Politico talks about the how the national parties will be spending thier dollars this fall:

With limited resources and an expansive map featuring at least 10 Senate seats in play in pricey markets, national Democrats and Republicans will soon face a string of tough choices — where to spend their cash heading into the final weeks before the midterm elections — that will make or break some campaigns this fall.

If you give to a candidate that you like, he/she may or may not end up needing it. What if every dollar you donated to politics went to races in which your money was critical to achieving victory for a business friendly, fiscally conservative candidate that favors limited government and opposes all new taxes ?

I’m talking about the Club for Growth, which monitors races nation wide and recommends worthy candidates to their members. But they also have a PAC that throws funds into close races at strategic times, often tilting the balance in favor of a pro-growth candidate.

The most important thing about the Club for Growth is that they are not tied to a political party. In fact, they often causing headaches for RINO Republicans. The Club supports fiscally responsible candidates, even against GOP incumbents.

Says the Washington Times, the “Club for Growth packs a punch“:

The Club for Growth, champion of low taxes, fiscal responsibility and free market economics, isn’t exactly a household name, but it will be a major political force to be reckoned with in the 2010 midterm elections.

It has been around for at least several decades, quietly supporting House and Senate candidates who embrace pro-growth economic policies, but it has begun to play a much more visible role in Republican politics in recent elections – often backing conservative insurgents spurned by the Republican Party establishment.

Their growing power and influence stems from their ability to raise tens of millions of dollars for like-minded candidates to jump-start underfunded campaigns and to pump money into TV ads in key battleground states and district races to advance their agenda.

I quit giving to the GOP when Bush backed Specter against Toomey in Pennsylvania in 2004. Interestingly enough, Obama backed Specter in a more recent primary contest, this time with less success. (Specter didn’t change his voting habits after switch parties. If that does not demonstrate the true extent of the moral bankruptcy of the GOP, then nothing will.)

In fact, I no longer give to individual candidates except at the local level. That’s because my dollars at the federal level go into the coffers of the Club for Growth PAC, where it will be put to the best use possible. I encourage you to do the same.

Bill Clinton gave us It’s the Economy, Stupid, using the concept to unseat a president that made Americans proud to be Americans again by liberating Kuwait and kicking Saddam’s ass back to Baghdad.

The Democrats have forgotten Slick Willie’s lesson and that, according to The Economist, is the reason that Democrats are at risk of losing both the House and the Senate (admittedly a long shot, but with the size of their majorities this shouldn’t even be a topic of conversation at this point). Whilst the Dems were bailing out unsuccessful financial companies and auto makers, and passing a hugely unpopular (and expensive) health care bill, this is what was happening to Joe Sixpack:

More than half of all workers have experienced a spell of unemployment, taken a cut in pay or hours or been forced to go part-time. The typical unemployed worker has been jobless for nearly six months. Collapsing share and house prices have destroyed a fifth of the wealth of the average household. Nearly six in ten Americans have cancelled or cut back on holidays. About a fifth say their mortgages are underwater. One in four of those between 18 and 29 have moved back in with parents. Fewer than half of all adults expect their children to have a higher standard of living than theirs, and more than a quarter say it will be lower.

Another way to put this is that for many Americans the great recession has been the sharpest trauma since the second world war, wiping out jobs, wealth and hope itself. That is why fewer than half now think that Mr Obama is doing a good job. He and his party will need to present an astonishingly good argument to talk the electorate out of doing what will come naturally in a mid-term: casting a protest vote against the party in power. They have not yet provided one that is sufficiently persuasive.

Exactly. And time is running out fast.

How are Democrats spending that time? Hugh Hewitt says that Democrats are sprinting towards the political cliff:

Against this backdrop the Democrats refuse to extend the Bush tax cuts, refuse to fix the death tax which will skyrocket at the end of the year without action, and refuse to address the wild spending which has driven the deficit to levels that risk a fiscal stroke.

What do the Congressional Democrats instead offer as the key legislative debate?  A manifestly unconstitutional attempt to advantage themselves in elections via the so-called “DISCLOSE Act,” an absurdly partisan ploy to keep union campaign spending robust and concealed while crushing the ability of almost all other groups –except the NRA, the Sierra Club and a few other favored special interests– from impacting elections. …

The Manhattan-Beltway media elite have fundamentally misunderstood or refused to believe what is happening in front of their eyes, and their blindness has apparently led the MSM-addicted Congressional Democrats to ignore the issues that do concern voters while pushing forward an agenda that deeply offends an already outraged electorate.  The president’s deep-seated ideology similarly renders him incapable of understanding the depth of the rejection of his agenda that is sweeping the country.

