You know, America is getting rightfully fed up with the crap going on in DC. Our supposed “Hope & Change”, post-partisan President who was elected in 2008 has now morphed into a far left zealot who has gone into ‘divide America and win at all costs’ manic overdrive. Hate the rich, hate the middle class, hate whites, hate Christians/Catholics, hate business, hate profits, hate success, hate Israel …

The White House has become a pathetic distillation of the worst of the left – and somehow expects this to win them votes in 2012. It is stupendously stupid as well as tone deaf political move.

The Senate has become the pouting chamber, killing one House bill after another and threatening to shutdown the government. The only problem with this strategy is that it might be THE MOST POPULAR move the pols in DC could make. Check out these latest numbers from Gallup (click to enlarge graphs:

A record-high 81% of Americans are dissatisfied with the way the country is being governed, adding to negativity that has been building over the past 10 years.

These numbers are worse than in 2008 when the GOP was ousted from power, and worse than 2010 when the Dems in the House were ousted. Worse yet, most people fear the reach and incompetence of government over most other concerns. Check out this key number:

49% of Americans believe the federal government has become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. In 2003, less than a third (30%) believed this.

So, if you are from the big-government, dangerously-incompetent party (i.e., Democrats) what do you think your chances are for 2012? I would say ‘slim to none‘ is being kind.

The economy cannot get out from under the crush of government ‘oversight’ and taxes. Obamacare has turned out to be the disaster everyone said it would be. The great socialist experiment in Europe is crashing down. The Keynesian government-trickle-down theory has been finally destroyed. And liberals are up in arms because they have justly lost all credibility.

You have to wonder why the Dems have become so incoherent. What has driven them to this point?

Obama promises to tax millionaires while his millionaire buddies go bankrupt and hand taxpayers a $535 million dollar busted loan. One of many to come.

Obama’s EPA is outlawing breathing (CO2) and the inhalers used to help those with trouble breathing. The Death Panels are up and running already when breathing is a crime.

It simply boggles the mind how ridiculous and insane the strategeries coming from DC really are these dys.

Note to Harry Reid – please shut it down. Shut it all down.

And then the next Congress and President can re-open it from the bottom up, with only those minimal requirements implemented. Right now that would probably be the simplest and quickest path back to sanity.

A new poll out is just one more in a long line of abysmal polls showing President Obama’s dramatic fall over this past summer.

This week’s Economist/YouGov Poll is full of bad news for President Barack Obama. The frontrunners for the GOP nomination in the 2012 contest are pulling very close to him in head-to-head matchups, and his approval rating has been at or near the lowest levels of his Presidency for the last few weeks. And the worrisome economy keeps it there: this week just 36% approve of the way he is handing his job overall, the lowest rating ever in the two and a half years of his Presidency. More than half the public — 56% — disapproves of the President’s performance.

36% indicates, once again, that Obama is heading for a one term run. He has just about completely flipped his support/opposition numbers from the heady days of his inauguration. Even worse, the mistakes and misjudgements he and his party have run through since January 2009 are starting to pile up and spread to the Democrat Party at large:

One of the Democratic party’s leading pollsters released a survey of 60 Republican-held battleground districts today painting an ominous picture for Congressional Democrats in 2012. The poll shows Democratic House candidates faring worse than they did in the 2010 midterms, being dragged down by an unpopular president who would lose to both Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Mitt Romney.

We all know how well 2010 did for the Democrats – a historic blow out. So if it is really worse now than last year for Democrats, one can only ponder what type of devastation is now facing the Party of big-government incompetence.

Can the Democrat party even survive a repeat of 2010 in 2012? I would wager the party  runs the risk of going the way of the Whigs Party if they become so toxic only radical ideologues feel compelled to vote for them. If they become the symbol of screwed up, corrupt, big-government and the punching bag of voter angst then they could irreparably harm the Democrat Party brand.

Given the left have been on a tear to irreparably tear down the core of America’s values and strengths, this scenario is not as far fetched as some may think.

Then there is the litany of recent dumb announcements (see here and here) and bad news on Obamacare (see here and here) to indicate this administration has decided to accelerate its demise to full speed ahead. Evey day another chicken comes home to roost on liberals, and the administration’s response is stubborn denial.

