Ray Stevens has a new hit tune out that Congress needs to hear

Contrary to rumor, Ray Stevens is not dead. He's alive and well and has a new hit tune out.

I must confess I stole this from The Stoned Crab.

Obama and Congress invent new dance: 'The Slide'

David Brooks is the sole conservative on the Noo Yawk Times editorial staff. Which means his conservative credentials are roughly as suspect as the virtue of a piano player in a whore house.

But when Brooks points out what he calls "The Obama Slide," and he ain't talking about a new dance, it's sorta like a Jeff Foxworthy sign that you might be a redneck. When Brooks says Obama might be in trouble, you can bet your sweet bippy BHO is wading into deep doo-doo.

By force of circumstances and by design, the president has promoted one policy after another that increases spending and centralizes power in Washington.

The result is the Obama slide, the most important feature of the current moment. The number of Americans who trust President Obama to make the right decisions has fallen by roughly 17 percentage points. Obama’s job approval is down to about 50 percent. All presidents fall from their honeymoon highs, but in the history of polling, no newly elected American president has fallen this far this fast.

Anxiety is now pervasive. Trust in government rose when Obama took office. It has fallen back to historic lows. Fifty-nine percent of Americans now think the country is headed in the wrong direction.

That's the bad news for the Obama White House. Then Brooks notes that the political outlook for the leftwingnut Democrat leadership in Congress is even worse.

The public’s view of Congress, which ticked upward for a time, has plummeted. Charlie Cook, who knows as much about Congressional elections as anyone in the country, wrote recently that Democratic fortunes have “slipped completely out of control.” He and the experts he surveyed believe there is just as much chance that the Democrats could lose more than 20 House seats in the next elections as less than 20.

There are also warning signs in the Senate. A recent poll shows Harry Reid, the majority leader, trailing the Republican Danny Tarkanian, a possible 2010 opponent, by 49 percent to 38 percent. When your majority leader is down to a 38 percent base in his home state, that’s not good.

The public has soured on Obama’s policy proposals. Voters often have only a fuzzy sense of what each individual proposal actually does, but more and more have a growing conviction that if the president is proposing it, it must involve big spending, big government and a fundamental departure from the traditional American approach.

Sorta reminds me of the old adage of giving a fool enough rope to hang himself. The leftwingnut Democrats (AKA "Progressive Moderates") have taken power and in their moment in the spotlight have demonstrated they are roughly as progressive and moderate as Attila the Hun.

I for one can't wait for 2010 for voters' revenge on Congress and in 2012 for a new President.

Robin Hayes tells truth, no apology necessary

Robin Hayes, my Congressman, is catching flak for telling the truth about liberals.

Republican Rep. Robin Hayes, who is locked in a closely contested House race in North Carolina, has also been criticized after telling a crowd Saturday that "liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God." Hayes initially denied making the remarks, but he was forced to acknowledge them after an audiotape of the speech surfaced.

"I genuinely did not recall making the statement and, after reading it, there is no doubt that it came out completely the wrong way," Hayes said in a statement released by his campaign. "I actually was trying to work to keep the crowd as respectful as possible, so this is definitely not what I intended."

Hayes had spoken at a campaign rally in Concord, N.C., where Sen. John McCain appeared. The 10-year congressman told the crowd he wanted to "make sure we don't say something stupid, make sure we don't say something we don't mean."

He then went on to praise Palin. "Folks, there's a great American," Hayes said. "Liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God."

So, what's to apologize for?

The Big Bank Heist of 2005: Whodunit?

The current economic crisis we're in sorta reminds of my grandmother's cure for all that ails you: Black Draught. It tasted awful and the results were even worse than the taste. But the alternative of doing nothing was worse still, so shut up, hold your nose and swallow your medicine.

Wesley Pruden at the Washington Times likens the $1.8 trillion bailout for the current crisis to Bonnie and Clyde "dealing in wholesale" banking.

Now we see what Bonnie and Clyde could have made of themselves if only they had gone to Harvard Business School. Machine guns and fast getaway cars are not nearly as efficient as computers, lawyers and imaginative accounting.

Bonnie and Clyde relieved depositors of their savings at little banks in out of the way places, dealing only in retail. The Lehman brothers and their sisters, Bear Stearns and AIG, relieved investors of their money on Wall Street and now get to relieve taxpayers of their money from coast to coast, dealing in wholesale. The brothers and sisters have given "free markets" an entirely new meaning. They're free to take the money and run, with Hank Paulson driving the getaway car.

But Pruden, like all the rest of us taxpayers, will have to pay the bill. So he moves on with the obvious question: How'd we get into this mess?

