Saturday, November 6. 2010
 CT is running counter to national trends. Not a single Repub Congressman or Senator, and a State House controlled by Dems with the first Dem governor in 24 years. No brakes.
Watch your taxes, middle class suburbs and quiet farming villages, because they are coming after your money. The unions want a state property tax and a state income tax increase, and Malloy is now owned by the unions.
Even my Dem friends are talking about setting up Florida residence. Vote and run.
Good source for my state's news: Connecticut News Junkie.
This good old independent Yankee state is now entirely in the pocket of the unions - especially the government unions - and the three corrupt urban train wrecks which, instead of being the dynamic centers of job and wealth creation that they once were, have become insatiable sponges for dollars: Hartford, New Haven, and Bridgeport. Their declines have been dramatic: In the late 1950s, Hartford was voted the most pleasant medium-sized city in America to live in - higher than Boston - and I was told about the lines of limousines parked in downtown Bridgeport.
I cannot explain how that happened, but I do know that people migrated north just before the jobs moved south (to avoid the unions, the high wages, and the taxes). Business has feet: it can move easily to Texas or to India.
CT still has the highest per-capita income in the country, but that is mostly because of New York City's prosperous suburb, Fairfield County (where the O likes to go frequently to mine for gold - Greenwich for the real gold, Bridgeport for the votes). If they over-tax those folks, they will move away. They ain't stupid. You can run a hedge fund from anywhere.
I see that CT is already ranked the fourth-worst state in which to do business. With the new team, I'm sure we could get higher on that ladder without too much effort. It's a damn shame.
The only consolation is that we still have open carry and, of course, readily-obtainable carry.
Deirdre McCloskey, author of The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce, has a new book: Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World
Anchoress discusses Palin.
Love is not enough. (Not enough reason to vote for somebody)
Global Geoengineering Moratorium
Good to see a hint of sanity
Nor should Republicans overinterpret their Tuesday mandate. They received none. They were merely rewarded for acting as the people's proxy in saying no to Obama's overreaching liberalism. As one wag put it, this wasn't an election so much as a restraining order.
The Republicans won by default. And their prize is nothing more than a two-year lease on the House. The building was available because the previous occupant had been evicted for arrogant misbehavior and, by rule, alas, the House cannot be left vacant.
I think Dr. K underestimates the force and speed of this return to normal.
The economy: Gridlock's not enough. A quote:
The problem is that Obamanomics has placed the US economy in a hole so deep that it will take more than easy money coupled with political gridlock to fix. To lower unemployment in a meaningful way, Washington needs to unwind the trillions of new debt, higher taxes and new mandates that it's given us over the last two years. The GOP's gains this week aren't enough to make that happen.
How do I know this? It's the assessment made by just about every businessman I spoke to before and after Tuesday's voting. (Almost no one speaks on the record these days, for fear of political retribution. But that's another column.)
Stratfor on the election, via SDA
Friday, November 5. 2010
The Lib Zuckerman doesn't have my politics, but he's always interesting. America's Love Affair With Obama Is Over:
He came across as a young man in a grown-up's game—impressive but not presidential. A politician but not a leader, managing American policy at home and American power abroad with disturbing amateurishness. Indeed, there was a growing perception of the inability to run the machinery of government and to find the right people to manage it. A man who was once seen as a talented and even charismatic rhetorician is now seen as lacking real experience or even the ability to stop America's decline. "Yes we can," he once said, but now America asks, "Can he?"
And
The open purchasing of votes through the provision of special exemptions for five states and for unions, and concessions to many of the special interests in the Democratic Party, especially trial lawyers, symbolized the corruption of our politics. The 2009 omnibus spending bill alone contained 8,570 special earmarks like those that had so enraged the American public in the past. When lawmakers had no time to even read the bills, it gave the impression that what was important was passing anything, no matter how ineffectual. Obama had promised he would change "politics as usual." He changed it all right, but for the worse. The list of his additional programs only provoked the public's distaste for big government, big spending, and big deficits.
Yeah, read the whole thing.
Image above from post at Watts.
All sane people hope for globalistical warmening. It's too darn cold.
Litotes? Litotes.
FOF: Avoiding and Ending an Affair
Nobody listens to those bozos.
Maybe not so evil, but I hate change of any kind.
Insty:
ROBERT GIBBS: Efforts to repeal ObamaCare won’t get past the Senate. That’s okay. Make â€em vote for it again.
What a loss for the ignorant peasants.
That's a good thing.