Add to all of this the breaking Solyndra scandal and you have a baked-in 2012 shellacking of the Democrats:

The sudden bankruptcy of the Fremont, California, manufacturer of solar panels?—?after it was feted as a model creator of “green jobs” by President Obama and Vice President Biden?—?has already featured FBI raids, contentious congressional hearings, and demands for a special prosecutor to investigate. The plot thickened further last week when Solyndra’s two top executives, who made 20 trips to the White House while their loan application was under consideration, invoked the Fifth Amendment rather than answer questions from the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The NY Times came running to Obama’s defense, but it was a weak and pathetic list of lame excuses. They claimed no political pressure was brought to bear, but with incessant involvement from the White House on a normally mundane and quiet selection process that is a joke of a lie. The administration claims they were blinded by lobbying, which is an admission of pressure from the politically connected people superseding legal responsibilities of government. You can’t get away with breaking the law by saying someone else made me corrupt. The excuses will only full those gullible groupies who refuse to open their eyes anyway.

The nail in the coffin against this backdrop of millionaire special treats paid for by taxpayers is Obama’s idiotic claim that he wants to be on the side of average citizen by taxing millionaires. Millionaires making money from corrupt and incompetent federal programs. Do the math. If the millionaires buddies of Obama have to pay an extra 10% on the $534 million they just spent on jobs in China and Europe (where much of the money went) they still walk away with 55% of our money. I have never seen anything more incoherent than defending the waste of millions of dollars on bogus green jobs funneled to Obama donors while saying he is a warrior for the non-millionaires.

This prior Obama supporter sums up the root cause of Obama’s (and the left’s) political problems:

I have now become convinced that President Obama’s biggest problem is that he believes — wrongly — that he (or his people) know better how to allocate resources than do the many millions of “men and women on the spot.”  This is the thing that keeps our very smart President from being a wise President.  It is killing economic expansion in this country, and it may well render him a one-term President.  It is, quite literally, a fatal conceit.

…

The President is proposing to penalize private investment (where the investors themselves decide which projects deserve their money) in order to fund government investment.  He proposes to penalize charitable giving (where the givers themselves get to choose their beneficiaries) in order to fund government outlays to the needy.  He calls for impairing municipalities’ funding advantage (which permits them to raise money cheaply to fund the projects they deem most worthy) in order to fund municipal projects that the federal government deems worthy of funding.

…

He believes that he and his people know better than the men and women on the spot how to allocate productive resources.  That conceit renders a very smart man very unwise.  Solyndra, I fear, is just the beginning.

Maybe if just once their conceit proved to be right – but not so far.

Fall 2011 looks like it will go down in history as the time when Obama’s presidency finally began to sink below the waves and take the Democrat Party down with it. Since most of the moderates have been purged from the very liberal party, there is little chance we will see a course correction. Independents are jumping ship to the GOS side. The Left plans to ride this disaster all the way to their political demise. It will take over a year to see the final stages of this slowing moving train wreck.

Creating jobs the old fashion way

Gary Johnson just stole the debate tonight with his comment: “My neighbor’s two dogs have created more shovel ready jobs than this administration” [paraphrasing]

Classic!

Losers: Romney and Perry.

Winners: Cain, Bachman, Santorun.

Doing better (people who need to be in the next administration): Gingrich, Johnson, Santorum

Apparently Obama/Holder are making GITMO news in Europe today. But since the completely ignorant cries under Bush to close GITMO and put terrorists/enemy combatants on trial we have seen this administration put out an assassination order on a US citizen in Yemen without a trial and guilty verdict.

So … self proclaimed terrorist/enemy combatants from foreign countries deserve a trial but a US citizen does not, he just gets executed?

With such dizzying intellectual incoherence like this is it any wonder liberals screwed up so badly on the economy?

Oh, this is sooo sweet:

As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports, today is the deadline for unions to file petitions seeking a recertification election, and to pay a fee to the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission. And that is a process upon which the larger unions are not embarking, with only a few locals thus far taking on the challenge. The unions can continue to exist, but will lose many important advantages of certification.

School budgets are turning around as the monopoly the union controlled health plan is broken and they are forced to compete in the open market. This means more funds for teaching and teachers with no loss in benefits.

