At a “Town Hall” style meeting the Chinese government set up for him in Shanghai, President Obama also bowed to Chinese Presiden Hu Jintao (watch at about the 1.0 minute mark for several small bows and one deep one):

While Obama’s behavior before Asian heads of state isn’t headline news here in the United States — and is being excused as “simple courtesy” by Democrat political hacks — Daily Mail in the UK headline read: Obama branded “Groveller-in-Chief” after deep bow to Emperor son of Japanese ruler who authorized Pearl Harbour attack.

So why would the President of the United States bow to the leaders of a country in which bowing is considered a breach of their political and social philosophy, etiquette and protocol? Well, one Chinese writer tweeted that “he acts like someone that never meet an asia person & is eagar to please. ignorant!…however, I believe that it is more a matter of common cents…and falling dollars.

President Obama bowed to the Emperor of Japan on his current tour of Asia. It was a full bow, with his upper body almost at right angles to the ground. Here’s the video:

Here’s what the New York Times had to say about the President of the United States bowing to the Emperor of Japan:

…the image…was indelible: an obsequent President, and the Emperor of Japan. Canadians still bow to England’s Queen; so do Australians. Americans shake hands. If not to stand eye-to-eye with royalty, what else were 1776 and all that about?

…But the “thou need not bow” commandment from the State Department’s protocol office maintained a constancy of more than 200 years. Administration officials scurried to insist that the eager-to-please President had not really done the unthinkable.

From this point on, things just get worse for “the first Pacific President. Much worse.

Of course, that quotation from the New York Times doesn’t refer to President Obama. Their criticism was for President Bill Clinton in 1994. And the “bow” that the Times was so upset about back then wasn’t a full-out, upper-body-bent-almost-parallel-with-the-floor, Japanese cultural bow of a peasant to the living embodiment of a god on earth. No, what the times was complaining about was an “almost bow” by Bill Clinton:

It wasn’t a bow, exactly. But Mr. Clinton came close. He inclined his head and shoulders forward, he pressed his hands together. It lasted no longer than a snapshot, but the image on the South Lawn was indelible: an obsequent President, and the Emperor of Japan.

As I write this, the New York Times has not indicated their reaction to the Obama-bow, however a lot has changed in fifteen years and I doubt they will express outratge. And this is not, of course, the first time that our current president has committed a breach of protocol and custom by bowing down to a foreign head of state. You might remember that he did the same thing while meeting the King of Saudi Arabia.

But why all of this controversy over a simple gesture of politeness?

Well, because politeness isn’t what it is. The act of bowing to a monarch or head of state is an indication of subservience, not of politeness. It indicates that the person you are bowing to has power over you, and that you acknowledge that fact. In Japan, people bow to those who are their superiors — their employers or elders, for example. And the depth of the bow indicates exactly how superior the person is. The lower you go, the lower you acknowledge that you are.

It would have been very hard for President Obama to have bowed any lower than he did before the Emperor of Japan and the King of Saudi Arabia unless he had gone down on his knees on the floor.

And that, perhaps, would have been overkill.

What makes this worse, from a protocol standpoint, is that this was not Barack Obama bowing to the Emperor of Japan. This was a state visit, and Barack Obama, as President Barack Obama, was representative of the United States of America. It is the same diplomatic mysticism that says that foreign embassies are extensions of the soil and sovereignty of a foreign nation and not really part of the country that they stand in. President, Kings and Emperors are symbols, not people.

It was the United States of America bowing low and lowly before Imperial Japan. And before that, doing the same before the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Surprisingly, however, President Obama did not bow to the Queen of England when they met.

Obviously, one might say, after having made a protocol error in Saudi Arabia, President Obama learned from his mistake and acted correctly when in the United Kingdom. That answer remained valid until yesterday, when he bowed before the Emperor of Japan.

One might ask, “Why did the President of the United States, after having made what could be called a “novice” error in bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia, and correctly behaving in England, make the same mistake again while meeting the Emperor of Japan?” His action in Japan certainly calls into question President Obama’s judgement and memory, if not his intellect.

His actions raise an even more interesting question: “Why did President Obama bow to the heads of state of two nations who hold a substantial majority of current U.S. debt, but not bow to the head of state of one of our strongest allies?” Surely the answer couldn’t be simple “sexism,” could it? Obsequious behavior to kings and emperors but superiority to queens? Surely not.

On the surface, the Obama bows appear to simply be a matter of the Obama administration recognizing the reality of America’s new place in the International Economic hierarchy. A reality where a spendthrift American government is at the mercy, and under the control, of those nations who supply our consumer goods and our oil. A global pecking-order in which America obeys the dictates of foreign nations in Asia, the Middle East and Europe on which wars are justified, which laws should be enforced and how high a standard of living U.S. citizens deserve. A New World Order where the United States is a debtor to all, and a shining beacon of hope to none.

An America, in fact, that is the triumph of American Liberalism. America as American Liberals have always perceived it and wanted it to be. An America that knows its place…and willingly takes it on the world stage.

Or perhaps “backstage” might be a more appropriate way to phrase it.

And this raises what may be the most important question of all. Will President Obama bow before China’s head of state? (UPDATED November 24, 2009 — Yes, he did. He bowed down before both Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Chinese President Hu Jintao.)

China, after all, holds the majority of current U.S. debt. What is fair for the heads of state of the number 2 and number 3 U.S. debt-holder nations should certainly be fair for the head of state of the country we are most obligated to and dependent upon. Where does one draw the line once one has established a precedent? (UPDATED: Obviously, one draws the line only with those who are not our economic overlords.)

Having bowed down in Japan and Saudi Arabia, if President Obama fails to bow down in China will that not be taken as a deliberate national insult in face-conscious Asia? And coming at a time when China has hinted they will be dropping support for the dollar? (UPDATED: Apparently, President Obama and his handlers agreed with me, and he bowed frequently and low in China.)

So, is it an intellectual insufficiency, sexism, or economics that caused President Obama to bow down in Saudi Arabia and Japan? China will tell. (UPDATED: Economics, at least. I suspect one of the other causes is also in play, but your opinion may differ. Or not.)

The last questions are how low will he — and we — go? And why? (UPDATED: Now that the question of “why?” seems to have been answered, only the question of “how low will he go?” remains.

And since a top economic advisor sat in on President Obama’s most recent deliberations on how, or whether, to continue the war in Afghanistan that so far this year has cost the lives of more American soldiers than any other year of the war…that question is literally vital.)

And that means that if the current Senate bill passes, every taxpayer is going to be required by law to pay for abortions to be performed. No matter what your personal feelings, moral values and religious principles are, your money will be going to fund countless numbers of abortions. And if you don’t participate in the system, as Moe Lane pointed out, with video showing Nancy Pelosi stating it clearly, then you will go to jail.

This is becoming a problem of Biblical proportions.

You can read about it yourself in the linked pdf of the actual bill if you have any doubts. Starting on page 118, line 7, section 1303 of the massive, 2,074 page bill, under Voluntary Choice of Coverage of Abortion Services, the HHS Secretary is given the sole authority to decide when abortion is allowed under the government-run health care plans mandated by the bill. Senator Reid’s plan also requires, on page 120, line 13) that at least one insurance plan covers abortions.

And all enrollees in the government-run health care plan will be charged a monthly premium to pay for abortion coverage for those who choose to have it. Not just those who elect to have abortion coverage. All enrollees.

Erick very rightly points out that the health care fight cannot hinge on abortion. But there are a few Democrat Senators who are not in favor of federal funding being used to kill unborn babies. Two of the three remaining hold-outs on voting to allow the bill to procede are also against public funding of abortions. One of them, Mary Landrieu of Lousiana, is being handed what ABC news points out is a targeted $100 million dollar payoff to buy her vote in favor of abortion.

Senator Landrieu originally said that she would decide by today how she would vote; she now has put off the decision until Friday. Perhaps the fact that ABC broke news of the massive payoff to her is giving her second thoughts.

I hope so. But since the latest post on her Senate website indicates that the Senate bill, “while imperfect,” is a step in the right direction–I think I know what her annoucement on Friday will be. And no matter what rationalization she uses, voting in favor of the motion to procede is a vote in favor of using your tax dollars to fund abortion.

Senator Ben Nelson indicated that he would not vote for a bill that did not contain abortion restrictions at least as tough as those in the bill that passed the House. He does not seem to be reading the same bill that I have read, and that you can read. It not only is not restrictive of federally-funded abortions, it mandates abortion funding.

But Senator Nelson apparently has also decided to vote to allow debate to begin on the bill, and is falling back on the excuse that a vote to allow debate to begin–which requires 60 votes and could stop the bill from proceding–is not the same as voting for the bill itself. And since that only requires a simple majority, and is a probable foregone conclusion to pass without fillibusters and other procedural tricks, Senator Nelson is at best being disingenous.

Any Senator who votes in favor of the motion to procede, is voting in favor of the bill passing. To say anything else is to say something that simply isn’t true. The fact that Senator Nelson is saying that he will fillibuster the vote on the bill is encouraging, but it still means that the bill will be one step closer to passage when, and if, he follows through on his threat.

