Blogs For Victory

UPDATE – Breaking News: President of Poland, senior Polish leaders killed in plane crash.

UPDATE II: Pajamas Media has a round up.

Seems that Ohio Democrats would rather become Republicans.

43% strongly disapprove of President Obama’s performance. This is becoming rather consistent in the Rasmussen survey. Its going to be hard for Obama to climb out, and as long as he’s down there, he’s a drag on all Democrats.

Liberal love and tolerance: NJ teacher wishes Gov. Christie’s death.

In more “booming economy news”, Wal-Mart is aggressively cutting prices to reverse a sales slump. But, but, but…they said that retail sales are increasing. How can the experts be wrong, again?

Mish reports:

Florida remains ground zero of the housing bust with an amazing 19.39% delinquency rate. The Tampa Bay area has a delinquency rate of 17%.

The St. Petersburg Times has the details in Nearly 17 percent of Tampa homeowners three months behind on mortgage.

Nearly 17 percent of Tampa Bay homeowners haven’t paid their mortgages for at least three months.

The February report by First American CoreLogic shows mortgage delinquencies rising steadily for more than a year. From February 2009 to February 2010, delinquencies increased from 10.84 percent to 16.96 percent of all residential mortgages, making mincemeat of such government anti-foreclosure measures as Making Home Affordable.

Florida’s 90-day delinquency rate was even worse at 19.39 percent. The U.S. rate was 8.78 percent.

This might not be strictly related to the economy – it could be a sign that Floridians are just bailing out on their “underwater” home loans. It would make sense: walking away is probably something which starts small, and then builds. As people see their neighbors giving up on underwater mortgages, it becomes more likely that they’ll do it, too, as whatever stigma is attached fades away.

I’m going to be watching things with care out here in Nevada – a lot of ARMs come due in the second half of 2010. These will be on houses which cannot be refinanced and which cannot be sold to cover the principal. The pressure to just walk away will, I believe, become irresistible. It might already be happening – housing prices continue to drop, which indicates more houses are coming on the market and I’ll bet dollars to donuts it is because of “short sale” actions (where a person puts the house on the market and the bank agrees to accept whatever the house brings).

There is really no easy way out of this – even if the economy really is in recovery, housing prices will not recover fast enough to bring home values back in line with mortgage balances. And if the economy really isn’t improving – and I think its all smoke and mirrors – then we just have a bad situation about to get very much worse.

Wow–I received this neat email today from none other than Joltin’ Joe Biden!

Leo —

Two weeks after it was signed into law, health insurance reform is still the talk of the town.

It’s for a good reason: This was a historic accomplishment. But it wasn’t easy. I remember what it’s like to be a senator and take a tough stand on an issue — confident that it’s the best thing for your constituents, but equally sure that special interests will pour buckets of money into attacking you for it.

Your senators, Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, took that tough stand when they supported health reform. Now, we need to provide a line of defense money can’t buy: the voices of real constituents speaking out and showing their support.

That’s where you come in. Do you have three minutes to jot down a quick letter to your local newspaper? If you need ideas on what to say, you can watch a quick video Organizing for America put together about how reform will benefit Minnesota.

Click here to get started.

Believe me, senators and their staff read the letters page — because they know just how influential it can be. Your letter could make a tremendous difference.

In my conversations with my old colleagues, I made it clear that this White House was prepared to back them up — that no barrage of partisan attack ads would go unanswered. But to follow through, I’m going to need some help from folks like you.

This legislation will put Americans in control of their own health care, rein in insurance-company abuses, and give millions of Americans access to affordable health care for the first time.

Special interests know that in the coming months, all their lies about reform will be proven false. But that won’t stop them from inventing new ones and spreading attack ads.

