This week has been interesting on many fronts.  But any review of events must be seen in the context of a nation trying to enjoy the last few weeks of summer while probably doing everything they can to keep politics out of the picture. Too bad we can’t also keep the Obama economy out of the picture as well.  So here are a few observations from some one who is also not really drawn to the babble of politics right now and only had half an ear on events. Especially given the latest round of business as usual on the debt ceiling debate – i.e., another round of impotent commissions, empty promises on future cuts and a massive and immediate rise in the debt. After that mess I can think of millions of other things to do with my time right now.

Michelle Bachman won the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa, and congrats to her. Finally the DC Political Industrial Complex (PIC) will have to start to take her more seriously, though conservative women are never taken seriously by the left or right (see Sarah Palin).

Tom Pawlenty was one of the big losers in Iowa – his obsession and rudeness over Bachman basically torpedoed him. He totally forgot the 11th Commandment in his ridiculous attacks. Update: Hot Air has a post up with Pawlenty dropping out. Smart move on his part – end update

Another loser was Romney. Not only did he draw a Perry candidacy his star is definitely fading. He will never get over 25% in the GOP field, so as it thins out he will fade away.

Barack Obama was the biggest loser, has his own brinkmanship over the debt ceiling debate (remember all his veto threats and the Dems killing reasonable House bills in the Senate?) then turned into the lame whine about partisans holding the nation hostage. The stupid conclusion made by the White House – after his ‘we need to get along speech’ over the weekend  is another flip-flop to ‘we need to become more intrenched and partisan‘:

As the economy worsens, President Obama and his senior aides are considering whether to adopt a more combative approach on economic issues, …

This careening back and forth is a clear sign the Obama White House is completely off track and rudderless. Obama has never compromised on a damn thing. Pretending their propaganda spin was really compromise is pretty lame stuff – even for politicians.

Obama is going into his final year here a lame duck. He has squandered all his political capital on losing policies (see stimulus as failing to trickle down jobs and Obamacare failing to contain costs). He will be either really compromising or sitting on the sidelines whining. What he won’t be getting is his way on anything unless he begins to lead and win back support. While possible, that scenario is highly improbable. There are tipping points, and Obama passed his a while back.

Fox News – big time loser on the Iowa debate and covering the Straw Poll as if it meant something big. Message to Fox News – stop being a political junky’s news channel. And stop throwing gotcha games in debates. One of the refreshing things about Fox News under Brit Hume was avoiding the minutia and staying focused on the big important issues. New Gringrich was right to call Wallace out for inane questions. Get back to representing the mains stream folks, get outside of the DC bubble before you auger in like CNN and MSNBC.

Big Winner : the Tea Party movement. The Tea Party movement is alive and well – if frustrated with the pace of DC getting its act together and making some headway on anything tangible. If you are taking a lot of heat and barbs then you are doing  really good at shaking things up in DC. Only people who play the game avoid the heat. So don’t let the backlash from the Political Industrial Complex be a sign of failure. In this political environment the best place to be is on the side of Main Street and opposing the guardians of the status quo in DC.

Update: Judge that tipped ruling was Clinton appointee. Sweet Justice – end update

Just got word from DJStrata that the 11th Court of Appeals has decided against Obamacare:

An appeals court ruled Friday that President Barack Obama’s healthcare law requiring Americans to buy healthcare insurance or face a penalty was unconstitutional, a blow to the White House.

The Appeals Court for the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta, found that Congress exceeded its authority by requiring Americans to buy coverage, but also ruled that the rest of the wide-ranging law could remain in effect.

The legality of the so-called individual mandate, a cornerstone of the 2010 healthcare law, is widely expected to be decided by the Supreme Court. The Obama administration has defended the provision as constitutional.

The case stems from a challenge by 26 U.S. states which had argued the individual mandate, set to go into effect in 2014, was unconstitutional because Congress could not force Americans to buy health insurance or face the prospect of a penalty.

Well, it looks like all those crony exemptions to Obamacare were unnecessary after all – since they entire fiasco falls with the individual mandate. And note this is a majority of states challenging DC’s over reach. My bet is if Obama does not get elected in 2012 the nation will be able to dump this liberal albatross and avoid the same health care debacle we see in the UK and Canada. That alone should add a lot of momentum against a 2nd term for Obama, since much of the political backlash we have seen was sparked (if not fueled) by Obamacare.