Even Sen. Lindsey Graham believes that inclusion of a public option in a final health care bill that passes and is signed into law will destroy private health care in the United States. And that means, if he and other observers are correct, that in a few years everyone in the United States will be required to pay, out of each paycheck, to fund what many consider to be the murder of millions of innocents…or go to jail for not participating in the system. Nancy Pelosi seems quite intent on making sure of that.

If the health care bill passes the Senate, the final bill President Obama signs into law will include both a public option and federal funding of abortions. That is a virtual certainty. And every one of us, no matter what our beliefs or values, will be paying for abortions under threat of imprisonment. We will all be complicit in the system, and in the continuing the millions of abortion deaths in our country.

Count on it. Do something to make sure it doesn’t happen.

Get on the phone and call Senator Ben Nelson and Senator Mary Landrieu and let them know how you feel about their principled talk on not voting to fund abortions with your tax money. Call Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and give her another reason to not vote for the bill–she is the only other Democrat hold-out at this point.

And do something more. Call members of your church who feel the same way you do. Put Senators Nelson, Landrieu and Lincoln on your church Prayer Chain if that’s possible. Call family members and like-minded friends. Ask them to call and make their feelings know.

Make sure the bill is stopped on the procedural motion to procede while it still can be stopped.

Here’s what the New York Times had to say about the President of the United States bowing to the Emperor of Japan:

…the image…was indelible: an obsequent President, and the Emperor of Japan. Canadians still bow to England’s Queen; so do Australians. Americans shake hands. If not to stand eye-to-eye with royalty, what else were 1776 and all that about?

…But the “thou need not bow” commandment from the State Department’s protocol office maintained a constancy of more than 200 years. Administration officials scurried to insist that the eager-to-please President had not really done the unthinkable.

From this point on, things just get worse for “the first Pacific President. Much worse.

Of course, that quotation from the New York Times doesn’t refer to President Obama. Their criticism was for President Bill Clinton in 1994. And the “bow” that the Times was so upset about back then wasn’t a full-out, upper-body-bent-almost-parallel-with-the-floor, Japanese cultural bow of a peasant to the living embodiment of a god on earth. No, what the times was complaining about was an “almost bow” by Bill Clinton:

It wasn’t a bow, exactly. But Mr. Clinton came close. He inclined his head and shoulders forward, he pressed his hands together. It lasted no longer than a snapshot, but the image on the South Lawn was indelible: an obsequent President, and the Emperor of Japan.

As I write this, the New York Times has not indicated their reaction to the Obama-bow, however a lot has changed in fifteen years and I doubt they will express outratge. And this is not, of course, the first time that our current president has committed a breach of protocol and custom by bowing down to a foreign head of state. You might remember that he did the same thing while meeting the King of Saudi Arabia.

But why all of this controversy over a simple gesture of politeness?

Well, because politeness isn’t what it is. The act of bowing to a monarch or head of state is an indication of subservience, not of politeness. It indicates that the person you are bowing to has power over you, and that you acknowledge that fact. In Japan, people bow to those who are their superiors — their employers or elders, for example. And the depth of the bow indicates exactly how superior the person is. The lower you go, the lower you acknowledge that you are.

It would have been very hard for President Obama to have bowed any lower than he did before the Emperor of Japan and the King of Saudi Arabia unless he had gone down on his knees on the floor.

And that, perhaps, would have been overkill.

What makes this worse, from a protocol standpoint, is that this was not Barack Obama bowing to the Emperor of Japan. This was a state visit, and Barack Obama, as President Barack Obama, was representative of the United States of America. It is the same diplomatic mysticism that says that foreign embassies are extensions of the soil and sovereignty of a foreign nation and not really part of the country that they stand in. President, Kings and Emperors are symbols, not people.

It was the United States of America bowing low and lowly before Imperial Japan. And before that, doing the same before the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Surprisingly, however, President Obama did not bow to the Queen of England when they met.

Obviously, one might say, after having made a protocol error in Saudi Arabia, President Obama learned from his mistake and acted correctly when in the United Kingdom. That answer remained valid until yesterday, when he bowed before the Emperor of Japan.

One might ask, “Why did the President of the United States, after having made what could be called a “novice” error in bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia, and correctly behaving in England, make the same mistake again while meeting the Emperor of Japan?” His action in Japan certainly calls into question President Obama’s judgement and memory, if not his intellect.

His actions raise an even more interesting question: “Why did President Obama bow to the heads of state of two nations who hold a substantial majority of current U.S. debt, but not bow to the head of state of one of our strongest allies?” Surely the answer couldn’t be simple “sexism,” could it? Obsequious behavior to kings and emperors but superiority to queens? Surely not.

On the surface, the Obama bows appear to simply be a matter of the Obama administration recognizing the reality of America’s new place in the International Economic hierarchy. A reality where a spendthrift American government is at the mercy, and under the control, of those nations who supply our consumer goods and our oil. A global pecking-order in which America obeys the dictates of foreign nations in Asia, the Middle East and Europe on which wars are justified, which laws should be enforced and how high a standard of living U.S. citizens deserve. A New World Order where the United States is a debtor to all, and a shining beacon of hope to none.

An America, in fact, that is the triumph of American Liberalism. America as American Liberals have always perceived it and wanted it to be. An America that knows its place…and willingly takes it on the world stage.

Or perhaps “backstage”might be a more appropriate way to phrase it.

And this raises what may be the most important question of all. Will President Obama bow before China’s head of state?

China, after all, holds the majority of current U.S. debt. What is fair for the heads of state of the number 2 and number 3 U.S. debt-holder nations should certainly be fair for the head of state of the country we are most obligated to and dependent upon. Where does one draw the line once one has established a precedent?

Having bowed down in Japan and Saudi Arabia, if President Obama fails to bow down in China will that not be taken as a deliberate national insult in face-conscious Asia? And coming at a time when China has hinted they will be dropping support for the dollar?

So, is it an intellectual insufficiency, sexism, or economics that caused President Obama to bow down in Saudi Arabia and Japan? China will tell. The last questions are how low will he — and we — go? And why?

The problem is…Bill Owens might not have won the 23rd District Congressional seat after all.

Both of the things that Doug Hoffman was told on election night turn out not to have been true. A “snafu” by officials in Oswego county and elsewhere caused Hoffman’s vote to be under-reported. He actually won Oswego County by 1,748 votes — 12,748 to Owens’ 11,000. District-wide, Owens lead over Hoffman has now shrunk to 3.026 votes, not 5,300. And the race is going to be decided by 10,200 absentee ballots, many from the military, that remain to be counted.

NY-23 is the home of Fort Drum and the Army’s 10th Mountain Division, by the way.

That’s right. The race in NY-23 is not official yet. Doug Hoffman very well may have won.

If the absentee ballots show that Hoffman actually won, then Bill Owens will be removed from office and Hoffman will be sworn in.

And what about the Health Care vote?

The vote is over. The fact that Hoffman conceded based on false information given to him means that the election was uncontested. Legally, there was no bar to Owens being sworn in. The vote stands.

But if Hoffman had not been given that false information…Nancy Pelosi would have lacked at least two votes in the final balloting on Saturday. Two votes because Rep. Cao, the lone GOP Representative voting in favor of the bill indicated that he only voted for it when it became obvious it was going to pass. Take away those two votes, and the tally on the Health Care bill would have been 218-217.

And with it that close, and every single vote mattering as THE vote that would have passed the bill, it is quite possible that one or two more of the handful of “Blue Dog” Democrats who voted “yes,” would have voted “no” instead.

But while no one can know for sure what might have been, and nothing can be done to change what has already happened, one thing is certain. The next time Health Care comes up in the House, there is a very good chance that Bill Owens will not be voting on the issue.

What if he had been a Caucasian born in Selma, Alabama, instead of an Arab-American born in Arlington, Virginia?

What if knowledge of his family roots had caused Joseph Robert Lee to list his nationality as Confederate States of America rather than “United States of America,” the way that Nidal Malik Hasan–born in Arlington, Virginia of immigrant parents, listed his nationality as “Palestinian” on a document he filled out at the Silver Springs, Maryland mosque he attended?

What if he had signed himself as JoeBob while posting on websites where he advocated violent overthrow of the U.S. government if there was an attempt to disarm citizens in violation of the Second Amendment, instead of signing himself NidalMalik in online postings praising suicide bombers as heroes making a sacrifice “for a noble cause,” and suggesting people “strap bombs on themselves and go into Times Square?”

What if it had been Joe Bob who attended the same Evangelical Christian church at the same time as Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, instead of Nidal Malik attending the same mosque at the same time as Nawaf al-Hazmi and Hani Hanjour, two of the September 11 hijacker terrorists?

What if it had been Joseph Robert Lee proselytizing colleagues and patients while on the job, inviting them to become Christians, instead of Nidal Malik Hasan proselytizing patients and co-workers and inviting them to become Muslims? What if Joseph had passed out Bibles the way Nidal passed out Qu’rans? Would being placed on probation and warned not to do it again have been enough in that case? Or would it have ended his career?