It’s just the first step, but one letter from a constituent is worth a hundred paid advertisements. So please make sure your friends and neighbors understand the benefits this law will bring to ordinary Americans — take three minutes and write a paragraph or two now:

http://my.barackobama.com/SenateThank

Thanks,

Vice President Joe Biden

Well, shucks–that was mighty nice of ol’ Joe–I mean–to offer the resources of Organizing for America to write a letter of ‘thanks’ to Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken for their thoughtful consideration in voting for Obamacare! It was so nice, that I thought I would take him up on his offer. So, I wrote the following LTE to the St. Cloud Times, the Star Tribune, and the Duluth Tribune, all on OFA’s dime:

I am writing this letter to voice my disgust over Senators Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar’s blind passage of the behemoth health care bill that is neither about bringing down the cost of health care nor of expanding the coverage of quality health care. Already we are seeing the effects of planned layoffs at corporations who will, by virtue of the mandates of the bill, be required to lay off hundreds of workers, merely to stay in business. This, along with the proposed Value Added Tax (VAT) could not come at a worse time, and will only prolong this, the greatest recession since the 1930s. This bill was ill conceived from the onset, and it is clear that Senators Klobuchar and Franken lacked the integrity to do the right thing and to block the passage to the greatest affront to America’s personal and financial liberties since before the American Revolution.

Rest assured, the voters will long remember this transgression, and Senators Klobuchar and Franken will go down in History in the Hall of One-Term Wonders.

The rumors are out there:

If Barney Frank Is Retiring, We’ll Know Soon

A candidate ending his campaign a little early isn’t always big news, but I find it interesting that Dave Sukoff says he was encouraged by Massachusetts Republicans to run in the state’s 4th District, against Barney Frank, in light of the rumors that Frank is thinking about retiring. Sukoff had been running against Rep. John Tierney in the 6th District.

I would note that if Frank is indeed retiring, we should hear a lot more buzz between now and the May 4 filing deadline. The only other Democrat currently on the ballot is a LaRouchie. Frank is way too loyal a Democrat to leave his party without a strong candidate as his successor, so my guess is we’ll hear about some state legislator getting his campaign set up in the coming weeks.

While beating Frank would be a very hard task, the fact of the matter is that its not impossible in 2010 – certainly, Frank could be given a run for his money. Now, if Frank sticks then he’s got a very hard fight and then might wind up as a mere minority-party back-bencher in 2011. Not a very appealing set of circumstances – and not at all appealing to have the power in GOP hands, which will mean that the machinery of the House will no longer be at his disposal to help cover up his corruption.

Might be better, in Frank’s view, to take a powder and angle for some easy appointment in the Obama Administration. We’ll have to see.

But, never fear, the “experts” are convinced that we are in a sustained recovery period and all will be well:

With unemployment still at a severe high, a majority of states have drained their jobless benefit funds, forcing them to borrow billions from the federal government to help out-of-work Americans.

A total of 33 states and the Virgin Islands have depleted their funds and borrowed more than $38.7 billion to provide a safety net, according to a report released Thursday by the National Employment Law Project. Four others are at the brink of insolvency.

One thing, though: weren’t the experts now telling us all is well once telling us that all was well, just before the crash?

The man sells out his own values, and apparently has no ability to defend his action and is now taking the easy way out.

Michigan Rep. Bart Stupak, the congressman who led anti-abortion rights Democrats in the House during health care negotiations, will retire this year, CBS News has learned. He is expected to announce his plans later this morning.

Had Stupak sought re-election, he would have faced challengers from both the left and the right backed by interest groups angered by Stupak’s health care vote.

Stupak negotiated with Democratic leaders down to the eleventh hour for stricter abortion language in the health care bill, but he ultimately voted for it after President Obama agreed to sign an executive order assuring the new laws will keep taxpayer dollars from funding abortions.

A fairly easy task when one is a down-to-earth person facing off against a self-absorbed elitist:

President Barack Obama on Thursday made clear he was not going to take advice from Republican Sarah Palin when it comes to decisions about the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Palin, the former vice presidential candidate, has not been shy about criticizing Obama’s policies and this week weighed in on his revamped nuclear strategy, saying it was like a child in a playground who says ‘punch me in the face, I’m not going to retaliate.’

“I really have no response to that. The last I checked, Sarah Palin is not much of an expert on nuclear issues,” Obama said in an interview with ABC News.

Neither are you, Barry – and while you’ll try to sell this as something done under the advice of the SecDef, it still remains that you are the President and thus this boneheaded, ignorant and foolhardy new policy is all yours. As soon as President Pal…errmmm…I mean, as soon as a new President is sworn in, the military will breath a sigh of relief that they no longer have to salute policies they know make America unsafe.

What is really bad here is how clearly Sarah Palin has got under Obama’s skin – if his fellow Americans can rattle him this badly, imagine what our foreign enemies can do? A President who can’t graciously react to domestic criticism is not a President we can rely on in a foreign crisis.