Meanwhile the Democrat’s wasteful actions are being felt across the nation in state-level races, with GOP being forecast to pick up 6 to 12 governor mansions and as many as 20 legislative chambers.

Democrats were weak on terrorism in 2002, leading to the Bushification of America. Will the bankrupting of America’s future lead to a Republican tsunami in 2010? Four months to go, and the Democrats don’t seem to have a strategy to head off the wave.

Problem is, experience teaches us that a Republican Congress does not equate to a conservative nor even fiscally responsible Congress.

Technorati Tags: Races of 2010, Remember November, Republican Tsunami, Bankrupting America, Stimulus and Other Failed Programs, Rising Unemployment in America, Barack Hussein Obama the Dangerous Choice

Rasmussen finds that only 25 percent of likely voters think the financial bailouts were a good idea. A full 56% think they were out-and-out a bad idea. [Note: the 19% who are still undecided on the issue should have their voter registration cards taken away. How can you not have an opinion on this vital issue by now?

Unsurprisingly, political insiders don’t share this view:

There also continues to be a strong divide between the Political Class and Mainstream voters. While a strong majority of Mainstream voters are still against both of the bailouts, at least half of the Political Class think they were a good idea.

This dichotomy is supported by a recent Politico poll:

Only 27 percent believe the country is headed in the right direction, compared with 61 percent who think the nation is on the wrong track. Likewise, when asked whether the national economy is heading down the right or wrong track, just 24 percent chose the right track, compared with 65 percent for the wrong track.

Yet among the 227 Washington elites polled, more think the country is on the right track, 49 percent, than the wrong track, 45 percent. On the economy, 44 percent of elites think the country is on the right track, compared with 46 percent who believe it is not.

Politico also found that compared to mainstream Americans, the political elites were more supportive of Obama, less supportive of Palin, and tended to think of the Tea Party movement as a “fad”. And that’s just sad.

Further, a Bloomberg poll shows that 7 out of 10 Americans see even more joblessness and an increasing deficit, believing that the country is mired in recession.

Seven of 10 Americans say reducing unemployment is the priority. At the same time, the public is skeptical of the Obama administration’s stimulus program and wary of more spending, with more than half saying the deficit is “dangerously out of control.”

If Obama’s “stimulus” had actually created jobs instead of rewarding failure, the recession might be in the rear view mirror and public opinion would be much different. Instead, 70 percent think the economy is still in recession and 13 percent think we are headed for a double-dip. Meanwhile, real unemployment hovers just short of 22 percent.

Amity Shlaes compares today’s economy with that of 1932, the end of Hoover’s presidency and just when things started getting better. She notes that although there are factors that differenciate the two, there are a number of similarities. Read the whole thing, but here’s the money quote:

The takeaway from 1932? Resetting the euro’s criteria for existence and member countries’ obligations when it comes to bailing out one another should happen sooner rather than later. Democrats and the president should ignore unions and cut trade deals with Latin America. John F. Kennedy, a Democrat, supported tax cuts. Obama can too, or at least block rate increases. The president might also want to suppress his lawyer- Keynesian reflexes and reconsider policy when it comes to wages. But the 1932 crisis talk actually impedes such consideration.

If anyone believes that these can take place in today’s partisan environment just hasn’t been paying attention. Get settled folks, this recession isn’t going away any time soon.

Technorati Tags: Bankrupting America, Bailouts and Other Bad Ideas, Stimulus and Other Failures, Rising Unemployment in America, Unions and Other Drags on the Economy, Political Elites and Other Yammerheads, Barack Hussein Obama the Dangerous Choice

Stephen Roach, Morgan Stanley’s chairman for Asia, warns that because consumers are wary to spend the US economy is headed toward a period of “protracted sluggishness.”

The U.S. economy grew at a 2.7 percent annual rate in the first quarter, less than previously calculated, reflecting a smaller gain in consumer spending and a bigger trade gap, data showed last month. Consumer confidence slumped in July to the lowest level in a year, signaling that the biggest part of the economy is losing momentum, according to the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary index of consumer sentiment published on July 16.

“The dynamism that we’ve gotten hooked and accustomed to, is just not going to be” there, Roach said.