Would Joseph Robert Lee have been dismissed by the FBI as harmless and promoted by Army brass from Captain to Major after exchanging about a dozen emails with a Christian preacher who had ties to the Tea Party movement or the Minuteman Project? Captain Nidal Malik Hasan was cleared by the FBI and promoted to Major after provably exchanging 10 to 20 emails with radical Muslim cleric Imam Anwar al-Awlaki, a known supporter of armed jihad against the United States, and also after Captain Hasan tried to contact several other Al-Qaeda terrorist leaders.

What if Joseph Robert Lee had been a minor member of President Bush’s transition team when he took office in 2001, prior to the 9-11 tragedy, identical to the way Nidal Malik Hasan was a minor member of President Obama’s transition team (see page 32 of the linked, official pdf) when he took office in 2009? Would that have been headlined on the evening news and in newspapers across the nation?

How much of a difference do you think it would have made if the shooter had been an Evangelical Christian who committed this act of treason — the first time in United States history that a commissioned officer in our Armed Forces turned a gun on fellow soldiers and murdered them in premeditated, cold blood? Especially if it had not been the first time in recent years that a member of this particular religious faith had used the teachings of that faith and passages from a book the faith considered to be holy as justification for killing fellow American soldiers? Do you think it would have been reported differently by the Mainstream Media?

How many calls of “don’t rush to judgement” would have been heard from President Obama if the shooter had been Evangelical Christian Joseph Robert Lee?

How many politicians and media pundits would have leaped to defend Evangelical Christians and insisted that they are not all tarred with the same brush because of the actions of the murderer?

How many would have worried about a “backlash” against Christians, or the danger of stereotyping and profiling white southern Americans?

How many questions would have been raised about the judgment, intelligence and fitness to serve of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces if this tragedy had happened while George Bush was president? How many allegations would have flown about Republican failures to make Americans safe if the GOP had still controlled both the House and the Senate?

Of course, the outcry that it is America’s love of guns that caused the deaths would have been a lot louder, because that’s the one thing you can count on as a politically-correct, enlightened, knee-jerk response no matter what the shooter’s name would have been. But the response from the Democrat President, Speaker of the House, and Senate Majority Leader would certainly have been a lot quicker, a lot louder, and a lot less cautious and concerned about stirring up bigotry and feeding negative stereotypes if the shooter had been named Joseph Robert Lee.

And I believe that I can say this quite positively based on other recent events that showed much more of a “rush to judgement” feeding bigotry and negative stereotypes. And in this I am completely agreeing with Rush Limbaugh, who said it earlier today.

But the real question the Fort Hood murders raises is how long we are going to continue to allow “political correctness” to place American lives in jeopardy?

Major Nidal Malik Hasan himself warned of the dangers of Muslims in the U.S. Armed Forces, in a presentation he gave while still at Walter Reed titled, The Koranic World View As It Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military. He warned that for pious Muslims, He ended that presentation with a statement that is even more chilling in hindsight than it first appeared: “We love death more then [sic] you love life!”

And the most chilling thing about that statement, ending a presentation in which Hasan, among other points, justified armed overthrow of a non-Islamic government such as our own and establishment of a world-wide Islamic state under strict Shari’a law, is that it is a view shared by 65.2% of mainstream, non-extremist Muslims throughout the world, according to a 2007 survey conducted by the University of Maryland and World Public Opinion.

But in the face of statistics, and statements to the contrary from radical Muslims, the liberal media prefers to view Hasan’s actions as just another example of a solider — trained to violence — “cracking” under stress and reacting violently as he was trained to do. Basically, the same response we heard President Obama give today. The same response that will no doubt become the official verdict on this couldn’t-possibly-be-a-terrorist-act “incident” unless men and women of principle within the military and intelligence communities make sure that the full truth is told.

How very different things might have been if the shooter’s name had been Major Joseph Robert Lee.

And how much simpler for the current Powers That Be.

And what exactly is acceptable health care coverage in Nancy Peolosi’s Brave New America?

Well, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the lowest cost for a non-group family insurance plan under the provisions of Speaker Pelosi’s bill would be $15,000 a year in 2016. The bill requires that coverage include all individuals (or married couples, if filing jointly) at a rate of 2.5% of their income. It also requires a similar level of coverage for each of their children.

The Senate version of the bill removed the jail-time penalty, but keeps in the fines. Speaker Pelosisi obviously feels that more coercion than simply a quarter of a million dollar fine is necessary.

If you were wondering if it is important to be in Washington tomorrow to be part of the Second Health Care “House Call” on Washington…now you have another reason why it is important. And if you needed any more reasons to call the Representatives most likely to need reminders of why they should vote NO on the Speaker’s bloated, health care budget-buster…now you have 15,000 more reasons.

And if your Congressional Representative is on this list of people leaning no, wavering or having said they will vote no, then this weekend is a really good time to call them personally and tell them exactly how closely you are watching what they are going to do about Speaker Pelosi’s bill.

I’m in Asheville, North Carolina. Heath Shuler is my Representative. He’s been hearing a lot from me lately about how we are counting on the Blue Dogs keeping their word. And hearing what is going to happen to them in the next election if they don’t keep their word and vote No.

Go thou and do likewise. They need to hear from us enough to shut down their phone lines.

Wrong.

That official 10.2% figure really doesn’t tell the truth about unemployment in America. The real unemployment figure is more than twice the official 10.2% rate–a lot higher than you know, even if you already know about some of the number-jumbling that is normal in “official” government statistics. The bad news, and the full facts, paint a bleak picture of the months ahead.

The official unemployment number doesn’t include people who have given up looking for a new job because of months of not being able to find one.  It also doesn’t include people who have taken a part-time job just to survive in the short-term, but whose long-term survival requires them to find full-time employment.

What this means is that if you were a highly paid software engineer with Master’s degree whose company went belly-up a few months ago–and you are now working nights at a gas station to put food on the table–you don’t count in the official unemployment rate of 10.2%.  You have a job.  It doesn’t matter that you are now making a fraction of what you used to make in what you consider to be a temporary, fill-in job. It doesn’t matter that you are still sending out resumes and trying to land interviews. It doesn’t matter that you have lost, or are going to lose, your house. You don’t count.

That isn’t all. You also don’t count if you found yourself laid-off in a company down-sizing back at the beginning of the summer, and after four or five months of getting turned down for job after job you have given up looking for a job because you are discouraged. The same is true if you have taken a break from job-hunting until the economy improves, or in hopes that your former employer will re-hire you as things get better.  If you weren’t actively looking for a job in October, then you aren’t officially unemployed.  You don’t count. You are in political Limbo.

The official adjusted unemployment rate, when you add in all of the people who are a.) still out of a job but have given up looking for a new one, and b.) used to have full-time jobs but have had to take a part-time job to try to make ends meet, is 17.5%.

17.5%. Not 10.2%.

This method of trimming huge numbers of people out of the official unemployment numbers is fairly recent. It started in 1993 during the Clinton administration. And so, while we can say conclusively that the Obama administration has produced the highest unemployment toll since 1993, we can’t easily compare these numbers to the recession of 1983, or unemployment during the Great Depression.

But we can look at the official data available under different headings, even things up as much as possible, and get an idea of how bad things really are right now–and how bad they are likely to become. And the picture is not a rosy one.

Looked at that way, U.S. unemployment during the Great Depression (or the First Great Depression, as historians are likely to call it after the next few years), hit a record high of 24.6%. It took four years for it to reach that level after the stock market crash of 1929. One year after the Crash of ‘29, American unemployment was 8.5%. Two years after the Crash, in 1931 it hit 15.9%. The following year, in 1932, it bottomed out at 24.6%.

One year after the beginning of our current “economic crisis,” the comparable U.S. unemployment rate is already higher than unemployment was in 1931. How bad will our unemployment be this time next year? Two years from now?

Unemployment remained high in America throughout the 1930s, and only dipped below 15% when World War II began. By 1942, unemployment had plummeted to 4.7% because of our mobilization for the war.

You might remember that Democrats were in charge back then, too.

Remember those recent warnings from the Obama administration that unemployment was going to remain high for the next several years? They are basing that on history as much as on economic projections. The last time this happened, high unemployment lasted for 12 years. And it took a global war to bring it down to pre-Depression levels.

17.5% real unemployment today versus 24.6% unemployment at the depth of the Great Depression of the 1930s.  Well, at least it isn’t worse.

Or is it?

The problem is that 17.5% isn’t the actual, current unemployment rate either.  Things are really worse than that already.

If you lost your job more than a year ago, and have given up looking for a new one until the economy improves or out of frustration, you aren’t counted at all in any of the government’s official statistics.  For all practical purposes, you have simply ceased to exist as far as the government is concerned.  Retirement-age people–even those who have to work to supplement their incomes–aren’t counted either.  Neither are the disabled who are able to work but have lost their jobs.

John Williams, of American Business Analytics and Research, an economist who runs the Shadow Government Statistics website, estimates that when you add in the people who are no longer officially counted anywhere but have lost their jobs…the October, 2009, most accurate figure for the October, 2009, American unemployment rate is 21.4%.

21.4%. More than one out of every five people in the United States is unemployed.