Bad news:

More Americans unexpectedly filed claims for jobless benefits last week…Initial jobless applications increased by 18,000 to 460,000 in the week ended April 3, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington…

…Economists forecast claims would fall to 435,000 from a previously reported 439,000 the prior week, according to the median of 47 projections in a Bloomberg News survey.

Its still “unexpected”. Because the people who forecast simply lack the knowledge base necessary to make accurate predictions. In some cases, its simply a matter of the data being impossible to find – in other cases, it is because most people have been educated up in Keynsian ideology and simply believe the asinine view that government spending can spur genuine economic growth.

Until we start making, mining and growing things, we won’t get out of this. Period.

The news:

Consumer borrowing dropped in February, after increasing for the first time in a year during the previous month, according to a government report released Wednesday.

Total consumer credit fell a seasonally adjusted $11.5 billion, at an annual rate of 5.6%, to $2.448 trillion in February, the Federal Reserve reported.

Economists predicted a decline in total borrowing of $0.7 billion in February, according to a consensus estimate from Briefing.com.

“February’s decline reflects on the still dire state of the economy,” said Yasmine Kamaruddin, an economic analyst at Wells Fargo.

Yeah, no kidding, Yasmine. You figure that out all by yourself?

Anyways, not to get down on Yasmine – or any of the other “experts” who found this drop to be “unexpected” – we’re still in a bad way. And the January gain was just a mirage brought about by some screwy government action on student loans which made it appear that consumer credit grew in January when it really didn’t. Essentially, we’re now 13 months in to consumer credit decline.

In the long run, this is very healthy – the American people are de-leveraging and learning that they don’t really need instant gratification. Frills can wait, as it were. In the short run, however, this bodes ill for the Keynsian economic model we’re following. All these bazillions of bucks of government printing, borrowing and spending are supposed to ignite the economy – but it stubbornly refuses to catch fire.

I think its because we got badly burned in the housing bubble and we’d rather not torch up again. Slow and steady does get the job done – which means that we’ll only be able to spend money as we make it. The problem is that nothing in Obama’s policies encourage wealth creation – there is nothing in there to really encourage someone to open a mine, start a farm, build a factory. Until we start doing that, we’re just spinning our wheels – at best – or digging our economic grave – at worst (and I think its “at worst” – our debt is crushing us).

Going to be a long, hard road out of this – made harder by Obama and his Democrats. The good news is that they might wipe themselves out so bad that we need not trouble with them for a generation. And that’s a good thing because it will take us that long to clear up the mess.

HAT TIP: Mish’s

And puts the world in danger:

So one wonders—as Putin embraces Chavez and Karzai plays host to Ahmadinejad; as Russia asserts the right to repudiate any nuclear-arms reduction treaty and China gives us the bird on the yuan; as the alliance with India languishes and the one with Britain experiences unprecedented atrophy; as Israel expresses acrid disagreement with us and Japan seeks to rip pages out of its postwar rulebook—what all the pragmatism has really, truly accomplished…

…other than give our delighted adversaries a free pass and our friends a very rude wakeup call.

And, indeed, one does wonder – but not too much. This is just the way Obama was educated to view the world. This is liberal education over the past 25 years or so put in to practice. Obama likely really believes the stories – perhaps believes such things as the reason Iran is hostile is because we supposedly helped conduct a coup in the 1950’s, that Moslems hate us because we’re partial to Israel, and so forth. If you believe that American actions are a source – or, possibly, the source – of global conflict, then pretty much doing the opposite should reduce – or eliminate – conflict.

That it is all mind-bogglingly stupid and not based on a shred of fact is neither here nor there – Obama was taught it by people who asserted it stoutly, who had the apparent credentials to make such statements and, of course, made such statements without any dissenting views being allowed any where near. Obama’s mental view of the world is a product of a hot-house climate of liberalism.

So, what to do? Hunker down and wait for a new President – it is all we can do. Obama will continue to weaken the United States all through his Presidency and we’ll be at increasing risk of war until the day he leaves office. And let’s pray war isn’t thrust upon us while Obama is in office because he’d probably be worse than useless at that, too, as in all his education, there probably wasn’t even a moment when he considered military policy.

Long, rough few years ahead.

Cross Posted: Noonan for Nevada