The Illinois House has voted to impeach Governor Rod Blagojevich almost unanimously (one vote contrary).

The actions of the House--approving an article of impeachment maintaining Blagojevich had committed abuses of power--represents the equivalent of an indictment.

The impeachment resolution covering Blagojevich's actions "show a public servant who has betrayed his oath of office, who has betrayed the public trust, who is not fit to govern the state of Illinois,” said Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie, the Chicago Democrat who headed a special panel that recommended Blagojevich’s impeachment a day earlier.

Next week, when the Senate convenes, it will begin the process of setting up a trial of the governor in which each of the 59 state senators act as judge and jurors.

A total of 40 senators are needed to convict Blagojevich which would remove the governor from office and make Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn the state’s new chief executive. A trial is expected to take at least three weeks.

I have the distinct impression that a lot of Illinois pols are setting themselves up for an unceremonious end to their own political careers by engaging in this hypocrisy, although frankly, they probably had little choice. Call it the Rev. Ted Haggerty paradigm--if you preach sanctimoniously against homosexuality, you better not get caught fraternizing with gay call boys. I couldn't hazard a guess as too how many of these assembly-persons have been guilty of similar pay-to-play transactions in their careers, but Chicago politics didn't suddenly get its reputation for corruption in the past month. The "everybody is doing it" defense just went out the window with Blago's impeachment.

Out of the top twenty most gerrymandered districts, 16 are held by Democrats.

Instead of politicians representing districts, districts represent political parties. Tell me again why they call them Democrats?

The NY Post reports the "certain" pick, and the NY Times has a front page puff piece on her public service, so it does look like it's in the bag.

The Senate is truly the millionaire's club, our House of Lords. And the majority are Democrats. (Brought to you in part by McCain's campaign finance "reform".) Of course there are other ways of buying a seat:

Rep. Jim Durkin said Burris was the recipient of the single largest contribution that was made to a campaign in Illinois history, and the company that made it also contributed to Blagojevich.

"Telephone USA Investments made a $1.2 million contribution to Burris in the 2002 campaign. The only other person to receive a contribution from Telephone USA Investments ever was Rod Blagojevich," Durkin said.

The loan hasn't been paid back.

P.S. This sets up the Republican revival to be a populist one-- I just pray it's not the Huckster. I like Sarah Palin's more libertarian West approach. We shall see. Sen. Mitch McConnell is a smart guy, which is the best we have now to slow liberal legislation there, but longterm our revival will not start in the Senate.

Check out this video of the former Presidents waiting it out in the crypt of the Capitol.

...the ex-Presidents gathered in the crypt of the Capitol preparing to head out to the platform, a chilly day got a bit chillier as the Carters and the Clintons were forced to occupy the same cramped space.

Former Democratic President Jimmy Carter appeared to greet former Republican President George H.W. Bush and his wife warmly, kissing Barbara Bush on the cheek. But as Carter passed fellow Democrats Bill and Hillary Clinton, the two men did not appear to acknowledge each others presence at all.

To be fair, no one ever really liked the Carters in Washington. Whether this was Jimmy Carter's fault or simply the dynamics of Washington is hard to say, but it is fair to say that Democrat egos make it very hard for them just to get along. The Clinton2 reputably blamed Carter and the Reagan landslide for Clinton's loss of the governorship in Arkansas. Carter for his part just didn't like the way Clinton was running things and meddled inexcusably in his foreign policy and broke ranks to criticize Clinton over his intern scandal. Let's just say there is no love lost among two egomaniacs.

Is it just a gossipy observation or a sign of things to come? Democrat egos are massive, ubiquitous and in power. Will Pelosi and Reid taking marching orders from Emanuel and Obama? Reid may be more tractable since he's going to have difficulty getting reelected and the juice of a popular president (assuming that is the case in two years...) could make the difference. Pelosi has already drawn her line in the sand.

I think the country may find that Democrat fratricide is even more intense that the war against the Bush administration.

One might be tempted to dismiss it as unintentional as Carter has claimed, but the body language in the above picture screams that there is indeed something going on.

Alcatraz Island: An Inescapable Experience!!! Come on Nancy, get on board! It's the new Obama era! FoxNews:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday shrugged off Republican suggestions that the federal government reopen Alcatraz prison in her San Francisco district to house detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

President Obama this week signed an executive order calling for the closure of the prison at Guantanamo within the year. Republican Rep. Bill Young then suggested to White House counsel Greg Craig that the prisoners who could not be released back to their home countries or sent to a third country be put up in "the Rock," the famous military installation and prison that closed down in 1963 and is now part of the National Park Service.

Asked whether that was a serious proposal, Pelosi said, "It is -- no."

"Perhaps he's not visited Alcatraz," Pelosi said of Young while displaying little sense of humor. "Alcatraz is a tourist attraction. It's a prison that is now sort of like a -- it's a national park."

Hasn't our president called for shared sacrifice and a new era of responsibility? And I quote:

But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions — that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington , D.C. 20016

Dear Concerned Citizen,

Thank you for your recent letter roundly criticizing our treatment of the Taliban and Al Quaida detainees currently being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

Our administration takes these matters seriously and your opinion was heard loud and clear here in Washington

You’ll be pleased to learn that, thanks to the concerns of citizens like yourself, we are creating a new division of the Terrorist Retraining Program, to be called the Liberals Accept Responsibility for Killers’ program, or LARK for short.

I was really surprised that Barack Obama would refer to Rush Limbaugh directly--its so--unpresidential.

Nevertheless, its out there and once again, the Democrats are asking Republicans do to something they themselves completely reject--be reasonable.

"You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done," he told top GOP leaders, whom he had invited to the White House to discuss his nearly $1 trillion stimulus package.

One White House official confirmed the comment but said he was simply trying to make a larger point about bipartisan efforts.

"There are big things that unify Republicans and Democrats," the official said. "We shouldn't let partisan politics derail what are very important things that need to get done."

Suddenly obstructionism is a bad thing.

This is generating a firestorm.

According to Congressional Budget Office estimates, a mere $26 billion of the House stimulus bill's $355 billion in new spending would actually be spent in the current fiscal year, and just $110 billion would be spent by the end of 2010. This is highly embarrassing given that Congress's justification for passing this bill so urgently is to help the economy right now, if not sooner.

That's 7% of the total earmarks (which is what they are really...). Well be out of the recession any day now, right? Add to this insult, Nancy Pelosi's incomprehensible claim that spending a 100 million on birth control will in fact stimulate the economy. Is hanging really out of the question for her? I'm getting the thumbs down.

Its bad. It looks bad and the Democrats know it looks bad, so they are now claiming that this is all a "Republican trick".

Reports of a recent study by the Congressional Budget Office, showing that the vast majority of the money in the stimulus package won't be spent until after 2010, have Democrats on the defensive and the GOP calling for a pullback in wasteful spending.

Funny thing is, there is no such report.

"We did not issue any report, any analysis or any study," a CBO aide told the Huffington Post.

Well, it depends on the definition of "report". Partisan Democrats have taken to referring to the CBO reports as "not a real report".

the nonpartisan CBO ran a small portion of an earlier version of the stimulus plan through a computer program that uses a standard formula to determine a score -- how quickly money will be spent. The score only dealt with the part of the stimulus headed for the Appropriations Committee and left out the parts bound for the Ways and Means or Energy and Commerce Committee.

So there is a report after all, but the partisan hacks are saying that its wrong, incompletely, any damn thing they can to try to discredit it.

Frankly I don't even care if they are right about what has been left out--spending only 7% of what was left-in is criminal and people should hang. Oh, I'm getting the thumbs down on the hanging thing again...

The country needs John Carter (R-TX) in Congress--if for not other reason than to prick these gas bags of lamentable risible rhetoric.

Rep. Carter introduced a bill Wednesday to eliminate all IRS penalties and interest for paying taxes past due.

The legislation calls for the creation of what he calls the, "Rangel Rule," -- drawing attention to the recent legal issues of House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., enabling citizens who fail to pay taxes on time to do so later with no additional fees.

Rangel, who writes the country's tax policies, acknowledged last fall that he failed to pay thousands in real estate taxes for rental income he earned from a property in the Dominican Republic.

As of September 2008 the Harlem Democrat reportedly paid back more than $10,000 in taxes but that did not include any IRS penalties.

"Your citizens back home should have the same rights and benefits that come to you as a member of congress. You shouldn't be treated any differently under the law than your citizens back home," Carter said.

He added that citizens should receive the "same courtesy" that the IRS is allegedly granting Rangel and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who also recently acknowledged a failure to pay taxes.

Carter penned a letter to Rangel earlier this month requesting that he either pay the IRS fees or join him in co-sponsoring the legislation establishing the rule.

"As Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, I believe you set an example for all American taxpayers in your dealings with the IRS, and that you must do so in a way that enforces blind justice without regard to wealth or status," he wrote in the January 6th missive.

A spokesman for the New York Democrat would not comment on the state of the tax issue, which is currently under investigation by the House Ethics Committee, but did respond to the Carter bill.

"This legislation is unnecessary. All taxpayers currently receive equal treatment under the law," Rangel spokesman Emile Milne said.

You just can't make this stuff up...

As good a summary of what just happened as I've seen anywhere.

...House Republicans had conceded that dramatic action was needed and had grown utterly supportive of the idea of federal jobs creation on a large scale. All that was needed was a sober, seriously focused piece of legislation that honestly tried to meet the need, one that everyone could tinker with a little and claim as their own. Instead, as Rep. Mike Pence is reported to have said to the president, "Know that we're praying for you. . . . But know that there has been no negotiation [with Republicans] on the bill—we had absolutely no say." The final bill was privately agreed by most and publicly conceded by many to be a big, messy, largely off-point and philosophically chaotic piece of legislation. The Congressional Budget Office says only 25% of the money will even go out in the first year. This newspaper, in its analysis, argues that only 12 cents of every dollar is for something that could plausibly be called stimulus.

Got that? 3 cents on every dollar gets spent this year to stimulate the economy.

Let them eat cake.

And now, almost as if on cue, come the shocking, 'have you no shame" lies. Nancy Pelosi:

“I didn’t come here to be partisan. I didn’t come here to be bipartisan. I came here, as did my colleagues, to be nonpartisan, to work for the American people, to do what is in their interest.

Well, you know what happened to Marie Antoinette, right?

Guy Ryder, the general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), said that the current financial turmoil had triggered a social timebomb that would lead to deepening civil unrest and soaring crime.

I caught a little but of the Daily Show early this morning--something I do about as frequently as visiting Manhattan (not very).

