This is awesome.

Sarah Palin: Smarter than every member of the Obama Administration, combined:

There is no shortage of threats to our economy. America’s unemployment rate recently hit its highest mark in more than 25 years and is expected to continue climbing. Worries are widespread that even when the economy finally rebounds, the recovery won’t bring jobs. Our nation’s debt is unsustainable, and the federal government’s reach into the private sector is unprecedented…

…I am deeply concerned about President Obama’s cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.

American prosperity has always been driven by the steady supply of abundant, affordable energy. Particularly in Alaska, we understand the inherent link between energy and prosperity, energy and opportunity, and energy and security. Consequently, many of us in this huge, energy-rich state recognize that the president’s cap-and-trade energy tax would adversely affect every aspect of the U.S. economy.

Energy is liberty – in ancient times, to own one’s land and be free to use it at will was the engine of human liberty…today, after a disastrous century of applied liberalism, the source of individual liberty has changed…forced off the land, we now require ready access to cheap energy in order to have the ability to build wealth safe from government control. Instinctively, liberals sense this, and are thus determined to restrict our access to energy…to make us dependent upon government for what we can have, and what we can do with it.

Obama’s “cap and trade” scam will allow the mega-corporations he’s buddy/buddy with to live…but will make it very hard for someone new to enter and industry, and that is the real point of “cap and trade”: Control. Remember, to our liberals it is our unfettered ability to do what we please outside the bedroom which is the problem (liberals will die in the last ditch to defend our right to get laid…but that is as far as the liberal concept of liberty goes)….all these Americans who want to make things, build things, do things…all of it without a government license and not at all related to a desire to save Gaia from the perdition of human liberty. Can’t have any of that.

Sarah Palin – she being one of us, the people – understands this very easily, and thus understands how hard we must fight against this “cap and trade” boondoggle. In a small way, this may be considered the opening shot of the 2012 campaign, even if Palin decides against running. Time is running out for American liberty, but it hasn’t run out altogether…we can preserve this City on a Hill, if we fight for it.

It is, in a very real sense, upon us – the barbarians are not at the gates, but are amidst us:

I bet it never crossed the minds of many living during the Dark Ages that they were particularly dark, or of those living during the decline and fall of the Roman Empire that it was speedily declining, let alone falling. Since the Owl of Minerva flies at dusk, and hindsight is 20/20, it appears to be an inexorable law of both history and human nature that men recognize the “signs of the times” only after those times have passed.

One of the most astute “sign readers” of today is the reigning Pope. Here is one of Benedict XVI’s most startling yet accurate readings: “We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goals one’s own ego and one’s own desires.” If I might put it into less philosophical terms, what the Holy Father is telling us is that Western culture is descending into barbarism.

We tend to associate barbarism with images of primitive savages looting and pillaging villages, razing the walls of cities, and enslaving women and children. However, the Holy Father is suggesting here an entirely new kind of barbarism, one with a distinctly spiritual character. Civility is the quality of soul and society by which we recognize not only that other people exist, but also that they have the right to our courtesy, dignity, and respect. Civilization, then, as the opposite of barbarism, is founded upon the recognition of the dignity and rights of the other. Thus, a culture in which “the highest goals [are] one’s ego and one’s own desires” is the very definition of barbaric.

And so we abort, we euthanize, we enslave – heck, we even vandalize when we consider the plague of graffiti and the installation of “art” which would have made Attila the Hun puke. Future generations will marvel that the bigoted, narrow-minded barbarians who are destroying civilization consider themselves a breath of fresh air – in the strange days of today, the painted savage holds himself to be freer than the dedicated father. Very weird.

But, also, very dangerous. The gladitorial games of ancient Rome didn’t just spring up out of nowhere. They started off slowly and, to a certain extent, even respectably…but time went on and eventually people were being fed to lions for the amusement of a jaded, degraded mob which told itself, over and over again, that it was civilized. We aren’t yet at the point where we are lighting dissidents up as torches at our garden parties, but we’re not too many steps away from that sort of thing…and the oddest turn of all is that it is, once again, Christians who are being prepared for the lions, just as in the old days.

Its going to be a long fight to save the remnants of civilization and then rebuild it, but with leaders like Benedict XVI, we will do it – and there will be, once again, a time when people appeal to our noblest selves rather than pitch to the lowest common denominator.

Believe it or not, there is some significant potential for Republican victories in the liberal northeastern states of New York and Massachusetts.

Polls show that Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick is in serious trouble, and one Democrat has already changed his registration to ‘unenrolled’ to secure a spot on the general election ballot, bypassing a primary. There will, however be a Republican primary.

Next there is New York, with another unpopular governor and dysfuctional Democrat-controlled state government. Right now, polls show Rudy GIuliani either defeating Governor Paterson, or gaining ground with Paterson’s potential primary challenger, Andrew Cuomo.

Recent Marist Polls show that Rudy Giuliani would crush Paterson in a general election match-up, while Republican Rick Lazio is in a dead heat with the governor. Cuomo polls significantly better against both in general election match-ups, beating both Giuliani and Lazio… Though the numbers show Cuomo’s support against Giuliani is slipping. 