Change you can believe in (and take to the bank)

A ray of hope burst out from DC’s dark echo chamber yesterday as the House GOP put an end to the deficit/debt fiasco by opposing GOP House Leadership on a stop gap spending bill for GFY 2012:

The House stunned Republican leaders Wednesday by rejecting a temporary spending bill that would have funded the government through Nov. 18.

The vote failed, 195-230, after Democrats pulled their support [1] for the bill and Republican leaders were forced to scramble for enough votes entirely within their own ranks. Four dozen conservatives voted against the bill because it left spending levels for 2012 higher than the cap set in the House GOP budget [2].

Emphasis mine.The news media is desperately trying to spin this to be about disaster relief funding – which it has nothing to do with. Right on cue, the media comes out clueless and off point.

That is because this story is peppered with Democrat talking points – as shown by the lead sentence. The Democrats pulled their support – which meant this Continuing Resolution for Continuing Fiscal Madness was being passed by the inept old pols in the House around the freshman class. With the current Congress, consensus means over ruling the Tea Party desires.

Democrats decided to play ‘shutdown chicken‘ [1] over the plan to actually pay for disaster relief by cutting \ someplace else. The Dems want to keep on spending our money without responsibility or limits.

The whole thing backfired as the freshman kept to their promises from the 2010 election and demanded fiscal sanity. Note why the GOP failed to support the bill – because spending was higher than agreed to previously [2]. Not because disaster relief was being paid for through Department of Energy cuts:

Democratic leaders objected to a GOP provision cutting funding from a Department of Energy manufacturing loan program to offset additional money for disaster relief.

So the Democrats wanted even MORE deficit spending in the CR – what a shock. These fools are addicted to  spending beyond our collective means. They have no shame in carelessly putting us all in deeper debt. The GOP is going to come out the champions of fiscal sanity on this one. Anyone demanding a shutdown (like Harry Reid did) is the one playing petulant god.

Boehner comes out of this looking weak, which will have to be confirmed by other reporting not so tied to the DNC as this article clearly is:

Boehner had tried, unsuccessfully, to rally Republicans behind the bill earlier in the day, warning them in a closed-door conference meeting that the level of spending was likely only to increase if their legislation failed.

I don’t know about part of the sotryu this because it seems the deeper the fiscal hole the House allows to be dug the more Libertarian/Tea Party support the GOP will lose. The 2010 election was loud and clear on the point of fiscal madness in DC. Why would Boehner risk his base of support AND sell short his convictions. It’s possible, but seems like a lunatic move to me.

The Debt Ceiling debacle was rightly panned because it was business as usual: massive deficit spending now and silly promises of  better behavior in the mythical future. Same thing with the GFY 2011 budget that covered the last four months. Massive over spending now, piddly spending cuts maybe in the future.

This has to stop, and only the GOP House has any will to make it stop. Boehner cannot give up balancing budgets and cutting back wasteful AND questionable programs. Most of the government is made up of questionable (or dubious, pick your connotation) spending with unclear returns on investment. All of that questionable spending should be on the chopping block as wasteful. We should not spend a dime without clear and unambiguous positive results that warrant the expenditures (no more $5 returns on $1,000,000 spent).

I applaud the House and this vote. It should be THE topic of the week, if not the month. If we are going to go through another damn year without Democrats doing their sworn duty in Congress (i.e., passing real budgets) then we might as well start using CRs to begin cutting.  Because until we do the country will continue to suffer both in the short term and in the long term.

Update: Jazz Shaw at Hot Air has this to say on the matter:

There is a common and completely understandable impulse among much of the base to break out in applause whenever Republicans lay down in front of the tanks in terms of spending. Further, there are obviously some in the progressive base, still smarting from losing the majority in 2010 and the drubbing they took in the debt ceiling fight, who want to see their leaders in the House poke a finger in John Boehner’s eye whenever the opportunity presents itself. For people on both sides, if I could borrow a phrase from Larry David, you might want to curb your enthusiasm in this case.

This continuing resolution is strictly Off Broadway stuff. The real battle is taking place on the big stage of the super committee, and that’s where we’ll find out how serious Congress is about setting the nation’s fiscal house in order.

Sorry, But I disagree. Strongly.