Tags: Obamacare, Strike Down, US Appeals Court

Rick Santorum imploded in the debates last night.  I did not watch live, but listening to his social conservative rants played on a conservative AM news station this morning I quickly realized he was completely off track with this election cycle:

RICK SANTORUM: It sounds to me like Rep. Paul would say that polygamous marriages are okay.

The entire discussion of the federal government determining who has a valid, long term, legal commitment between consenting adults is getting tiresome. I do not want our schools inundated with LGBT exposure (especially before High School), but on the flip side I don’t want a bunch of puritans preaching to me about their view of a proper relationship. LJStrata and I have been married for over 25 years and have 4 wonderful kids. But our path was not one a Rick Santorum would tolerate – as if I cared what he thought.

This drive into the ditch last night was why the GOP cannot get traction against the left. Social conservatives fail to understand that America does not want either party dictating behavior through the power of the federal government. Santorum’s obsession with polygamy shows he is not focused on jobs, the economy and our over spending government. He just torpedoed his chances this round.

Also, drop the pathological, hypothetical examples. It also signals an inability to find common ground when you throw straw men like our young President does.

Not surprisingly the USPS has discovered that government run enterprises are too expensive to survive on their own:

The financially strapped U.S. Postal Service is proposing to cut its workforce by 20 percent and to withdraw from the federal health and retirement plans because it believes it could provide benefits at a lower cost.

Good lord, even the government can’t afford Obamacare!  So why does anyone with two brain cells to rub together think America’s economic engine – the small business – can afford this nonsense? Let me those still struggling out there a hint: no one can afford the gold plated fantasies  liberals dream up in their TV-Land view of the perfect human society.

It’s official, the inexperienced and naive White House has completely run out of ideas. They have no experience in the private sector, so they have no clue how to rejuvenate our economy and create jobs. Instead they are coming out with an endless stream of sophomoric proposals more indicative of a middle school homework assignment than the product of a leading economic team.

First up is the idiotic plan to turn our federal government into the nation’s largest landlord enterprise. In the face of their failed economic policies the White House has devised a brilliant plan to become a rental property manager. Trust me, if that was a sound idea at the moment there would be entrepreneurs  lined up for miles ready to take on the job and make money. But the problem is not managing rentals but creating an economy that produces viable renters and home buyers. There is no better sign these people are looking for band-aids instead of dealing with the root cause of the carnage than this proposal. The government should not be gathering up potential business assets and pulling them out of the economy – that will just make the recovery take even longer!

But this is something White House adviser Valerie Jarret has real experience in, since she was a slumlord in Chicago before gracing the nation with her talents and ingenuity (photo below is one of her prime properties she ran for the government in Illinois).

The second moronic idea is that by paying people to be on unemployment we are creating jobs:

“I understand why extending unemployment insurance provides relief to people who need it, but how does that create jobs,” Wall Street Journal’s Laura Meckler asked Jay Carney at Wednesday’s WH briefing.

Carney responded: “Oh, uh, it is by, uh, I would expect a reporter from the Wall Street Journal would know this as part of the entrance exam.”

“There are few other ways that can directly put money into the economy than applying unemployment insurance,” Carney said.

Bullsh*t! The best way to ‘put’ money into the economy is to NOT TAKE IT OUT!  Lower taxes, lower the cost of business, lower the cost of regulation and that money will go into consumer purchases and new business start ups. Get government out of the way.

When all the White House produces is twisted logic so warped it resembles drug addled thinking you know these people are spent intellectually. I have never seen massive unemployment rolls create jobs – since the math doesn’t pan out at all. This is simple stuff folks:

The average weekly payment is 36 percent of the individual’s average weekly wage.

So a person on unemployment is making 64% less than they would be working. Therefore it is NOT a net benefit to the economy to pay someone not to work.

This is baby stuff – and yet it is beyond the grasp of this White House. 2012 cannot come fast enough.

Tags: Economy, Landlord, Unemployment

This was to be the post I was finishing up this morning when our database went insane.  The original – now lost in the cosmic bit bucket – was totally lost. Hopefully this version will be as good as that one was.  Also, you should note a lot of improvements here since LJStrata did performed a brain transplant on the site. Let us know if there are any remaining issues with the site.

