From Rasmussen:

…The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that the president currently earns support from 45% of Likely Voters across the nation, while a Generic Republican attracts 43% of the vote…

The good news for Obama is that he’s still out in front – the bad news is that he’s only barely ahead, and below 50%.

Key to Obama’s victory in 2012 would be the economy turning around – if there is a reasonable GOPer out there who can get people to answer “no” to the “are you better off than you were four years ago”, then Obama is toast. This may seem to mean that the GOP should just find the most reasonable candidate – but I want more than just Obama out: I want liberalism crushed. That means a candidate who can not only win on that question, but will so heartily attack Obama and his policies that a slim win becomes a crushing victory. Remember, Reagan didn’t just win because he wasn’t Carter – he won huge because he offered a vision for America in such stark contrast to Carter that the people rose up in what amounted to a revolution.

And I think that such a candidate would beat Obama even if the economy is turning around – I don’t think the economy will turn around, but even supposing it does, the people are sick of the sort of politics Obama represents. Sure, he presented himself as the new force in 2008 – but that was swiftly proven a lie in practice, and Obama is just another Ruling Class hack, as far as that goes. If the GOP can fire the popular imagination of an America restored to greatness, then even 7% unemployment won’t save Obama…and if the country is wallowing in 9% or higher unemployment in November, then the defeat of liberalism could become epic, if we have the right sort of fighting candidate.

And, so, that is what I’m on the look out – the man who offers the finest vision; the man who is most solid on the core issue…but mostly for the man (or woman, of course) who will fight the hardest and never let up for a minute on Obama and his Democrats.

Or, at least, that is how our liberals like to frame the issue – because there is just nothing we can cut (well, defense, but even there nothing which would eat in to a grafting politician’s campaign funds, ok?). Every last item in the budget is vital, and there is no waste in there, at all…from the Orange County Register:

High pay and benefits for lifeguards in Newport Beach is the latest example of frustrating levels of compensation for public employees. More than half the city’s full-time lifeguards are paid a salary of over $100,000 and all but one of them collect more than $100,000 in total compensation including benefits.

When thinking about career options with high salaries, lifeguarding is probably not one of the first jobs to come to mind. But it apparently should. In one of Orange County’s most desirable beach destinations, Newport Beach, lifeguards are compensated all too well; especially compared with the county annual median household income of $71,735…

Yep, lifeguards. And you just know if someone tries to cut the pay or the number of guards, we’ll have horror stories about how the kiddies will all drown. More than likely, that would work – because if you did vote to cut the spending and a kid did drown at the beach this summer, you’d get blamed. But, seriously, 100 grand for a lifeguard? I’ve been at the beach quite a bit over my life – can’t recall ever seeing a lifeguard actually get out of the tower…

I mean can’t we get some college kids willing to do it over the summer for, say, 20 or 25 grand? Its day work. Its at the beach. For crying out loud, they’d lining up for the job. But, we’ve apparently got career lifeguards…and we’re going to have to keep paying them because they can retire at 50 with 90% pay (wasn’t it once upon a time that a pension was half or one third of your pay?).

You liberals can squawk all you want – but as more and more stories like this come out the people are losing interest in your “the kids will die!” argument about the need to spend. I assert that we could reduce spending by 50% all across the board from Federal down to local government and if we just had some proper management, not one iota of government service would be impacted. Liberalism has built up a pile of corrupt, government garbage…and its time we took a shovel to it.

HAT TIP: Mish’s

And, of course, a bit of race-baiting political advantage for the President in 2012. From Business Week:

…At the Justice Dept., a new 20-person unit dedicated to fair lending issues received a record number of discrimination referrals from regulators in 2010 and has dozens of open cases, according to a recent agency report. Potential penalties can reach into the millions of dollars. “We are using every tool in our arsenal to combat lending discrimination,” Thomas E. Perez, the assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Div., told a conference of community development advocates in Washington in April.

To some banks the crackdown has come as a surprise, say consultants and lawyers representing financial institutions in discussions with regulators. Like Midwest BankCentre, some lenders are being cited for failing to operate in minority and low-income census tracts near their branches, even when they have never done business there before. “If you put your branches only in upper-income areas, the regulators are not accepting that anymore,” says Warren W. Traiger, a lawyer at BuckleySandler in New York, which advises banks on fair lending issues…

If there is anything we should have learned from the recession and our crushing, national debt is that debt is poison – you’re not doing a person a favor by lending them money. All you’re doing is hooking them – and making it less likely they’ll be responsible and giving them fewer real opportunities to build wealth and acquire property. Borrowed money is like a drug – and once you borrow some, you’ll want to borrow some more. After all, borrowing money allowed you to instantly gratify that desire for a new car…so why not allow it to gratify your desire for a new TV and some fine, new clothes? After a while, your disposable income – part of which is supposed to be saved – is being eaten up by interest and fees. You never get ahead.