Jon Stewart was picking off the low-hanging fruit of former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain's $35,000.00 toilet-on-legs. If you ever wanted to understand what black humor is--this is it. You don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Those rat-bastards on Wallstreet!

Yet no mention of the latest rat-bastard scratching at the door to get into the Obama administration.

Suitably Flip provides this visualization of the size of the "stimulus package that doesn't stimulate" and compares it to other really big historical spending.

So how big is the resulting $1.2 trillion spending package? Big enough to dwarf any government program in history, even after adjusting for inflation. It's bigger than the New Deal and the Iraq War combined. The interest alone will be costlier than the Louisiana Purchase or going to the moon. The $18 billion in bonuses paid legally by private Wall Street firms in 2008 - decried by the President as "shameful" - is vanishingly small in comparison (smaller even than the bill's incremental food stamps expenditures).

As the House bill stands now, only three percent of the total spending is stimulus spent this year.

Senate Republicans are making noises to the effect that the final bill will look very different, of will simply not pass.

McConnell and other Republicans suggested that the bill needed an overhaul because it doesn't pump enough into the private sector through tax cuts and allows Democrats to go on a spending spree unlikely to jolt the economy. The Republican leader also complained that Democrats had not been as bipartisan in writing the bill as Obama had said he wanted.

"I think it may be time ... for the president to kind of get a hold of these Democrats in the Senate and the House, who have rather significant majorities, and shake them a little bit and say, 'Look, let's do this the right way,'" McConnell said. "I can't believe that the president isn't embarrassed about the products that have been produced so far."

That's very charitable towards Mr. Obama, but unlikely considering his history.

VDH garottes Obama like a kind executioner, but bear in mind that Biden is next in line. You thought of that? What about this? After Biden comes Pelosi !!! You knew that already? Does it make your flesh creep? Well, get this: if Obama, Biden and Pelosi all perish under a pile of journalists' underwear, next in line is....ta da!....the Exalted Cyclops, the one, the only, Senator Robert Byrd!

The economy is so bad, that everybody in the U.S. is being fired twice a month.

Nancy Pelosi didn't actually say that, but its clearly the implication of her assertion that the U.S. is losing 500,000,000 jobs every month.

As Katrina was approaching the gulf coast, experts estimated deaths in the lower parishes of New Orleans would be between 25,000 and 100,000. In the end, the official death toll stood at 1,100. Yet that wasn't clearly an impressive enough death toll for those interested in damaging George W. Bush politically. Liberal media actively wrote stories as late as 2007 that sought to blame deaths of former residents in the subsequent months and years, on the Katrina disaster.

"There are high rates of mental health problems among the survivors and previous research has found that mental disorders are predictors of earlier death rates," Kessler said. "So putting the two together in New Orleans is not surprising."

Liberals love post-traumatic stress disorder. Its such a convenient way of pinning deaths on things you don't like. I wonder how many people will die because Obama was elected? I know I've been feeling a lot of stress about it...

As Obama's Government Stimulus and Middle Finger to Future Generations Bill slouches towards Bethlehem, I reflect that I am not a Democrat or a democrat or a Republican. I am a constitutional republican. An Obama-voting self-described 'conservative' friend calls me 'extreme right-wing', but my position on democracy, tax, rights, responsibilities and the Republic is barely distinguishable from America's founders.

Some quotes from Jefferson:

“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”

“If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.”

“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”

“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

John Fund

President Obama said in his inaugural address that he planned to "restore science to its rightful place" in government. That's a worthy goal. But statisticians at the Commerce Department didn't think it would mean having the director of next year's Census report directly to the White House rather than to the Commerce secretary, as is customary. "There's only one reason to have that high level of White House involvement," a career professional at the Census Bureau tells me. "And it's called politics, not science."

What else can we do but take refuge in some dark humor. Caroline Baum, Bloomberg:

Just imagine if the tables were reversed. Frank and Waters are seated at the witness table instead of perched on the hearing room dais. The questioning would go something like this:

Chairman Frank, on July 14, 2008, you made the following pronouncements about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two huge government-sponsored enterprises that are the key players in mortgage finance:

“Fannie and Freddie are fundamentally sound.”

“They are not in danger of going under.”

“Looking at the financials, they’re solid.”

You followed that analysis with a forecast. Referring to legislation before your committee to allow the Treasury to lend to and buy unlimited shares in the GSEs, you said: “We’re doing three separate things that make it much less likely -- very, very unlikely -- that we’ll have this kind of a housing crisis six months or a year from now.”

Less than two months later, Fannie and Freddie were wards of the state.

Just answer the questions, Mr. Chairman.

I'm listening to oldies on the radio. At least if I'm going back to 70's style Carternomics misery I can pretend I'm young again.

The rush to vote on a 1,000 page bill which Sen Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) admits no Senator will have a chance to read coincides with Speaker Nancy Pelosi's 6:00 PM flight to Rome for an 8 day European vacation.

Rep. John Culberson, TX claims the "stimulus" bill must be urgently voted on today -- because Speaker Nancy Pelosi is leaving at 6:00 PM for an 8 day trip to Europe!

Culberson made the charge on Houston's KSEV radio.

Pelosi is hoping to lead a delegation to Europe; there's a meeting with the Pope and an award from an Italian legislative group.

Calls to Pelosi's spokesman went unreturned.

I guess that's a good enough reason to dispense with the promised 48 hour public review by posting the bill on the internet.

Notice how the eyes follow you?

H/T Founding Bloggers

The Democrats are well on the way to impoverishing the country. The plans for the census will effectively disenfranchise every rural area in the country, but no coup is complete without disarming the populace.

H.R. 45 (Rush): This bill would require a license for handguns and semiautomatics, including those currently possessed. The applicant must be thumbprinted and sign a certification that, effectively, the firearm will not be kept in a place where it would be available for the defense of the gun owner’s family. The applicant must also make available ALL of his psychiatric records, pass an exam, and pay a fee of up to $25. The license may be renewed after five years and may be revoked. Private sales would be outlawed, and reports to the attorney general of all transactions would be required, even when, as the bill allows, the AG determines that a state licensing system is sufficiently draconian to substitute for the federal license. With virtually no exceptions, ALL firearms transactions (involving semiautos, handguns, long guns, etc.) would be subject to a Brady check. In addition, the bill would make it unlawful in nearly all cases to keep any loaded firearm for self-defense. A variety of “crimes by omission” (such as failure to report certain things) would be created. Criminal penalties of up to ten years and almost unlimited regulatory and inspection authority would be established.

This isn't Germany of course. Germany had Americans who were willing and able to restore democracy. No one is coming to rescue us.

The called Barack Obama a rock star during the campaign.

Well, you know how rock stars end up, dontcha?

Its not just radio, its the internet...

Senior FCC staff working for acting Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps held meetings last week with policy and legislative advisers to House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman to discuss ways the committee can create openings for the FCC to put in place a form of the "Fairness Doctrine" without actually calling it such.

I love this image. Even as it was taken, you knew it was the equivalent of a big "Mission Accomplished" banner.

Sweetness & Light enumerates the broken promises.

1. Make government open and transparent.

2. Make it "impossible" for Congressmen to slip in pork barrel projects.

3. Meetings where laws are written will be more open to the public. (Even Congressional Republicans shut out.)

4. No more secrecy.

5. Public will have 5 days to look at a bill.

6. You’ll know what’s in it.

7. We will put every pork barrel project online.

No doubt some people were in on the joke and laughing into their sleeves, but its hard to believe no Obama voters took him seriously.

Does Obama know something we don't know? Have the Democrats gone into the huddle with Hugo Chavez and figured out that the purpose of democracy is to elect a dictator for life?

The left is taking a preemptive strike at cartoonists contemplating mockery of the Messiah.

A cartoon likening the author of the stimulus bill, perhaps President Barack Obama, with a rabid chimpanzee graced the pages of the New York Post on Wednesday.

The drawing, from famed cartoonist Sean Delonas, is rife with violent imagery and racial undertones. In it, two befuddled-looking police officers holding guns look over the dead and bleeding chimpanzee that attacked a woman in Stamford, Connecticut.

Just one little problem--Obama didn't write the bill--Nancy Pelosi and her goons did.

No sense in letting a good opportunity for a little racial outrage go by unexploited though. Unsurprisingly, The Rev. Al thows in his two cents.

"The cartoon in today's New York Post is troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys. One has to question whether the cartoonist is making a less than casual reference to this when in the cartoon they have police saying after shooting a chimpanzee that "Now they will have to find someone else to write the stimulus bill."

"Being that the stimulus bill has been the first legislative victory of President Barack Obama (the first African American president) and has become synonymous with him it is not a reach to wonder are they inferring that a monkey wrote the last bill?"

Dissent used to be patriotic, now its racist.

Hoist on his own petard.

Sen. Schumer has pledged to undo a provision included in the stimulus package that will make it nearly impossible for New York’s banks to hire foreign workers through the H-1B visa program.

The amendment to the stimulus bill, proposed by Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Chuck Grassley, D-Iowa, originally would have banned the visas for any company that received money from the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP. A compromise lifted the ban, but companies will still be required to hire from the growing pool of laid-off American workers first. Advocates say that the mandate is so onerous that it will virtually stop banks from bringing foreign workers into the country.

According to a report released last year by the Partnership for New York City, roughly 13,000 workers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut are here on H-1B visas. The top visa sponsors in the area are the very same banks that have received TARP money. Those banks also have significant overseas operations, says Kathy Wylde, and this provision will hurt most when the economy turns around and the banks look to hire talent to tap new markets.

“When they require someone with a language or other skill who they feel is the best person for the job, if they can’t bring them to New York, they will move the function,” says Wylde. “That’s what’s happened in the past when we’ve had a shortage of the H-1B visas.”

Since the bill was signed with the provision included, Schumer will need to undo it in another bill, which could be tough sledding.

“This is a counterproductive amendment that could hurt New York’s economy, and we are going to work hard to change it,” Schumer says.

Yeah, but its not going to change. Politically the whole H1B visa program is in the dumper, and New York City just lost the tax revenue and economic inputs of 13,000 highly paid professionals.

I feel bad for New York, OK that's a lie. I should feel bad for New York, but I just can't find the compassion that should exist in my great heart. I'm still pissed about the time they booted my rental vehicle with the parking validation plainly visible on the dash...

I suspect that Schumer is going to get some grief for this come his next campaign season.

H/T The Corner

Looks like the Roman Catholic church has a little life in it yet.

No journalists were at the 15-minute encounter and the Vatican and the speaker's offices have not released any photos. However, according to their statements it appears the pope and the politician attended two different get-togethers.

