Just try to do the right thing and you’ll really change the world:

…I have no notion at all of propounding a new ideal. There is no new ideal imaginable by the madness of modern sophists, which will be anything like so startling as fulfilling any one of the old ones. On the day that any copybook maxim is carried out there will be something like an earthquake on the earth. There is only one thing new that can be done under the sun; and that is to look at the sun. If you attempt it on a blue day in June, you will know why men do not look straight at their ideals. There is only one really startling thing to be done with the ideal, and that is to do it. It is to face the flaming logical fact, and its frightful consequences. Christ knew that it would be a more stunning thunderbolt to fulfil the law than to destroy it … The pagans had always adored purity: Athena, Artemis, Vesta. It was when the virgin martyrs began defiantly to practice purity that they rent them with wild beasts, and rolled them on red-hot coals. The world had always loved the notion of the poor man uppermost; it can be proved by every legend from Cinderella to Whittington, by every poem from the Magnificat to the Marseillaise. The kings went mad against France not because she idealized this ideal, but because she realized it. Joseph of Austria and Catherine of Russia quite agreed that the people should rule; what horrified them was that the people did. The French Revolution, therefore, is the type of all true revolutions, because its ideal is as old as the Old Adam, but its fulfilment almost as fresh, as miraculous, and as new as the New Jerusalem.

But in the modern world we are primarily confronted with the extraordinary spectacle of people turning to new ideals because they have not tried the old. Men have not got tired of Christianity; they have never found enough Christianity to get tired of. Men have never wearied of political justice; they have wearied of waiting for it. – G. K. Chesterton

Down to the wire, indeed:

Republican Chris Christie continues to hold a three-point advantage over incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine in New Jersey’s down-to-the-wire race for governor.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state, conducted Thursday night, shows Christie with 46% of the vote and Corzine with 43%. Those numbers are unchanged from earlier in the week and little changed from polling conducted the week before.

The last four Rasmussen Reports polls have shown Christie with a very slight advantage ranging from two to four percentage points each time.

If Christie does manage 46% of the vote to Corzine’s 43% on Tuesday, then he’ll have won it – that is too much of a gap for the normal run of Democrat voter fraud to overcome…if its 44/44 with only a few thousand to a few hundred votes, then Corzine will win by the simple, Democrat expedient of stealing close elections. Right now, I expect Christie to actually approach 50% in his election day totals – but New Jersey is very hard to predict, and we’ll have to see how it goes. Heck, even if Corzine manages to win by stealing, it’s still a huge setback given Obama’s vote total just a year ago in New Jersey.

From Mish’s:

Thanksgiving came early this year. It was yesterday, Thursday October 29, 2009. The reason we know this is the after Thanksgiving shopfest known as Black Friday started today.

No doubt some of you who forgot to stuff yourselves with turkey and pumpkin pie yesterday are demanding proof of this occurrence. I can certainly oblige.

Please consider

Sears Starts Black Friday NOW! Promotion Today

Every week between now and Black Friday, Sears.com will have several doorbusters from their Black Friday ad available only for just a few hours. This week’s sale runs from 5pm this afternoon until noon tomorrow (central time). Here are the doorbusters available this week:

Its a desperation move – an attempt to just get people in to the stores by any means possible in hopes that the total sales from now until December 25th won’t be a complete disaster. I think they will be – check around with your friends and family and see if you know anyone who is planning on a major spending spree this Christmas. Me, personally: I don’t know anyone who is. Those who are out of work will, naturally, spend as little as they can; those who have work are at least somewhat concerned about job losses and/or pay cuts. Its just not the time to spend like there’s no tomorrow…and even if you were planning on charging up the credit cards, you’ll find that the major credit card issuers are dropping credit lines and raising interest rates.

As I’ve said since Obama got in to office – his plans and programs might allow us to tap dance around disaster for some time. It might put the brakes on the slide. It might burnish the numbers on this or that. But the fundamental problem remains – our dollar has lost 99% of its value since approximately 1913; we’re in debt up to our eyeballs; the banks are largely insolvent; our assets are still way over-valued; our manufacturing, farming and mining base is way too small; our government has many tens of trillions of dollars of unfunded mandates. This cannot be sustained.

Only balancing the budget, lowering taxes (which means some very, very large budget cuts will be necessary – without in any way adversely affecting national defense, law enforcement or the elderly on social security) and getting ourselves back to work making, mining and growing things will get us out of this mess. We’re broke – we have to admit it, pay off our debts and get back to work.

