Candidates, campaigns, and New Coke

by Jeff Jacoby

DENOUNCING the Supreme Court's Jan. 21 ruling in the Citizens United campaign-finance case, President Obama called it "a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics" and "a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies, and the other powerful interests." He denounced it again in his State of the Union address last week, saying it would "open the floodgates for special interests" and adding: "I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests."

The Senate's top recipient of special-interest contributions is outraged by the Supreme Court's ruling.The president's rebuke was not without chutzpah. In his 2008 White House run, he became the first candidate in the modern era to reject public financing, thereby freeing himself to amass a staggering $745 million in campaign contributions. Much of this was "special interest money" -- according to the Center for Responsive Politics, Obama's record-breaking campaign haul included $43 million from lawyers and lobbyists, $19 million from donors connected to the health-care industry, $18 million from investment and commercial banking, $10 million from real estate interests, and $9 million from Hollywood and the television industry.

Obama isn't the only critic of the high court's decision whose outrage at the thought of corporate influence in political campaigns seems a trifle ... contrived. Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, condemned the court for having "predetermined the winners of next November's elections. It won't be Republicans. It won't be Democrats. It will be corporate America." Coming from Schumer, that's a curious complaint: He is the Senate's leading recipient of campaign contributions from political action committees and other donors in nearly two dozen industries, including real estate, construction, securities, liquor, insurance, and hedge funds.
Worse than hypocrisy, though, is the condescension for voters that underlies so much of the fury aimed at the Supreme Court's ruling.

To read the entire analysis of the president's and the media's hypocrisy, Go Here

Tea Parties and the GOP II

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit has a series of links to articles with this theme, including one of his own.  Read them all.
From the Examiner:
Glenn Reynolds: More impact is what's next for the Tea Party movement

A year ago, the Tea Party movement didn't exist. Today, it is arguably the most popular political entity in America. The movement is already more popular than the Republican or Democratic parties, according to a recent NBC / WSJ poll .

Even in blue-state California, three in 10 voters identify with the Tea Party movement.

And, of course, Scott Brown's come-from-behind blowout in Massachusetts occurred in no small part because of money and volunteers from the Tea Party movement around the nation.

In The Hill:
Armey tells House GOP: Win back the tea-partiers to win
By Molly K. Hooper

Dick Armey left his former House GOP colleagues on Saturday with a sobering thought: They lost the tea-party activists in 2006, now go win 'em back.

The former House GOP leader told the lawmakers gathered on the third day of the issues retreat that if they worked hard, it would be possible to win back the “small-government, grass-roots conservatives.”

From Cincinnati.com:
Tea Partiers aim to remake local GOP
by Howard Wilkinson

A year ago, when the Tea Party movement first stirred to life, it had to shout to be noticed, with big public rallies that drew thousands of conservatives to places like Fountain Square and VOA Park in West Chester - citizens angry about government bailouts, billions of tax dollars for economic stimulus and political parties that didn't seem to be listening.

Now, though, the speech-making over loudspeakers to angry throngs seems to have given way to a much quieter form of protest - one in which Tea Party activists, here and across the country, are trying to either take over or gain a foothold in the political parties from the ground up.

They are doing it here by the hundreds by filing as candidates in the May 4 primary election for the office of precinct executive, the lowest rung of the political party structure.

American Spectator:
Grassroots vs. Establishment Battles Shape GOP Primaries
by Robert Stacy McCain

The Tea Party movement continues to shake things up in the Republican Party, as contested primaries provide opportunities for grassroots activists to show their strength against the GOP establishment.

A crucial test will come in Tuesday's Illinois primary, where political newcomer Adam Andrzejewski has gotten a surge of support, with a Tea Party event yesterday in Chicago where the temperature was 7 degrees:

The Tea Party movement continues to shake things up in the Republican Party, as contested primaries provide opportunities for grassroots activists to show their strength against the GOP establishment.

A crucial test will come in Tuesday's Illinois primary, where political newcomer Adam Andrzejewski has gotten a surge of support, with a Tea Party event yesterday in Chicago where the temperature was 7 degrees: ...