"His Holiness took the opportunity to speak of the requirements of the natural moral law and the Church's consistent teaching on the dignity of human life from conception to natural death which enjoins all Catholics, and especially legislators, jurists and those responsible for the common good of society, to work in cooperation with all men and women of good will in creating a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of its development," the Vatican wrote, having released the statement moments before the two met.

Several hours later, Pelosi's office gave her take on the tete-a-tete.

"It is with great joy that my husband, Paul, and I met with his Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI today," Pelosi said in a statement released hours after the meeting. "In our conversation, I had the opportunity to praise the Church's leadership in fighting poverty, hunger and global warming, as well as the Holy Father's dedication to religious freedom and his upcoming trip and message to Israel. I was proud to show his Holiness a photograph of my family's papal visit in the 1950s, as well as a recent picture of our children and grandchildren."

Pelosi no doubt thought she'd get a photo op to prove her Catholic bona fides during the next election, all the while spinning tales about how the church fathers thought killing unborn children was just peachy keen. His Holiness wasn't having any of it. It's looking like a genius move, because it was guaranteed to get big media play and the Pope got to lay in on the line about abortion.

Well its happened. The media has arrived at the point where further editorial disinterest and/or mitigation of the seriousness of various "honest mistakes" would, in their estimation, irretrievably damage their professional credibility. Its a "you're on your own buddy" moment at the AP.

The Obama administration and the new Congress are quickly handing over to Republicans the same "culture of corruption" issue that Democrats used so effectively against the GOP before coming to power.

Freshman Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill., is only the latest embarrassment.

Senate Democrats accepted Burris because they believed what he told them: He was clean. Burris now admits he tried to raise money for Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who authorities say sought to sell President Barack Obama's former Senate seat.

"The story seems to be changing day by day," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Wednesday.

The political mess for the Democratic Party, however, isn't Burris' conduct alone; it's the pattern that has developed so quickly over the past few months.

Really? The pattern suddenly developed over the past few months? Before all this, Rod Blagojevich was a model of moral rectitude? Burris never did any quid pro quo politics before all this? Still protecting Obama etal, but its going to get impossible. This eruption of corruption is the product of generations of political malfeasance and permeates every corner of Democrat politics.

Everybody is doing fine down in the Louisiana parishes now that Obama is president.

The economic stimulus signed by President Barack Obama will spread billions of dollars across the country to spruce up aging roads and bridges. But there's not a dime specifically dedicated to fixing leftover damage from Hurricane Katrina.

And there's no outrage about it.

Democrats who routinely criticized President George W. Bush for not sending more money to the Gulf Coast appear to be giving Obama the benefit of the doubt in his first major spending initiative. Even the Gulf's fiercest advocates say they're happy with the stimulus package, and their states have enough money for now to address their needs.

"I'm not saying there won't be a need in the future, but right now the focus is not on more money, it's on using what we have," said Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., who has criticized Democrats and Republicans alike over Katrina funding.

It's a significant change in tone from the Bush years, when any perceived slight of Katrina victims was met with charges that the Republican president who bungled the initial response to the disaster continued to callously ignore the Gulf's needs years later.

This trick works every twenty years or so as a new generation forgets how the last one was fooled with the same nonsense. All the weeping and wailing over the victims of Katrina suddenly stopped like the crying at a New Orleans funeral when the casket hits the dirt.

During the Reagan and H.W. Bush years, it was the homeless. Every night weeping and wailing over the plight of the homeless on the national news broadcasts. Clinton gets elected--poof! No more homeless.

Lifted from Varifrank.

"Democrats think that a good economic plan is one where they pay half the population to dig holes and then pay other half to fill them in, and then tax the hell out of imported shovels to pay for it all..."

Overhead in line at Wal Mart. A store that I found this very weekend (along with In-n-out Burger) to be filled to the brim with customers. Go figure...

If you're plan all along was to nationalize the banks, wouldn't you first want to consolidate the market so you'd be dealing with a more a manageable number? U.S Bancorp's CEO alludes to as much.

Davis went on to say in his talk that while government officials marketed the program as a way to entice banks to lend again, TARP actually was designed to give solid banks like U.S. Bancorp some extra cash to buy weaker banks in the system. U.S. Bancorp did just that late last year when it acquired the assets of two failed banks in California, Downey Savings and Loan and PFF Bank & Trust.

"We were told to take it so that we could help Darwin synthesize the weaker banks and acquire those and put them under different leadership," he said. "We are not even allowed to mention that. ... We were supposed to say the TARP money was used for lending."

But Davis is talking about it now, he says, because he and others oppose current and future strings attached to the program. Davis didn't detail those strings, but he said he and some peers intend to voice their opinions to Washington, D.C., soon.

"Now they're punishing you for having the capital," he said, adding that he refuses to stand by and let his company become "collateral damage" in an attempt to nationalize the banks.

In Honor of the 44th President of the United States , Ben & Jerry's has developed a new flavor: Baracky Road ."

Baracky Road is a blend of half vanilla, half chocolate, and surrounded by nuts and flakes.

The vanilla portion of the mix is not openly advertised and usually denied as an ingredient.

The nuts and flakes are all very bitter and hard to swallow.

The cost is $100 per scoop.

When purchased, it will be presented to you in a large beautiful cone, but then the ice cream is taken away and given to the person in line behind you. Thus you are left with an empty wallet, no change, holding an empty cone, with no hope of getting any ice cream.

Aren't you feeling stimulated?

Freddie Mac lost 50 billion last year, and the perpetrators have long disappeared under the cloaks of their Democrat masters, enjoying centi-million fortunes amassed from meeting targets for extending bad loans to targeted constituencies. Those still standing are the middle managers, now promoted into "acting" senior offices to clean up the mess.

David Kellerman was one such pawn in the big game. Now he's dead. An apparent suicide.

David Kellermann, acting chief financial officer of Freddie Mac, one of the housing-finance companies backed by the U.S. government, was found dead at his suburban Washington home early Wednesday.

Officer Shelley Broderick of the Fairfax County Police Department in Virginia said there were "no signs of foul play" when police found Mr. Kellermann's body after responding to a call made at 4:48 a.m. Mr. Kellermann was 41 years old.

The call was made from within Mr. Kellermann's home in the Hunter Mill Estates subdivision in Reston, said Fairfax County Police spokesman Eddy J. Azcarate. "The body was downstairs in the basement and the officers went directly to it," Mr. Azcarate said.

Happily married with a five year old daughter and a with a well-compensated if challenging job; Kellerman's took his life in the basement of his home, where his wife and daughter were able to discover the body.

I am dubious.

Suicide is a well-studied phenomenon, and Kellerman doesn't have significant risk factors, if any. In fact, he has a considerable number of contraindications. Men commit suicide in their teens and twenties and in significantly larger numbers after the age of 65. Environmental factors include being single, having a low income, retirement and disability. Family history of suicide is a significant factor--largely because it points to genetic predispositions for depression.

Kellerman was married, with a child, handsomely compensated in gainful employment and only 41 years old. He had in fact been tapped for the big chair (CFO of Freddie Mac) after the company lost 50 billion last year and its executive suite was abandoned by its malefactors. It was in fact and ideal career situation. The old guard was disgraced and if he succeeded at rescuing Freddie Mac, he'd be a hero. If he failed, he was was no worse for wear since his predecessors would get the blame. Just to get to that rung in the corporate hierarchy suggests Kellerman had the robust psyche required to negotiate the brutal politics of such an environment--definitely not the kind of guy who'd put a gun to his head and pull the trigger.

Then there is the fact that he allegedly offed himself in the basement of his home--under the same roof as his wife and five year old daughter. Truly motivated suicidal people tend to seek isolation from potential guardians or rescuers in order to minimize the trauma to loved ones or prevent intervention. This is why cars, National Parks, the Golden Gate bridge, and motels are such popular locations for suicides.

On the other hand, the motivations to murder an acting CFO of a troubled corporation with significant political ties to the party in power? Good odds.

Having heard that Elizabeth Edwards was speaking out on her husband's condomless affair with a campaign bimbo, I browsed over to Time Magazine to read what she had to say.

I can't say I was shocked, but I was surprised that the left's lust for power was so extreme, that it would negate what has to be one of the worst betrayals and public humiliations in modern history.

It didn't occur to me that at a fancy hotel in New York, where he sat with a potential donor to his antipoverty work, he would be targeted by a woman who would confirm that the man at the table was John Edwards and then would wait for him outside the hotel hours later when he returned from a dinner, wait with the come-on line "You are so hot" and an idea that she should travel with him and make videos.

Do you see the implication here? It wasn't Edward's fault, it was the bimbo's. After a year of reflection, John is absolved of all responsibility.

Those with any fame or notoriety or power attract people for good reasons and bad. Some want to contribute and some want to take something away for themselves. They flatter and entreat, and it is engaging, even addictive. They look at our lives, which from the outside in particular are pictures of joy and plenty, and they want it for themselves.

I've known a lot of people who had to deal with infidelity, but none as humiliating and public as this. Not a one of them expressed this kind of magnanimity, especially not after a year. Psychologists specializing in infidelity will tell you that the possibility of reestablishing trust only begins to occur eighteen to twenty-four months afterwards--if at all.

The conclusion is obvious--Elizabeth is lying, which isn't particularly surprising in a political family like the Edwards. As I said, I wasn't shocked, but nevertheless surprised at the implications of this lie. The prospect of political power, no matter who distant, has such value for people like the Edwards that it trumps all others. Love and family, which for most people is the bedrock of their lives, are secondary considerations--even in a dying woman.

That scares the hell out of me.

What wouldn't Elizabeth Edwards do to get what she wants for her husband and herself?

I've got a book on my shelf called "On Killing" which analyzes in academic fashion the dynamics of killing. When I first read it, I was surprised at how difficult it is for the average person to kill someone. Militaries all over the world are actively managing psychopaths for maximum advantage because at the end of the day, you need people with this kind of extreme lack of empathy to kill the enemy.

Now imagine those people with political power.

Addendum: I had further thoughts after I published. When I was young, I used to watch hockey in an era where men of average size but superior skills were the stars of the sport. I had friends who had the talent to play professionally, but as we got into our twenties an interesting thing happened--my friends all ended up playing in Europe. The reason? Too small. The NHL had become yet another sport dominated by physical freaks of nature. Men of normal size were simply not competitive.

John and Elizabeth Edwards (among others...) are a fair indication that our political process has also become a freak league. Intelligence and talent are secondary to heaping quantities of dissocial personality disorder.