It could be—it seems just possible—that the “truth and science and facts” that these Democrats talk about are really only schoolhouse theories that have no bearing on reality; that they are tried-and-failed progressive fairy tales that could only continue to be believed by people who have spent most of their adult lives glued face-first to the public tit. It’s possible that the best-informed populace in history has risen up in a truly spontaneous grassroots movement deeply connected to the nation’s founding principles and prudently given the heave-ho to a bunch of spendthrift, incompetent, supercilious, and self-deceived buffoons who mistook their college degrees for wisdom.
Somebody is crazy angry: Tim Wise at Daily Kos (h/t. Q&O)
I think this guy wants to have me shot. Make my day, weenie. He cannot wait for the demise of the USA - and says so. Where does this sort of anger come from?
For a moment, I thought somebody photoshopped Obama into this Drudge pic:
Readers will be happy to know that we replaced our old server today:
Two competing programs are proposed to Congress from the left and from America�s manufacturers. One protects domestic unions while further burdening US manufacturers and consumers. The other grows US competitiveness.
The Nation, in its inimical leftward way, analyzes the problems with �free trade globalization.� Its National Affairs correspondent, William Greider, longtime journalist, describes �a huge hole in the world�a massive loss of demand. Think of the trade wars as the largest producers fighting over an abrupt shortage of buyers.
The situation, as Greider sees it: A Wall Street Journal poll found that 53 percent (including 61 percent of Tea Party adherents) think free-trade globalization has hurt the US economy. Only 17 percent think it has helped. But the trouble with Americans claiming injured innocence is that it blinds them to the complexities of the predicament. The fact is, the United States and China, motivated by different but mutually reinforcing reasons, collaborated to create the unbalanced trading system. American multinationals eagerly sought access to China's market. The Chinese wanted factories and the modern technologies needed to develop a first-class industrial base. American companies agreed to the basic trade-off: China would let them in to make and sell stuff, and they would share technology and teach Chinese partners how it's done. Not coincidentally, US corporations also gained enormous bargaining power over workers back home by threatening to go abroad for cheaper labor if unions didn't give wage concessions.
Greider points out, correctly, that multinational corporations, clever devils, have profited from US subsidies but, anyways, shipped production overseas for less costly labor and regulation.
Greider�s prescription is to impose more regulation and taxes upon multinationals that ship production elsewhere. Greider does not even suggest that unions negotiate less costly labor contracts or that our government reduce its regulatory burdens upon domestic manufacturers.
Greider, finally, does admit that his recommendation �would raise prices for Americans.� US manufacturing unions, however, would � though still likely to hemorrhage jobs � keep high wages and benefits for their remaining members, and dues flowing for contributions to Democrat political campaigns.
By contrast, the National Association of Manufacturers just issued its Manufacturing Strategy for Jobs and a Competitive America. Some recommendations are clearly self-serving, like not taxing foreign earnings, but most make much more sense than Greider�s � get ready for this euphemism � �national loyalty program.�
Continue reading "US Consumers Vs Unions: Which Program For Congress?"
 Bag of uncounted ballots discovered in Bridgeport.
Sounds like Bridgeport. They always have bags of stuff, when needed.
Powerline: Annals of the welfare state
E-mail shows illegal activity in Reid's campaign
What happens in Vegas is supposed to stay in Vegas.
Bishop Tutu and "Israeli Apartheid"
Krauthammer's take at NRO. Electric cars?
Somebody told me yesterday that electric cars will save the human race from extinction because they have no emissions. What can you say to people like that? I am not kidding: She said electricity comes from the wall outlets. College-educated.
Democrats have to be more competitive in states that don’t touch an ocean if they want to bounce back.
Must be the toxic ozone from the salt water. Ban the oceans, along with the Happy Meals.
Driscoll: How the Gray Lady Became Margaret Dumont
Nancy Pelosi Seriously Considers Staying as Democratic Leader
Goody.
More good links later today, when I find the time to post them.
Our antique server broke down. Nothing a little duct tape and baling wire couldn't fix. Sorry.
This from Dick Morris on Why Triangulation Won't Work This Time:
Obama's programs have been so far-reaching and fundamental that any compromise would leave the nation far to the left of where it's always been and wants to be. When he took office, government (federal, state and local combined) controlled 35 percent of the US economy -- 15th among the two-dozen advanced countries. Now, it controls 44.7 percent, ranking us 7th, ahead of Germany and Britain. So where's the compromise -- leave government in control of, say, 40 percent?
Thursday, November 4. 2010
A spanking is what was administered to the Dems on Tuesday, minus (or not) the fun sado-masochistic eroticism. (Don't ever try to tell me that you've never had kinky thoughts.) Pic is from Vintage Spanking.