...Despite the frigid weather, the Tea Partiers and other self-described "true" conservatives made their way to Federal Plaza Friday afternoon. There, they welcomed their newest hero, Republican gubernatorial candidate Adam Andrzejewski.

"New ideas are required by new people. Real reform requires a new generation of leadership," said Andrzejewski.

Andrzejewski, a Hinsdale businessman who made millions selling telephone books, vows not to raise taxes and to cut, cut, cut spending, as he says. His rhetoric has resonated with the Republican right.

"We need more people to step up to the plate for hard-working Americans who have the morals and can go in and get our country back," said Kathy Hurst, Tea Party member.

Lech Walesa's appearance yesterday with Andrzejewski helped generate extensive media coverage. One Illinois source reports that the campaign is sending out a mailer featuring the former Polish president's endorsement that will go to a list of more than 200,000 Polish-American voters in the state.

Obama, Holder and a BIG Mistake

Powerline has a post by Scott Johnson discussing the whole mismanagement of Eric Holder's justice department and the agenda driven purpose behind it.

In designating the mastermind of 9/11 and his co-conspirators who are detained in Guantanamo for trial in federal court in Manhattan, cloaking them with the rights of American citizens under the Constitution of the United States, Holder sought to give them their "day in court." He also sought to "t[each] the entire world about who we are but also the basic principles of rule of law."...

.....Following Obama's higher wisdom, Eric Holder established an insane protocol. It is titled "Determination of Guantanamo Cases Referred for Prosecution." It establishes a presumption that explains the cases of KSM et al. and Umar Abdulmutallab. The second paragraph of the protocol sets forth the "Factors for Determination of Prosecution." It provides: "There is a presumption that, where feasible. referred cases will be prosecuted in an Article III [federal] court, in keeping with traditional principles of federal prosecution."

The Obama administration's determination to give KSM and Umar Abdulmutallab their "day in court" is untenable. It is untenable as a matter of law and it is untenable as a matter of tradition. It is indeed, as Thomas Sowell holds, an obscenity. It is also untenable as a matter of politics. Congress has adopted a system of military commissions for unlawful enemy combatants that conforms to the Supreme Court's requirements. That is where the trials of KSM and Abdulmutallab belong.

Much more in the article but you need to read it for yourself.

The IPCC Report is so Flawed

We don't get as much reporting on it here in the US as they do in the UK.  This is another article from the Telegraph.

UN climate change panel based claims on student dissertation and magazine article

By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent and Rebecca Lefort

The United Nations' expert panel on climate change based claims about ice disappearing from the world's mountain tops on a student's dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine.

Just think about that. World wide economies are being structured on what is mainly opinion and the religion of anthropogenic global warming.  Read the rest of this article, it is mind boggling what a piece of drivel the world has been fed by scientist who are making profound judgements in areas that are not in their field and more importantly not based in fact. Read it!

Jobs and how to create them

I've been listening to Meet the Press and the commentators are discussing "job creation." Of course, their emphasis is on "government job creation." All of their offerings are  what government can do to create jobs. NO ONE seems to get it. The private sector creates job growth.

NO ONE mentioned how jobs are kept down in the energy industries, coal, oil and gas, and yes, even nuclear, by restrictions. Government created restrictions. I kept wanting to shout at them, "open up drilling, stop threatening the coal industry. Stop the restrictions. Let us drill baby drill, let us create new nuclear power plants, let them put in wind power off Ted Kennedy's estate."

How many jobs could be created in that way? what are they thinking? Well, they just aren't thinking. They have the liberal blinders on.

Who ARE the Voters?