We're told that this is no time to play the blame game. But why not? Since we're all stockholders now in a vast Ponzi scheme, we should have some say in who gets thrown into the street and who doesn't. The Democrats are particularly eager to avoid the blame game. They fiercely opposed legislation in 2005 that would have imposed sanity on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whence came this misery. The legislation was written by three senators, including, as it happens, John McCain. The senators who blocked it were, as it happens, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Chris Dodd. This unholy trio took more than a quarter of a million dollars in campaign contributions from executives and employees of Fannie and Freddie. Just a coincidence, of course.

Economists Charles Calomiris and Peter Wallison provide the details in The Wall Street Journal of this Congressional whodunit from 2005.

In light of the collapse of Fannie and Freddie, both John McCain and Barack Obama now criticize the risk-tolerant regulatory regime that produced the current crisis. But Sen. McCain's criticisms are at least credible, since he has been pointing to systemic risks in the mortgage market and trying to do something about them for years. In contrast, Sen. Obama's conversion as a financial reformer marks a reversal from his actions in previous years, when he did nothing to disturb the status quo. The first head of Mr. Obama's vice-presidential search committee, Jim Johnson, a former chairman of Fannie Mae, was the one who announced Fannie's original affordable-housing program in 1991 -- just as Congress was taking up the first GSE regulatory legislation.

In 2005, the Senate Banking Committee, then under Republican control, adopted a strong reform bill, introduced by Republican Sens. Elizabeth Dole, John Sununu and Chuck Hagel, and supported by then chairman Richard Shelby. The bill prohibited the GSEs from holding portfolios, and gave their regulator prudential authority (such as setting capital requirements) roughly equivalent to a bank regulator. In light of the current financial crisis, this bill was probably the most important piece of financial regulation before Congress in 2005 and 2006. All the Republicans on the Committee supported the bill, and all the Democrats voted against it. Mr. McCain endorsed the legislation in a speech on the Senate floor. Mr. Obama, like all other Democrats, remained silent.

...If the Democrats had let the 2005 legislation come to a vote, the huge growth in the subprime and Alt-A loan portfolios of Fannie and Freddie could not have occurred, and the scale of the financial meltdown would have been substantially less. The same politicians who today decry the lack of intervention to stop excess risk taking in 2005-2006 were the ones who blocked the only legislative effort that could have stopped it.

I love a good whodunit, but I prefer ones with a happy ending. The only way this one will turn out well is a McCain-Palin victory at the polls. If Obama and Biden join Pelosi and Reid in power, we're gonna long for the good ol' days when Bonnie and Clyde robbed only one bank at a time.

OK, Drill. But only where there’s no oil?

Nancy Pelosi supposedly caved in to pressure from the voting public who are mad as hell about $4+ per-gallon gas prices. Madame Speaker is allowing a vote in the House on a so-called compromise energy bill that will allow offshore oil drilling. Just not where there’s any oil to find.

Iain Murray at The Corner on National Review calls the “compromise” bill under debate Energy Gangsterism

Anyone who believes this is a pro-drilling bill is fooling themselves. It allows a tiny amount of drilling while pushing forward all the fever dreams of the anti-energy environmentalist movement. I urge everyone to read Marlo Lewis' post on this from Planet Gore yesterday. Note in particular that the bill will:

• Permanently ban access to about 97 percent of the undersea oil lying within 50 miles of the California coast.
• Continue the ban on energy production in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico.
• Impose a brand-new ban on oil and gas leases in Alaska’s coastal waters out to 50 miles.
• Not allow states that approve new leases beyond 50 miles to share royalties with the federal government, thus stripping any financial incentive for states to stand up to environmental pressure groups, who will continue to agitate against any new oil and gas operations offshore.

This is not a compromise. It is a sell-out to the anti-energy gangsters.

Now there’s some Pelosi-Obama-style change we can believe in, spare change left in our empty pockets after we gas up. Thanks a bunch, Nancy. If I have to walk, I'll see you at the polls.

If you're not one of 1,478,172 Americans who has signed the Drill Here, Drill Now! petition, do it now.

I heard on Fox News tonight the latest strategy by Pelosi & co. is not to allow any energy bill to pass, but instead let the drilling ban expire in October and then reinstate it after Obama is in the White House and Pelosi and Reid are re-elected leaders of an even bigger Democrat majority in Congress.

But just suppose...

Pelosi fiddles while America burns

Here’s an issue all of us suffering from $4-gallon gas can agree on. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi turned out the lights on Congress and went on vacation, leaving us all to burn. A few Republicans are camping out in the Capitol in the dark until she agrees to vote on drilling for oil.

Eric Cantor (R-VA) is sponsoring a website where you can sign a petition to urge Speaker Pelosi to call Congress back in session in order to vote on an energy package to include offshore drilling:

We, the undersigned, believe that gas prices are too high. Speaker Pelosi has closed Congress for a five-week paid vacation, without taking any action to lower gas prices. We, the undersigned, have a simple demand: Call Congress Back, Madam Speaker!

If you haven’t signed the Drill Here, Drill Now! petition, join the 1,403,615 Americans who have.