Still strange in CT - who won?
First they came for my Happy Meals...
"Soft tyranny"
TNR: The Gates Foundation's Delusional Techno-Messianism
GOP sweeps FL, wins Maine (!) governorship
Wins keep coming in
Harsanyi:
No matter what happens, for now, we can look forward to two glorious years of hyper-partisan acrimonious gridlock: Washington's most moral and productive state.
Gridlock is good.
Wherein Ace gets a taste of Politics 101
Opinion: Why Are Voters Only 'Angry' When They're Tossing Dems Out?
Well, who says it?
SDA: Bits you might have missed
Including Alabama
North Carolina: The strangest beast in all of politics
NRO: New York Wrap
As hopeless as CA
How did Harry Reid do it?
He won ugly.
Podhoretz: No time to celebrate- GOP remarkably sober at win
Us, too.
Wednesday, November 3. 2010
Image above stolen from Surber
Fred Barnes: The Republican Landslide
Wehner: Obama after the fall
Strange.
China's Christians: China could not silence 200 empty chairs in Capetown
Summary of governor's races.
CT's Tom Foley lost, by a Bridgeport.
Some Liberals Still Head Over Heels In Love With Obama
Being in love with a politician is a perversion.
Krauthammer: 'Obama Agenda is Dead,' 'He Tried a 2-Year Experiment in Hyper-Liberalism and the Country Has said No'. (Here's the good video)
Powerline: The trouble with California
Hopeless.
More attacks in Bagdad: Sunni vs. Shiite
Yes, they are mad about Gitmo and American Imperialism. Gotta bomb somebody, for Pete's sake, or your life will have no meaning.
Michelle: Moonbeam wins weirdest victory speech award
Sure sounds stoned. California is in good hands.
The Wrong Sort of Scepticism is a Crime against Humanity Says Penn State Prof
Sheesh. I'm a criminal against humanity. Shame on me.
Here. It affects the Congressional race and the Governor's race.
It's lawyer time.
My two cents are to echo Marco Rubio:
"We make a great mistake if we believe that tonight these results are somehow an embrace of the Republican Party," said incoming Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida. A rising GOP star, Rubio seized his new role as a party leader and potential presidential candidate, casting the results as "a second chance for Republicans to be what they said they were going to be not so long ago."
Similar from Jay Cost:
This is not an endorsement of the Republican party, but much more of a rejection of the Democratic party, specifically the claims the Democrats have made since 1996 to be broad in its appeal and moderate in its policies.
Democrats built a congressional majority in 2006 and 2008 by persuading Bush voters to cross the aisle to support them, with an implicit promise of bipartisanship and moderation. The party under Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi did not deliver on that promise -- and thus they lost the support of these Republican-leaning districts.
Related, how does somebody please all the independent voters?
... for all the decisiveness of the independents' shift, this election hasn't resolved the most fundamental question facing the country: What should the role of government be in the 21st century?
Instead it has simply set up what figures to be a two-year debate over that question in Washington, and ensures that it will be a focal point of the 2012 election.
Thanks to independents—along with other crucial swing blocs, such as suburban women, blue-collar workers and retirees, all of whom also shifted toward the Republicans—the GOP now has the strength to stop pieces of the Obama agenda and, perhaps in some instances, roll it back.
Iraq and Afghanistan played little roles in the 2010 elections. However, President Obama will likely pay a price in 2012 for the withdrawal of US armed forces from Iraq. The Iraqis are already paying the price. The AP's Robert Burns reports:
The Obama administration could be overstating what U.S. diplomats can do to contain Iraq's ethnic and sectarian tensions without U.S. military forces, a State Department audit concluded Tuesday, raising fresh concerns about the planned pullout of American troops next year.
The auditors also questioned whether American diplomats who remain behind will be adequately protected against insurgent violence, and their report faulted Washington for its planning of the transition from a U.S. military-led mission in Iraq to one run by American civilians in 2011.
The audit's findings echo worries expressed by some U.S. defense analysts and former diplomats. They say hard-won security gains in Iraq could crumble if U.S. forces leave on schedule….
The report said the first six months of 2012 are likely to be "especially dangerous as extremists test U.S. resolve and Iraqi security forces' capabilities." It questioned whether the U.S. can meet President Barack Obama's goal of ensuring a safe work environment for remaining U.S. personnel in Iraq in 2012. "Security risks are expected to increase," the report said.
Ohio returned to its Republican roots yesterday. It's the Heartland.