Yesterday in Wisconsin the liberal left, Democrats and Unions experienced a stinging defeat that cannot be understated. In the big picture of things political, the losses in Wisconsin were  one more glaring ‘dot’ in a string of ‘dots’ that, when connected, map out a political blood bath coming in 2012. But before we fill in the historical picture, let me explain why yesterday was more than just a near miss for the Dems.

This recall election was fought completely on the turf and issues selected by the left. The theme of the elections was retribution against the GOP. The focus point was on GOP Governor Scott Walker for breaking the union strangle hold on the taxpayers money and for requiring government employees to chip in for their benefits (like every other worker in America does). Not only that, but national left wing organizations were able to focus all their energy, resources and GOTV capabilities on these 6 small districts in Wisconsin – unlike normal elections  across a state or across the nation. This off year, off cycle special election should have been a cake walk for the well organized left. The only opposition was the ad hoc grass roots movement of the Tea Party and like minded conservatives, independents and libertarians. There was no equal GOTV machine, even though comparable deep pocket national groups did pump in their fair share of money.

Moreover – all 6 districts were swing districts. They were more bell-weather than ideologically pure. If there was going to be a backlash led by the left, these should have been easy pickings under these conditions

But they weren’t – not even close. If you take a look at the popular vote across all 6 swing districts the Dems had their heads handed them. Not only did they lose 4 out 6 races, but they lost the popular vote 53-47% (see chart below – click to enlarge).

All toll the GOP garnered 184,328 votes while the Dems only pulled in 165,130 (source here). So yesterday we had a special election, on the Democrats terms, in swing districts with the full focus of the national left wing organizations – and they lost the popular vote by 6%.

That is a major defeat. Anyone not looking at the details surrounding this defeat is in deep denial. A place the left wing media and pols have been for going on 2 years now. Because, as I said in the beginning, this is just the latest signal in a long line of warnings the electorate has sent the left.

The string of dots began in the fall of 2009. In November 2009 the tide turned against the left in a big way, signalling a need to reverse course from the failed stimulus bill (just beginning to fall way short of any economic impact) and Obamacare (something no one mandated in the 2008 elections). That year the VA Governor’s race and the NJ Governor’s race were won in spectacular fashion, reversing Obama’s 2008 win percentages by nearly 20 points in the case of VA.

But that was just the beginning. As Obamacare began getting crammed down the throats of Americans, another signal was sent to DC. This time it came in January 2010 with the Special Election win by Scott Brown in MA, winning Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat away from the anointed successor. A huge political shift in a deep blue state.

But the liberals and Democrats ignored that warning sign too. So in November 2010 the American voters came out en mass and dumped the Democrats out of House of Representatives in record numbers. Not only that, the 2010 blood bath went deep into the state and local level. Setting up the Wisconsin fights we just experienced.

And still the Democrats ignored the warning signs. In Wisconsin the left swore to unseat a GOP State Supreme Court judge, and failed. And now they failed in the perfectly teed up special election yesterday. If you are looking for a sign folks, they are all over the place!

Scott Walker has proven to be right in busting the union strangle hold on the state. Not only did he force the unions to collect their own damn dues (meaning anywhere from a third to a half the employees will probably keep their money for their families and cripple the union machine), he also broke the union monopoly on employee benefits. Once the GOP legislation took one school in Wisconsin went from a $400K deficit to a $1.5M surplus. It seems the unions were raking the taxpayers over for health care and the such, and when the union provided plan had to compete it couldn’t.

I really could care less if the Democrat nincompoops in DC face up to reality now or not. They can pretend that the voters will take out their vengeance on the GOP more than them in 2012. It won’t happen that way, just like it did not happen that way in 2010. Obama cannot survive politically by chastising the GOP – he is now just as guilty as the rest of dysfunctional DC. But more importantly, the message from Main Street is clear – cut back government to a reasonable size, stop massing mountains of debt and stop poking the government’s nose into every nook and corner of our lives. That means the party of Big Government (Democrats and Liberals) will ALWAYS take the brunt of voter anger right now.
As Ron Weasely famously said – how thick can you get?

