Blogs For Victory

From The Hill:

Soon-to-be Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) is being pressed by taxpayer groups to slash the salaries of House lawmakers.

Cutting member pay would show voters the new GOP majority in the House is going to lead by example in their efforts to rein in spending and start with their own wallets, say officials with three prominent taxpayer advocacy groups in Washington, D.C…

I can see no objection to this – even a symbolic 10% or so pay cut for elected officials would be good. A way of expressing solidarity with the people who are hurting so much due to the economic mess. I hope the House GOP runs with this.

From Twitter:

Driven by the urgency of creating jobs & protecting #hcr, #wsr, Social Security & Medicare, I am running for Dem Leader.

The gift that keeps on giving! Thank you, Nancy – nothing could please us more than having you to kick around for a little while longer.

This is the arrogance of power, my friends – utterly crushed and rejected by the American people, Pelosi can’t think of any other response than to try and worm her way back in to power. That she’s led her party off the cliff doesn’t even register – Pelosi wants power, and so she’s going to go for it.

Worse, for the Democrats, is the fact that she likely wouldn’t have done this if she hadn’t already lined up majority support for her effort in the House Democrat caucus…which means that the survivors of the Democrats, at least a majority, cannot think of anyone better in their caucus than Pelosi! The “fresh faces” of the Democrat Party in 2011 will be….Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, with dynamic, new support from the likes of Barney Frank, Charles Rangel, Jerry Brown and Andrew Cuomo.

We couldn’t write a better script if we tried…

UPDATE by Matt Margolis: What I find interesting about this is that this move tells us, the the very least, she isn’t retiring, as previously theorized. And what I particularly like about that is that the Republican Majority can now open up an ethics investigation into her abuse of military planes for personal travel.

From CNN:

Keith Olbermann, MSNBC’s primetime firebrand host, has been suspended indefinitely for violating the ethics policies of his employer earlier this year when he donated to three Democrats seeking federal office, MSNBC announced Friday.

“I became aware of Keith’s political contributions late last night. Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay,” MSNBC President Phil Griffin said in a statement…

Ok, so is MSNBC trying to keep up some sort of pretense of objectivity? I mean, come on – Olberman is a sock puppet for the DNC, so what is the harm of him kicking a few bucks their way? This just seems silly to me – firing Olberman makes sense on a lot of levels (he’s insane, his ratings are lousy, that sort of thing) but to fire him for giving what is actually a fairly small amount of money to Democrats? Absurd.

UPDATE: On Twitter, suggestions for a replacement host.

A video retrospective on Olberman’s career:

Noted over at Zero Hedge:

The inverse silver lining to today’s jobs report that will be lost in the shuffle of what is perceived as a good NFP (despite consistent initial jobless claims of around 450K, which means that either there is a massive data error, or the rate of job creation has somehow surged) is that labor force participation has now dropped to the lowest rate it has been since 1984, at 64.5%…

The upshot of all this is that if we had labor force participation at the levels of a couple years ago the unemployment rate would be about 11.6%, rather than the official rate of 9.6% announced today. It is also a bit odd that we got this number of private sector job growth when new claims for unemployment have remained in the 450,000 range for so long – but, whether data is being manipulated or not, the harsh facts on the ground are that things are pretty lousy.

Real job creation will not resume until we set in place policies which allow for the creation of new wealth – ie, the process of making, mining and growing things. Hopefully the new Republican House will be able to force through such policies, but we’ll be forced to fight through the blank incomprehension of this by Senate Democrats and President Obama. In other words, don’t look for any significant improvement for a while.