Normal people don't go into politics, and if they do, how long can they really endure such an environment? Maybe after we elect people, we should send them to psychiatric hospitals...

From the underappreciated Robert A. Heinlein:

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded- here and there, now and then- are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.This is known as "bad luck.".

The Wallstreet Journal notes the recent evidence for this truism.

"Rich States, Poor States," published in March, shows that Americans are more sensitive to high taxes than ever before. The tax differential between low-tax and high-tax states is widening, meaning that a relocation from high-tax California or Ohio, to no-income tax Texas or Tennessee, is all the more financially profitable both in terms of lower tax bills and more job opportunities.

Updating some research from Richard Vedder of Ohio University, we found that from 1998 to 2007, more than 1,100 people every day including Sundays and holidays moved from the nine highest income-tax states such as California, New Jersey, New York and Ohio and relocated mostly to the nine tax-haven states with no income tax, including Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire and Texas. We also found that over these same years the no-income tax states created 89% more jobs and had 32% faster personal income growth than their high-tax counterparts.

Did the greater prosperity in low-tax states happen by chance? Is it coincidence that the two highest tax-rate states in the nation, California and New York, have the biggest fiscal holes to repair? No. Dozens of academic studies -- old and new -- have found clear and irrefutable statistical evidence that high state and local taxes repel jobs and businesses.

Proving once again that you don't have to be an idiot to be a Democrat (or a Republican in name-only), but it helps.

The silliness has been repeated everywhere for generations, establishing a debilitating pattern. I had a recent visit from a friend from Ontario, Canada, who moved his business to Florida. He reminded me that when the New Democrat Party (orthodox socialist) took power in Ontario one of the humorous ironies was that the UAW, strong supporters of the NDP, discovered they were in fact the "rich" that needed soaking. Actual rich people had long left the province for friendlier tax climes, and between 1990 and 1995, the province sank into deep recession.

The absence of metaphorical milk cows never abates the left's appetite for social butter, so unsurprisingly, the crushing tax burden fell upon the middle class, many of whom are moving to Canada's friendlier tax clime--Alberta. In the end, what's left is a vast ocean of underachievers complaining of dwindling entitlements and paying ever-increasing taxes. Autoworkers became the new Kulaks (Ukrainian farmers who owned more than 24 acres of land "liquidated as a class" by Stalin...)

Fortunately, the bright-side of this sad state of affairs is that there will always be localities only too willing to extend the hand of friendship to talented people with assets...

One of the great things of modern life is that we are rich enough and diverse enough that some people can spend their entire lives studying incredibly narrow fields. E.O. Wilson of sociobiology fame, spent most of his career studying ants. Its pretty incredible that a man can be funded--well-funded, to travel the world and study one species of insect.

One of the bad things about modern life is that people can spend their entire lives studying ants.

Its no accident that modern democracy arose from the intellectual ideals of the renaissance, with its emphasis on mastering many different skills. The renaissance man spoke several languages, played music, wrote literature, pursued science, business and agriculture. They understood art, economics and humanity in a way that the "geniuses" of modern government are profoundly ignorant of. Show me anyone in government with the range of knowledge and skills that someone like Ben Franklin had. The renaissance ideal allowed its practioners to sort the essential from the merely important.

Rick Newcombe of Creator's Syndicate is moving his business out of Los Angeles--out of California. The reasons are all too typical.

Everything was fine until the city started running out of money in 2007. Suddenly, the city announced that it was going to ignore its own ruling and reclassify us in the higher tax category. Even more incredible is the fact that the new classification was to be imposed retroactively to 2004 with interest and penalties. No explanation was given for the new classification, or for the city's decision to ignore its 1994 ruling.

Their official position is that the city is not bound by past rulings -- only taxpayers are. This is why we have been forced to file a lawsuit. We will let the courts decide whether it is legal for adverse rulings to apply only to taxpayers and not to the city.

We work with hundreds of outside agents, consultants, independent contractors and support services -- many of whom pay taxes to the city of Los Angeles. This spurs a job-creating ripple effect on the city's economy. Yet I suspect many companies like ours already have quietly left town in the face of the city's taxes and regulations. This would help explain the erosion of jobs.

Regardless of the outcome of our case, the arbitrary and capricious behavior of some bureaucrats is creating a lose-lose situation for everyone involved. If we win in court, the taxpayers of Los Angeles will have lost because all those tax dollars will have been wasted on needless litigation.

If we lose in court, the remaining taxpayers in Los Angeles will have lost because their burden will continue to swell as yet another business moves its jobs -- and taxpayers -- to another city.

As long as City Hall operates like a banana republic, why is anyone surprised that jobs have left the city in droves and Los Angeles is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy?

California's bureaucrats aren't mean-spirited trolls, they are simply the result of the liberal-left's extremely narrow education aspirations. We have a President who is publicly elevating careers in "non-profit" enterprises, with the strong implication being that profit is somehow immoral and hurtful to society.

None of this is new--Democrats have been destroying economies since I was a lad. The Northeast was in the post-war era, the source of nearly all the industrial activity in the world. It is now a region mired in more or less permanent recession, filled with hundreds of thousands of acres of rusting infrastructure, high unemployment, depressed real estate values and depressed people.

Now California, the economic wunderkind of the western world, is sinking beneath the waves, so obviously bankrupt that they won't even accept their own IOUs in trade for state fees and services.

It would be easy to say that a "Democrat hath done this", and while it would be true, it would blind us to the real problem, which is a culture that produces idiot savants. You simply can't appoint a PhD in ethnic studies to run anything or you inevitably end up with a banana republic.

This wasn't too surprising.

Representative Mike Ross, who leads the so-called "Blue Dog" conservative coalition, said they had reached a deal with leadership after days of long negotiations.

CNN said that under the agreement, a healthcare bill would be moved to committee by Friday but that the full House would not take the issue up until September after it returns from its month-long break.

Mind-numbing crap, but an interesting back story.

The more unpopular the health-care bill becomes, the more the President needs it to pass and the more the Blue Dog Democrats need it to fail. They will already be dealing with a trillion dollar load of crap in the failed stimulus bill, and they certainly don't need the coup-de-grace the health-care bill would provide.

This agreement simply gives the communists time to engineer a full-scale media assault on the country in attempt to turn the polls around.

Good luck with that.

From the Blue Dog perspective, its a no-risk proposition. They postpone a vote, thus delaying the hard choice of alienating party leadership or pissing off voters. They will go back to their districts and "listen" to voters, thus justifying any vote they make in September (if it actually comes to a vote...)

For the President and Nancy Pelosi, this is a hail Mary pass. They have 45 days to change the minds of the American people about their health-care package.

With a compliant state media, you'd ordinarily have to give them good odds of getting it done, but Obama has already squandered much of his political good will. He's lost 3 points in a week and its almost certainly because of this issue. More importantly, he's on the rhetorical ropes. He's followed the two courses open to him, with is to say "trust me", and to demonize the current health-care regime. I really don't know what else he can do at this point.

Then there is the reality of a increasingly muscular opposition. The national news might be able to ignore the tea parties, but local news has to cover them. I expect that every Blue Dog Democrat is going to be experiencing a tea party in the next month in case they miss the point.

All in all--a pretty good deal for the Blue Dogs.

Pennsylvania is supposed to be friendly territory for Democrats and RINOs, but Arlen Specter is wishing he was back in Washington where they know how to treat a Senator with deference, no matter how much of an asshole he or she is...

Do you get the feeling that Americans aren't buying state media propaganda?

Another day, another Dem talking point discredited.

Lisa Benson channels an AARP townhall meeting. Meanwhile footage below shows a busload of seniors, paid by the insurance industry... or is that AARP paid by the insurance industry?

___________________________________________________________________

h/t Redstate

I've long been disgusted by everything on Planet Obama, but the videos of Acorn officers conspiring to abet the rape of children made me sit up. When you pile it up... the Black Panthers, Rev Wright, Acorn running the Census, preventing the treatment of babies that survive abortion, palling with terrorists, no birth certificate, few primary source documents, Van Jones, Auntie Obama, Charlie Rangel, donations from 'A.Hitler', pervasive tax evasion, pervasive racism, und und und...I don't conclude that this government is the winner in a culture war.

I conclude that it's a criminal racket.

The none-too-subtle reflex by liberal Democrat surrogates to blanket each an every incident of dissent with a charge of racism, suggests that Democrat officials and their lackeys understand completely how desperate their circumstances are.

Greg Pollowitz characterizes the new state of affairs best with this tweet.

Dissent is the greatest form of racism.

The world's most prominent anti-semite accuses half the country of racism.

Former President Jimmy Carter drew widespread criticism Wednesday for saying in an interview that Rep. Joe Wilson's "You lie!" outburst last week was "based on racism" and that an "overwhelming portion" of similar demonstrations against President Obama are rooted in bigotry.

The most powerful man in the world is a "victim". Barack Obama must be popping anacin like skittles.

Of course, what can Obama or any Democrat expect from a party steeped in a culture of victimhood? Accusations of sexism and racism have become a job creation bonanza for Walmart managers hired just to deal with the work-load for such complaints from Democrats who don't like their work schedules or who need to mitigate disciplinary action for absentism and theft of office supplies. Every slacker in the country has learned to use emotional blackmail to make their way in the world.

Of course, we aren't much inclined to give these people responsibility, much less reelect them as President--you see the problem for a guy who needs to look strong--Spock-like--in order to measure up to his office. The racism-reflex is a disaster for Obama, and if he doesn't deal with it, there will probably not be another black president in my life-time.

The public fury over Obama's health-care proposals, the economy, the debt and the general climate of corruption in the Democrat Congress, is polling in the seventy percent range. They simply don't make racism blankets that big...

Although most people have probably forgotten about it, I'll always remember Hillary Clinton grandstanding on the issue of Manhattan air quality post 9/11--no so much for the issue, but for Clinton's inadvertent revelation of how things worked in the Clinton White House.

"I know a little bit about how White Houses work," she said. "I know somebody picked up a phone, somebody got on a computer, somebody sent an e-mail, somebody called for a meeting, somebody in that White House probably under instructions from somebody further up the chain told the EPA, 'Don't tell the people of New York the truth'. And I want to know who that is.''

For the Clintons, accusing their opponents of their own blackest sins is a proven political tactic, and apparently Alan Grayson (D-FL) is learning the black art of Democrat politics very well.

"If you get sick, America, the Republican health care plan is this: Die quickly," he said.

