We still can’t believe the Democrats would keep Nancy Pelosi as their leader. But, if they are really considering this, all we can say is…please, please, pretty please…We’re not certain the GOP can win another 60 seats, but with redistricting and Pelosi, who knows?

The Left will have you believe that people who own guns are a bunch of fun-loving, action-hero-wannabes, who are excited by shiny things and loud noises and like to run around blowing things up by remote control. And I say, that’s not a bug — that’s a feature!

But there is much, much more to it than that.

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With the mauling of the Democrats, their ideology, and policies, in addition to some RINOS in the primaries, let’s hope the new Congress heard Americans loud and clear on Tuesday and the United States government is no longer a punchline, and will return to sound fiscal and free market policies without the need for earmarks, bribes, pork, class warfare, and rhetoric to sell and brand bills.

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In her recent essay at Slate, (Elizabeth) Curtis Sittenfield asks, “Am I the last person in America who still adores President Obama”?  She’ll be happy to know that, no, she isn’t.  There are plenty of other people who remain, “unfailingly struck by his intelligence and charisma, by his easygoing humor, and by the magnificence of his megawatt smile”.

Ms. Sittenfield apparently bottled whatever Obama’s campaign managers put in the water, and she has been sipping it for the past two years, because her essay reads like a 7th grader’s love note to the handsome school principal.  And like most 7th graders, she is uneducated about politics and economics.

Sittenfield illustrates all that is wrong with the least astute of Americans.

They place their faith in politicians, whose first priority is their own survival, not the desires of their constituents.

They place emotion above practicality.

They ignore the most basic economic concepts.

These are the Sittenfield Americans, folks who can’t — or won’t — see beyond Obama’s gleaming surface, where they would find that almost every policy decision made by this Administration….uh….fell short of what was promised.

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There’s much good news from the elections, but first let me wet blanket some of the fires of enthusiasm. Republican majority or Democrat, it remains the case that so long as the Dept of Health and Human Services, the EPA, the Federal Reserve, and the like still exist the Federal government will continue to do great harm. That will still be true even if a better-than-Reagan Republican wins in 2012.

Now, for the election analysis — including lots of good news from the events of Nov. 2.

There’s no doubt the American electorate in many, many places rejected the Obama-Pelosi-Reid anti-Constitutional approach to government, i.e. Progressivism.

That’s clear, even though the Republican pickup in the Senate was disappointing, especially with the re-election of Harry Reid. Take a look at Republican gains in the State legislatures: 650-700 seats, compared to 505 in 1994. That’s huge.

There’s bad news to be sure.

Boxer won, and by a surprisingly comfortable margin. Polls can still be wildly wrong, apparently. Henry Waxman and Nancy Pelosi coasted to easy wins, Moonbeam Brown became Governor of California again. State legislators there are their younger clones. All that seals that state’s fate. It will be at least 25 years before the once-Golden State recovers, if ever, no matter who is elected two, four, or six years from now.

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Ninety-five Democratic Congressional hopefuls signed last week a pledge to support the Federal Communications Commissions proposed Net neutrality rules. On Tuesday, all ninety-five “net neutrality protectors” lost to their Republican opponents.

Among the measure’s endorsers–or victims, as some campaign insiders suggest today–were would-be senators Alexi Giannoulias, Jack Conway, Paul Hodes, Joe Sestak and Lee Fisher.

With the nation’s economic recovery still in uncertain territory, opponents to the FCC’s redesign of the broadband regulatory regime point to regulation fatigue as the critical precursor of Democratic losses Tuesday.

“Candidates who support creating burdensome new Internet regulations were handily rejected at the polls,” a blog post at Broadband for America (BfA) reads. “The message from voters is that unnecessary regulation is a losing tactic.”

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Reason.tv presents a tribute to Keith Olbermann, who was suspended indefinitely by MSNBC for violating company ethics policies by making unauthorized donations to three Democrats seeking federal office earlier this year.

He will be missed.

From the Associated Press:

Despite widespread complaints about massive losses that will put Democrats in the minority, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday she will try to stay on as leader of her party in the House.