And that is just the national, averaged rate. In some parts of the country, such as Michigan, the rate is much higher already. Just as it was during the Great Depression, where cities such as Detroit, Cleveland, Toledo and many others had unemployment rates of 50% or more–some up to 90% unemployed.

Remember that “change” that President Obama and the Democrats promised in last year’s election campaign?  Remember the jokes and bumper stickers about how the only change that voters would actually have would be the change jingling in their pockets?

Well, for one out of every five Americans who used to be working…even pocket change is hard to come by these days.

The sky-high unemployment rate getting worse every month from the deficit-busting policies of President Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress is going to be the Grinch that steals Christmas this year. Spending is going to be down.  Malls are going to remain Ghost Towns.  Retailers that have held on hoping for a Christmas miracle are going to cut back or close completely early next year.

And then things are going to get worse.  Much worse.

At the same time, support for the Democrat-led House and Senate has fallen to all-time lows. Support for massive government programs like Obamacare and ongoing, nationalizing bailouts is below 50% and dropping farther every day. In addition, poll numbers indicate, at this point, that the GOP will capture current Democrat-held governorships in Virginia, and in New Jersey. Things, for the GOP, appear to be looking quite good.

Appearances, however, can be deceiving. If you are an elected Republican official, party leader or strategist, and you aren’t seriously worried right now about your prospects for 2010, 2012, and beyond…you should be. Let me tell you why.

The reason is quite simple, and contained in a recent Rasmussen poll of Republicans who plan to vote in 2012 state primaries:

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 73% think Republicans in Congress have lost touch with GOP voters from throughout the nation.

Look carefully at that statistic. This is a survey of hard-core Republicans who are already planning to vote in the 2012 primaries–solid, dependable Republican voters. And the survey says that nearly three out of every four of those voters you depend upon believe that their Republican Congressional representatives are out of touch with them. They do not like what you are doing and how you are doing it.

And that means that they are no longer dependable voters who can be counted on to pull the lever for anyone who has an R next to their name and is the endorsed Republican party candidate.

Case in point: the New York 23rd Congressional district and your endorsed “Republican” candidate Dede Scozzafava. In what should have been an easy race for the GOP, she is currently running in third place behind the Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman and the endorsed Democrat candidate.

And Doug Hoffman seems likely to beat both the endorsed Republican and the endorsed Democrat. The latest polls show that he has a slim, 4 point lead in the race, with 22% remaining undecided.

The fact that, nationally, three out of four Republican voters are not happy with current Republican incumbents and leadership means that they are open to vote for somebody else who is not out of touch with them. Somebody like Doug Hoffman.

No matter how you try to spin the New York Republican Party selection of Ms. Scozzafava as their candidate, the fact is that she is the most liberal candidate running in that race. She is more liberal than her Democrat challenger. She is so liberal that liberal blogs are endorsing her. And she is running in last place in a district that has sent a Republican to Congress in every election since the Civil War.

There is a much-needed lesson there, if you, the leaders and elected officeholders of the Republican Party will learn it. As Rush Limbaugh often says, “Conservatism works every time it is tried.” And of course, he is right.

A current Gallup poll shows that when Americans are asked to identify themselves as either conservative, moderate, or liberal, the majority, 40%, identify themselves as conservative. 36% identify themselves as moderate, and only 20% choose to call themselves liberal.

At the same time, Gallup polling also shows that only 27% of Americans currently identify themselves as Republicans. When you add in the 15% of self-identified moderates who say they tend to vote Republican, you have a block of 42% Republican voters. That is remarkably close to the number of people who identify themselves as conservatives.

So how do you siphon off 9% more voters from the moderate block to get to 51% and be assured of winning elections? Certainly not by running candidates who are liberal. Those statistics cited above show that conservatives outnumber liberals in this country by a two-to-one margin. The New Jersey governor’s race is illustrative of what voters are looking for.

New Jersey is a Blue state. The Republican candidate, Chris Christie, is about as conservative as a candidate can be and still be viable in New Jersey. In a head-to-head match-up, polls show that Christie would beat incumbent Democrat governor Jon Corzine. But there is a third candidate in this race.

Chris Daggett, the New Jersey third party candidate, is an environmentalist and former EPA administrator who has worked for and in Republican administrations. He can be termed a social liberal, since he is pro-choice and pro-gay marriage. He is running as a fiscal conservative, and he is taking votes away from both Christie and Corzine. Latest polls indicate he is now hurting Corzine more and that Republican Christie is in the lead.

Looking at the best current polling numbers, Christie and Daggett have the combined support of from 53% to 55% of the New Jersey electorate. Both are presenting themselves as fiscal conservatives, and a majority of voters in a liberal state are supporting them. Conservatism is a winning strategy even in a liberal state like New Jersey.

If, as now seems likely, the incumbent Democrat governors of Virginia and New Jersey are defeated by Republican challengers next week, don’t allow yourself to bask too long in the afterglow of victory. I hope that you–the Republican leadership and GOP incumbents up for election next year–instead concentrate and learn from what is going to happen in that single Congressional district in New York state. Remember that poll from Rasmussen Reports about how three out of four of us out here don’t like they way things have been going in the Republican party. We don’t like RINO candidates who are not genuinely conservative. And we like left-of-RINO candidates like Dede Scozzafava even less.

Your political future–your careers–depend upon you getting the message, and changing the way you do business. Because business as usual isn’t going to work any more.

If you think I’m kidding, just consider that a lot of us are looking at Doug Hoffman, watching a true American political success story unfold before our eyes, and thinking that maybe–just maybe–we could do the same thing in our own Congressional districts.

All over the country.

Everywhere.

Four hundred and thirty-five Doug Hoffmans.

Think about that for a moment. If I were you, I’d be very worried it might happen. And I’d work quickly, and very hard, to make sure that an awful lot of those three-out-of-four dissatisfied Republicans don’t think we need to do it.

Which brings me to my topic.

The D-word has passed the lips of many people over the last couple of weeks. That was unthinkable even a month or two ago, and would have had the speaker labelled as a kook and marginalized as an alarmist. But now, we routinely hear people warning that another Depression-not-recession is looming and can only be staved off by swift, decisive action by the Government.

Take a deep breath for a moment, let the panic subside, and let’s consider what exactly causes a Depression and how we can avoid one before it happens, or get out of one after it starts. That is, after all, what we are talking about. It is what everyone wants. And it should be a part of any discussion of the crisis we are facing.

Now, discussions of economics and economic theory have a tendency to make people’s eyes glaze over, so I am going to keep this direct, specific and cut through some of the tech-speak. This is a basic pocketbook issue for all of us, and I firmly believe that you don’t have to have a doctoral degree to understand it. A lot of it is common sense, but there is not a lot of common sense demonstrated in politics and economics usually. As a sort of guide and outline for discussion–and as a fairly impartial assessment of current thinking–I am going to be quoting passages from the Wikipedia article on the Great Depression. It isn’t perfect, but it is in this case quite useful.

So, from the Wikipedia article on The Great Depression:

“Recession cycles are thought to be a normal part of living in a world of inexact balances between supply and demand. What turns a usually mild and short recession or “ordinary” business cycle into a great depression is a subject of debate and concern. Scholars have not agreed on the exact causes and their relative importance.”

We begin, therefore, with an admission that there is no consensus of opinion among economic and financial experts on exactly what causes a Depression. Which of course means that there is no consensus of opinion on how to prevent one, or what to do to get us out of one. And that raises big questions about the need for speed this past week in passing legislation most Senators and House members didn’t have a chance to read, and wouldn’t have understood even if they had read it since it was long on money and short on explanations. And things get even more amusing, confusing and worrisome after the jump…

Also from Wikipedia:

“In early 1930, credit was ample and available at low rates, but people were reluctant to add new debt by borrowing. By May 1930, auto sales had declined to below the levels of 1928. Prices in general began to decline, but wages held steady in 1930, then began to drop in 1931. Conditions were worst in farming areas, where commodity prices plunged, and in mining and logging areas, where unemployment was high and there were few other jobs. The decline in the American economy was the factor that pulled down most other countries at first, then internal weaknesses or strengths in each country made conditions worse or better. Frantic attempts to shore up the economies of individual nations through protectionist policies, like the 1930 U.S. Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and retaliatory tariffs in other countries, exacerbated the collapse in global trade. By late in 1930, a steady decline set in which reached bottom by March 1933.”

At first glance, and allowing for differences caused by the passage of time, this sounds an awful lot like what we are facing at the moment. So is it any wonder that Ben Bernanke, who has studied the Great Depression to death, is behaving as if the sky is falling?

We should all be concerned. Nobody wants another Great Depression (except possibly and cynically certain members of a certain political party who might advance their careers and their socio-political agenda through a depression in the same way they tried to gain a political advantage by causing America to lose a war…but I digress.)

The question really isn’t if we “want” to avoid another Depression, the question is “how” can we avoid another Great Depression. And there are basically three schools of thought on that question.