From MSNBC:

President Obama is open to the idea of discussing an extension of Bush-era tax cuts for all income levels, which one trader said could prevent massive year-end tax selling by investors…

The thing to keep in mind here is “2012 Democrats”. These are Senate Democrats who were elected in the 2006 Democrat victory and now face the music in 2012…with the economy likely to still be sluggish (at best) and Obama likely engaged in (once again, at best) a difficult fight for re-election, these Democrats will want to bring home some “TEA Party” votes to insulate themselves from the Democrat party, as a whole. The reality is that even though there will be only 42 Republican Senators in the “lame duck” session there are enough “2012 Democrats” to put an extension proposal over the top. If Obama is serious about this, he’s just acknowledging harsh reality.

As it is, this the best thing we can do immediately for the economy – give people and businesses the certainty that in 2011 their taxes will not go up. That, in and of itself, will inject a bit of confidence and might even get us back on a genuine growth track by the second half of 2011. Strong growth – ie, growth good enough to get unemployment down to 8% or below – probably can’t come before 2012 (we’ve a very deep hole to dig out of), and won’t come even then unless the new House GOP can force through additional tax cuts, as well as very large spending cuts.

This, however, is the first fruit of victory – there will be more, provided we don’t compromise with Obama and his Democrats. It is Democrats and their liberal, Big Government programs which are supplicants before us – they have to give, and give in a lot, on taxes and spending and only after they do that can we consider going along with anything they might desire. To the victors go the spoils – and in this case, the spoils of political war is getting to set the legislative agenda.

The Financial Times is reporting that central banks in China, Brazil, India and elsewhere are dismayed by the Fed’s action to print $600 billion and spread it around America’s bankrupt financial system. They’ve good reason to worry – this is killing the value of the dollar, making their exports to the US more expensive, as well as driving up the dollar cost of things like gold and oil. Its a huge mess – a repeat, on steroids, of the stupid mistakes the Fed has made since 2007.

Everyone must keep in mind what has really happened here. Bernanke essentially pressed a button at the Federal Reserve and $600 billion in US currency immediately appeared – but not out of thin air. You see, by making this extra pile of money, he essentially picked the pockets of all Americans because the money you had yesterday is now worth less, today. Your money is a store of your wealth – so, that hard days work you put in on Friday? You now ended up getting paid less for it.

How’s that feel?

And it gets worse. You see, what Bernanke did will eventually wind up in the hands of the bankrupt Banksters – who will then use it to by US Treasuries. So, the money which was stolen from you will be given to Banksters who will then loan it back to you, at interest.

Want to grab your bucket of tar and bag of feathers, yet?

But here’s the real kicker – it won’t work. This is designed in accordance with Keynesian theory which says that if the central bank does this, it will spur investment and job creation. What it is really doing is fueling an already overboard asset bubble (you’ll note that the stock market rocketed up on Thursday) which will eventually crash, taking what remains of the economy with it. So, the final result here is that you have had your money stolen and then loaned back to you, and you’re going to see your job lost, your home value drop some more and your retirement nest egg wiped out.

Anyone out there still wondering why I’m calling myself a revolutionary these days?

I haven’t had too much use for Ron Paul over the years, but he’s got one good idea which must be pressed – audit the Fed. We need to tell everyone just where the money went so that public outrage will grow to proper proportions, and then kill the Fed completely. No more central banks, no more fiat currency, no more wealth being ripped off so that fat cats can remain fat.

That is the number of State legislative seats the GOP picked up on Tuesday – from National Journal:

While the Republican gains in the House and Senate are grabbing the most headlines, the most significant results on Tuesday came in state legislatures where Republicans wiped the floor with Democrats.

Republicans picked up 680 seats in state legislatures, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures — the most in the modern era. To put that number in perspective: In the 1994 GOP wave, Republicans picked up 472 seats. The previous record was in the post-Watergate election of 1974, when Democrats picked up 628 seats.

The GOP gained majorities in at least 14 state house chambers. They now have unified control — meaning both chambers — of 26 state legislatures…

This means, by and large, that we’re in charge of re-districting – and this is the first time we have this sort of dominance in this area since after the 1920 census. In practical terms, the chances of the Democrats taking back the House before the 2020 elections just got a lot smaller.

