Is this what we need?
(Reuters) – Britain’s coalition government produced the harshest budget in a generation on Tuesday, slashing spending, raising sales tax and slapping a levy on banks to cut a record deficit to almost nothing in five years.
Bond markets rallied and rating agencies gave it a cautious welcome. But analysts questioned whether Conservative [...]

What does this say about our country?
Conservatives have maintained their leading position among U.S. ideological groups in the first half of 2010. Gallup finds 42% of Americans describing themselves as either very conservative or conservative. This is up slightly from the 40% seen for all of 2009 and contrasts with the 20% calling themselves liberal [...]

As Caesar Chavez warned immigration cannot be a tool to drive wages down.
HP-Angered by a recent influx of Hispanic workers attracted by jobs at local meatpacking plants, voters in the eastern Nebraska city of Fremont will decide Monday whether to ban hiring or renting property to illegal immigrants.
The vote will be the culmination [...]

We must change the goal…..
DB…..If “success” in Iraq is judged as meaning something so literal as “achieve one’s goals,” then the surge, like the war, failed. Indeed, Petraeus failed.
Petraeus’ tenure in Iraq, and particularly the “surge” undertaken in 2007, has become a celebrated military success. But while there certainly were impressive operational achievements, the win [...]

How will this play out?
TH-After Senate Republicans used the increasing deficit as an excuse to shoot down Democratic attempts to extend unemployment benefits, Democrats are questioning if that commitment to fiscal discipline will continue when it comes time to extend the Bush tax cuts.
“I will be curious to see if their new found fiscal religion [...]

Anyone moving to Texas?
HP-Texas Republicans recently unveiled a policy platform that includes a statement of support for legislation that would make it a felony to issue a marriage license to same-sex couples as well as for an official to perform a marriage ceremony for gay partners wishing to wed.
The 25-page proposal debuted last week as [...]

Time to go home….
Most Americans approve of President Obama’s decision to remove Gen. Stanley McChrystal as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, and they support the White House timetable to begin withdrawing from the nation’s longest war next year.
In all, 58% back the plan to start pulling out [...]

Good idea…!
HP-Wary of slamming on the stimulus brakes too quickly but shaken by the European debt crisis, world leaders pledged Sunday to slash government deficits in the most industrialized nations in half by 2013, with wiggle room to meet the goal.
They generally sided with cutting spending and raising taxes, despite warnings from President Barack Obama [...]

Less Government….? The Tea Party candidate?
HP-Former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, who is vying to unseat Sen. John McCain in Arizona’s Republican primary race for Senate, appeared in a 2007 infomercial as a pitchman for seminars promoted as teaching people how they can get federal grant money for free.
While Hayworth has made his self-proclaimed fiscal conservative values [...]

The Independent Institute
By Senior Fellow Alvaro Vargas Llosa
At the World Cup politics and soccer come together every four years. Upsets are frequent, and the games offer upward mobility and relief from the economic crisis of a kind presented nowhere else. A new pecking order emerges: developing countries sit atop the assembly of nations. [...]

This is BS…..
TH-House Democrats are readying an alternative budget measure that would set next year’s spending levels without requiring a vote on deficits.
House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt (D-S.C.) said the alternative would be the “functional equivalent” of a full-fledged budget. But because it won’t be a traditional budget resolution, it will be [...]

Is she nuts?
Politico-Former Alaska GOP Gov. Sarah Palin on Friday encouraged her supporters to read an article comparing the BP escrow fund to Nazism.
“This is about the rule of law vs. an unconstitutional power grab,” Palin tweeted, urging her followers to “Read Thomas Sowell’s article.”
The article Palin points to was published on [...]

Does this help or hurt the GOP in 10?
HP-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Thursday that Democrats are giving up on trying to break a Republican filibuster of a bill to reauthorize several expired domestic aid programs, including extended unemployment benefits.
“We’re going to move to the small business jobs bill,” said Reid when asked [...]

The Independent Institute
By – Senior Fellow Robert Higgs
The Obama administration and the activists behind it make clear that the gulf spill is a golden opportunity to increase restrictions on drilling. The Sierra Club’s director of Land protection declared, “You don’t want to let a good crisis go to waste.” The wave of antagonism is [...]

What does money buy…..
DB-Some of the toughest questions for embattled CEO Tony Hayward last week came from House members who don’t mind taking big checks from Big Oil.
Congress is the scourge of the oil industry, or so one might think from last Thursday’s House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee grilling of BP CEO Tony Hayward, who [...]