The decision exposed a rift between Pelosi’s liberal allies and the dwindling number of moderate Democrats, who feel besieged and eager for substantive and symbolic changes in direction after Tuesday’s Republican rout. It also is likely to trigger leadership battles farther down the ladder.

Pelosi, the nation’s first female speaker, said many colleagues urged her to seek the post of minority leader in the new Congress that convenes in January. That will be the Democrats’ top post, because Republicans, who grabbed more than 60 Democratic-held seats Tuesday, will elect the next speaker. It will be John Boehner of Ohio, who will swap titles with Pelosi if she succeeds in her bid.

“We have no intention of allowing our great achievements to be rolled back,” Pelosi, 70, said in a letter to her colleagues.

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The impact of the Tea Party has been felt. After an historically short period in the wilderness, Republicans have recaptured a share of the government, and brought with them a fairly impressive new class of small government advocates.  However, with so little time for the party to absorb the lessons of its prior losses and adjust accordingly, there is reason to be worried about whether Republicans truly get it.  It is therefore imperative that advocates of limited government continue to hold their collective feet to the fire.

When Republicans were the controlling majority, they lost their way and vastly expanded the size and scope of government. For this, they were severely punished in the voting booth. Despite these losses, many in the Republican establishment argued for further promotion of big government and marginalization of principled conservatives.

The Tea Party stepped in to battle these establishment Republicans over the future of the party. Some of them were taken down in primaries, but many more remain. Due to the extraordinarily radical Obama administration, Republicans were not in the wilderness for long. This meant less time to clean house. And right this very minute, the remaining establishment figures are looking for ways to “co-opt” the new class. They will try to stack their offices with establishment staffers, and teach them how to go-along-to-get-along.

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Today, in 1947, Meet the Press made it’s debut. 63 years of obfuscation will leave a mark.

The Senate campaign of Alaskan Republican, Joe Miller, claims the Alaska’s Division of Elections failed to meet its responsibilities today with regard to the transparent handling of what is sure to be a closely watched ballot counting process. They say they were surprised to find out that the Absentee Ballot validation process began today at 10 a.m.

The Miller Campaign was told of the news from a Republican Party member who was informed of the decision this morning. In response to this news, Joe Miller said, “Our goal is to uphold the integrity of the voting process. Every vote that is cast correctly should be counted. All Alaskans deserve a free, open and fair election. Unfortunately, the State Division of Elections has decided to call that process into question with the constant maneuvering of dates and procedures.”

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Something HUGE happened Tuesday…

No, not the shift in power in the House or the Republican gains in the Senate, this wasn’t done be the voters. No, the big story is…

…San Francisco banned the Happy Meal.

The new law takes effect on December 1 and bans the practice of giving away toys with kids meals unless the meal tastes like cardboard and is something no kid wants to eat has under 600 calories,  and includes fruits and veggies. Oh, and no excessive fat or sugar in the drink.

So, brussel sprouts, spinach leaves, a soy burger and water? Mmmmmm! Come on, kids, let’s go to McAwful’s!

The “do-gooders” on the S.F. Board of Supervisors know what’s best for you and your children. Just ask them.

“Our children are sick. Rates of obesity in San Francisco are disturbingly high, especially among children of color,” said San Francisco Supervisor Eric Mar, who sponsored the measure.

Ronald McDonald, you are a red haired clown monster. You’re killing our children and you seem to take great pleasure in harming our “children of color.” How do you sleep at night, sir?

“This is a challenge to the restaurant industry to think about children’s health first and join the wide range of local restaurants that have already made this commitment,” Mar said.

This is exactly the type of government overreaching that was rejected on Tuesday. It’s the parents’ job to decide what to feed their children, not the government’s. Leave. Us. Alone.

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It’s the morning after and along with guests Jonah Goldberg and the WSJ’s Bill McGurn, we tackle what it all means, what the future may hold, Paul Ryan’s plan, Barney Frank’s victory speech, the repudiation of Time Magazine, and of course, a gratuitous Star Trek reference.