I guess I knew this was coming. Euthanizing the elderly is a key element of any socialized medical system. Are you surprised by that? Abortion as an issue marks the boundary between Democrats and Republicans. Democrat luminaries are pleading for leniency for an admitted, convicted and fugitive child rapist

With the record before you, who do you think would contemplate killing off grandma so they could sell the house?

Grayson is simply projecting his own murderous proclivities.

I've already prognosticated on the fate of health care reform, but just as important are the prospects for some other Democrat legislative ambitions.

Wither card check?

Cap and trade?

Both are unambiguous economy wreckers and only the most committed socialist believes the crap about new "green jobs".

It seems that every few years we have to educate a new generation on the reality that government doesn't create jobs--private business does.

In which I find a Glenn Greenwald column I actually agree with.

Everybody knows someone like this.

You just don't tell them anything because they don't take bad news well and/or they just don't want to hear anything that contradicts their particular view of the world. When someone like this is in a position of power, everyone around them act like goal-tenders, redirecting unwelcome news and suggestions to someone who may be able to deal with it.

Usually these people self-destruct--sometimes with a little help from ambitious subordinates.

Nancy Pelosi is running around, promising legislation will be voted on this weekend (and thus preventing legislators from returning to their home districts where they might encounter 'unpleasantness' that might affect their support), but Steny Hoyer seems to be off-message.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told reporters in a conference call Friday that the make-or-break vote on President Barack Obama's push to make health coverage part of the social safety net could face delay. Democrats were originally hoping to pass the bill on Saturday.

Interesting.

Clearly a lot of Democrats are not able to be candid with the Speaker, and apparently a lot of the disaffection is getting expressed to someone more accessible--Steny Hoyer.

With Pelosi alienating everyone in the House, Hoyer is correspondingly making a lot of friends.

That might come in handy after the next election when Democrats could be considering new leadership.

Its seems that a lot of Democrats have a vested interest in the legislation never seeing the light of day...

Do some Democrats look around and wonder what they are doing in the company of so many emotionally disturbed individuals?

Consider Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein's comments about Joe Lieberman today.

At this point, Lieberman seems primarily motivated by torturing liberals. That is to say, he seems willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score.

Mass murder for a good reason; liberals can understand; like Che's regrettable but necessary actions to advance the cause of glorious revolution. Mass murder in the form of screwing up socialism's Trojan horse for no better reason than being pissed that members of his own party tried to get him booted from office--well, that's beyond the pale.

But the really good part is that Klein can so easily rely on good, solid "government" research to back his point. You know, beyond-reproach science like they do at East Anglia University. Nevermind that a bunch of studies on the same subject conclude that Medicare had no discernable effect on mortality.

This is no doubt the "truth" that conservative commentators like that awful Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are "lying" about.

I can't get mad at these people, they're just too amusing...

Its long been clear that the Democrats trillion dollar stimulus is nothing more than a slush fund to buy Congressional votes for replacing the American experiment in Democracy with European-style socialism.

Actually, its more specifically French-style socialism, and if you are familiar with France's public sector which encompasses 70% of the country's GDP, and where government ministers from 'bon famille' circulate between private sector sinecures in government-owned enterprises and public sector fiefdoms, you might understand the attraction.

Nothing drives your educationally-elite Democrat crazier than making a civil service salary while some guy who starts a pizza chain becomes a millionaire. These people are so much smarter than everyone else, as demonstrated by their degrees from fine universities in such socially vital fields as women's studies, political science, and the law (of course!). From their perspective, the U.S. is an upside down country, where 'idiots' earn fabulous wealth and adulation while their betters languish in anonymity and genteel poverty.

Now France knows how to do things. Jacques Chirac, the son of school teachers, established himself with attendence at the most prestigious schools in France, entering the government directly afterwards and soon being tapped to assist then-President Georges Pompidou. He never held a 'real job' in his entire life, moving from government ministry to government ministry until finally winning elective office as mayor of Paris.

Ironically, that is pretty much the work history of the last five Democrat presidential candidates as well--groomed from their youth to rule and reign.

A lot more entrepreneurially-challenged Democrats would like to have similar careers, but something first has to be done about this damn American culture of self-made men and women.

Enter carbon taxes and publicly-run health-care, both designed to create the kind of government dependency a good oligarch needs to function.

I'd love to be a bird on the wire in the Democrat caucuses these days. Senators and Congressmen must be getting fabulous buy-out offers to fall on their political swords to "get this done". I'm most curious about what Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson are being offered to "go along". Lieberman in particular must be having a ball watching his antagonists squirm.

You'd smile too, if you were this man-->

Roland Burris must be the luckiest guy in the world. A senator only because of a storied turn in Chicago politics that had disgraced former governor Blagojevich appoint him in an attempt to buy off the Illinois black caucus, he survived being outed as just another Chicago pol on the take as it was revealed his paid for his Senatorship with cold hard cash. The consensus has been that Burris is toast come next years election, but the health care debacle has given a powerful negotiating stance.

And on Monday, after Democrats indicated that they were prepared to meet the demands of Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, and strip the last vestige of a public option from their bill, Mr. Burris went to the Senate floor to warn that he had not committed to vote for the legislation.

Mr. Burris, however, did calibrate his language: “I am committed to voting for a bill that achieves the goals of a public option: competition, cost savings and accountability,” he said. “I will not be able to vote for lesser legislation that ignores those fundamentals.”

He added: “My colleagues may have forged a compromise bill that can achieve the 60 votes that will be needed for it to pass. But until this bill addresses cost, competition and accountability in a meaningful way, it will not win mine.”

If Democrats want their French socialist utopia, they are going to have to pay Roland Burris, and Joe Lieberman, and Ben Nelson, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera...

New York Magazine excerpts "Game Change", the book that's been giving Harry Reid such grief this weekend for his "no Negro dialect" quip. The excerpt deals with the destruction of the Edwards campaign, which as it happens, is as much about their personal (self) destruction as well.

If you read this blog (and even if you don't), you probably know most of the details of Edward's dalliance with Rielle Hunter. What you don't know is in New York magazine. The last soap opera I saw was Dynasty--yeah, its a lot like that.

No one in the Edwardses’ political circle felt anything less than complete sympathy for Elizabeth’s plight. And yet the romance between her and the electorate struck them as ironic nonetheless—because their own relationships with her were so unpleasant that they felt like battered spouses. The nearly universal assessment among them was that there was no one on the national stage for whom the disparity between public image and private reality was vaster or more disturbing.

With her husband, she could be intensely affectionate or brutally dismissive. At times subtly, at times blatantly, she was forever letting John know that she regarded him as her intellectual inferior. She called her spouse a “hick” in front of other people and derided his parents as rednecks. One time, when a friend asked if John had read a certain book, Elizabeth burst out laughing. “Oh, he doesn’t read books,” she said. “I’m the one who reads books.”

Snick. The piece falls neatly into place and we understand what was incomprehensible.

Success has many fathers, while failure is an orphan, thus much of the criticism of the Edwards should be taken with a grain of salt--what Edwards staffer wants to cop to being part of the problem?

Yet most of it simply rings true for one simple reason--virtually all great enterprises are destroyed by the personal flaws of their principles.

Read it all.

Pelosi goes all "damn the torpedos" on us.

"Let's remove all doubt, we will have healthcare one way or another," Pelosi said during an event in San Francisco on Monday. "Certainly the dynamic would change depending on what happens in Massachusetts. Just the question about how we would proceed. But it doesn't mean we won't have a health care bill."

There is one way to pass the bill, even without 60 votes in the Senate, that's getting a lot of attention now. But Pelosi probably won't like it, and neither will a fair amount of her members.

The procedure in question would involve simply having the House vote on the bill that the Senate has already passed. That would mean avoiding yet another cloture vote in the Senate, one Democrats would be likely to lose if their caucus is down to 59 members after the special election in Massachusetts on Tuesday.

I don't think so.

This is shock and awe. This is Jesus coming down from the clouds with concourses of angels singing hallelujah. This is aliens landing in Washington saying "take me to your leader..."

Democrats in Congress were a little nervous before. Now they're looking for a change of underwear.

When a Republican loses office, he gets a radio or television show, goes back to the hardware store or whatever business he or she was involved in before. Democrats don't have lives outside of politics.

While it was noted that Bill Clinton told Congressional Democrats that failure to pass healthcare legislation would create suffering on election day, I don't recall anyone asking why Clinton would make that particular juxtaposition. Clearly he understands, as does the Obama administration and every other Democrat official in Washington, that every Democrat's primary concern is reelection.

Now we have an unambiguous demonstration that support for healthcare is a highway to hell.

Pelosi has more important things to worry about that slamming through the healthcare bill. She needs to worry about saving her job...

Barney Franks has effectively killed the healthcare bill with these comments.

“I have two reactions to the election in Massachusetts. One, I am disappointed. Two, I feel strongly that the Democratic majority in Congress must respect the process and make no effort to bypass the electoral results. If Martha Coakley had won, I believe we could have worked out a reasonable compromise between the House and Senate health care bills. But since Scott Brown has won and the Republicans now have 41 votes in the Senate, that approach is no longer appropriate. I am hopeful that some Republican Senators will be willing to discuss a revised version of health care reform because I do not think that the country would be well-served by the health care status quo. But our respect for democratic procedures must rule out any effort to pass a health care bill as if the Massachusetts election had not happened. Going forward, I hope there will be a serious effort to change the Senate rule which means that 59 votes are not enough to pass major legislation, but those are the rules by which the health care bill was considered, and it would be wrong to change them in the middle of the process.”

Its hard to see how Pelosi etal proceed with their plan for a Pyrrhic victory with this on the record.

There is a lot of what passes for analysis going on today, and it will be interesting to see what attempts at spinning the loss are made, but if you read between the lines of what Frank is saying, its clear that they now know what we all have known for quite a while.

The public has seen through the smoke and mirrors of Washington rhetoric about 'healthcare', 'stimulus' and 'investment' to understand that what Democrats are really doing is stealing us blind.

It took Republicans more than a decade to exhaust public patience with their pay-for-play schemes. Its took the Democrats just months to get there. Anything. Anything the Democrat do that smells the slightest bit off, is just going to stir the hornets nest.

Yup. There's a sex tape.

"I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president," he told ABC's "World News" anchor Diane Sawyer in an exclusive interview today.

That what's called an oxymoron. Good Presidents serve two (or more terms). Bad Presidents get turfed from office at the electorate's first opportunity.