There’s no other way – play the fantasy of Obama and the bankers, and it’ll just get worse and worse…and harder and harder to get out of.

K Street Whores Demand Apology From Congressman Grayson

Round and round we go with Carter II’s foreign policy:

Frustrated by Iran’s continued defiance of demands to come clean on its nuclear program, the Obama administration is leaning toward imposing new sanctions, even if it must act alone.

Administration officials acknowledged growing concern that there may not be international consensus to expand the existing U.N. sanctions, despite Tehran’s apparent rejection of a confidence-building measure proposed by the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog in hopes of making progress on the nuclear issue.

To that end, the administration is quietly supporting legislation in Congress that would give President Barack Obama a broad new array of authority to target Iran’s energy sector by penalizing foreign firms that sell and ship refined petroleum products to Iran. The regime is heavily dependent on gasoline, kerosene and propane imports.

Uh, Barry, old buddy – you don’t need to dither around waiting for Congress…you can just tell the Iranians that if they don’t cave by, say, November 10th, we’ll send the US Navy to intercept all gasoline tankers headed towards Iran. Trust me on this one: Iran will at least sit down for some serious discussions.

Now, to be sure, they will try to roll you – they’ve taken your measure and see you as a weak man. Threatening blockade will take them off guard, but they’ll also be thinking that they can get you to back down once they throw some sweet words your way. That is why your words will have to be backed up with major ship movements towards the area.

They don’t want to fight us directly – they are building a nuclear program so that they can hide behind nukes and fight us via proxies without a worry of direct retaliation. They will back down if they believe the choice is war or submission. Do keep in mind, of course, that even if they back down they’ll still be dishonest and keep as much of their nuke program as they can…but you can slow them down for years, and in years a lot of things might change, including a revolution (and it’d be nice if you’d say a kind word or two about the Iranian dissidents, ya know?).

But if you go this route of endless jawing and waiting for this, that and the other thing to happen, then you’ll have no credibility and the Iranians will eventually laugh at your threats…which might put us in the difficult position of either backing down, or going to war. Much better if we make them dance to our tune.

Patrick Ruffini on the NY-23 race:

The key fact that sticks out in my mind about Doug Hoffman’s incredible momentum in NY-23 is that his election would not have been possible had he been the Republican nominee. The fact that we may be about to elect a non-squish from New York has everything to do with the fact that he is running as a third-party independent, and not a Republican (even if the Conservative Party is an auxiliary of the Republicans in most elections).

Hoffman as a Republican would have been too obvious a target and the subject of a relentless barrage of negative TV, websites, mail, and phones branding him as outside the mainstream, anti-choice, anti-worker, etc. But politically, Hoffman has managed to avoid all that until five days out, when it’s now clear he’s the frontrunner. And as Chris Cillizza points out this morning, Hoffman’s success in the polls is built on the back among strong support among independents and (primarily) not Republican regulars disgusted at Scozzafava.

It could be that with the GOP brand damaged by past GOP actions and the relentless hate campaign against us by the Democrats (and the MSM allies, of course) that in at least some circumstances it might be better to go with a non-GOP conservative or libertarian. This might prove especially true in areas where the GOP has been routed for three or four election cycles (think California and New England). While the GOP can still be massively successful (as we’re about to be in Virginia), we might have to put together new coalitions in other areas of the country currently closed off to us.

Ruffini shows how it might be done:

If you’re a party person, don’t dismiss this just yet. Say you’re the NRCC and you haven’t found a good recruit against a vulnerable House Democrat. Say the Republican nominee is a joke, or the incumbent is unopposed. Three months out, you go to your star recruit who turned you down a year ago and ask him to run as an independent. It’s a three month campaign as opposed to an 18-month campaign. They don’t have to quit their law practice or small business. They enter in the last few miles of the race, and you put serious pressure on the joke nominee to step aside, or put out word through local media and talk radio that this is the guy.

Those out there who have been attentive will realize that I’ve been working along these lines for a while now – as in my concept of running a libertarian against Nancy Pelosi. Lets face facts – no GOPer is going to be elected anything in San Francisco…but a well-funded libertarian who might agree with Nancy on a lot of social issues but is with us on taxes, spending, national defense and judicial restraint? We’d be in 7th heaven if we could pull off such a coup! And while that is an obviously forlorn hope (Pelosi would likely muscle her way to victory…but she’d have to fight for it, and that in and of itself is worth the effort), there are probably 100 seats out there held by Democrats for which a traditional GOPer might not go over so well…but a conservative or libertarian independent just might be able to win, if well funded. And even if its a losing effort, by forcing the Democrats to defend a very large number of seats, we prevent them from concentrating fire on our vulnerable members. I can see no downside to this.