This CR funds the beast for I believe a quarter of the year. If not now, then never. The Debt Commission is a silly fantasy – one Obama has already trumped with his insane proposals of more stimulus spending, more taxes, more of the same.

It is also a good time to send a signal to the 12 fools on the Hill who were instituted to avoid our normal constitutional process. This committee was set up to neuter the 2010 freshman class. It will always be spend or shutdown until 2012.

Look, you have to be able to implement your goals and principles CONSISTENTLY, at every opportunity, for them to take. Or else – as Captain Barbosa famously claimed – those principles and codes are ‘more like guidelines’ (said in a gnarly pirate accent. And therefore meaningless.

Tags: Boehner, GFY 2012 Budget, House GOP, Shutdown

It is interesting how the seeds of today’s political outlook were sown back in February 2009. President Obama and the liberal media never once grasped the inherent danger in Obama;s dramatic skill at over promising. He became the messiah of the desperate or stubborn (those who refuse to adjust their world view as humanity seasons and matures). When he promised the waters would recede due to his coming to office, you knew this administration had all the characteristics of a coming disaster.

Back in the very beginning of 2009 the liberals (Obama, Pelosi and Reid) announced to the country they had the magic elixir to solve all our problems. They claimed (like all good snake oil hucksters) that the Keynesian approach of trickle down government would turn the tide against the harsh competition (and its only harsh if you refuse to give it a good hard try) of the free market. Now there would be fairness (in other words lots of hand outs) across the land. As one poor sap claimed, Obama would now pay her mortgage.

Rule of life number 1: If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. The more expansive the hype, the more likely the hype is compensating for some serious (and known) short falls. Hype is meant to divert and turn off the inquisitive and cynical thought processes by replacing them with fantasies and dreams. And ‘Ol Obama was a gifted siren when it came to those who thought it unfair they had to work hard, get good grades and operate within reasonable social bounds to earn a good life.

Back in 2009, when the stimulus bill arrived with all the loaded nonsense of impossible promises (as if it were the new 10 Commandments come from on high) I noted the liberal bill had fatal flaws. There is no such thing as a shovel-ready job in government. Any new project takes years to get started, the bloated bureaucracy is so laden with check boxes, committees and paperwork.

Therefore, the Stimulus bill was doomed to never match up to the over reaching rhetoric that surrounded it. Promises, promises, promises. Fairness, good jobs, teachers blissfully teaching kids, a filet Mignon in every kitchen, every night. None of it would come to pass – the government is just too damn slow and incompetent these days.

2.5 years later my predictions all came true. Months up months of awaiting the golden eggs promised by the federal golden goose only produced hurt, bitterness and embarrassment at being duped by a silver tongued snake oil  peddler. The result: Obama now fades into the dustbin of history, another victim of failed left wing, socialist screw ups.

One day, humanity will grow up enough to realize government is the worst, coldest, least caring monopoly humankind ever conceived. Which is why our founding fathers took greater lengths to weaken and divide it than strengthen it. They knew government was the one institution that had the power to corrupt absolutely, given humanity’s bottomless ego of “knowing all”. Our ability to have confidence is also one of our most dangerous failings. Confidence turns to arrogance when it is really a false confidence covering up insecurity.

Look at racists, religious fanatics, sexists and the Nazis with the Jews.  All proclaim a superiority over their hated rivals, fed by a deep insecurity in relation to their rivals. Class warfare from liberals is no different – they create arrogance to cover insecurity between the haves and have nots. Sadly, that means the miscreants and middle America.

But America has long been comfortable in its skin. Our grass roots are deep. Main Street is our heart, not Wall Street or Pennsylvania Ave in DC. As I noted the other day, anarchists and socialists cannot get a hold here because we have the experience of individual freedom and socialism’s bloody failures. Only a few ignoramuses still follow that siren song.

Obama has come out with proposals that now cement his fate through 2012. He has proposed another round of sure-to-fail stimulus. Harry Reid wants to have a hissy fit and shut down government until he gets his way. And Pelosi has been thankfully marched off the political stage so we don’t need to be inflicted any more by her “Baghdad Bob” schtick. The wheels of progress grind slowly on. And America now looks any place but left.