Tags: 2012 elections, Barack Obama, Wisconsin Recall Elections

We had a major crash today and I’m rebuilding the site from backups. Please be patient. – LJStrata

Major Update: As I suspected, the high turn out is not working to the Democrats favor. 3 Senate seats already called for the GOP [as of 11 PM Eastern] – one more and the Dems have no hopes of taking the senate. 3 more and the Dems risk losing ground in the next round when it is their turn to defend their seats. More over at Hot Air Update: Dems win one, but one more in the GOP column and they are toast. Not looking good for Dems and unions tonight.

Major Update: Looks like turnout is damn high in Wisconsin’s special elections today – nearing presidential election levels:

Various clerks in the recall districts are reporting steady turnout so far with some projecting numbers that will rival a presidential election.

In the 10th SD in western Wisconsin, River Falls City Clerk Lu Ann Hecht said today’s numbers could be as high as the 2008 presidential election.

I would wager this is bad news for Democrats, who needed only the left to come out, not both sides. It will be very interesting to see the results tonight, but if the Prosser election is any indication, high turn out means lots of Tea Party, Conservatives, GOP voters and right leaning independents are showing good energy. – end update

I am going to go out on a limb today and predict the Democrats fall way short of taking control of the Wisconsin State Senate in today’s Special (Whine) Elections. Looking at some late polling over at Daily Kos I see a disaster in the making for the left. Another epic fail as the nation turns their back on liberal nonsense.

Just as the Judge Posner revenge game failed, and as Governor Walker’s policies have begun already to save schools from bankruptcy, there is little rage outside the echo chambers of the rabid left. Only one of the 4 races polled looks like a Democrat pickup, and even that is dodgy. The rest don’t look close.

Polling in these kinds of races are basically wild guesses as to turn out. The normal 3-5% error is not possibly 10-15%. But to oust incumbents for voting their conscience is extremely rare, because we all recognize our democracy is completely predicated on letting the other side win occasionally, and letting the system play out even though we may not like the choice.

So few people really are in the mood to let democracy devolve into pettiness – as is the want for this round of special silliness playing out in Wisconsin today.

One good result from the debt limit debate debacle and the Left’s ridiculous reactions is the understanding of how messy democracy can be when one political group will not give up on their failed fantasies. As the nation turns away from endless, incompetent government solutions to all problems big and small, the left in DC has been bitterly and angrily trying to hold onto to the fantasy that government is all knowing and better than the private sector.

The left has had to hide behind false statements for decades to try and salvage the socialist state programs they enacted. But the truth is these programs are failures. The war on poverty has failed – we now have more people on food stamps than ever before, along with ‘entitlement’ programs that are out of control and spending us into oblivion. The left-wing experiment to loosen mortgage lending requirements – to enable anyone who can fog a mirror to own a home – brought on the worst economic crash in living memory. That one ill-thought-out experiment wiped out the life’s work of tens of millions of Americans. Even the effort to raise the African-American community has failed – mainly because they remain stuck in victim status and have not lifted themselves up as strong individuals (the only way a community can rise). They are trapped by leaders who require their fealty more than their individual freedom. The left wing controlled public school system is such a failure we now see massive test score cheating spreading across the country to hide the disaster from scrutiny and accountability (see here and here) – not to mention to line the wallets of those who pretend to be succeeding.

The nation’s response to this sea of wasted money is not surprising. End the knee-jerk spending, stop trying to solve every program with a government study doomed to fail and cut government back to its minimum size and scope. But the left wing in DC, ensconced in the Democrat Party of Big Government, are ignoring the will of the people to the point they will do anything to save their precious socialist programs – no matter how bad the results.

This is well captured by Janet Daley from London, an American who has lived in the heart of European socialism since the 1960’s. One can only say ‘well spotted’ as you read through her assessment of what we are living through at this moment in history:

The truly fundamental question that is at the heart of the disaster toward which we are racing is being debated only in America: is it possible for a free market economy to support a democratic socialist society?

…

This was the heaven on earth for which liberal democracy had been striving: a system of wealth redistribution that was merciful but not Marxist, and a guarantee of lifelong economic and social security for everyone that did not involve totalitarian government. This was the ideal the European Union was designed to entrench. It was the dream of Blairism, which adopted it as a replacement for the state socialism of Old Labour. And it is the aspiration of President Obama and his liberal Democrats, who want the United States to become a European-style social democracy.