As I’ve said before – I am a Republican and I believe that it will be through a revitalized Republican party that America will be reformed…but I’m also someone who is dedicated to an end to the current power structure, and thus it is in my interest to put as many different view points as possible in the halls of power. It would be ok to me if neither the GOP nor the Democrats had a Congressional majority but had to court independent conservative and libertarian support. It would slow things down; muck things up…and make any resultant legislation a genuine compromise much more likely to serve the interests of the people than the politicians.

Showing, once again, that it is possible to be a sensible liberal:

Sounding more like an independent than a Democrat, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., tells ABC News he will campaign for some Republican candidates during the 2010 midterm elections and may not seek the Democratic Senate nomination when he runs for re-election in 2012.

I like the fact that Lieberman is an Independent – in fact, a few GOPers and Democrats should become an Independent block in the Senate (off hand, I can think of 5 or 6 possibilities) and thus hold the balance of power. Democrats would still be in charge and that is ok – they won the election; but they wouldn’t be able to do what they’re attempting now: steamroller through as much of a radical left agenda as possible before the political winds shift. America did vote for Democrats in 2008, but America did not vote leftist.

We need to break the entrenched power of DC – and that means we have to be open to all sorts of political groupings and alliances. The more varied the interests at play, the better for America.

Can’t be too in love with death, I guess, if you’re a Democrat:

It’s alive.

The Medicare end-of-life planning provision that 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin said was tantamount to “death panels” for seniors is staying in the latest Democratic health care bill unveiled Thursday.

The provision allows Medicare to pay for voluntary counseling to help beneficiaries deal with the complex and painful decisions families face when a loved one is approaching death.

For years, federal laws and policies have encouraged Americans to think ahead about end-of-life decisions, and make their wishes known in advance through living wills and similar legal documents. But when House Democrats proposed this summer to pay doctors for end-of-life counseling, it touched off a wave of suspicion and anger. Prominent Republicans singled it out as a glaring example of government overreach.

Outside the run-of-the-mill liberal despair which makes them morbid about such things there is the fact that Obamacare will cost far more than we can afford…Donks can raise taxes (unpopular), cut benefits (unpopular) or just sneak in the savings by denying expensive treatments and encouraging people to give up and die quickly. Guess which path they are most likely to choose?

The problem with all these liberal plans is that they presume that there is a human cure for all that ails us. The fact of the matter is that as long as we’re on this world, perfection will not be attained – there will be suffering, and death. Liberals are working on the assumption that they can cure everything – and when faced with reality, they don’t adjust their thinking, they just do wicked and stupid things to try and make it seem like its working.

Mark my words – if this Obamacare becomes law, then the ultimate result will be federally funded abortion and suicide on demand; its a sure as night follows day…because the costs of birth and death are just too much to be worked in to the Obamacare budget.

Doesn’t get much worse than this:

Franklin and Marshall College Poll Director Terry Madonna says Arlen Specters’ 29% approval rating is the senator’s lowest performance since the survey began asking that question in 1991.

On top of that, just 23% of respondents say the longtime incumbent deserves another term.

…And a historically large number, 66%, say its time for a change.

I think we Republicans got the better end of the deal – Democrats, congratulations!

Ah, the Chicago way:

More than 40% of President Obama’s top-level fundraisers have secured posts in his administration, from key executive branch jobs to diplomatic postings in countries such as France, Spain and the Bahamas, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

Twenty of the 47 fundraisers that Obama’s campaign identified as collecting more than $500,000 have been named to government positions, the analysis found.

Overall, about 600 individuals and couples raised money from their friends, family members and business associates to help fund Obama’s presidential campaign. USA TODAY’s analysis found that 54 have been named to government positions, ranging from Cabinet and White House posts to advisory roles, such as serving on the economic recovery board charged with helping guide the country out of recession.

When the history gets written, I think this Administration will be found to be the most corrupt, ever. And even if we want to excuse Obama (who may, indeed, be clueless about this), the fact is that a bunch of horribly corrupt Chicago pols are at the levers of power…and the only thing they know is corruption.