This article in the Telegraph(UK) says it is the same group in the US as in the UK, and President Obama has learned his lesson on who that would be. What do you think?
Barack Obama finds out who really holds power
by Janet Daley

Barack Obama is in big political trouble, so he has to make an explicit appeal to American middle-class voters. Gordon Brown is in big political trouble, so he has to make an explicit appeal to traditional British working-class voters. The funny thing is that these two groups are really the same sort of people. In the US, "middle class" means "middle income" – not the rich, or even highly educated professionals, but ordinary working people in skilled blue-collar or clerical white-collar jobs, or who run small businesses (such as "Joe the Plumber", who became John McCain's most famous supporter during the presidential race). But in Britain, "middle-class" means "bourgeois", with all the Marxist connotations, and it is as much a cultural as an economic classification. It is possible to be middle-class in one's tastes and attitudes (toward education, for example) and quite poor, or to be working-class in one's tastes and attitudes, and quite wealthy – a phenomenon that the British tend to find utterly hilarious.

We all know Great Britain has, or had, a well defined class system that the US has not. At least ours is not as defined and many people pass through several levels in their lifetimes. Read on to get the whole article here.

We were Warned by President Obama

Even while he was campaigning we kept hearing what he was, what he planned to do. Many of us knew it was coming, we just didn't think it would happen so soon.
Frank Meile writing in his Editors 2cents at the Daily Interlaken says:
America: Are we being ‘transformed’ and ... if so ... into what?

The week before he was elected president, President Obama made the bold statement that, “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”

No doubt, at the time, most of us would have written this off as the usual overblown rhetoric of a politician pumped up on his own favorable poll numbers. Instead, it turned out to be a warning.

We don’t have time or space here to recap all of the “changes” brought about in the first year of the Obama administration, but among the biggies were the federal government takeover of major components of finance and industry (also known as socialization), the appointment of communist sympathizers to major posts in the administration, and the dismantling of national security policies that had kept us mostly safe for the eight years since Sept. 11. 2001.

What has become abundantly clear in the last year is that the president not only has a goal of “fundamentally transforming” the country, he also has a plan for how to do so. That plan might be compared to science fiction writer A.E. van Vogt’s strategy for writing a novel, which was to make sure at least one new thing happened on every page — a new character, a new plot twist, a new gimmick, a new gadget — anything to make you forget he was not really a very good writer to begin with...

....It turns out that if you want to fundamentally transform a country, the best way to accomplish that is to introduce so many revolutionary ideas into the mix that some of them just have to slip through. The last month or so has been typical...

...This month, it was announced that the president had signed another executive order creating yet another “new idea” in governance. This one has gotten very little attention. According to the official press release on Jan. 11, “The President today signed an Executive Order establishing a Council of Governors to strengthen further the partnership between the Federal Government and State Governments to protect our Nation against all types of hazards. When appointed, the Council will be reviewing such matters as involving the National Guard of the various States; homeland defense; civil support; synchronization and integration of State and Federal military activities in the United States; and other matters of mutual interest pertaining to National Guard, homeland defense, and civil support activities.”

Interesting idea, but what exactly is it? Does this perhaps fulfill President Obama’s campaign statement that, “We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded...”

...Remember, when one thing keeps happening after another, in rapid-fire succession, “you are not supposed to ask questions.” If there is anything that better sums up the magical first year of the Obama administration, I don’t know what it is.

For a better idea of Mr. Miele's point, read the whole editorial.
Note: all bolding is Rockport Conservatives.

President Obama Visited the GOP Retreat

The discussions were lively. If you haven't seen it already, try to catch a repeat as it airs on C-span.  I've noticed little tidbits of it scattered around the blogosphere today. This is an important one I found via Gateway Pundit, be looking for others:

Real Clear Politics reported on this shocking admission:

“The last thing I will say, though — let me say this about health care and the health care debate, because I think it also bears on a whole lot of other issues. If you look at the package that we’ve presented — and there’s some stray cats and dogs that got in there that we were eliminating, we were in the process of eliminating. For example, we said from the start that it was going to be important for us to be consistent in saying to people if you can have your — if you want to keep the health insurance you got, you can keep it, that you’re not going to have anybody getting in between you and your doctor in your decision making. And I think that some of the provisions that got snuck in might have violated that pledge.“

Of course, if the health care talks would have been televised on CSPAN as Obama promised we might have seen the democrats “sneak” this provision into their 2,000 page health care package.

No wonder most Americans don’t trust Obama or democrats.

Those last two links show other untruths from the President.