First, the Classical Economics viewpoint–and for the technically minded, I’m lumping monetarist views and neo-classical supply-demand economics in here too. This approach says that the Great Depression was caused by a contraction of the money supply. The Stock Market crash of 1929 would have been just another recession if it hadn’t been for a lot of bank failures happening at the same time that reduced the availability of credit and the drying up of capital.

This situation was made worse by too much debt caused by cheap, over-available credit that was fueling the economy. When the economy faltered and debt began to be unsuccessfully called in, it triggered the collapse of banks. That led to panic and runs on banks, which led to a cascade of bank failures.

Sound familiar? It should. It is Ben Bernanke’s personal nightmare, and the biggest question that should be asked of him is why with his theoretical monetarist stance and his broad knowledge of the Great Depression, he did not spend every moment since becoming Fed Chair shouting warnings and insisting that something be done. And while Bernanke is right on many of his fears about the situation we are in, he is wrong in his approach to solving those problems. Theoretically a monetarist, for some schizophrenic reason he has been trying to use Keynesian solutions at odds with many of his theoretical beliefs. But more on that below.

So, to anyone who believes Classical Economics–and there are not many of them in positions of authority or power any more–our current crisis is a repeat of many of the problems that led to the Great Depression of the ’30’s. Or, in the words of Yogi Berra, it is “deja vu all over again.” The solution now, as the solution would have been then, is to provide liquidity to the banks through the Fed (as has been done on an ongoing basis) and prevent a cascade of bank failures (increase the FDIC limit, make targeted bail-outs, not wholesale ones, and let sound financial institutions buy up unsound ones.)

To round out the Classical theory, add into this mix overproduction caused by the spread of electricity and better industrial machinery in the first decades of the twentieth century, a downturn in employment as fewer workers were needed to produce greater numbers of products, and underconsumption since unemployed workers don’t buy that many products and you have the Classical causes of the Great Depression. But the Classical theory is not the only one around, as I mentioned.

The second school of thought on what caused the Great Depression is Structural Economics, principally Keynesian economics. Keynesians like to focus on the idea that the Great Depression resulted from a large-scale crisis of confidence. Depressions can be avoided by bolstering confidence. You can do that in part by slapping more regulations on the financial system–because an unbridled market is a robber baron market as everyone knows, and people have confidence in Big Government and know that Big Business is inherently bad.

Ahem.

Secondary causes of the Great Depression for Keynesians were underconsumption because of high unemployment and overinvestment (an economic bubble). Toss into the mix malfeasance by bankers and capitalists and incompetence by government officials who didn’t enforce enough regulations, and you have their recipe for the Great Depression.

Ben Bernanke, while theoretical a monetarian, has been doing things as Fed Chair that are mainly Keynesian in his attempts to manage and fix national economics (macroeconomics).

(An aside to the esoterically minded: I know, I know, Bernanke is supposed to be primarily a monetarist, but a case can be made that monetarism is just a special case of Keynesian theory for reasons we don’t need to go into now, and most people don’t give a hoot about these distinctions in label anyway. They simply look at what a person says and what a person does.

if you want to read a very good analysis of Bernanke’s approach to managing the economy, here is a link to a Forbes article from 2006 that is very enlightening.

Keynes was a very big advocate of socializing investments, and Bernanke and Paulson have been travelling that path a lot lately. With that, I could basically rest my case that Bernanke is channelling Keynes in this situation. However, if you have any lingering doubts, remember that Bernanke is the one who said, “We have the keys to the printing press, and we are not afraid to use them.” which is not the statement of a monetarist and may go down in history as a line as famous and fatuous as the one falsely attributed to Marie Antoinette: “Let them eat cake.”)

Heads are going to roll over the mishandling of this crisis at some point or another.

But back to the second main view of what caused the Great Depression. For Keynesians, it is all a confidence game, and one way to instill confidence is to pump large amounts of money into the system and let everyone know the government is on the job and nothing can possibly go wrong. (Another word for “pumping up” of course, is inflation, but we aren’t going to mention that, are we?)

Bad thoughts aside, if this approach is followed and confidence is maintained, then the shee…ah, people, will keep on buying things, keep on investing their money, and everything will be hunky-dory on Main Street, whatever that means. So, demand will keep up with supply on a microeconomic level and There Will Be No Great Depression. This is the “in” thing among economists at the moment–a double standard of Keynes theories for “big” or macroeconomics, and neo-classical theory for “small” or microeconomics.

“Small” by the way, means how you and I do economics. Managing a household, keeping to a budget, making personal and family savings and investment decisions, figuring out what not to buy when gasoline prices go through the roof because refineries and pipelines shut down temporarily due to a hurricane, etc., etc., etc.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you and I could switch over to Keynesian economics to manage our households whenever we felt a “crisis of confidence” in our ability to buy what we want to have? All we’d have to do is go into the family room or our office, crank up the computer and the laserjet printer, print out a few dozen sheets of colorful paper money, cut them out neatly and carefully, and go buy whatever we wanted to buy.

Or, we could just write as many checks as we wanted to on our bank account and run an ever-increasing deficit that the bank would be obliged to allow. Don’t worry about it. Just keep that negative checking account balance rising from month to month as we buy anything we want to buy, from emergency expenditures to get the car repaired or pay for that leg we broke on our last ski trip, as well as the luxury ski trip to Vail where we broke our leg.

Maybe our kids will pay off our checking account deficit. Or their kids. But who cares. Don’t worry. Be happy.

A moment’s thought will be enough to show you why the Fed, and the government…and the bank, of course, do not think that Keynesian microeconomics are a good idea for you and I to use in our everyday lives. No, Keynesianism is reserved for governments since only they know enough and are responsible enough to use it wisely and with careful, measured discretion.

I’ll pause here a moment until you stop laughing or swearing, as the case may be.

Ready to go on? Good.

The third current school of thought on why depressions happen is Marxism. I’m going to ignore Marxism in this discussion, since even though many on Capital Hill may be closet Marxists, for the most part they are not insane enough to advocate it as an economic theory the U.S. should be basing decisions on.

At least, not yet.

Besides, the Marxist argument is that basically depressions happen because capitalists are evil and exploit the masses, separating those who produce from the just rewards of their labors, and a pox on the whole system anyway. Not a lot there that is useful or works in real life.

Instead of discussing Marxism, I want to talk about one additional theory of how the Great Depression happened. It is a theory that all fiscal conservative–and all Republicans–should be thinking about right now. Because if this theory is correct, then actions by the Senate yesterday and probable actions by the House tomorrow will inevitably insure that happy days are indeed here once again.

“The severity of the Wall Street crash, he argued, was not due to the unrestrained license of a freebooting capitalist system, but to government insistence on keeping a boom going artificially by pumping in inflationary credit. The slide in stocks continued, and the real economy went into freefall, not because government interfered too little, but because it interfered too much.”

This statement is from the forward to the Fifth Edition of a book I heartily recommend to everyone, called America’s Great Depression by Murray N. Rothbard. It is available freely online as a PDF file from the Mises Institute.

The Mises Institute espouses economic beliefs that fall under the Austrian School label, and they are rather libertarian in philosophy. I am not going to go into their background any farther, but if you have an interest google “Ludwig von Mises” or check wikipedia.

The Austrian economic school of thought believes that the primary cause of the Great Depression was the expansion of the money supply during the 1920s by the Federal Reserve. That expansion led to an unsustainable credit-driven boom, or bubble, in the U.S. economy that burst with disastrous consequences for our country and for the entire world.

Asset prices (the price of stocks and bonds) and the price of capital goods went up and up until they were tremendously over-valued. By the time the Fed tried to get control in 1928 by raising interest rates in an attempt to tighten things up, it was too late and a depression was inevitable. Interference in the economy by the government didn’t work since the system was overbalanced and needed correction, and attempts to prop up the economy after the crash of 1929 made things worse. The death blow came through Congressional action instituting protectionism and tariffs, and an ill-advised raising of tax rates in an effort to redistribute wealth.

According to the Austrian school, big government intervention was directly responsible for turning a serious recession that would have lasted a couple of years into a major global depression that dragged on and on until World War II. You can even make a case that the Great Depression was directly responsible for World War II, since economic conditions in Germany and Europe provided the environment in which Hitler could rise to power.

And there is something else about the Rothbard’s analysis that is particularly important for us to consider now, as the House considers passing one of the biggest and quickest pieces of big government intervention in the private sector ever conceived. Quoting again from the Wikipedia article on the Great Depression:

“Rothbard criticizes Milton Friedman’s assertion that the central bank failed to inflate the supply of money. Rothbard asserts that the Federal Reserve bought $1.1 billion of government securities from February to July 1932, raising its total holding to $1.8 billion. Total bank reserves rose by only $212 million, but Rothbard argues that this was because the American populace lost faith in the banking system and began hoarding more cash, a factor quite beyond the control of the Central Bank. The potential for a run on the banks caused local bankers to be more conservative in lending out their reserves, and this, Rothbard argues, was the cause of the Federal Reserve’s inability to inflate.”

Anyone looking for an answer to why the stock market didn’t crash disastrously on Monday, then recovered somewhat on Tuesday and stayed basically unchanged on Wednesday, then fell about 350 points the day after the Senate passed their bloated version of the Bailout should look at the approval numbers of Congress. I would be willing to bet that the Stock Market will fall more if this Bailout passes than it has already fallen over the past few days. Do you seriously think that the American public is going to make decisions on what they do with their money based on faith in the ability of Congress to fix anything?