Of course, I'm thinking like an American, and not a far-left ideologue. Joe Klein's comments about a nation full of dodos are a case in point--the far left are elitist (and fascist) by nature. Any disagreement is always perceived as proof of evil intent or mental retardation. Members of the Tea Party movement are renamed 'tea-baggers', accused of latent racism and low IQ. Fox News is not a 'real' news organization. Rush Limbaugh should die a horrible, painful death.

We used to call this Bush derangement syndrome, but the reality is dawning on all of us--the left is just plain deranged--period. In Barack Obama the paranoia is catalyzed with an intense narcissism.

With this in mind, consider that Barack Obama is the only one who gets to define what 'good' is in the context of his Presidency. We--the benighted masses, are resisting what Obama's superior intellect has determined is necessary for our continued well-being, and thus like children, need to be physically restrained, lied to and mollified, while the bitter medicine is forced down our throats.

If we hate him in the process--sobeit. He is not our friend, he is our father.

...but I'll take him up on the one-term bit...

Nancy Pelosi uses military aircraft, costing $18,000.00/Hour, to shuttle her kids and grandkids around the world, in one case an entire military transport jet flying empty with the exception of her grandson.

Politico:

The health care bill is in trouble, but a series of narrow deals — each designed to win over a wavering senator or key interest group — is alive and well, despite voter anger over the parochial horse-trading that marked the rush toward passage before Christmas.

With the exception of Nebraska Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson’s “Cornhusker Kickback,” which alienated independent voters and came to symbolize an out-of-touch Washington, none of the other narrow provisions that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid inserted into the bill appear to be in any kind of danger as Democrats try to figure out the way ahead.

Not only that, House liberals want to reopen the labor deal struck just days before Democrats lost their 60-vote majority — not to dial it back but to provide more generous protections from the tax on Cadillac insurance plans.

If you didn't previously grasp how Washington works, reading the article will be an education.

Healthcare is simply the mule for members of Congress to strap their earmarks to.

For reasons I'll never understand, Democrats persist in thinking that government-run health-care was, is and will be, popular with the folks, and thus guaranteed to pass into law. The perfect opportunity to slip in a backroom deal to benefit the special interests in say, Michigan or Louisiana and thus insure a steady stream of campaign cash to the career politicians.

What a job! Spend millions, get elected to Congress. Be a bag man for your campaign donors. Do it again each and every election cycle. What kind of A-hole actually wants a position like that?

I copied the whole thing because any minute now, Nancy's staff is going to take this down...

Pelosi: Where Are the Jobs, Mr. President?

August 1, 2003

Washington, D.C. -- House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today on the Bureau of Labor Statistics' announcement that 470,000 people abandoned their job searches in July and that 3.2 million private sector jobs have been lost since President Bush took office:

“The fact is that President Bush’s misguided economic policies have failed to create jobs. Since President Bush took office, the country has lost 3.2 million jobs, the worst record since President Hoover. And today we learned that in July nearly half a million people gave up looking for a job.

“Job losses are taking a real toll on the financial security of American families. While Democrats are fighting for opportunity, jobs, and economic security for working families, Republicans continue to focus on helping those who need help the least.

“According to today’s survey, while the national unemployment rate dropped slightly, it still stands at a near record high. In addition, the unemployment rate for African Americans was still over 11 percent in July, and the unemployment rate for Hispanics was 8.2 percent in July.

“It is time for President Bush and the Republicans to get to work for all Americans, not just the elite few.”

Michael Barone:

Public-sector unionism is a very different animal from private-sector unionism. It is not adversarial but collusive. Public-sector unions strive to elect their management, which in turn can extract money from taxpayers to increase wages and benefits -- and can promise pensions that future taxpayers will have to fund.

The results are plain to see. States such as New York, New Jersey and California, where public-sector unions are strong, now face enormous budget deficits and pension liabilities. In such states, the public sector has become a parasite sucking the life out of the private-sector economy. Not surprisingly, Americans have been steadily migrating out of such states and into states like Texas, where public-sector unions are weak and taxes are much lower.

Barack Obama is probably the most union-friendly president since Lyndon Johnson. He has obviously been unable to stop the decline of private-sector unionism. But he is doing his best to increase the power -- and dues income -- of public-sector unions.

One-third of last year's $787 billion stimulus package was aid to state and local governments -- an obvious attempt to bolster public-sector unions. And a successful one: While the private sector has lost 7 million jobs, the number of public-sector jobs has risen. The number of federal government jobs has been increasing by 10,000 a month, and the percentage of federal employees earning over $100,000 has jumped to 19 percent during the recession.

Obama and his party are acting in collusion with unions that contributed something like $400,000,000 to Democrats in the 2008 campaign cycle. Public-sector unionism tends to be a self-perpetuating machine that extracts money from taxpayers and then puts it on a conveyor belt to the Democratic party.

Representative John Murtha (D-PA) from southwestern Pennsylvania, died today from complications of gall bladder surgery.

Murtha's power in the House was so extensive, that its likely that Johnstown, PA in his home district, will experience a significant long-term decline simply because Murtha won't be bringing back billions in military and research contracts to the area.

Murtha was also significantly responsible for the ascension of Nancy Pelosi to the Speakership and was considered her right-hand man.

He was a man of contradictions, having been initially elected as a supporter of the Vietnam war, but opposed to the Iraq war, even as he worked military appropriates for the benefit if his constitutents. He was a former Marine who took umbrage at being obliquely accused of cowardice for not supporting the Iraq war, but publicly condemned the Haditha marines as murderers before an investigation had even taken place (all but one of the marines had the changes dropped.Sergeant Frank Wuterich still faces charges of involuntary manslaughter...).

Murtha was socially conservative, consistently opposing abortion. He was never personally charged with corruption, but had several near misses, including the ABSCAM sting where he was named an unindicted co-conspirator, and more recently after when the Justice Department looked into several military contractors with close ties to the Congressman.

Aside from the obvious personal loss to his family, the Democrats lost a very effective legislator with Murtha.

Life moves on though, and the governor must call a special election within 10 days. Murtha's district was the only one in the country that voted Kerry in 2004, and McCain in 2008. Considering the current political climate, the Democrats are in serious danger of losing a seat they never contemplated being anything but safe and secure. Republicans will be actively contesting 6 Congressional districts in Pennsylvania this fall (including Murtha's).

Dave's Poscript: Congressman Murtha sucumbs to the ultimate term limit. He was the earmark king who had a symbiotic relation with his district; neither knew any shame. I can think of no better epitath then this wrap-up of one of his earmarks:

PENSACOLA, Fla. — A federal judge sentenced two former Air Force colonels to prison on Tuesday for destroying documents, lying to a grand jury and other crimes related to a wider fraud scheme by contractors and defense lobbyists with ties to a powerful Rep. John Murtha, D-Johnstown.

The men, both engineers and graduates of the U.S. Air Force Academy, are among those accused by federal prosecutors who are looking into alleged wrongdoing by contractors with ties to Murtha, chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense.

Murtha has not been accused of criminal wrongdoing.

Harry Reid recommended Barack Obama run for President, in spite of his utter lack of executive experience, a grasp of real-world economics or foreign policy realities.

Now Harry thinks that judicial experience is overrated for federal judgeships.

The important thing is what Harry wants...

UPDATE: Obama discovers that the Middle East has 'intractable problems'. Really? Who knew?

Seems like William Jefferson, former Louisiana Congressman, current inmate, was a victim of his milieu.

But [black] caucus members have attracted increasing scrutiny from ethics investigators. All eight open House investigations involve caucus members, and most center on accusations of improper ties to private businesses.

The corruption of the Black Caucus has long been an open secret, so my question is why this is becoming public now--in the New York Times no less?

Inquiring minds want to know...

Spend a little time cruising memeorandum and you get a sense that the Left is just seething with anger. Evan Bayh is the target du jour, but a casus belli doesn't seem to matter to these people--their heads are always just ready to explode. Even when Bayh says something they like, the Left still find a way to trash him.

It’s immaterial whether Bayh thinks his brand of mushy centrism and fiscal peacockery would fare better under a change in Senate rules. What’s crucial here is that we have a Democrat actually stating the reasons for the lack of action from Washington, combined with a real proposal to fix it.

Of course, it would be preferable, if Bayh wanted to actually change the rules of the Senate to make it a better institution for his children and the future of the country, for him to STAY and actually get that done. So his departure because of the difficulty of things smacks of cowardice. However, if someone like Bayh is willing to identify the Senate rules as the source of the problem, then old lions like Chris Dodd, who called such reforms “foolish,” are probably in the deep minority in the chamber.

I was trying to think, if during my adult years, there was ever a time when the left wasn't totally pissed off. They were pissed during the Carter years. Really pissed during the Reagan year (when prosperity was bad...), and then again during the Clinton years (when prosperity was good...). How does one maintain that level of outrage for that long?

First Amy Bishop kills six of her colleagues at the University of Alabama because they won't give her what she wants (tenure).

Now Bush-hater Joe Stack crashes a plane in IRS offices because they won't give him what he wants (a pass on illegal tax deductions).

Obama supporters are really, really angry...and they have planes.

Usually Democrats try to hide their inner fascist, but crisis tends to bring out people's true colors. Jules Witcover of the Baltimore Sun:

In any event, the political risk to Mr. Obama of appearing to be an inept leader cannot be underestimated if he fails to achieve the primary legislative goal to which he devoted his first year in office. He needs to employ whatever means are available to him now to get it, and then to move on to other challenges with enhanced leadership credibility.

Hmmm. Stalinist logic.

Stalin, needing the vast mineral wealth of Siberia to build the Soviet state, simply had citizens sent to Kolymar on any pretense, to be worked to death in the mines. Survivors recount having to bring out one hundred carts of ore per shift on a daily ration of half a herring fish, and a fistful of bread. If they failed, they had to work another shift. If they failed again, they had to work another shift. People didn't make it for a fourth.

The irony is that they wrote letters to St. Stalin, pleading their cause, completely oblivious to the reality that he was the author of their misfortune.

Millions died, but even today, hard-core Leftists continue to admire Stalin, and excuse the slaughter as necessary to create a superpower.

By any means necessary...

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post detailing the role of the Senate parliamentarian in making a determination of whether the budget reconciliation process was an option for health-care.

Now the chickens have come to roost.

The Senate Parliamentarian has ruled that President Barack Obama must sign Congress’ original health care reform bill< before the Senate can act on a companion reconciliation package, senior GOP sources said Thursday.

What this means is that as soon as the House votes on the Senate bill, it must in fact be signed into law by the President before any attempt at reconciliation can proceed. With the parliamentarian's ruling, Democrats will effectively be voting for federal funding on abortion. Period. Stop. That might go over in the most liberal districts in the country, but its certain political death of any blue dog Democrat.