Republican Debates of January 29th

Can be found at these links at Alamo City Pundit:
* Replay: The Belo Debate Part I
* (related link)Replay: The Belo Debate Part II
* (related link)Replay: The Belo Debate Part III
* (related link)Replay: The Belo Debate Part IV
He also has a good discussion of the debate.  See it here.

The SEIU Wants to Stop Our Tea Parties

No surprise there. They are, however, trying to keep it quiet they are they ones behind that move.
From Gateway Pundits:

The progressives are not just trying to split the tea party movement from the Republican Party, they’re also trying to legitimize and destroy the tea party movement itself.

This website recently popped up on the internet:

The Tea Party Is Over-

Our Mission: To prevent the Tea Party’s dangerous ideas from gaining legislative traction.

Lee Doren did his research and found out who is behind this anti-freedom website:

I just came across a new website titled: http://www.theteapartyisover.org/

It is paid for by the American Public Policy Committee. Well, according to opensecrets.org, the two donors for American Public Policy Committee this year are Patriot Majority and Patriot Majority West.  

However, according to opensecrets.org, the 2nd largest contributor in 2008 to Patriot Majority was SEIU and other top Unions around America.

It figures. When the SEIU is not out cracking heads and stomping on tea party vendors they’re working on other ways to destroy the tea party movement. They will do anything to force their radical agenda on America.

U.S. Formally Embraces Copenhagen Climate Deal

Headline from Junk Science. I guess it doesn't matter how much scandal has emerged from all the global warming "science" there are still those in control who see it as a major way to grab power over every facet of our lives.

WASHINGTON - The United States on Thursday formally notified the United Nations that it has embraced the Copenhagen Accord setting nonbinding goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that was negotiated last month.

Todd Stern, the top U.S. climate negotiator for the Obama administration, also gave notice that, as expected, it will aim for a 17 percent reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming by 2020, with 2005 as the base year.

A final emissions reduction target will be submitted, the U.S. said, once the U.S. Congress enacts domestic legislation requiring carbon pollution cuts. But such legislation has an uncertain fate in the Senate. (Reuters)

I certainly hope it  has an uncertain fate in the Senate.

Pat Buchanan is Not My Favorite Talking Head or Politician

But Pat Buchanan has an article I completely agree with via Lucianne from Creators.com:
Crisis of the Government Party

President Obama is in a dilemma from which there appears to be no easy or early escape.

Democrats are the Party of Government. They feed it, and it feeds them. The larger government grows, the more agencies that are created, the more bureaucrats who are hired, the more people who become beneficiaries, the more deeply entrenched in power the Party of Government becomes. 

At the local, state and federal level, there are 19 million to 20 million government employees. And if one takes only Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and earned income tax credits, we are talking of scores of millions who depend on government checks for the necessities of their daily life.... 

....The progressives thought that with the takeover of both houses of Congress by veto-proof Democratic majorities, and the election of the most progressive of the candidates in the Democratic primaries save Dennis Kucinich, a new Progressive Era was at hand.

Another New Deal, another Great Society. And early passage of a stimulus package of $787 billion, nearly 6 percent of the entire economy packed into a single bill, seemed to confirm that happy days were here again.... 

....But, at the same time, the federal takeover of AIG, General Motors and Chrysler and the bailouts of Fannie, Freddie and the Wall Street banks were igniting a Perot-style prairie fire that manifested itself in Tea Party rallies in the spring and town-hall protests in August.... 

....Came November, Republican victories in Virginia and New Jersey showed that the grass-roots rebellion was real and broad-based. This was confirmed by Scott Brown's astonishing upset in Massachusetts, where a state Obama won by 26 points went Republican by 6 points, with Brown capturing a Senate seat held by the Kennedy brothers since 1952.

 Talk about a fire bell in the night. 

Obama's dilemma, evident in his State of the Union, is that the progressives, who were indispensable to his victories over Hillary, now feel betrayed, especially with apparent abandonment of health insurance reform, while conservative Democrats and independents, who were indispensable in giving Obama his November victory, are angry and alienated and disposed to vote Republican to stop what they see as America's plunge into socialism.