True, some people can manage debt – manage, that is, to pay it off with rapidity. Most people aren’t able to do that. It just becomes too easy. I work in credit; I see it all the time. People who have piled up debt and never pay it off. Some go bankrupt (and most of the time start the process over again as soon as discharged), others just stagger along, making slightly more than the minimum payments, never getting done with it. I’m not saying we should ban debt – some times it can be vital, but mostly only in purchases of very large items (a house, eg) or for business expansion – but we should never, ever be seeking ways to make obtaining debt easier. It should be hard – only the most successful, hard-nosed people should be able to obtain it…because only they won’t be screwed by it.

Mostly, this is just a pander – a way to generate leftist sympathy; let the minority communities know that Obama is “fighting for them”; get in the papers. The other side of the coin is the corrupt deals that government will cut with the banks to let them off the hook – the sort of deals which profited handsomely politicians like former Senator Dodd while also allowing things like Fannie Mae to become financial monsters. But it is bad, all around bad – and the worst effect will be on the poor people it is supposed to be helping. Making it easier for them to borrow – making it easier for them to become debtors; making people least equipped to handle complex, financial matters the easy prey of those best able to create financial scams.

For goodness sake, it is high time we got government out of this – to learn the lesson that if you try to “fix” things in the economy via government power, you’ll just make it worse. The way out of poverty is by hard work and frugal living – not by a combination of welfare and a credit card. Sure, that can make a poor person seem like he’s not poor…but it doesn’t help him obtain work skills, financial skills, savings and property…the things of real wealth. Those who are pressing this issue should be ashamed.

As far as intellect goes, he’s at the top rank – and far superior to the dunderhead currently in the White House. In policy, Gingrich has excellent ideas as well as the practical, political experience to get them through Congress.

But can Gingrich win? Or is he just yesterday’s news?

That, to me, is the larger question. If you’re to have a poetry night at the White House, the big question is whether the poets are writing anything worthy of thought, of consideration. It looks as though Common (Lonnie Rashid Lynn, Jr.) has been dissed a bit at the White House, but his invite is still causing all sorts of controversy. Not being someone who listens to a lot of rap (these days I tend to the sillier songs of the 60’s and 70’s, along with bit of Mozart…yes, it is a bit of musical vertigo), I decided to look up some of Common’s recent lyrics – this is from Universal Mind Control

Get-Get it

Get-Get it

Get-Get it

I am a Renegade,

I’ve never been afraid, Fresh and Im getting paid the future, future of this age.

From the Chi, so I talk this way. Twista hate at the Grand Marque, rock the fly (expletive deleted) like everyday till the top and im on my way. Let’s go, uh

This is that new (expletive deleted). keep them standin in line. That Universal Mind Control, now move your behind. You know you like it, it’s calling your name. (N-word), this is that new (expletive deleted) and it don’t feel the same. It’s that bang bigga-bang ba-bang ba-bang bang. Bang bigga-bang ba-bang ba-bang bang. Bom bigga-bom ba-bang ba-bang bigga-bigga bom bigga-bom ba-bang ba-bang bang.

One too many bangs, perhaps? Before we make a judgment, we should find something universally recognized as good poetry to compare it to. So, from Chesterton – Ballad of Suicide:

The gallows in my garden, people say,

Is new and neat and adequately tall;

I tie the noose on in a knowing way

As one that knots his necktie for a ball;

But just as all the neighbours on the wall

Are drawing a long breath to shout “Hurray!”

The strangest whim has seized me. . . After all

I think I will not hang myself to-day.

To-morrow is the time I get my pay

My uncle’s sword is hanging in the hall

I see a little cloud all pink and grey

Perhaps the rector’s mother will NOT call

I fancy that I heard from Mr. Gall

That mushrooms could be cooked another way

I never read the works of Juvenal

I think I will not hang myself to-day.

The world will have another washing-day;

The decadents decay; the pedants pall;

And H.G. Wells has found that children play,

And Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall;

Rationalists are growing rational

And through thick woods one finds a stream astray,

So secret that the very sky seems small

I think I will not hang myself to-day.

So, is Common’s work poetry? We report, you decide.

