of unpublished data. Yet overall employment has fallen only 4.1%…

The “profits” of late come about a lot of ways – not buying as much inventory; cutting back on employee benefits and pay; not hiring temporary/seasonal workers; squeezing overhead expenses, etc, etc, etc. Boiled down, though, is that when you get a “profit” by such expedients you really haven’t accomplished anything.

This is, also, nothing new – do you really think that we can’t build a factory in the United States to compete with the Chinese factory your kitchen table came from? Sure we could – but it takes time and effort to build or renovate a factory, and that eats in to this quarter’s profits. Much better to just close the outdated factory you have, order the goods from China and beam with glee over your increased quarterly profits even as your firm makes less stuff and employs less people. Meanwhile, as you’re patting yourself on the back and offering huge bonuses to retain the “talent” which carried out this program, America’s economic base shrinks to the point where it can’t sustain the profligate lifestyle American’s have grown used to.

Pay no attention to the shell game Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Big Corporation and Big Government are playing. Until we start working our way out of this, we won’t get out. They’ll continue to fudge the numbers, print money, swap various toxic assets back and forth, increase taxes, increase spending and it’ll all amount to nothing, in the end. Except more debt for me and you, and a longer, harder task of working our way out of it.

Of course:

…On Thursday, October 22, J. Russell George, inspector general for the Internal Revenue Service, testified before a House Ways and Means subcommittee that the tax credit has been rife with inefficiency and fraud. Among those scamming the program, he believes, are more than 50 IRS employees. This interim report, George emphasized, if anything, understates the problem…

…As part of President Obama’s economic stimulus proposal, Congress this year transformed the program into a giveaway. Lawmakers extended the eligibility period through November 30, raised the credit to $8,000 and eliminated the repayment requirement on all purchases after January 1, 2009. What’s more, a “first-time” homebuyer actually refers to a buyer who hasn’t owned a home over the previous three years. Moreover, the law established income limits of $75,000 for single-adult households and $150,000 for married couples, with a phase-out (rather than elimination) of the credit at higher levels.

Liberalism would work just fine if we could repeal human nature. But, as we can’t, this is what we get – a boondoggle program which was never needed and which is being milked by the corrupt for their personal benefit. More and more of this sort of thing will come out as the Obama years advance, mark my words on that.

No, I’m not kidding – an excellent article on the subject of Detroit and the prospects of urban innovation in such dying cities. Especially fascinating are the pictures of “de-urbanization” over the past decades: areas of Detroit once fully urbanized are now nearly vacant – and not just of people, but of buildings. As the author points out, this opens up the prospect of all sorts of urban experimentation.

There are places all over our large, decaying cities just like that – places which have become the arena for rebuilding America. Now, to be sure, lots of these places have corrupt, liberal governments addicted to taxes and regulation (its why they’re blighted, after all), but the time will come when even the most obtuse tax-and-regulate liberal will have to see that the jig is up. Right now, you can buy a house in Detroit for about 2 grand – of course, given that the place is pretty crime ridden and has a shrinking employer base, its not such a good idea at the moment. But it can be made different.

If we can provide incentives for people to start or expand businesses (land is cheap in Detroit and jobs are scarce); if we can break out of the mindset that if its urban it must stay that way (why not put a strip a half mile wide between Detroit and any neighboring community and restore it to forest and farm land?); if we genuinely think anew and act anew, we can restore our cities – not, hopefully, to the soul less, concrete megalopolis of the past, but to places where human beings can live and work.

This is a very exciting time to live in – mindset which seized upon our nation in the 30’s are at last breaking down completely, and we now have a chance to re-forge the America our grandfathers knew, and our Founders intended.