I've copied only the most relevant paragraphs here, go read the rest here.

Christmas Day Bomber and the Rush to call it Criminal

Charles Krauthammer explains

"The real scandal surrounding the failed Christmas Day airline bombing was not the fact that a terrorist got on a plane -- that can happen to any administration, as it surely did to the Bush administration -- but what happened afterward when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was captured and came under the full control of the U.S. government.

After 50 minutes of questioning him, the Obama administration chose, reflexively and mindlessly, to give the chatty terrorist the right to remain silent. Which he immediately did, undoubtedly denying us crucial information about al-Qaeda in Yemen, which had trained, armed and dispatched him.

We have since learned that the decision to Mirandize Abdulmutallab had been made without the knowledge of or consultation with (1) the secretary of defense, (2) the secretary of homeland security, (3) the director of the FBI, (4) the director of the National Counterterrorism Center or (5) the director of national intelligence (DNI). "

Krauthammer goes on to discuss what happened and why it was so dreadfully disastrous for our national security.  Read his whole editorial here

Obama Doubles His Bet

according to Jonah Goldberg writing in the Houston Chronicle (originally ran in NRO):
Obama continues to let everything ride on bad bet

In 1964, Barry Goldwater gave an uncompromisingly conservative and liberty-loving speech to the Republican Convention. A reporter in the audience couldn't believe his ears. “My God! He's going to run as Barry Goldwater!”

I had a similar reaction to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address....

...So what was Obama's bet? He believed that he was elected to usher in a new progressive era, a new New Deal. Unfortunately for his wager, every significant election since November 2008 has refuted the sagacity of this gamble. In New Jersey, in Virginia and even in Massachusetts, voters have said that is not the change they were looking for. The rosy scenario for Democrats is that they will “only” lose 20 to 30 seats in the coming midterm elections. If we were at the dawn of a new New Deal, you would expect voters to be ratifying Obama's actions. That's what they did for FDR. Not so for BHO.

And yet there the president stands, mocking his opponents and the ignorant rubes who don't understand his system as he says in word and deed, “Let it ride.”

This is just a few paragraphs out of a more detailed article, read it all here.

Another gambler analogy from J.C. Arenas in American Thinker blog:

Obama's gambling problem

Last night, great expectations were abound. With his job approval in free fall and congressional supermajority now belonging to the ages, many pundits expected the president to use the State of the Union address as an opportunity to take a "hard-pivot" to the center of the political spectrum. But rather than walking away from what has thus far been nothing but a losing table, Obama dug in his heels, ordered another vodka martini, and doubled down on radical liberalism....

....The realist would have acknowledged how fortunate he was to learn so much over the last year and cognizant of the reality that there would be much to learn in the future. Going through that learning process would have resulted in the formation of a better leader. But Obama won't be that realist, nor ultimately, that better leader. Unfortunately, last night served as a reminder to this nation that it will continue to be led by the gambler who uncontrollably picks up the dice, convinced that he's just one roll away from regaining all of his chips. But if Obama keeps gambling, we'll be the ones who lose everything.

As always read the the paragraphs in between here.

An Affirmative Action Nation

As James Lewis at American Thinker writes of An Affirmative Action President, I'm thinking that is not all that affirmative action has caused, then I see in his article he addresses the whole problem.

You don't pick brain surgeons by the color of their skin. You pick them by competence only. Same thing with airplane pilots. But we have allowed the profoundly irrational liberal media to persuade the American public that we are supposed to pick a U.S. president by affirmative action. Obama was elected to universal Hosannas because he is black. It wasn't a secret. That's why the Left around the world went into ecstasies when Obama ran and got elected.

We've been using affirmative action to hire and promote teachers and cops and to popularize movie stars and media heroes. We've had a generation of affirmative action agitprop, 24/7/365. Hillary Clinton was going to dictate racial and gender preferences for medical school admissions under HillaryCare. You can bet that reverse-racism is all over the 2,200 pages of ObamaCare. It's reverse-racism forever!