And does anyone seriously believe that, if the Bailout goes through, credit is going to loosen up now much more than it did back in 1932? Haven’t we ensured through this mess that non-conservative bankers and institutions are not going to be around? And that lending policies are going to continue to tighten as bankers wait for another shoe to drop? And that after being frightened out of their wits most people are going to tighten their belts and not make major expenditures for a while since they don’t know when the next crisis will strike?

Use some common sense.

This massive infusion of tax dollars is not going to “restore confidence” because people have been hearing a constant drumbeat from the Democrats on how bad the economy is, how shaky things are, and how it is all the fault of Republicans and their buddies on Wall Street and in the Big Oil Companies. Now the Democrats are leading the charge in a bail-out of Wall Street and the banks–and yes, I know that this isn’t about that, it is about credit for small businesses and car loans and student loans and home loans, but the volume of negative phone calls and emails Reps and Senators keep receiving should demonstrate that it is Wall Street and “Big Business” that is still taking the hit here.

And Republicans of course. Republicans always take the hit.

Thanks to the Democrats.

And who loses if the Bailout fails, as I am certain it will fail? Well, obviously, the average American loses. And Republicans will lose, quite obviously, for they will take the blame for failure no matter what happens. The Democrats are too good at spinning the blame game, and the press is too good at making sure the Democrat perspective is the only one that gets heard.

But the country is going to lose and lose big if something is not done to stop what comes next. The Democrats have already positioned themselves for what comes next in ways that nobody on the other side of the aisle are thinking about as we slouch towards Bethlehem this election year.

Again, quoting from Rothbard: “Franklin D. Roosevelt, elected in 1932, primarily blamed the excesses of big business for causing an unstable bubble-like economy. Democrats believed the problem was that business had too much power, and the New Deal was intended as a remedy, by empowering labor unions and farmers and by raising taxes on corporate profits. Regulation of the economy was a favorite remedy. Some New Deal regulation (the NRA and AAA) was declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. Most New Deal regulations were abolished or scaled back in the 1970s and 1980s in a bipartisan wave of deregulation. However the Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Reserve, and Social Security won widespread support.”

Can you say “New Deal Part Deux?” I think that if you cannot, you had better learn to say it pretty fast. Re-read that quotation above and change “Franklin D. Roosevelt” to “Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid” and see if the first couple of sentences doesn’t sound a lot like the current Democrat talking points.

Eerie, isn’t it.

And Barack Obama keeps getting higher in the polls as John McCain stays silent or goes along with the march toward an extremely unpopular, massively expensive, precedent-setting government intervention in the private sector. And the rest of the Republican Party is following along like lemmings toward a supposed safe haven of the Bailout that is going to turn out to be a huge cliff.

The danger here is not that Barack Obama will ride this crisis into the White House. The danger is that he will ride it into a New New Deal that will institutionalize government control of the economy and every aspect of everyday life in ways that will be as impossible to roll back once enacted as was the “temporary” income tax or the Social Security program.

And that will make any recession or depression that we are heading into deeper, longer and more painful for Americans.

If Republicans, and Conservatives, stand for anything at all anymore, then they had better stand up, stand together, and have the guts to say that they will not stand for this kind of bloated, untried, unproven and un-American government intervention. This is a 700 Billion Dollar albatros that potentially is going to sink the Republican Party and the Conservative movement for decades to come.

What happens if the Dow continues to head south after a Bailout is passed? What happens if it drops 1000 points next week, or 2000 points? Well, one thing that it will mean is that, in the eyes of the majority of Americans who did not favor the Bailout plan in the first place, the people will have been right and Congress will have been wrong yet again. And the Senators and House members who voted in favor of the Bailout are going to be about as popular as the Republican Congress and Herbert Hoover were back at the beginning of the Great Depression.

It might be nice if the Democrats could take the blame on this one this time, especially since it it the Democrats who truly deserve a lion’s share of the blame. Consider carefully what is at stake here.

Failure to pass the Bailout may mean that we have another Great Depression.

But passage of the Bailout may mean that we have another Great Depression too…it depends on which school of economic theory is correct. And we will only know who is right after the fact. And possibly not even then.

And while we’re on the subject of the Great Depression, I will candidly admit that watching the Democrats position themselves as the Saviors of America from financial crisis–and watching Republicans fall in line and fall all over themselves jumping on a bipartisan bandwagon to Hell agreeing with them and implicitly taking blame for a mess Republicans did not cause–makes me feel very much like a small, furry animal who sees Lennie Small walking towards me with a friendly smile on his face.

For mice and for men, things are about to gang agley indeed…

If you are a fiscal conservative then you cannot be in favor of this Bailout no matter what rationalization you use. Any vote other than “no” is a vote from fear and/or short-term self-interest. If you cannot hold to your principles in a time of crisis, then you have no principles.

We are gambling with the entire free market system and every Republican who votes in favor of the Bailout for good, sound, compassionate reasons–or from fear of political fallout if the economy falters farther–is just giving ammunition to Democrats that “they” knew the system wasn’t working, “they” knew deregulation didn’t work and did it anyway, “they” knew that Big Business couldn’t be trusted…and “they” finally voted with the Democrats (who were right all along) when it was too late to prevent disaster.

And “they,” of course, are those evil Republicans who are against the common people and the “little guy.” Republicans are going to take a hit on this one in the short term no matter whether the Bailout passes or fails again. And Republicans are going to be hit with the blame in the short term when the economy continues to head south, as it will no matter whether the Bailout passes or fails again.

If a hit is inevitable, then at least take a hit for something that you truly believe in. In that way, the party and the conservative movement may be positioned to say “I told you so” when massive intervention fails yet again. And we may be able to put the pieces of our broken economy back together quicker and better for the sake of everyone.

Allard (R)
Barasso (R)
Brownback (R)
Bunning (R)
Cochran (R)
Crapo (R)
DeMint (R)
Dole (R)
Enzi (R)
Inhofe (R)
Roberts (R)
Sessions (R)
Shelby (R)
Vitter (R)
Wicker (R)

Sanders (I)

Cantwell (D)
Dorgan (D)
Feingold (D)
Johnson (D)
Landrieu (D)
Nelson (FL) (D)
Stabenow (D)
Tester (D)
Wyden (D)

As gamecock has written elsewhere, let’s defeat it in the House….

The phones of Congressional Representatives and Senators are ringing off their hooks, with people complaining that either no one answers them or they are put on perpetual hold. The American public is overwhelmingly against the Bailout, and they feel that nobody is listening to them.

The number of phone calls has been unprecedented. So too has the volume of email. In fact, so many emails have been received that the Congressional system has had to have a block put in to electronically limit the number of emails allowed through because there are “too many” for the system to handle.

This didn’t even happen with 9/11. The Bailout is massively unpopular. And it should be. If someone with some clout sponsors a March on Washington…this could get very interesting.

Now, if John McCain would only stand on principle and the side of the people and oppose the Bailout, he might catch the current tidal wave of opposition and be able to craft some legislation that would actually fix the problems we face. If he does not, then we are going to end up simply following politics as usual and throwing money at a problem with no guarantee it will do any good.

John, listen to the voice of the people.

We haven’t heard a lot from you lately. Not a lot since last week, really, when you suspended your presidential campaign and announced that you were going back to D.C. to fix the economic crisis that Congress and the nation suddenly discovered it was in.

We know why we haven’t heard a lot from you. First, the news media doesn’t give you the same amount of coverage that it gives Sen. Obama, of course. But the coverage that you did get last week was overwhelmingly negative, and there was a loud drumbeat of criticism that you were just political grand-standing and did more harm than good while the Pelosi Bailout Bill was taking shape.

And then your numbers in the polls started heading south. Not just in the national polls, but your numbers started falling in the polls in swing states where it really matters electorially. So I imagine that many of your closest advisors jumped in to suggest that you have to be quiet, you have to go along to get along, and you have keep your eye on the ball and focused on the long term goal of winning the White House. The damage that an Obama presidency could do to the U.S. economy and national security are far greater than any short-term problems that this Bailout will cause…aren’t they?

Well, John, I don’t think that your advisors are right. And if your gut is telling you the same things, then I don’t think that your gut is right either. You are losing this election at the moment John, and you are losing it because you have stopped being the John McCain who surprised and shocked everyone by the bold, daring, non-politically-safe things you were doing just a few short weeks ago.

We need that bold, daring, shake-things-up John McCain to come back. We need him to come back now–before it is too late. Only that John McCain has a chance to win the White House and get us out of the messes that we are in.

And you really have nothing to lose by being bold, daring and outspoken. At least, nothing that isn’t lost already. (more after the jump)

John, the Republicans–and you–are going to be blamed for all the problems that come along anyway. That’s the way the deck is stacked right now.

It doesn’t matter what you do or do not do. It doesn’t matter if you are quiet and supportive, or bold and a Maverick. The Republicans are going to be the fall guys here because the Democrats are very good at the Blame Game, the GOP doesn’t know how to properly head it off or counteract it, and the media are on the Democrats side.