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As bits of information about what former President George Bush’s wrote in his soon to be released book,  ”Decision Points” are published, the stark difference between our former President and today’s commander-in-chief becomes incredibly apparent. One is a true leader who grabs responsibility, the other is someone who looks for a way to transfer responsibly to other people.

For years, the left has been screaming for an investigation to determine who approved the CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) against Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed. Through the use of those techniques our government learned of additional terrorist plots against the US and other western targets potentially saving thousands of innocent lives.

With the official release of his book next Tuesday, President Bush saves the progressive lynch mob time and money. He make it clear that he personally approved the use of EITs  to be used against the 9/11 plotter.

In his book, titled “Decision Points,” Bush recounts being asked by the CIA whether it could proceed with waterboarding Mohammed, who Bush said was suspected of knowing about still-pending terrorist plots against the United States. Bush writes that his reply was “Damn right” and states that he would make the same decision again to save lives, according to a someone close to Bush who has read the book.

Bush previously had acknowledged endorsing what he described as the CIA’s “enhanced” interrogation techniques – a term meant to encompass irregular, coercive methods – after Justice Department officials and other top aides assured him they were legal. “I was a big supporter of waterboarding,” Vice President Richard B. Cheney acknowledged in a television interview in February.

According to the Washington Post that use of waterboarding saved American lives:

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Democrat pollster Mark Penn appeared on MSNBC’s Hardball and said that President Clinton reconnected with his speech after the Oklahoma City bombings, and Obama needs a similar situation to do the same.

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On Wednesday night the Competitive Enterprise Institute, through its outside counsel Gibson Dunn, filed its brief arguing against NASA’s rather scattershot and contradictory effort to dismiss our lawsuit requesting certain documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Our suit, CEI vs. NASA (U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia), followed on the heels of ClimateGate, and a December 2009 Notice of Intent to Sue if NASA did not turn over certain records withheld since CEI sought them in August 2007 and January 2008 requests. That Notice was eleven months ago and, despite NASA offering some documents and admitting — temporarily — that certain others relating to the advocacy site used by NASA scientists, RealClimate.org were “agency records”, NASA then ceased its brief steps to comply with the transparency statute FOIA.

Despite NASA stonewalling CEI has already learned, for example, that NASA does not, contrary to widespread media and pressure group claims, have an independent temperature data set. Instead, as NASA told USA Today in an email, despite its serial, breathless press releases trumpeting some new temperature high, it actually is just a modeling office, which also (for unknown reasons, possibly extra attention and importance, or mere advocacy)  cobbles together some US data from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) with that of the Climatic Research Unit’s temperature history. You may recall how CRU withdrew its claim to a temperature history data set after ClimateGate led to an admission it actually lost its data.

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In today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson, Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss Bernanke’s latest QE2 moves, the GOP’s opportunity society, and why health care, not the economy, may have been the biggest issue in Tuesday’s election.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment.com and Stephen Clouse and Associates. We’d also like to let you know that we’ve set up a standalone site at CoffeeandMarkets.com for easier browsing of our past broadcasts.

You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

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How the Republicans can fulfill their pledge
Democratic Pollster: The Economy ‘Was Not the Decisive Factor in this Election; Health Care Was’
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Our latest guest is British Member of the European Parliament Daniel Hannan, who came to wide acclaim for his stripping down of then Prime Minister Gordon Brown:

“The truth, Prime Minister, is that you have run out of our money … you cannot carry on forever squeezing the productive bit of the economy in order to fund an unprecedented engorgement of the unproductive bit. You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt. And when you repeat, in that wooden and perfunctory way, that our situation is better than others, that we’re ‘well-placed to weather the storm’, I have to tell you that you sound like a Brezhnev-era apparatchik giving the party line… And soon the voters too will get their chance to say so. They can see what the markets have already seen: that you are the devalued Prime Minister of a devalued government.”

To hear what he has to say about politics in America and the Tea Party movement, health care and the Europeanization of the US, the decline of the family unit and America’s role as the world’s only superpower, watch our full interview below.

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