The U.S. housing market took another step back in June as construction and purchases dropped, and a gauge of the outlook for growth signaled the expansion will lose steam, economists said before data due to be published later this week. Housing’s inability to maintain a rebound is one reason the economic recovery is not gaining speed.

But don’t worry. Change is coming with another Obama “stimulus” just around the corner.

Technorati Tags: Bankrupting America, Faltering Jobless Recovery, US Economy, Barack Hussein Obama the Dangerous Choice

My guide for the August election is available at TennWatch, or you can download the prettily formatted PDF version here.

Please address comments at TennWatch. And please, feel free to criticize.

Technorati Tags: Tennessee Politics, Shelby County Politics, 2010 Tennessee State and Federal Primary Election, 2010 Shelby County General Election, Races of 2010, AlphaPatriot’s Picks

Received via email. Sounds old, yet still funny:

I stopped by the Toyota Dealership yesterday for a look at the new  Tacoma .

Just for fun, I took it out for a test drive. I wanted to sense that new “feel” before they become extinct.

The salesman (wearing an Obama “change” lapel pin) sat in the passenger seat describing the truck and all its “wonderful” options.

The seats were of particular interest. He explained that the seats directed warm air to your butt in the winter and directed cool air to your butt in the summer heat.

Feeling like messing with his mind, I mentioned that this must be a Republican truck.

Looking a bit angry, he asked why I thought it was a Republican truck.

I explained that if it were a Democrat truck, the seats would blow smoke up your ass year-round.

I had to walk back to the dealership. Dip-shit had no sense of humor.

Technorati Tags: Humor

Barclays Wealth is a private UK-based wealth management firm that handles some $231 billion in client assets. Earlier this month Barclays’ Chief Economist Michael Dicks set the chances of a UK “double dip” recession at 1 in 3, saying:

All in all, we would say that it is more likely than not that the fiscal tightening takes the edge off of the recovery, rather than completely wrecking it. But, a double-dip scenario certainly cannot be completely ruled out.

Today Barclays is in the news again due to a reduction in its estimate for gains in the S&P 500 this year. Although still predicting that the S&P will end the year in the neighborhood of 1,110 (an increase of 4.2 percent from last Friday’s close), this is 9.8 percent lower than earlier predictions.

“The probability of something really horrible happening has risen,” Dicks said in a press briefing in London today. “With growth in both the U.S. and Asia set to slow in the second half of the year, fears may rise. Expectations could remain polarized between either a stock market boom or a deflationary bust.”

Dicks is more pessimistic than most economists, citing continued risks to growth in either the US or China, falling US consumer confidence, China’s failure to hit the GDP growth forecast, and the threat to the European union:

As European governments slash their budget deficits, gross domestic product in the 16-nation euro region may fall and monetary union may “break up entirely,” adding to uncertainty in equity markets, according to Dicks.

A jobless recovery and even that seems to be at risk. The lesson is to keep your money at work in the stock market, but hedge your bets and be ready to cash out if, as Dicks says, “something really horrible” happens.

You can follow Michael Dicks on his blog.

Technorati Tags: Double Dip Recession, Bankrupting America, Barack Hussein Obama the Dangerous Choice

Defending his Wall Street “reform”, Obama attacked Republicans by saying that their ideas have been tried and failed. He did not mention that Democrats now control the House, Senate and White House and that the numbers to be released Friday will likely show a rise in unemployment (now that all his little Census workers have been released).

Meanwhile, the market fell again, extending the first quarterly drop in the S&P 500 Index in more than a year.

The S&P 500 fell 1 percent to 1,030.71 at 4 p.m. in New York. It has declined 12 percent since March 31, breaking a four-quarter winning streak that drove the benchmark index for U.S. stocks up 47 percent. The Dow decreased 96.28 points, or 1 percent, to 9,774.02 today, giving it a second-quarter decrease of 10 percent. The Nasdaq-100 Index, which gets 63 percent of its value from technology companies, slumped for an eighth straight day, the longest stretch of losses since 2006.

So just exactly what have the Democrat policies got us? Besides trillions in debt with more to come and a real unemployment rate just shy of 22 percent, I mean.

Technorati Tags: Barack Hussein Obama the Dangerous Choice, Bankrupting America, Losing the War on Terror, Liberal Terrorist-Hugging Marxists

NRO’s The Corner has updated their chart on stimulus spending vs. the unemployment rate:

That certainly inspires confidence that The Chosen One knows what he’s doing, right?

Technorati Tags: Barack Hussein Obama the Dangerous Choice, Bankrupting America