Has America really given up on Obama? Absolutely, if this poll is really the harbinger it seems to be:

Look out President Barack Obama. Even Sarah Palin’s gaining on you.

A new McClatchy-Marist poll finds that Obama looks increasingly vulnerable in next year’s election, with a majority of voters believing he’ll lose to any Republican, a solid plurality saying they’ll definitely vote against him and most potential Republican challengers gaining on him.

…

After trailing Obama by more than 20 percentage points in polls all year, the new national survey, taken Sept. 13-14, found Palin trailing the president by just 5 points, 49-44 percent. The key reason: She now leads Obama among independents, a sharp turnaround.

Obama now can only plan his exit strategy, there is no winning strategy out there. The Dems need to plan for another long trip into the political minority. Will the left exit maturely and gracefully, setting the stage for an earlier possible return to the main stage? Or will they go in the same petulant manner they governed – setting their sentence in political oblivion to be one of many, many years to come?

So far they have been choosing door number 2 – the petulant path out. I have little expectation they are capable of losing with grace (given the fact they run from legislative responsibilities as their first reaction to looming losing a vote). But America is now looking to a new morning. And a lot of credibility has been burned up on the left, for the hapless news media, for the political pundits, and for big-government more than all the rest. We may finally begin to see positive change.

Update: Hot Air is getting a lot of commentary on this poll. I just don’t think people were ready to stick a fork in Obama, but no one should be surprised the backlash that began in the 2009 elections, flowed through unabated to the 2010 elections, and showed consistent results in the 2011 elections we have seen (WI, NY, NV) should be a glaring set of data points the 2012 is when the backlash will peak – not subside.

Don’t have time for a long post with links, but I have to note how President “Hope & Change” has transformed into  President “Political Dunce”. Who else would propose higher taxes and fees that hit consumers and the job creators – thus irritating the right and center – and also proposes cuts in entitlements – to irritate the left. Is there anyone this proposal doesn’t push to the ‘reject’ column? As Mark Penn notes this is a recipe for political disaster.

This seems to be more Obama trying to save himself and throwing everyone else in the country (left and right) over board.

Sadly, that is just not a winning plan when a voting booth is involved. One term for sure now.

Major Update: The Obama White House will be burned down by green greed ($$$$) and fraudulant solar power investment. Ironic, isn’t it?

It turns out that the bureaucrat responsible for overseeing Solyndra had direct financial ties to Obama and Solyndra:

Steve Spinner, who helped monitor the Energy Department’s issuance of $25 billion in government loan guarantees to renewable energy projects, was one of Obama’s top fundraisers in 2008 and is raising money for the president’s 2012 reelection campaign.

Spinner did not have any role in the selection of applicants for the loan program and, in fact, was recused from the decision to grant a $535-million loan guarantee to Solyndra Inc. because his wife’s law firm represented the company, administration officials said Friday.

Good lord – a complete FUBAR. There is no need for Spinner to be involved in ‘a selection process’ that has already made the selection per political directives. As has been made clear (see ‘lawyer’s view” link below) Solyndra’s selection was set in motion 6 days after Obama took office – and after the Bush administration had rejected the company as a viable candidate. One way to get access is through spouses – so messages could easily (and verbally) move from Solyndra to the Department of Energy without any concern of exposure or miscommunication. Oldest DC trick in the book.

Obama is about to make Watergate look like a mild political joke in comparison. And we all know how that turned out for the GOP in 1976! – end update

Just as we could see the writing on the wall for the GOP well before the 2008 elections, and the Dems well before the 2010 elections, the wheels set in motion for 2012 are already pointed in their set direction and turning inexorably  towards our next political pivot point. At this moment in time and history, unless something major happens to deflect the current momentum and its direction, Obama and the Dems are heading towards another round of political shellacking.

Mark Steyn – as is his wont – has penned some excellent points that drive home how stuck on stupid Obama and the left have become after 3 years of ignored warning signs from the markets, main street and the electorate:

Simply as a matter of humdrum reality, there is no bill, it won’t “create” any jobs, and it will be paid for with money we don’t have. But the smartest president in history has calculated that, if he says the same four monosyllables over and over, a nonexistent bill to create nonexistent jobs with nonexistent money will be yet another legislative triumph in the grand tradition of his first stimulus

Does anything better sum up the decades’ long problem with DC? How many times have the worshipers to The-God-of-Big-Government claimed the money they deprive of our workers and main street will solve any and all problems, only to fail abysmally when all is said and done?