Ms. Daley sets up the debate quite well, but not perfectly. The question is really about what is the better path to redistribution – raising the individual up based on their talents and vision (free market capitalism) or by bringing down those who succeed and stripping them of their rewards (socialist confiscation). It is clear the left wants to be Robin Hood, a mythical character who fights obvious evil and oppression. But today’s left has no evil Prince John (i.e., government oppression) so creates a fantasy about private sector success which is just plain silly. In America, the individual has infinite choices for career and success, all they have to do is stay off the government dole and work hard. Only those on the dole long term fail. Only those who fail to reach beyond the public school education (or drop out) fail to succeed. Only those who demand from others fail to learn to make for themselves.

Microsoft and Apple Computers are probably the best examples of America’s open wealth creation system. Gates, I believe, never finished college. Both groups sprung out of garage-engineered ideas that were timely and visionary. Neither group would have received a dime of federal funding because their ideas were too radical, too much against the ‘conventional wisdom’ of the day. Government does not take a lot of risks basically the bureaucrats fear “on the edge” innovation and resist change at all levels. They are the antithesis of the risk taking entrepreneur.

It is only the rare external threat that creates an opening for innovation. A prime example of this was the Able Danger program for sifting through public records to try and identify terrorists threats. It was in the research stage years prior to 9-11, but was being resisted because it opened up questions about political leaders and their ties to foreign nations (the Clintons and China to be specific). The results was the program was disbanded to protect political leaders over the nation’s general protection.

I could spend years cataloging all the advances of humankind that arrived without or in spite of government assistance. Government jumps on bandwagons (see Al Gore and the Internet) only after they are built and running successfully.

But let’s get back to the battle at hand:

Contrary to what the Obama Democrats claimed, the face-off in Congress did not mean that the nation’s politics were “dysfunctional”. The politics of the US were functioning precisely as the Founding Fathers intended: the legislature was acting as a check on the power of the executive.

And the morons on the left had the gall to call those applying the checks terrorists, with one lame Senator (Kerry- Dumb MA) actually calling for the free speech of the libertarians to be gagged. You know they have lost it when their solution to their problem is government censorship.

The Tea Party faction within the Republican party was demanding that, before any further steps were taken, there must be a debate about where all this was going. They had seen the future toward which they were being pushed, and it didn’t work. They were convinced that the entitlement culture and benefits programmes which the Democrats were determined to preserve and extend with tax rises could only lead to the diminution of that robust economic freedom that had created the American historical miracle.

This is not a belief of just the Tea Party – who are among the most vocal proponents of this call for sanity. This view is held by libertarians and independents as well. The fact is, there is never enough money for bottomless social spending. There has to be a limit, yet the DC spenders are so addicted they cannot find it. So we sent a historic number of new faces to DC to change direction – and the old tired left resisted with all their might. And gave us a national credit downgrade. If the left thinks they are winning they are nuts, but so far nothing indicates much rationality or sanity on their side of the debate. They are losing support and distilling down to the rabid die-hards.

And, again contrary to prevailing wisdom, their view is not naive and parochial: it is corroborated by the European experience. By rights, it should be Europe that is immersed in this debate, but its leaders are so steeped in the sacred texts of social democracy that they cannot admit the force of the contradictions which they are now hopelessly trying to evade.

Well at least the Democrats have succeeded in bring a version of European stubborn political ignorance to America. Of all the great gifts and talents Europeans have to offer, we picked this one. Read the entire article because it is a crystal clear synopsis of what is happening in America, and soon will be happening in the EU as its socialist society collapses under its mountain of debt, built on naive good intentions.

We can delay this no longer. It is time to readjust the role of government, and remind everyone that it is not superior to the private sector on numerous fronts. It needs to be limited to a role that protects our nation and society, yet does not consume it like a cancer of over indulgence, waste and fraud. The debate for 2012 is not only teed up, it is probably also over. The debt ceiling wrangling produced no substantial change in our deficit spending trajectory, just a well deserved downgrade. Just one more failed liberal approach backfired.

We can stop beating our heads against the left hand wall any time now.