That's a decent excuse to post one more of my Ohio pics from 2 weeks ago - the new Paul Newman Field House at Kenyon College. Fantastic for such a tiny college. Kenyon is strong in swimming.
The story is that alumnus Newman offered Kenyon a blank check for new theater and auditorium facilities. Kenyon said "Thanks - but we're good with the old stuff we have." So Newman asked "Well, then what can I do?"
 Pic is Kristi Noem, gun-totin' Conservative who happily won in South Dakota.
Many races I feel good about (like Allen West and Dan webster in FL, Toomey in PA, etc), many I feel badly about (like Debicella losing in CT with a 50-50 result, and Sean Bielat's spanking by the horrible Barney). Angle was a lousy candidate, and it will be good fun to have Dingy Harry to kick around again. Summary of votes at RCP.
I enjoyed this from Gateway:
Racist, sexist teabaggers have elected Marco Rubio, Susanna Martinez, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, Bill Flores, Allen West, and...
Still, Eugene Robinson says it's about race and Obama.
Pitiful.
From Chantrill:
In the end, of course, it doesn't matter whether President Obama is a socialist, a crypto-socialist or a liberal. From the point of view of the ordinary American it's a distinction without a difference. Faced with a problem, President Obama will always opt for a solution that makes government bigger and Americans smaller.
Unfortunately for the president and his grand plan to transform America, the majority of the American people believe that the solution to our problems is to make the American people bigger and the government smaller.
Former President Bill Clinton - who presided over his own first-term electoral catastrophe in 1994 and is thus something of an expert on Republican landslide wins - denied this election is a referendum on the Obama agenda. "It. Is. A. Choice," he said. "A choice between two different sets of ideas." Well, obviously it's a choice; the people are simply choosing to reject the Democrats' ideas. Mr. Obama quipped, "The big difference here and in '94 was you've got me" - a point on which all sides can agree.
More misc. links later if I can find time to clean up my tabs...
My greatest disappointment was Barney Frank's easy defeat of Sean Bielat. I don't get it. I do notice, however, that the Maine legislature has flipped to Repub. That is remarkable.
Otherwise, this important warning at Pajamas - What Republicans Need to Do Now, subtitled If Republicans avoid over-estimating what this victory means and focus on the business of the American people, the gains of 2010 can be the beginning of a conservative resurgence:
Victorious Republicans should enjoy their election victory, but they should also understand it does not mean that the American people have bought wholesale into conservative political philosophy, as is so tempting to believe after a big election.
Tuesday, November 2. 2010
We will not be live-blogging, drunk-blogging, stoned-blogging, pajamas-blogging, nude-blogging, or otherwise reporting or commenting on election returns tonight.
Furthermore, we promise to post no profound statements about "what this election really means."
 Having some friends over late tonight for a couple of hours to watch the election returns.
We'll have a jolly time, regardless of the results. Richard Baehr advises me not expect too much.
All I want is a "restraining order," for now.
ANY WONDER WHY CALIF. IS GOING BROKE?
California Academic Performance Index (API) California Access for Infants and Mothers California Acupuncture Board California Administrative Office of the Courts California Adoptions Branch California African American Museum California Agricultural Export Program California Agricultural Labor Relations Board California Agricultural Statistics Service California Air Resources Board (CARB) California Allocation Board California Alternative Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority California Animal Health and Food Safety Services California Anti-Terrorism Information Center California Apprenticeship Council California Arbitration Certification Program California Architects Board California Area VI Developmental Disabilities Board California Arts Council California Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus California Assembly Democratic Caucus California Assembly Republican Caucus California Athletic Commission * California Attorney General
Those are just the As. The rest are below the fold.
Continue reading "California state agencies"
With special reference to Dick Blumenthal, at Am Thinker
 I just voted. I enjoyed it.
This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land
Related: This Is America, Stupid! And it's not just the economy. It's the disrespect for the wishes of the electorate, who pay for everything.
The elite without a country
Sharpton: Blacks Unemployed Because Of Racist Republicans
Al should write for The Onion
Chavez Says Venezuela's Golf Courses Should Be Seized, Put to Other Uses
Chavez should write for The Onion, too.
Tina Brown beclowns herself
She could write for The Onion too.
Was stimulus Barack Obama's 'original sin'?
Slaughter at Baghdad Church- 52 Murdered Including 3 Priests During Al-Qaeda Siege , and Churches Set Ablaze
in Russia's Muslim Caucasus
These perps obviously need better jobs, social workers, teachers with better pensions, and more understanding. Or are they just still mad about Gitmo?