The ruling serves to eliminate the ambiguity that Pelosi has been trying to leverage among House Democrats. Their current reality is that a vote for healthcare is a vote to make the legislation law, and that the reconciliation process being talked about would be at the mercy of the same parliamentary rulings that affirmed the requirement that the President sign the bill into law--in other words, reconciliation is and always has been a mirage.

On a related note, Pelosi is going backwards in the vote count. With current vacancies, she needs to keep the defections down below 37. There are 25 no and 'likely no' votes out there right now. Stupak and his gang of 12 are not in that total. The have indicated that they are persuadable, but its hard to see how at this point. With the Stupak gang, the defections kill the bill.

Indications are that House leadership knows this, as they have pushed back against the White House's demands that they pass it by the 18th. That arbitrary dead-line would have insured a vote before the two week recess, since no one on the Obama team wants Congress to go home to their districts and face the angry hordes.

Further complicating matters is the Hispanic Caucus, which could also vote no on the basis of the bill's immigration provisions.

I almost feel sorry for Nancy.

Almost.

Reports that Rep Bart Stupak was open to voting for Obamacare have been greatly exaggerated. In this frank interview with NRO, Stupak provides some interesting insights into the kind of weapons being brought to bear on reluctant House members.

Wanting their cake and a chance to eat it, Democrats appear to be playing both ends against the middle.

...all those claims were put to the test -- all those bluffs were called -- once the White House decided that it had to use reconciliation to pass a final health care reform bill. That meant that any changes to the Senate bill (which had passed with 60 votes) -- including the addition of the public option -- would only require 50 votes, which Democrats assured progressives all year long that they had. Great news for the public option, right? Wrong. As soon as it actually became possible to pass it, the 50 votes magically vanished. Senate Democrats (and the White House) were willing to pretend they supported a public option only as long as it was impossible to pass it. Once reconciliation gave them the opportunity they claimed all year long they needed -- a "majority rule" system -- they began concocting ways to ensure that it lacked 50 votes.

Sounds like black helicopters, but Glenn Greenwald isn't without some evidence.

If that's true -- if they lack the votes to pass the public option through reconciliation? -- why is Dick Durbin now whipping against it, telling Senators -- in his own words -- "You just have to swallow hard' and say that putting an amendment on this is either going to stop it or slow it down, and we just can’t let it happen"?

No one has to argue against something 'impossible', so by definition it must be a real option.

Of course, it presupposes that the legislation can actually be put through the reconciliation process, which is by no means certain.

Frankly, a column like this works against the House passage of the bill because it creates even more suspicion that reconciliation isn't only a long-shot, but that Senate leadership doesn't even want it.

You can't tell from Pelosi public announcements where she's at in her quest for health-care votes--everything is always peachy. Others are telegraphing something closer to the truth.

Bart Stupak let drop that House leadership is no longer courting the 12 votes he allegedly controls, which suggests, one way or another that Nancy has gotten all the votes she's going to get out of that crew.

That leaves the option of mining the previous no votes--37 of them. That apparently isn't going so well either.

As of today, Speaker Pelosi's Treasure Hunt for votes isn't going well. Not one of the Democrats who voted against health care last year has proclaimed support for the Senate bill, while dozens of members who voted for it last year say they are undecided.

Its probably even worse than it looks--and it looks pretty bad.

Anyone whose been in a situation where someone wants something from you real, real bad, understands that its both an opportunity and a problem. Say no, and you're the enemy, and you can expect to be treated as one. Say yes and you're in the bag--the negotiation stops and you've possibly left money on the table. The trick is to appear persuadable but noncommital. Saying yes as late as as you can, guarantees you the maxiumum concessions. Saying no as long as you can is also a good idea, because it keeps the hammer off your skull for as long as possible, and as circumstances change, its very possible that you might not have to say no at all.

Here's Nancy's problem though--this late in the game, and baby, its late, all the money on the table is all the money on the table. Anybody who could be bought, has been. That leaves a lot of people who don't want to incur the wrath of Rahm and are playing for time.

If there is no vote next week, I would bet big money that there never will be.

Jack Cafferty isn't much of a commentator in my view, but he does tend to reflect one type of populist reaction to the events of the day. So his disgusted reaction to Pelosi's stated intention of invoking the Slaughter rule to get Obamacare passed, is an interesting bellweather on how this is all going to fly politically within the country

A poll commissioned by Pajamas Media yielded the following insights:

· Most Americans oppose (81%) health care reforms that would increase insurance premiums for healthy people to offset premiums of people who wait until they are diagnosed with an illness to purchase insurance.

· Eight Americans in ten (81%) oppose allowing the government to decide what kind of health care coverage Americans are able to purchase.

· Most Americans (87%) oppose having a government panel recommend or decide what medical procedures or medical advances your doctor or health plan can or cannot use.

· Three in four Americans (76%) oppose health care reforms that would raise taxes and cut Medicare benefits to pay for health care subsidies for expanded coverage for those currently insured.

I still don't think a lot of Americans appreciate that these aspects of a government-run health-care program aren't optional--they define socialized medicine, as does the government's right to dictate your life-style choices out of a fiduciary responsibility to 'the taxpayers'. This was in fact the rationale used to justify mandatory seat-belt laws in Canada back in the 1980s.

I'm not surprised that Americans overwhelmingly reject Obamacare--they are after all "Americans", with all that being an American means. What bewilders me are all the other people. What astonishes me is the kamikaze drive behind this damn the torpedoes, rush-the-machine-gun effort to pass healthcare legislation.

I saw a clip of Brit Hume being interviewed and stating an obvious but seldom expressed observation that at no time in his long career has he ever seen anything like this. While the economy crumbles around our ears, the Democrats have spent over a year trying by any means possible to pass a healthcare bill, sacrificing elected officials along the way, incurring the wrath of the electorate, and removing an pretense of a claim to the name "Democrat".

Its almost comical how they insist that their maniacal single-mindedness is done purely from motives of covering 'poor, uninsured people' and rescuing the country from certain destruction. We can only guess at the real motives, but you'd better believe that there is a pretty big pot of gold at then end of this rainbow.

What does it mean when one of the House whips gives an interview indicating that he'll vote 'NO' on Obamacare? Nothing good for Obama.

Even one of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s floor whips, U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, says a proposed parliamentary move to pass health-care reform would be “disingenuous” and harm the credibility of Congress. In a sign of how tough it’s been for Pelosi to round up votes for the massive bill, Lynch - a South Boston Democrat who supported a House reform package last year - said he’ll probably vote against a key Senate version of the legislation, unless unexpected major changes are made soon.

Lynch, who serves as one of Pelosi’s key vote counters, said he also can’t support a proposed “deem and pass” procedure that would allow Democrats to vote to strip out controversial portions of the Senate bill and then “deem” that the entire package has passed without a second, direct vote.

“It’s disingenuous,” said Lynch, who considers unfair a Senate provision to tack a surcharge on higher-end health plans. “It would really call into question the credibility of the House.”

South Boston? Hmmm. The Scott Brown victory isn't something he can lightly dismiss, which reminds me that I haven't heard anything from the normally ebullient Barney Frank either in recent weeks.

A few days ago, I wondered out loud if Deem-and-Pass wasn't an unforced error on the scale of Bush's 16 words in the State of the Union address. I was reminded of this recently as Karl Rove made the rounds promoting his new book. The Democrats had been driving the meme that Bush was operating on bad intel, and then he gives them the gift of an unverifiable, second-hand report of Iraq's intention to buy uranium-oxide. It was the "sign of the dove" for anyone who had doubts about the war--a confirmation that everything the Democrats were saying was true.

For years, if not decades, conservatives have been slamming Democrats for ignoring the constitution, then boom--"sign of the dove" in Nancy Pelosi's off-the-cuff comment about liking the Slaughter rule which hides the health-care vote inside of another vote. For many Americans, all benefit of the doubt has been removed.

Just like the 16 words controversy, the offense can fit its message on a bumpersticker, while defenders must engage in long, complicated technical explanations. Like Tiger Woods, the Democrats have been caught with unexplained telephone numbers in their cell phone and desperately spinning tall tales to explain it.

Its been interesting to watch Congressperson after Congressperson come onto Fox News and express their concerns over the massive bribes and special deals and perceived process impropriety. These aren't the talking points used as moral justification to vote for the bill--they clearly lay the groundwork for voting against it.

As the vote on Obamacare approaches, things are moving swiftly.

No one really knows where things stand, but Pelosi etal have a long row to hoe to make sure the bill passes.

Yes Dave, Matheson has declared he will vote NO. I personally think that he cut a deal with the leadership to keep his mouth shut as long as possible so they could create their inevitability illusion.

No real surprises in the declarations that are coming a lot faster now, except for perhaps one.

Bart Stupak, the nominal leader of the pro-Life 12, canceled a press conference he had scheduled. Word is that Obama has offered an executive order to cover his butt on the abortion issue. Obama would simply direct federal agencies to ignore the Congressional mandate to fund abortions, and that of course would be challenged in the courts with the end game fairly predictable.

The pro-choice caucus went nuts when they heard this, but if its merely a ploy, Nancy keeps them in line.

I suspect he canceled the press conference for the same reason Matheson declared his position so late in the game--the leadership asked him to. It is quite revealing though that they are actively negotiating with Stupak again after writing him off earlier. It strongly suggests that they haven't found all the votes they need and going over the ground they've already covered in hopes of squeezing out a few more.

The real question is whether Stupak is looking for a way to vote for the bill, and just needs a plausible excuse. Hard to say. The Stupak dozen are now the Stupak six, but that's more than enough to defeat the bill when you fold in the Republicans and the declared NO votes. The last time I checked there were 10 undeclared Democrats--remarkable this late in the game.

STUPAK HAS ANNOUNCED HE'LL VOTE YES. IN A FEW MINUTES, THE US BECOMES A SOCIALIST COUNTRY.

Fox is reporting a tally that suggests that by one vote, Pelosi can pass the bill. That's a guess, not a fact or else they would have had the vote already.

As of last night there were still 20 undecided Democrats, so this is more of Pelosi's 'air of inevitability meme' in action.

I should stress that no one in the media really knows what is going on, and the honest ones are admitting as much. The scenarios are that Pelosi has the votes and is just trying to pad the outcome, or she doesn't have the votes and is scrambling to get them

Its already 2:00 PM EST time and no vote yet.