Update: This is the most heart wrenching, bleak assessment of our economy I have seen. It points to the results from all the failures of the liberal left – from messing with mortgage lending rules to trickle down government stimulus. And it is why we cannot afford for any more naive liberal fairy tales and policy blunders when it comes to assuring a sound future for our children. – end update

Update: A hat tip to Ed Morrissey for noting this WSJ interview with Eric Cantor on what drives the DC Dems right now -and it ain’t fiscal sanity but only a stubborn belief in a liberal fantasy straight out of TVLand. – end update

S&P’s downgrade of America’s long term credit should not be a surprise to anyone, especially after the fiasco that was the debt limit debate. S&P has been warning for months that our out-of-control spending was going to force us into losing our AAA rating. As Ed Morrissey points out, the reasoning is obvious and bullet proof:

I’m most amused by the shock, to tell the truth. S&P didn’t say anything yesterday that was not common knowledge and common sense. If you had to rate a potential investment that had an income of, say, $22,000 a year but had costs of $37,000 per year, a standing debt of $143,000, and contracted future debt that exceeded $1 billion, would you give that investment a gold-plated AAA rating and buy their bonds at the lowest interest rate possible, or at all? Of course not, but that’s exactly the fiscal situation of the US, at a 100000:1 scale.

And this situation has not been lost on the American voter – who spoke loud and clear in the 2010 elections. New Tea Party members joined new libertarian, conservative and independent allies in the House of Representatives to put and end to the mindless auto-pilot that DC has been running on. That election was a clear indication from We The People that business-as-usual must end and now. But too many in DC wanted to ignore the ramifications of that election process, ignore the people speaking loudly, clearly and in unity from the voting booth last fall. And it is those arrogant and stubborn DC elites who brought this upon this nation.

S&P is quite clear and rational when they make these points about where we ended up after the debt ceiling nonsense:

We lowered our long-term rating on the U.S. because we believe that the prolonged controversy over raising the statutory debt ceiling and the related fiscal policy debate indicate that further near-term progress containing the growth in public spending, especially on entitlements, or on reaching an agreement on raising revenues is less likely than we previously assumed and will remain a contentious and fitful process. We also believe that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration agreed to this week falls short of the amount that we believe is necessary to stabilize the general government debt burden by the middle of the decade.

No surprise here. The Congress and White House kicked the can down the road as I noted last week. There are no real cuts until 2013 since the only near term cuts reflect about 1.5% of the annual deficit as it stand this year. When your expenditures run 70% ABOVE your income, a 1.5% adjustment is not going to indicate a serious change in fiscal direction.

But this also caught my eye because S&P tried to be apolitical and claim a pox on both parties:

The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America’s governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed.

Here’s the rub on trying to either blame the newly elected representatives in the House who stood firm and demanded basically the same thing as S&P did (fiscal sanity) or in playing the equal blame game. Only one party refused to recognize the 2010 elections happened. Only one party tried to claim there was no message in 2010. Only one party has ignored the will of We The People and stubbornly tried to continue down the path that is causing not only the fiscal madness, but is also the reason the voters sent a historic message to change paths – now.

And that Party is led by President Obama and Harry Reid, both completely dysfunctional leaders. They live in the most rank areas of the DC bubble, where they think even elections cannot touch them. They are the lofty denizens of Mt Olympus, whose typical reaction to an energized grass root movement is irritation and insults.

Democracy only works if the leaders LISTEN to the voters. The voters did not want empty and useless promises of future deficit reduction. There NEVER has been, nor ever will be, future cuts – we have heard this tried song for too long. Politicians who want to make a living on Mt Olympus dare not try to cut a damn thing, or else the will be tossed out of heaven. That is what stinks about the deal we just got stuck with. All spending, no real cuts and a super congress of 12 hand picked (not by the people mind you) demigods who will only mute the messengers sent to DC by the voters.

DC is nuts if it does not think the people will tear down this mess if it does not get its act together. There comes a point where things are so screwed up nothing is worth salvaging. Many of us can see we may have already passed that point. And that force for change exists in the most powerful segment of America – the middle and upper middle class. The rich have individual power, but they do not have collective power. The Elites may delude themselves as they babble inside their bubbles and deny the forces gathering outside. But that is just denial, not leadership and not salvation.

Here we are with a downgraded credit rating, a debt that ballooned massively in less than 5 days after the limit was raised underpinned by useless promises of future fiscal sanity from a group of incompetents that brought is all of this mess. And on top of all this the US Postal Service comes out and claims it is bankrupt.

The people understand the only way out is to throw all the bums out, tear down their icons to stupidity and start over. I would never think the polls could go lower than now, but after this I think we will be trolling the depths of American frustration as they await their next round at the voting booth.