MAINE FAMILY ROBINSON’S Top Ten The Hell With It, I’m Outta Here Movies
Somewhat related: The houseboat on the Pawcatuck River
The ‘big dog’ in campaign spending. Unions.
Who's Afraid of Marco Rubio?
Marco looks like a star. They always go after the potential stars, drive up their negatives or break their legs.
Americans are about to give Obama a bloody nose. Why? He just doesn't share their core values
Young Voters Say They Feel Abandoned.
Pathetic.
Monday, November 1. 2010
My chimney sweep was here at noon (to check my flue after my fire on Friday). As he was scoping out my chimney and sending his brushes and vision device up there like a colonoscopy, he commented "I hope we send a clear message to Washington tomorrow."
He is retired career USMC. He still lifts and runs every day, and it is obvious. Oorah. His son is a SEAL.
(He has a very good business going - at $150 per chimney, he was booked up solid from August through December, and does a second round in Feb. for heavy users. His preferred customers have multiple chimneys. Like a dentist, he sends out reminder postcards to his people each July to make appointments. He has a deer- and turkey-hunting cabin on 200 acres up in West Nowhere, NY, has a modest life and doesn't really need the money, so he uses his income to bring his entire family, including grandkids, on one-month European trips every June. He rents a big house with a cook and housekeeper in a different place each year, flies the the folks over and back whenever they can get free to come, and rents cars for them. Last year, he did Scotland. In past years he has done a Greek island, Tuscany, the Czech Rep., Sweden. This June he plans on Sicily, which I told him I felt was an excellent choice).
I said to this hearty, red-blooded American: "I think we will send a message, but who will be listening?"
Get your chimneys cleaned, Maggie's Farmers. We cannot afford to lose any readers in house fires.
He thinks the numbers predict a historic Dem smash-up. Says Jay:" I had to rub my eyes and look a second time. I could barely believe it."
I think it's all about turn-out.
From Fernandez' Aftermath at Pajamas:
...the sheer ferocity of the campaign suggests that all sides see it as a Rubicon, which once crossed means that more is to follow. Perhaps nobody sees 2010 as an end, only as the beginning of a very fundamental struggle.
The proximate cause of the conflict, even though he is ultimately not its basic antecedent, is the president. The Washington Post calls Barack Obama the divider-in-chief. He didn’t create the fence; he simply made it impossible to straddle it. The president has made it necessary to choose political sides. In a way, Barack Obama has done more than any recent president to cast the issues starkly.
It has been made clear as day to voters that a vote for a national Dem is a vote for a Leftist agenda.
Lots of Conservatives are excited about the elections tomorrow. It's this year's political World Series. With the numbers running for election, etc., a 45-seat Repub House pick-up would be fairly normal for a first midterm, so anything over that would be a big deal. I have no idea what to expect. All I know is that a wave-type Repub House victory will be like closing the barn door after the cows got out, and that it will be - and will be intended to be - a refudiation (thanks to Mrs. Palin for that handy neologism) of the Dem's national agenda.
Krauthammer:
Over the next two years, Republicans will not be able to pass anything of importance to them - such as repealing Obamacare - because of the presidential veto. And the Democrats will be too politically weakened to advance, let alone complete, Obama's broad transformational agenda.
OCR Editorial: What Tuesday might mean
Politico: Grim Dems await huge House losses
WSJ: A Vote Against Dems, Not for the GOP
Only partly true, I think.
Democrats blaming the victims
They called us names
We don't like that.
Parker: Obama's missing sense of humor
Especially about himself.
Via Driscoll:
“Only one question remains — what area of the private sector — aside from the slip-and-fall attorneys — isn’t hated and vilified by the Obama Democrats?”
Realted from Gerson: Obama the snob
His politics, somebody told me, are those of "the typical upper class Liberal, Ivy-educated, suburban white woman." Well, I see more Alinsky than Escalade in the dude, but I might be wrong.
Barone's Obama's Economists Missed What Voters Plainly Saw
The line from the Obama camp is that voters are confused, ignorant, misled or even racist; they can't be rejecting the president's party on the merits. But voters, in rejecting the Obama Democrats' vast expansion of government, may be more sophisticated than their supposed betters. Leave the private sector alone, they seem to be saying, so it can recover from the financial crisis recession and once again create the bounteous and unscripted growth that has been the norm in American history.
WSJ: CBS Phone Recording Sets Off Firestorm in Alaska
This sort of thing has a history at CBS...
Dick Morris reviews Daniel Hannan's new book
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