In America today, competence is suspect, and incompetence gets all the attention. Yet competence is what keeps us alive

I Didn't watch the Speech

Here are some links to commenters who did:

Statist Quo from the editors at NRO
Everything changes except President Obama. His agenda doesn’t change. He has had no second thoughts about the wisdom of his health-care policies, or any of his policies; resistance is always and only a reason for redoubling. Also unchanging is the condescension with which he articulates his agenda: He faulted himself for not explaining health care well enough to the easily confused American public. The same familiar strawmen dot the landscape of his rhetoric.

Justice Alito openly disparages Obama's critical remark about Supreme Court decision
WASHINGTON - Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito didn't like hearing President Barack Obama publicly criticize the high court's ruling removing corporate campaign spending limits — and he didn't try to hide it.

Ann Althouse call it Dull, Cheap and Successful
You know what, Jonathan Chait? You are wrong. Obama's speeches have always been bland. Look into your own head to discover why you heard "exquisite prose" and "unusually high intellectual level."
 
A. J. Strata at Stratasphere
Our President’s Unforgivable Omission
Who were these people sitting with the first lady at the State of the Union speech?
They were the heroes of the Ft Hood Massacre – who did not receive the call out from the President they deserved. That was a horrible omission by a young and inexperienced President more interested in his legacy than anything else. It was unforgivable.
AJ live blogged it-so be sure to read all he has to say.
 
Cato Institute Scholars Analyze the 2010 State of the Union Address.
via Instapundit
Also at Instapundit: HEH: Obama: You Liked My Speech? Please Send Money! “About an hour after the end of his State of the Union address, in which he called for an end to the partisan conflict that has plagued his first year in office, President Obama sent out a political fundraising appeal through his permanent campaign organization, Organizing for America.”
 
Matthews clarifies: Obama's 'taken us beyond black and white' in Poliitco.
I didn't link to his declaration originally but this will give you the whole thing.  He talks so much about race I can only conclude he is a racist as he seems to be overly conscious of it.
 
And to end it all on a high note here is Don Surber's Photo of the day.

Advice to the Republican Party

From young activist Daniel Greenfield. I found it at Canada Free Press but it is cross posted at his blog.

Behind the Republican Party's Malaise

Scott Brown's victory and Obama's falling poll numbers were virtually undeserved gifts to a Republican party that for the most part spent the year on the sidelines, benefiting from grassroots activism without actually doing much about it. It's little wonder that Michael Steele is widely hated or that there's talk of a third party. But to fix the Republican party, it's important to understand what is behind its malaise.

The Republican Party is Conservative

- I don’t mean conservative in the sense of socially conservative or fiscally conservative, but being risk averse and when in doubt sticking to the safest path. The party best known for Lincoln or Roosevelt or Reagan, has been defined more by Taft, Eisenhower and Bush Sr. That aversion to risk and making waves has helped Republican candidates be seen as safer and more traditional leaders, and kept the party afloat, but has made it unable to cope with sudden change.

As I wrote in my article, “A Revolutionary Party Once Again”, the Republican party needs to be able to fight for change, instead of defending a constantly eroding conformity. The left’s counterculture has successfully shifted the battle lines over and over again, because they played cultural offense, while conservatives have played cultural defense. That same phenomenon has occurred in virtually every arena, and politically it has left Republicans ahead on points, but without an actual agenda.

In the aftermath of the 2008 elections, the Republican party was disoriented, confused and lost… because its leadership has no real understanding of how to turn weakness into strength, or to agitate against those in power. And so it was left to the Tea Partiers and others to express the anger that so many Americans were feeling....

....The Republican Party Fears Extremism

- Liberalism’s cultural dominance meant that they were able to define conservative Republicans as either evil bankers or klansmen. The Republican party has since worked hard to avoid being associated with anything that smacks of extremism, not that this changes the false image that has been created at all....

...The Republican Party is Playing it Safe

- (See The Republican Party is Conservative) The Republican party chose to wait out Obama’s first year and let him destroy himself. Arguably they can claim that the strategy worked out nicely for them. The party’s fortunes are on the rise again, with very little risk to anyone besides Joe Wilson. But that is exactly the problem.