Reports are that Pelosi is actively negotiating with Stupak, which suggests to me that she doesn't have the votes. It makes sense to go back to Stupak at this point and confront him with the reality that he and his gang will bear the responsibility for killing the bill. His career as a Democrat politician would be permanently over. Of course, if he votes YES, the outcome will almost certainly be the same. I don't know how he comes down on this, but if I was given a choice of political deaths--dying for principle sounds a lot better than dying as a Judas goat. He might also have the option of switching parties.

Mr. Stupak and his Democrat followers have now clarified that you cannot be pro-life and be a Democrat. If abortion was truly their biggest issue, they wouldn't willfully align themselves with the Party of Death. This vote will expose the myth of the 'pro-life Democrat.' With this single vote, the Democratic Party will divide our nation into the Party of Death and the Party of Life, and future elections will never be the same.

This made me chuckle.

After steering the landmark health-care reform bill through Congress, the Democratic Party's leaders have emerged mostly unscathed, according to a new Washington Post poll, but they have not received a notable boost in approval ratings.

The title was even funnier.

Health-care overhaul leaves Democrats in stable condition

In medical terms, 'stable' is not actually a condition, even though we often hear doctors refer to someone as 'critical but stable'. Your condition can be undetermined, good, fair, serious or critical. Considering that another article today is reporting that Congressional disapproval ratings are at late 1994 levels (when Democrats tool a fifty seat beating...), I'd say that the Democrats are in critical condition.

Its an interesting way of reporting the state of the party, especially in light of the Democrat's pre-Obamacare vote, in which office-holders were told, over and over again, and in no uncertain terms, that passing healthcare would improve their reelection prospects. I suspect many who voted affirmatively have that cold knot in the pit of their stomachs now, realizing that they zigged when they should have zagged. Rep Steve Driehaus (D-OH) was getting the message over the weekend.

Outside his Cincinnati home, a few angry protesters wouldn't allow him a full escape from the raw and vitriolic discussions that have embroiled the health-care debate for more than a year. They showed up to decry the freshman congressman's vote for the overhaul, standing in the chilling rain most of the afternoon Sunday holding signs that read: "Driehaus Voted to Destroy Our Children's Future" and "Remember in November."

Frankly, I expected the Democrats to get a little bump, even if was only short term, but polls show disaffection to have increased slightly.

Right now, after a year of stimulus plans, bailouts and now nationalized health care, driving deficits to historically high levels, 70% of voters are angry with the policies of the federal government. That includes 48% who are very angry.

After all, just before the House of Representatives passed the health care plan last Sunday, 41% of voters nationwide favored it, but 54% were opposed. These figures have barely budged in recent months. Now that President Obama has signed the legislation into law, 55% favor repealing it. In terms of Election 2010, 52% say they’d vote for a candidate who favors repeal over one who does not. Forty-one percent (41%) would cast their vote for someone who opposes repeal.

I had guests over last night for some dinner and with no prompting from me (I try to avoid starting political discussions in the real world...), the talk soon turned to politics. I was a little surprised to hear people not normally predisposed to such discussions, passionately arguing politics, announcing their caucus participation and their plans to get 'more involved'. I found myself in the strange position of arguing for moderation! Just from my anecdotal evidence, its seems that the Tea Party is entering an expansion phase, not leveling off.

For Democrats hoping now that everyone just goes back to sleep, things don't look particularly good.

The Democrats destroyed the free-flow of private capital from the U.S:

On March 18, with very little pomp and circumstance, president Obama passed the most recent stimulus act, the $17.5 billion Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act (H.R. 2487), brilliantly goalseeked by the administration's millionaire cronies to abbreviate as HIRE. As it was merely the latest in an endless stream of acts destined to expand the government payroll to infinity, nobody cared about it, or actually read it. Because if anyone had read it, the act would have been known as the Capital Controls Act, as one of the lesser, but infinitely more important provisions on page 27, known as Offset Provisions - Subtitle A—Foreign Account Tax Compliance, institutes just that. In brief, the Provision requires that foreign banks not only withhold 30% of all outgoing capital flows (likely remitting the collection promptly back to the US Treasury) but also disclose the full details of non-exempt account-holders to the US and the IRS. And should this provision be deemed illegal by a given foreign nation's domestic laws (think Switzerland), well the foreign financial institution is required to close the account. It's the law. If you thought you could move your capital to the non-sequestration safety of non-US financial institutions, sorry you lose - the law now says so.

So be prepared to prepared to lose 30% of your capital if you want to invest it overseas. The Dems have to get someone to buy those T-bills to extend the debt.

This is a big deal, because your government effectively gets to control your foreign investments. One more thing - It's highly likely you first read about this takeover in a blog. The legacy media continues to cover for our DemoMarxists.

H/T SDA

I've been interested in the economic history of the United States for some time now, and I'm trying to think of a case where a product was rejected by the market and then succeeded after 're-branding'. I can think of only one modest success and that's Cadillac.

Cadillac, once a name synonymous with luxury, quality and performance, became a euphemism for everything that was wrong with the American automobile industry. With no other options, the GM division had no choice but to engage in the last option in the marketing toolbox--re-branding.

Cadillac is doing pretty well these days, so naturally the question poses itself--can Democrats rebrand the party into something more appealing to the American political marketplace?

The California Democrat (Nancy Pelosi), vilified by Republicans in the last election, has turned to director Steven Spielberg for help re-branding House Democrats.

Lawmakers say she is consulting marketing experts about building a stronger brand. The most prominent of her new whisperers is Steven Spielberg, the Hollywood director whose films have been works of branding genius. Lawmakers said Spielberg has not reported to Pelosi with a recommendation.

Spielberg has been a power player in Democratic politics for years, working on everything from President Bill Clinton's millennial celebrations to the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

Should I be worried?

Let's consider Cadillac again. Cadillac didn't just dress up its inferior offerings with a coat of paints and some flashy commercials, it fundamentally changed the Cadillac experience. Cadillac went from jalopy to juiced with ground-up engineering that included cutting-edge technologies, high-performance and exemplary fit and finish. It wasn't so much re-branding as it was resurrection.

Will Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats mend their villainous ways and embrace traditional American values of small government, fiscal rectitude, respect for the rule of law, the virtues of democracy and fair elections?

Not bloody likely.

I don't think even the illustrious Mr. Spielberg is going to be able to doing anything about this mess.

I'm don't generally put a lot of stock in signs and portents, but when I learned that my father-in-law, a dyed-in-the-wool Roosevelt Democrat, changed his voter registration to Independent, I suddenly understood exactly how alien the modern Democrat party is to the American mainstream.

Its not just the extremism, corruption and backroom dealing either. Let's face it, Democrats are well, just creepy.

Today, a 22 year old young man, described by his schoolmates as a committed leftist, injured 12 people, shot a sitting Congresswoman through the head, killed a District judge and nine year old girl.

Almost immediately, the professional left sought to variously place the blame on Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and the Tea Party. The only thing that surprised me was that somehow George W. Bush wasn't implicated. It's simply remarkable that Progressives share such a lack of basic decency. A killing of this type requires a completely lack of empathy. The professional left routinely displays a complete lack of empathy, willing to exploit every tragedy to advance their own interest with nary a twinge of discomfort.

In this case, the apple does not fall far from the tree.

# @antderosa it's loughner just checked my year book. less than 20 seconds ago via Twitter for iPhone in reply to antderosa # @lakarune I haven't seen him since '07. Then, he was left wing. 25 minutes ago via Twitter for iPhone in reply to lakarune # @noboa more left. I haven't seen him since '07 though. He became very reclusive. 27 minutes ago via Twitter for iPhone in reply to noboa # @antderosa he had a lot of friends until he got alcohol poisoning in '06, & dropped out of school. Mainly loner very philosophical. 29 minutes ago via Twitter for iPhone in reply to antderosa # @antderosa As I knew him he was left wing, quite liberal. & oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy. 33 minutes ago via Twitter for iPhone in reply to antderosa # @antderosa he was a pot head & into rock like Hendrix,The Doors, Anti-Flag. I haven't seen him in person since '07 in a sign language class 35 minutes ago via Twitter for iPhone in reply to antderosa # @antderosa He was a political radical & met Giffords once before in '07, asked her a question & he told me she was "stupid & unintelligent" 37 minutes ago via Twitter for iPhone in reply to antderosa

As with the attack on the Discovery Channel headquarters by James Lee, a disturbed individual was incited to violent action by typical violent rhetoric used by left-wing causes. Am I simply pointing the finger back at the left? Not at all---it's a matter of record that 'community organizers' make standard use of Saul Alinksy's Rules for Radicals, which has as one of its main goals the baiting of their opponents; "The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength." One of the standard tactics is virulent ad Hominem--identifying an individual or group to focus the target groups animosity.

These tactics are so widely used because they work, but while anger is good motivation for some to vote a certain way, its also motivation for people to kill and maim.

Gabrielle Giffords like every blue dog Democrat, was not very popular among the far left. The Daily Kos mentions her as having a 'bullseye' on her back for a primary challenge. In many ways, blue-dog Democrats attract the most contempt and calumny from the far-left, and its distinctly possible that Loughner targeted her for that reason.

Unfortunately for Democrats, the 'rules' have served to create remarkable isolation of Progressives from the American mainstream, making them tone-deaf to how their rhetoric is perceived. Like the Senator Paul Wellstone memorial during the 2004 election, the cynical exploitation of a death just reminds people how unAmerican the left is.

Creepiness is bad politics.

A stranger comes into town, and stops at the local bar and asked the bartender, "Say, how are the people in this town?"

The bartender replies with a question of his own, "What were the people like where you came from?"

The stranger gets a faraway look in his eyes and says, "Well, they were great. Always kind and helpful. Always a cheery hello. Wonderful people."

"Well, the people in this town are pretty much like that as well, " answers the bartender.

The next day, another stranger comes into town, stops in the bar and asks the same question. The bartender gives the same reply, "What were the people like where you came from?"

The stranger answered with a sneer, "Those people were awful. Rude, obnoxious and really busybodies to boot..."

"Well, the people in this town are pretty much like that as well, " responded the bartender.

I thought of this story which someone told me over thirty years ago, when I read this piece.

It's safe to say there was a collective sigh of brown relief when the Tucson killer turned out to be a gringo. Had the shooter been Latino, media pundits wouldn't be discussing the impact of nasty politics on a young man this week — they'd be demanding an even more stringent anti-immigrant policy. The new members of the House would be stepping over each other to propose new legislation for more guns on the border, more mothers to be deported, and more employers to be penalized for hiring brown people. Obama would be attending funerals and telling the nation tonight that he was going to increase security just about everywhere.

We are all just puppets in the theater of her mind.