Via NRO’s The Corner:

From The Hill:

[Senate Budget Committee chairman] Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) on Tuesday presented a budget proposal to Senate Democrats that calls for an even balance — 50 percent to 50 percent — of spending cuts and tax increases to reduce the deficit.

The emerging consensus on Capitol Hill is there should be at least $4 trillion in deficit reduction over the next 10 years. To meet that goal, Congress would have to increase tax revenues by $2 trillion over the next decade with an equal amount of spending cuts…

They just can’t do it, you see? They can’t do other than spend. For liberals, there is just nothing else to do. This is because their whole mind-set is wrapped around getting in to power in order to use government to make things happen. There is no concept in them regarding people just living their lives without let or hindrance from anyone else.

To be sure, this plan does allege there will be spending cuts – but you can bank on that just as much as you could bank on the Democrats’ 1991 plan which called for $2 in spending cuts for each $1 in tax hikes. We got the hikes in taxes, never saw the cuts in spending – until Democrats were beaten out of Congressional power in 1994. In a happy, Democrat world – one in which they hadn’t lost the House in 2010 – the tax hikes would sail through, some pretend cuts would be done and then when they thought no one was looking, the spending would skyrocket up (did you know that EPA spending went up 25% between 2009 and 2010? Oh, you don’t? But what about that huge debate in Congress where it was demonstrated that a vital, national priority was a gigantic, 25% increase in EPA spending…oh, yeah, I forgot; there wasn’t any debate…it just happened when no one was looking).

And it happened because that is all liberals know – to spend money to hire bureaucrats to make new rules to make special deals. They will never, ever stop. If you could demonstrate it to them beyond a shadow of a doubt that a reduction of spending would make people, long term, happier, healthier and wealthier than they are today they would still reject the notion. Not because your argument was flawed, but because it is outside their frame of reference. A world in which people just get on and live their lives is not a world liberals understand – mostly because there is no place for liberals; especially no place for liberals to be in charge, and to live a high life with no worthy effort and on a government pay check.

It almost seems a pity that we’re going to have to crush these people – they will be like lost, little lambs once we’ve turned them out. But, we must do it, good people; for their own good, as well as our own. And maybe after they’ve spent a little time in the real, non-taxpayer-subsidized world, they’ll understand that, just perhaps, spending isn’t always the answer.

Mark Hendrickson over at Crisis Magazine explains – first taking note of the idiotic federal policies which have actually restricted the supplies of oil and corn (just to name two commodities), then pointing the finger at where the “general” rise in prices comes from:

…Bernanke and the Fed are not blameless here. If the prices of a small number of commodities rise while most prices do not, we would reasonably conclude that those price movements are dictated by supply-and-demand factors. But when prices in general rise, that is the smoking gun that points to an inflationary monetary policy.

Since the Fed’s QE2 program was launched last September, the Commodities Research Bureau index of 19 basic, widely used commodities has risen by almost 40 percent. Has demand risen and supplies fallen significantly for all commodities since September? The odds against such an improbable coincidence are astronomical.

Instead, the answer is obvious: The Fed has flooded the financial system with newly created money, and the inevitable result of a lot more money bidding for approximately the same supply of goods is markedly higher prices…

It is here, and it is likely here to stay for a while. I don’t think we’ll get a bout of hyper-inflation, but the government policies of Obama and the financial policies of Bernanke have given us a round of “staglation” to deal with. Stagnant economy, rising prices. The big worry is that there are still rumors that Bernanke may go for another round of money printing after he finishes the current bout. The worry, for Bernanke and the banksters, is that if free money isn’t provided by the Fed, we’ll have a stock market collapse and renewed recession. Of course, we’ll have that if we keep printing, too…it’ll just take longer to get there. You really can’t repeal logic – and when things are way over-priced (as things like stocks and housing were in 2008) then only allowing them to settle to their real value will fix the problem.

But that isn’t what Bernanke wants to do – and it looks like he might keep trying his print-madness for a while longer. And, so, just prepare for it. We endured Carter, so we can endure Obama…but let’s just be sure that we repeat the end of Carter, too.

From White House Dossier:

President Obama doesn’t seem to have even peered out his Air Force One window to view the swelling Mississippi, a minimal show of interest for which George W. Bush was pilloried when he took a peek at the damage wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. At least Bush bothered to look.

Obama is traveling today OVER the devastation being wrought by the Mississippi in order to get to events in Texas, where he will rally his Hispanic supporters with a speech on immigration in El Paso and then head to the Lone Star state’s liberal bastion of Austin for two fundraisers.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, who spoke with reporters aboard Air Force One, was asked whether Obama had bothered to get a view from above.