It wasn’t 94 Democrats voting against the Pelosi Bailout that killed the Pelosi Bill! It was those stubborn Republicans who didn’t cross party lines and vote for it! It wasn’t the Community Reinvestment Act passed under the Jimmy Carter administration and expanded under the Bill Clinton administration that led to the housing bubble and the burst housing bubble/mortgage crisis–oh, no, it was the failures of the George Bush administration and the War in Iraq! You, and the Republican Party, are going to get the blame when this massive and massively unpopular Bailout Bill either fails to pass or passes and then fails to fix the problem.

The way things are now…you are going to lose either way. And America is going to lose in an even bigger way.

The sole purpose of the Republican Party in contemporary society as far as Democrats, liberals, intellectuals and the media are concerned, is to be convenient scapegoats for all the ills of the world. Republicans are those greedy, money-grubbing, selfish people who always put the interests of the banks, the oil companies and Big Business against those of the common people. They aren’t just wrong or misguided, oh no, Republicans for the most part and Conservatives specifically, are just plain evil. Plus, Conservatives and Republicans have connections and sympathies for other unsavory and dangerous groups.

So…do the right thing. Have the guts to stand on your principles, let the buck stop here, put your money where your mouth is, walk the talk, and all of those other cliches that harken back to an earlier time where people did things because they were the right thing to do and they had to be done, and not because of petty self-interest, small-minded partisanship or thoughts of personal gain.

Hold a press conference now, before the vote, and announce that you will not vote in favor of the bloated, pork-laden, “incentive”-stuffed Senate Bailout monstrosity. Don’t let people tell you what the political and economic consequences will be, because the people you are currently listening to are wrong.

Tax breaks and incentives for Puerto Rican and Virgin Islands Rum? $15 Million taxpayer dollars for Television and Film productions? Money to various Native American tribal nations? Money to American Samoa? Money for wool research? Wool research! Money subsidizing wooden arrows for American children?

A provision forcing insurance companies to provide coverage for mental health treatment on an equal basis to coverage of physical health problems? Something that will set things up for the next “crisis” when the insurance companies cannot provide private health care coverage?

Is this an emergency piece of legislation that represents the best thinking of the Senate on how to help the average American in what has been touted as the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression? Or is this the kind of legislation and legislative attidude that has gotten us into this mess in the first place? Which is it, John? And what side of the debate are you going to come down on? On the side of politics as usual or on the side of fiscal responsibility and protecting the proverbial “little guy?”

John, we are waiting for you to do something. Something bold. Something that shows independence and that Maverick spirit you like to talk about. Something that goes against not only your own party, but against both parties in this case. And I have a specific, concrete suggestion on what you might want to consider doing.

Announce your support for a version of the House GOP plan that includes a combination of insurance, loans and tax changes to deal with this financial crisis. Announce that we need to eliminate the abuses that the Community Reinvestment Act that led to many of our problems. Talk about how suspending “mark to market” accounting (and possibly eliminating it completely), raising FDIC insurance protection and the Fed continuing to pump liquidity into the market are the real ways out of this problem.

Most people won’t know what you are talking about when you get technical, of course. But they will know that you know what you are talking about. And that is what really matters.

People do not have ultimate confidence in a system. People have confidence in people. If you are going to become the next president, you are going to have to give people reason to have confidence in you. And, cynically, one of the best ways to do that is to tell people what they already believe to be true and affirm that the people are right.

Barack Obama and most Democrats tell people what they want to hear in nearly every speech they make. But for people who really care about the country, it helps a lot if you can tell people they are right when they actually are right. In this case, John, you can do that with a clear conscience.

The majority of Americans are dead-set against this Bailout. Their opinion goes against the talking heads on television, the political pundits, most of the economists and financiers and bankers–and the politicians right and left–who are dead-set certain that unless massive amounts of cash are thrown at this problem by Congress that we are going to be plunged into economic chaos and a New Great Depression.

Well…that’s what they said last week too. They all said that if the Pelosi Bailout wasn’t passed before Monday morning that the Dow would plunge a 1929-like 20-25% and we’d have a point drop of from 1000 to 2500 to deal with.

Of course, that didn’t happen. In the wake of the “surprising” failure of the Pelosi Bailout on Monday, the market dropped about a hefty 700 points. A large drop, or course, but not percentage-wise a record drop or a devastating one.

Especially since the Dow recovered about 500 points on Tuesday. And closed today only 20 points down.

The sky didn’t fall. The world didn’t come to an end. Nobody is setting up tent cities in Central Park or getting the soup lines going again.

And if you seriously believe that the reason we didn’t have a major Stock Market crash was because people are confident that Congress and the President are competent and will fix this problem…well, then you haven’t checked the polls on Congressional and Presidential approval recently, and you really need to ask a few pointed questions of people in Town Hall meetings. People don’t trust Congress to be able to tie their own shoes, much less fix major problems.

Of course, those same talking heads, politicians and “experts,” are saying that Wall Street and the Dow are not the real problem and the Stock Market numbers they made such dire predictions about last week should be ignored this week. The real problem is that the credit markets have dried up and nobody is lending any money. Businesses won’t be able to borrow money to meet payroll, or buy inventory. The economy will grind to a standstill. People won’t be able to get money to buy houses, or cars, or computers, or IPods, or…

Hold on a minute. John, does it make sense to you that credit would be flowing freely and well while banks and lenders are sitting around waiting for Congress to pass a quick, emergency, let’s-get-this-done-now-and-don’t-talk-to-me-about-reading-it piece of legislation that is going to put up to $700 Billion Dollars of taxpayer money into their hot, little hands?

Are we expecting the corporate geniuses who allowed greed and the desire for a quick buck by chasing 30% risky returns on investments to suddenly become angels and do anything that would avoid a $700 Billion Dollar windwall to drop into their laps? Or the responsible business leaders who were forced by the Community Reinvestment Act and idiotic policies forced on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac penalizing lenders who didn’t extend loans to people who should never have received them to not rather resentfully feel that since the government got them into this mess, the government should get them out now?

Why in the name of all that is Unholy Big Government Largesse should credit be flowing freely in the markets while everyone is holding their breath waiting to see just how big a gift Congress is going to authorize Santa Sam to give?

The Bailout is wrong. It is wrong morally, and it is wrong economically. If it passes, it will also be wrong politically down the road for everyone who votes in favor of it–and 94 House Democrats voted “No” on Monday and seem to agree with me. The Bailout is trying to put a bandaid on a bleeding artery without stopping the bleeding. The Senate Bill does not solve the root problems that led to the mess we are in–in fact, as the hours go by and the “incentives” grow, it is like cutting a few more arteries for good measure.

John, do something bold and responsible about this situation. Attack Barack Obama and the Democrats for trying to push through the greatest giveaway of taxpayer money in the history of the world on a massive bailout when there is a better and more responsible way of solving this problem. Point out that the root problems have to actually be addressed and solved and simply giving huge amounts of money to the same broken system is not going to help the average American.

Being bipartisan in this case means both parties joining together to do something that better than 60% of the American public does not want done. Going against the will of the American people would be fine if it was the right thing to do…and if it would work. But it will not work, and I think that deep down where you live, where you lived through all those torturous months in a prison camp, you know that it will not work. The wisdom of the common people in this case is right, and the pundits, politicians and players on the Street are wrong.

A caller to the Rush Limbaugh show named Kathy summed up the feeling of most people in American about the Bailout, and said it better than I have heard it said: “I believe there is so much anger and distrust, cynicism out there over the fraud perpetrated at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and especially at the failure of congressional leadership, that what we have is a crisis of confidence in government, not the markets. The foxes are putting themselves in charge of the henhouse and the henhouse is where the golden eggs would be laid if the government got out of the way.”

Americans do not need to have their confidence restored in the financial system. They need to have their confidence restored in government. And the face of government in this country is a single person, for good or for ill, and that person is the President. This election looked like it was going to be about change a month ago, but it has degenerated recently into day after day of more politics as usual.

Change it back.

We need you to come out against the Bailout on principle. We need you to stand up, talk straight, list the “incentives” and special interest add-ons in the Senate Bill and name the names like you promised to do. I know that the pork and additions aren’t earmarks, per se, but they are kissing cousins to earmarks and just as needless, wasteful and inappropriate.

Standing up, speaking out, and opposing the Bailout is going to take courage. But courage is something that your life shows you have. The reason that you have fallen behind in all of the polls since this “crisis” began last week is that we have not seen you showing any of the courage we expect from you lately. We have just seen you as one of the herd, running blindly toward the edge of the cliff, saying the same things and doing the same things as the rest of the herd around you.

We are heading into rough financial waters no matter what happens and no matter what Congress does or does not do. It is going to take courage and leadership to stand up now and go against what President Bush, the Democrat leaders of the House and the Senate, the media and the Street are all saying. But if you don’t stand up and say it…who will?