I am honesty very excited about the Republican Party’s chances in these bluest of blue states. And, if Republicans can be contenders there, then I see potential for Republicans to do better in 2010 than they did in 1994… if they craft the right message and recruit good candidates. Of course, with the way Obama is screwing up the country, the best spokesman for electing Republicans may be Obama himself.

Have at it, boys and girls.

What is the government role in curing the Obama Depression?

Not much:

Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things. – Adam Smith

And thus starts to become pro-abortion:

File this one under “timing is everything in politics.” A recent Ohio poll showed that 64.2 percent of Ohioans strongly oppose public funding of abortion. Another 5.8 percent somewhat disagreed with that practice.

At the same time this poll was being conducted, Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan, an alleged pro-life Democrat, voted to support a bill to allow public funding of abortion. This is either unlucky timing for Congressman Ryan or a clear illustration of a politician abandoning the base that helped elect him to his current office.

It’s no secret that Congressman Ryan is very politically ambitious and has his eyes set on a statewide office in the near future.

Its an old, sad story of Democrat politics – so strong is the pro-abortion movement’s control that any Democrat who aspires to high office simply must tack towards the pro-abortion position in order to gain the Democrat support necessary for such a run. Additionally, any Democrat who desires to become President must entirely become pro-abortion in views, or its a no-go. Even someone as quixotic in his Presidential ambitions as Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) felt compelled to abandon a life time’s pro-life position in order to mount his foolish campaign for the White House.

And we are the side accused of ideological rigidity. If only! On Wednesday I went over to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parish in order to spend some time in the chapel devoted to the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament (that would be worshiping Jesus, for those unfamiliar with Catholic practice). Right outside the door to this chapel is a memorial to all those children lost in the holocaust of abortion – and I have to say, it caught my heart, thinking of all those poor children murdered, and the poor mothers victimized by the cruelest and most inhuman practice since the days when children were sacrificed to Moloch. Where do we get this insane determination to keep legal this horrific thing, abortion? Where do we get politicians who would balance defense of life against personal ambition and come down on the side of ambition? Off to the side in that chapel is a statue of Mother Theresa holding a baby in her arms – where are there more like her, and less like the rest of us?

This will end. We will return to our senses – we will, in the fullness of time, come back to joy in life and hope in children.

That we’re in recovery, but its a jobless recovery. No, I’m not kidding. No less a slavish-to-Obama outfit that Newsweek has made this discovery:

Still, Achuthan warns that one of the most important indicators—employment—isn’t showing recovery yet. The reason: The combination of deleveraging and the long-term decline of manufacturing is hindering job creation and destroying existing jobs. After the last recession ended in 2001, the service sector created jobs, but payroll employment continued to fall through 2003 because millions of jobs were lost in the manufacturing sector during the expansion. “We may see some echo of that in this recovery.” But while employment is vital, payroll jobs growth alone doesn’t make the difference between recession and expansion…

…The recession is over! Let the jobless recovery begin!

Can you believe this nonsense? I mean, if we GOPers had tried this back in 2003, we’d have been hammered mercilessly…by Newsweek, for instance. Ah, well – they’ve got their man Obama, and they are determined to sustain him. If this means they have to be monumentally stupid, then so be it, as far as they are concerned.

As an aside, the talk of recovery – jobless or otherwise – is just plain and simple stupid. Wishful thinking from financiers who know that one more hit and they’re done for combined with, well, lies from liberals hoping to fool people in to thinking that they shouldn’t toss Democrats out at election time next year.

11% unemployment by Christmas, 15% by the middle of next year; that’s my guess.

This one will go down to the wire:

Republican candidate Robert F. McDonnell has rebounded to take a narrow lead over Democrat R. Creigh Deeds in the race for governor in Virginia, highlighting the expected closeness of that contest right up to November.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Virginia voters finds McDonnell leading Deeds 44% to 41%. Three percent (3%) prefer some other candidate, and 12% are undecided.

A month ago, just after Deeds beat two other gubernatorial candidates in the state Democratic Primary, he posted a six-point lead over McDonnell, 47% to 41%.

Both parties will, I’ll bet, end up pouring vast resources in to this race, considered a bell weather for what will happen in the 2010 mid-terms. In the end, I expect the continuing drag of the economy coupled with the increasing toxicity of the Democrat “brand” to boost McDonnell over the top in this State which so famously switched from Red to Blue in 2008. But it will be a hard fight and McDonnell had better take nothing for granted.

Meanwhile, if you live in that State, perhaps you’d like to help out?

I don’t think so – and neither does Mike Shedlock. Click the link and see an interesting graph which shows how our housing boom and bust tracks well with the Japanese land boom and bust. Ominous to consider that we haven’t hit bottom, yet – but its what I expect. Its why the temptation to use my VA-backed loan has recently faded as I consider the prospect that I could get a house next year for half the price of today.