The left are so entrenched in their failed dogma (the stuck on stupid part) they still fail to even consider the option of sharing responsibility with others by abandoning their knee jerk resistance to lower taxes and smaller government. Think of the new dynamics if the GOP was actually a partner in this next year of policy. But there is no compromise from the left – none.

Which is why Obama has put forth the dumbest Hail Mary plan ever conceived in modern politics. His plan embodies all the irritation points the electorate has been signalling the left to end for two and half years.

Steyn puts it concisely here

Gosh, it seems like only yesterday that Washington was in the grip of a white-knuckle, clenched-teeth showdown over whether a debt ceiling deal could be reached before the allegedly looming deadline. When the deal was triumphantly unveiled at the eleventh hour, it was revealed that our sober, prudent, fiscally responsible masters had gotten control of the runaway spending and had carved (according to the most optimistic analysis) a whole $7 billion of savings out of the 2012 budget. The president then airily breezes into Congress and in 20 minutes adds another $447 billion to the tab.

Massive debt and deficits, wasteful spending, lack of jobs – this plan hits them all, the wrong way. Can anyone be (or appear to be) more incoherent?  Worse, Obama is trying to claim this mythical bill will create jobs quickly – which we all know won’t happen ever since the stimulus bill of 2009 epically failed. Even if Obama got his wishes for 2012, it takes a year for government trickle down money (i.e., Keynesian Economics) to start to impact jobs. So again, we will go into debt on promises of future mythical results. Tiresome to the nth degree.

Against this backdrop of incoherence is a larger tale of criminal cronyism. One which is going to be deadly to the left’s image and character. The Solyndra scandal has already reached deep into the White House, with clear ties to big Democrat donors. Donors who appear to be walking away and leaving their costly mistakes for the American tax payer to clean up:

The Obama administration restructured a half-billion dollar federal loan to a troubled solar energy company in such a way that private investors — including a fundraiser for President Barack Obama — moved ahead of taxpayers for repayment in case of a default, government records show.

Update: A lawyers view of the Solyndra scandal – end update

Why can’t Solyndra be responsible for its own screw ups? Why do ordinary citizens – with no chance of financial reward if things had worked out – be the ones who have to pick up the tab? And why did the White House make this change AFTER it was clear Solyndra was going to default? This is an abuse of power, plain and simple. This is not complicated, vague or unclear with reasonable doubt. Every tax payer is a victim with the right of regress against the perpetrators of this theft.

While people in DC perceive these two stories as isolated and independent (part of that haze newbies to DC fail to grasp when they  come here and only see reality from inside the compartmentalized and distorted DC echo chamber) the nation sees this as what it –  two sides of a badly tarnished coin. Obama will get zero support for another left wing gorge at the taxpayer till with his cronies. It just ain’t going to happen with Solyndra out there.

So what Einsteins in the White House thought they could do another round of failed stimulus with the Solyndra scandal playing out in front of a nation hurting financially and in desperate need of more income? I mean you have to be epically clueless to think this is a politically sound and winning strategy. While an interesting question, it completely irrelevant.

Poking the voters in the eye is not going to do anything but cement their ire in the voting booth a year from now.

What is not clear is how this slow motion political implosion is going to play out over the span of a year. The American people are becoming frustrated and anxious that things have no hope of turning around before 2013 and the arrival of new management. That anxiety will continuously build and morph into bitter anger. And it will expand out to be shared by the Democrat Party at large – as long as they  fail to force change from within their ranks. The longer Democrats stand by and hesitate to act – because of some pathetic fear of looking MORE incompetent than they do now – the more voters will bless them with their expanding ire. The cancer that was Obama, Reid and Pelosi leadership is spreading through out the one-time party of Roosevelt and Kennedy. The problem is that liberals and unions have their egos on the line now, and they will refuse to admit they screwed up and need to change course.