Stand with the people on this one, John. Let’s hear some straight talk from you on why more earmark-like “incentives,” more pork, more business and politics as usual, and 700 Billion Dollars of taxpayer money poured in without adequate safeguards and assurance of fixing what is broken simply isn’t right, and won’t work. Some people might even compare it to a scam.

Stand up and give ‘em hell, John. Or there is going to be hell to pay over the next few years for America and the world.

Of course, it will not be what will be said. House Republicans, John McCain, and George Bush will be blamed. Count on it. After all, Nancy Pelosi made it clear that she wanted a minimum of 95 House Republicans to vote in favor of the Bailout Bill, and only 66 voted for it.

Take note of that. 66 Republicans voted in favor of Pelosi’s Bailout Bill, and 92 Democrats voted against Pelosi. And why did Speaker Pelosi want 95 Republicans onboard? For the simple and obvious reason that House Democrats (and “Blue Dog Democrats” in particular) need to cover their…ahh…votes and spread a thin veneer of bipartisanship over this vote so they don’t take the blame in the November elections.

About two-thirds of Americans in recent surveys did not want the Bailout to pass. Despite the comments that Republicans had to get on board or they would be responsible for the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression…look carefully at those 94 Democrat “No” votes. Those are Dems in close races, in vulnerable Districts–many of which used to have Republican Representatives–and those Democrats knew that voting “yes” on this Bill was political suicide for them.

The truth of the matter is that with a Democrat majority in the House that could have passed the Bill on their own, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her cronies failed to convince enough members of her own party to vote for the Bailout and that is why the Bill failed. 94 Democrats said NO! to Nancy Pelosi and her bloated Bailout Bill.

And the Bill failed.

Amie Parnes reports from Lebanon, VA:

Obama poked fun of McCain and Palin’s new “change” mantra.

“You can put lipstick on a pig,” he said as the crowd cheered. “It’s still a pig.”

“You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It’s still gonna stink.”

“We’ve had enough of the same old thing.”

The crowd apparently took the “lipstick” line as a reference to Palin, who described the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull in a single word: “lipstick.”

Despite immediate denials that Sen. Obama called Gov. Palin a “pig,” that seems to be exactly what he did.

Are we going to hear an outcry from prominent feminists and feminist organizations? Probably not. Are we going to continue to see Sen. Obama go down in the national and state polls? Probably we are.

Can you imagine what would have happened if a Republican had said this?

If I were connected to the McCain/Palin campaign, I think I’d be asking for a personal apology from Sen. Obama. And I’d be asking it in advertisements. In swing states.

Why is the fact that the death toll in Chicago this summer is about double the death toll of U.S. soldiers in Iraq not of concern to you, Senator?

Quoting from CBS news in Chicago: “**Information from wire service reports and the Chicago Police Major Incidents log indicated that 123 people were shot and killed throughout the city (of Chicago) between the start of Memorial Day weekend on May 26, and the end of Labor Day on Sept. 1.

According to the Defense Department, 65 soldiers were killed in combat in Iraq. About the same number were killed in Afghanistan over that same period.**”

More after the jump.

So…shouldn’t Senator Barack Obama of Illinois be concerned that it is safer to be a soldier on active duty in Iraq or Afghanistan than it is to be an average citizen living in Chicago.

If the Obama campaign isn’t concerned about that very vital set of statistics, well, the American electorate certainly should be concerned about it. Is this an example of what the kind of politics and “reform” that Obama learned from the Chicago political establishment leads to? Perhaps a little more community policing and community safety and a little less community “organizing” would have benefited the people of Chicago.

Of course, a sceptic might say that Chicago is a big city, with big city problems. That, of course, is true. I’ll put aside the obvious fact that one of Chicago’s major “problems” is a liberal, machine, Democrat administration and compare the largest city in Senator Obama’s state to an even larger city: Los Angeles.

Los Angeles has a population of nearly 15 million people. Chicago has a population of a fraction over 9 million people. So Chicago is about two-thirds the size of Los Angeles. And what about their homicide rates this summer?

From the LA Times: “From the beginning of June through the end of August, there were 84 homicides in Los Angeles — a level of relative calm not seen since the summer of 1967, when the city had 79 killings over the same period.”

Los Angeles has had considerably less homicides this summer than smaller Chicago. About 46% more homicides in fact, even though Obama’s city is one third smaller than LA.

And both cities are more dangerous to be in than either the Iraq or Afghanistan theaters of war.

Perhaps the Obama campaign ought to look to its home base when it starts talking about making America a better place to live. For most people, rhetoric eventually falls flat if it is all talk and doesn’t result in concrete plans, specific reforms and detailed policies that really affect the lives of average Americans. And pretty much everything falls flat if you are afraid to walk the steets of the the town–or the major city–where you live.

Of course, I wouldn’t expect Senator Barack Obama to think in terms of lowly things like homicide rates and crime prevention and citizen safety at the citizen level in a city. His eye seems to be on something “higher” than those sorts of things.

After all, he has never been a mayor.

Is the DNC actually admitting in print an anti-Semitic bias?

And has anyone asked for a comment on this from Democratic Independent Senator Joe Lieberman? More on this, and the new “marching orders” from the DNC for party loyalists, below the fold…

The main thing that surprises me about 660 word DNC hit piece on Rep. Eric Cantor is not that it mentions “Jewish” five time. It is that they couldn’t throw in six more words to round it out to an even 666.

What! No comments that the Jewish people are responsible for high oil and gasoline prices? Or some subtle comment that all of our banking and mortgage problems can be directly laid at the feet of…well…those people?

If you haven’t read the DNC trash on Cantor linked above, you might think this is an over the top reaction to an obvious misunderstanding of what the DNC meant to say. And what they meant to imply. They couldn’t really be anti-semitic, could they?

Then perhaps you think there is something measured, sane and explainable as other than anti-semitism in this direct quotation from their web page:

Hence a request by Cantor … to switch his eponymous sandwich to roast beef on challah, ‘a deli special that exudes Jewish power.’”

Sarcasm? Irony? Intellecutual hijinks?

How about Lowest-Common Denominator Populist Fear-Mongering? Mean-spirited religion-baiting?

Or let’s just call it good, old-fashioned Anti-Semitism and put Occam’s Razor away.

Has anyone asked Sen. Joe Lieberman for a comment on this yet? Or asked Joe if there is any connection between DNC ant-Semitism and why he was essentially kicked out of the Democratic Party?

The Big Tent appears to have a rally going on inside it and the tune they are playing made the rounds once before about 70 years ago.

Should we be watching for the Obama campaign slogan to be changed from “Change You Can Believe In,” to “One People, one Empire Nation, one Leader!”.

Anyone care to get up a pool on how long it will be before an Obama campaign spokesperson issues a stunningly bland disavowal of DNC anti-Semitism and reminds us that it is Republicans who are racists and bigots? A carefully worded denial issued in the name of “Our Glorious leader,” perhaps?

How far is it from the Democratic Party convention site in Denver to South Park, Colorado? Not very far at all, it seems…

Hey, it really is Change You Can Believe In…

…but it seems to be a definite move to the Reich for the Democrats.

Shuler is holding a seat that was in GOP hands for many years, and it has been considered safe for Democrats to hang onto in this election. That may change though if these allegations of malfeasance have legs. And the man running to unseat Shuler is a very rare sort of Republican these days. He is a committed, Conservative with firm principles.

If that sounds like an urban myth, then you might want to continue reading below the fold…

Allegations surfaced today about North Carolina Democrat Rep. Heath Shuler seeming to misuse his office for personal gain. No matter what the outcome of the investigation into that turns up…assuming there is an investigation, of course…Shuler is a first-term congressman holding a seat that had been in GOP hands for a number of years.

Shuler’s opponent in the election this fall is Carl Mumpower, a psychologist, conservative activist and a member of the Asheville city Council. This summer, Mumpower suspended his campaign because he did not think that the NC GOP (or the national GOP) was conservative enough.

The Republican Party hierarchy went ballistic, but enough county Republican committees agreed to Mumpower’s conditions that he reactivated his campaign within a week. However–and this is a Very Big However–his campaign reported just $1,000 left in its treasury as of June 30. Well-heeled “Blue Dog” Shuler, in contrast, has $965,000 in his piggy bank.

Mumpower is running what he calls a “Lincoln Campaign”–he’s asking for literal Lincolns ($5.00 bills) as contributions and is committed to not taking money from Special Interests, Party Hierarchies, etc. He calls himself a Maverick, but he is a Maverick who is standing on firm Conservative principles that you can read about by clicking on this link.

At the moment, Mumpower is at a significant financial disadvantage. In heavily liberal Asheville which is the major city in the district he’s running to serve, the news media is not paying a lot of attention to him. If you’d like to help him out in his run against Highrolling Heath Shuler, then Here is a Link to Donate to Carl Mumpower’s Campaign

And no matter what you decide, take some time and look around Carl Mumpower’s website. Hey, a guy who is running on Principle. What a concept!

Just for the record, I have no connection to the campaign of Carl Mumpower (nor to any other campaign), nor am I connected with the Republican Party (or any other party) except as a voter. I simply live in western North Carolina, am aware of the situation here, and am trying to get some attention focused on this race.