“I haven’t seen him do that but I haven’t been with him for the full flight so far,” Carney said…

Its “flyover” country. Places where people go to church and own guns. Places where, let’s face it, Obama isn’t going to pick up many electoral votes in 2012, no matter what happens. So, lack of interest…but also note what Obama was doing while ignoring the plight of the people along the Mississippi: heading to a State he can’t win to talk up a proposal (comprehensive immigration reform) he won’t push in order to galvanize hispanic support for 2012…and then he’s off to a fat cat fundraiser in one of Texas’ few liberal bastions. “Cynicism” doesn’t even begin to cover this.

You liberals picked him. You called him “the one”. You swooned with ecstasy at his 2008 rallies. He’s your man. You got what you wanted.

No, how does it taste?

Interesting – from Reuters:

A long-simmering movement by liberal stalwarts in southern Arizona to break away from the rest of the largely conservative state is at a boiling point as secession backers press to bring their longshot ambition to the forefront of Arizona politics.

A group of lawyers from the Democratic stronghold of Tucson and surrounding Pima County have launched a petition drive seeking support for a November 2012 ballot question on whether the 48th state should be divided in two…

This is a bit dicey for a conservative. The first thought is “good riddance” – you can set up on your own, tax and regulate yourself to your heart’s content and spin out of control in to complete collapse. The trouble with that is that then all those liberals will try to move to the conservative State…and even that wouldn’t be so bad, but then they’ll go right ahead and try to impose the same policies which just killed Liberal Land (here in Nevada we call it “Californication” – where liberals from California, fleeing the collapse of that liberal State, come here and start bothering us about environmental regulations, smoking bans and other such nonsense…all with the requisite tax and spending increases, of course). On the whole, it might be best to go with the “keep your friends close, and your enemies closer” advice on this.

On the other hand, this could become a nifty experiment for the United States – blessed as we are with our (partially atrophied) federal system. It would be a grand experiment in what works. And lots of States can be carved up. Even Nevada can – Democrat-heavy Clark County (think: Las Vegas) can move out and keep Harry Reid…the rest of us (and, yes, I’d move…Pahrump really isn’t such a bad place to live) can be Reid-less and start to build a rational government without having to deal with quite so many liberals (or, really, any at all outside parts of Reno). Just look at the “red/blue” county maps from the 2008 election and you can see where States break up.

We’d not only have north and south Arizona, but north and south New Mexico; north and south Texas (though I don’t know if we’d convince those Texans to break up); east and west California; east and west Oregon; east and west Washington; north and south Illinois; east and west Pennsylvania – the rest of the States either don’t have convenient demarcation lines, or are too solidly red or blue. Have it done and see where it leads – liberals are always saying they are smarter than the rest of us and know how to make piles of money…let’s see how it goes when they are on their own…and how the red areas do once freed from liberalism. Within ten years, we’ll know what works.

From CNBC:

U.S. home values fell in the first quarter at the fastest rate since late 2008, real estate data firm Zillow said on Monday, suggesting that a bottom will not be seen until 2012 at the earliest.

Zillow said its home value index fell 3 percent in the first three months of the year from the previous quarter, and was down 8.2 percent year-over-year…

The kicker is that we would have hit the bottom in housing in 2010 – if Obama and Bernanke had not tried to stop the crash with money printing and idiotic purchasing credits. We could have done something back in 2009 or 2010, but it would have taken (a) a bit of vision and (b) a little less concern for the views of the idiots who got us in to this mess. We did exactly what we shouldn’t have done, and now we’re going to pay for it.

A recovery of housing prices – meaning a return to 2007 prices – is entirely out of the question; but if we had just let things take their course, the crash would be long over and we’d at least have stabilization, with maybe a little uptick, possibly leading to a genuine economic recovery. Instead, we got government efforts which ranged from useless to counter-productive. And I don’t think we’ll see the bottom in 2012 – because in 2012 we’ll have the “ARMs” (Adjustable Rate Mortgages) from 2007 coming due, and to 2013 will probably see the bottom. Pretty much anyone buying a house right now is making a bad decision – except in a few markets, you will lose money, and lose quite a lot of it…and it may be a decade or more before you get back to par.

While he wages of sin is death; the wages of folly is poverty – we followed the fool course of fake money, debt and government-subsidized failure. We’re now going to get a lot poorer than we were. But, as I’ve said before, poverty is not necessarily a bad thing – and America can and will endure this, and come out stronger in the end. Provided, of course, we get the liberals who wrecked the country out of power.