As long as the stubborn and naive arrogance remains in place,  more damage will be inflicted on the left. The left wing media groupies keep pretending the factors at work are outside the left. They point to the GOP, foreign forces, EU economies, etc. But the fact is the the implosion is happening from bad decisions, horribly ignorant policies, extreme inexperience and fragile egos INSIDE the political left. It is now too late to wake up and have any course correction be taken serious or survive the internal strife such change would create.

Either way, the left is going to come out of 2012 fractured, broken and unable to be a political force until it deals with its own problems. Now it is just a question of how bad it will be. My guess is worse than 2010, by a long shot. Just like 2010 was worse than 1994 by a long shot, today’s left is hell bent on total success or total self destruction. Too bad they can’t face the fact ‘success’ is not an option for them any more.

Update: The left’s finally going “all in” with staged protests of Wall Street and evil corporations (more here). Shades of Germany and Russia  post World War I, and the rise of communism and Nazis. The left is still stuck in the past. They have no idea why modern America does not need to turn away from the free markets that built this country and made it the world’s leader in many aspects.

For so called intellectual elites, the clowns on the left are horribly ignorant and simple minded. Socialism ignited in Russia and Pre-Nazi Germany because those countries never had free market democracies. They had no idea how free market democracies could unleash individual freedom and wealth. Moreover, they did not have the history with the bloody failures of socialism we have today (the very same Nazi Germany and Communist USSR, etc). That is why a reenactment of protests is doomed to tip the nation left. The more the left rises up in mob anger, the more repulsed the level headed main street will become.

Recall, it was main street which ended previous wrongs, from racism to sexism to worker abuse in submission of unbridled greed. Now the left and its oppressive big government is the cancer – and main street will not rush to the protests, but reject them outright.

Bad play on the part of the left – but I am not surprised. After many years of bad plays I would expect no more now.

I have hesitated to pontificate too much on the gun runner fiasco that let thousands of guns out on the street to maim and kill. Trust me, the government bureaucracy is capable of immense mistakes caused by what normal people would call criminal negligence. Basically, stupidity at such a level it is a danger or threat to others, but is not accompanied with an intent  to harm.

But the recent recent news about the Obama administration funneling hundreds of millions of $$$ in loans to a ‘green company’  that promptly blew the money and went bankrupt – for the taxpayer to bail out – is not just stupidity run amok. While stupid, it was also clearly premeditated:

The Obama White House tried to rush federal reviewers for a decision on a nearly half-billion-dollar loan to the solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra so Vice President Biden could announce the approval at a September 2009 groundbreaking for the company’s factory, newly obtained e-mails show.

The Silicon Valley company, a centerpiece in President Obama’s initiative to develop clean energy technologies, had been tentatively approved for the loan by the Energy Department but was awaiting a final financial review by the Office of Management and Budget.

The August 2009 e-mails, released exclusively to The Washington Post, show White House officials repeatedly asking OMB reviewers when they would be able to decide on the federal loan and noting a looming press event at which they planned to announce the deal. In response, OMB officials expressed concern that they were being rushed to approve the company’s project without adequate time to assess the risk to taxpayers, according to information provided by Republican congressional investigators.

Solyndra collapsed two weeks ago, leaving taxpayers liable for the $535 million loan.

One e-mail from an OMB official referred to “the time pressure we are under to sign-off on Solyndra.” Another complained, “There isn’t time to negotiate.”

Emphasis mine of course. Earlier this week I claimed the emails clearly showed White House pressure to make the decision based on a political photo op and not on due diligence, as is the responsibility of all government employees. By circumventing the legal process and pushing the decision to a major Obama contributor, the inexperienced ignoramuses in the White House forgot there are bright legal lines that cannot be crossed that insulate the functions of government from political malfeasance.

It is clearly illegal to bypass laws and override concerns when it comes to handing out taxpayer money. These are known as political pay offs and in this case there is little doubt it occurred. Just answer this question: would Solyndra have garnered the special loan and conditions of the White House stayed neutral? Clearly not, since the business case (making solar cells at many times the going price) is laughable.

This White House is now in serious, serious legal trouble. From now on it will have one and only one priority – protect itself. It’s political capital is now spent and it can only limp to a 2012 defeat. There will be no impeachment – the country has no will or taste for that at the moment. But America will count down the days to fire these buffoons and look to hire new management.

Tags: Biden, Obama, OMB, Solyndra, Taxpayers