But even better than that, by re-drawing the districts to better reflect the center/right majority of the American people, we’ll be able to get a stronger representation of small government, low tax, pro-family legislators, thus changing the whole tone of our debate. We won’t be forever arguing idiot Democrat programs but, instead, advancing programs and principles to make America an ever more perfect union.

This is the re-alignment, good people – we’ve been working on it for 30 years and never got past 2nd base in the effort..now we’re rounding third. So, let’s not blow it, ok?

Why did the GOP win? In large measure, because Catholics went heavily GOP. You’re welcome.

We might not know the Alaska result for weeks – and Miller just might win.

Fox News dominated election night coverage. Did anyone actually watch MSNBC?

Looking over the returns in Washington, I get that sinking feeling about Dino Rossi. I was really hoping he’d get it in order to correct the complete fraud which cost him the gubernatorial contest in 2004, but it looks like Murray will squeak by, though Rossi is officially, at this point, still looking for a good turnout from some of his strong holds.

Glenn Beck gloats.

The Culture of Death and liberal fascism – evil twins which never stop trying. From the National Catholic Register:

The Department of Health and Human Services is considering a request from the American Civil Liberties Union that it compel Catholic hospitals to provide emergency abortions.

But the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty has vowed not only to provide free legal defense for any hospital the HHS takes action against, but to sue the feds to stop them…

This is a back-door effort to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions – or to force them out of business. Catholics can never, ever perform or assist in the performance of an elective abortion. Medical procedures can be done which have as their unfortunate side-effect the ending of a pregnancy, but what the ACLU is trying to do here is kick in the door and make an issue where some will claim it was medically necessary, others won’t but liberal judges would be found to rule against the Church and award damages…facing the Church with the stark choice of either denying Truth, or ending a service.

This is what they did in the United Kingdom regarding adoptions – because the liberal fascists demanded that Catholics violate their conscience and adopt children to gay couples, the Church was forced out of the adoption business altogether. The ultimate liberal goal is, of course, to destroy the Church – and they are more than willing to do it in incremental steps, each time calling to witness a misrepresentation of mercy and justice.

Make no mistake about this: we are in a fight for our liberties. All of them. The left, checked in Tuesday’s election, isn’t going to give up. They’ll just keep pressing their case by every avenue available, confident that they’ll eventually wear us down. This is why our fight must be across the board – no truce, ever. While one issue might become temporarily more important than others in the day-to-day battle, we have to be mindful of the big picture, and go toe-to-toe with the left where ever it rears its ugly head.

From CBS:

With their sweeping electoral victory in hand, Republicans are committed to ending earmarks – the local-project riders to legislation – and focusing on the big national issues, a top Senate Republican said Wednesday.

“We can’t have 500 congressmen and senators who think it’s their job to bring home the bacon – and that’s what’s going to change,” South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint told CBS’ “The Early Show. “One of the first thing we’ll do in the House and Senate is ban earmarks as Republicans – that’ll get our eyes back on fixing our tax code, fixing social security and Medicare, getting America back to work.”…

It is in pressing these common sense, populist reforms where we’ll gain our traction, where we’ll gain the genuine respect of the American people, and the long term lease on power which that will bring.

We have to hit the ground running – there are plenty of popular things to do which, acted upon swiftly, will bring credit to us and which will set the narrative for 2012 even if (actually, especially if) Democrats manage to block them either in the Senate or with Obama’s veto pen. Genuinely reforming America will take either a complete change of heart on the part of Obama (unlikely), or the complete defeat of Obama and the Democrats in 2012. Until that, all we can do is hold the line and keep demonstrating why we should be entrusted with full power.

Remember that November 2nd was just Step 1. The process of reforming America will take years, and can’t fully get underway as long as Obama is President. We have to be prepared for long, drawn out and difficult times – including defeats along the way. But if we keep our eye on the ball and hold the Congressional GOP to the fire, we can do this, and save our nation from disaster.