Be sure read the whole thing.  I think you will see a well thought out discussion of what we as a Rockport 912 group are all about.
 
Here is the bio on Daniel Greenfield:
Daniel Greenfield is a New York City based writer and freelance commentator. “Daniel comments on political affairs with a special focus on the War on Terror and the rising threat to Western Civilization. He maintains a blog at Sultanknish.blogspot.com.
Daniel can be reached at: sultanknish@yahoo.com

Climategate News from Canada

Climate agency going up in flames
Exit of Canada's expert a sure sign IPCC in trouble
by Terence Corcoran

A catastrophic heat wave appears to be closing in on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. How hot is it getting in the scientific kitchen where they've been cooking the books and spicing up the stew pots? So hot, apparently, that Andrew Weaver, probably Canada's leading climate scientist, is calling for replacement of IPCC leadership and institutional reform.

If Andrew Weaver is heading for the exits, it's a pretty sure sign that the United Nations agency is under monumental stress. Mr. Weaver, after all, has been a major IPCC science insider for years. He is Canada Research Chair in Climate Modelling and Analysis at the University of Victoria, mastermind of one of the most sophisticated climate modelling systems on the planet, and lead author on two recent landmark IPCC reports.

For him to say, as he told Canwest News yesterday, that there has been some "dangerous crossing" of the line between climate advocacy and science at the IPCC is stunning in itself.

Lots more at this site.

Will the Real President Obama Please Stand Up?

A few of this blogs readers remember the TV show "To Tell the Truth."   Three people claimed to be who one of them actually was. At the end of the segment the moderator would say  "would the real whoever, please stand up."  Victor Davis Hanson hits this theme in his latest article in  National Review on President Obama.

Obama versus Obama
Will the real Barack Obama (if there is one) please stand up?

There is little need any more to offer consistent opposition to Barack Obama, since he himself is already running hard against the many previous incarnations of Barack Obama.

The first one we met was Barack the radical progressive, in his primary campaign against Hillary. Then in the general election we were introduced to the centrist Obama, who promised to invade Pakistan if need be, called for an end to partisanship, and lectured about fiscal sobriety.

Then with congressional majorities, soaring public support, and obsequious media attention came the leftist ideologue President Obama, who tried to ram through a statist health-care regime, gobbled up private enterprises, and gave us Anita Dunn and Van Jones.

Now we are back to sorta centrist Obama, who is going to fight terror, not apologize any more to the Muslim world, and freeze spending rather than give us another $2 trillion in debt.

These serial reset Obamas are quite astonishing even for a politician.

Professor Hanson then goes into details. Read it all.

We Need to Work on the Education Establishment

The information in this article is not news, but it is alarming. Children are our most precious resource, it is disheartening to think of the many subtle ways they are indoctrinated to the liberal (progressive) way of thinking. This is from American Thinker Blog.
Liberal assault on education

by Jason Abston

According to various polls, many educators at all levels consider themselves to be liberal. This political ideology often makes its way into the classroom.

While some liberal educators do a good job at educating students, it is unfortunate that others are more interested in promoting their political views. Various news stories in the fall of 2009 highlighted elementary teachers leading students in singing praises to the Obama administration.

The textbooks educators use are often a tool of indoctrination reflecting their ideologies. When a particular text teaches something contrary to that ideology, the educator often avoids the topic.

Texas is currently undergoing debates on the content of textbooks for public schools that may have dramatic implications for everyone. Fox News says that book publishers develop material for the rest of the nation based on Texas.

He goes on to explain this all starts in the  education of the classroom teachers. He is right.  Keep your eye on this discussion in further news from all media. Read the rest of todays article here.

Democrats are Trying to Drive a Wedge Between GOP and Tea Partiers

From Politico, via Gateway Pundit:

Dems 2010 Strategy: Drive Wedge Between Tea Party & GOP
by Jim Hoft

After getting trounced in Massachusetts, Democrats distributed a memo this week that details their plan for the 2010 elections. They hope to drive a wedge between tea party activists and the Republican Party.

The Politico reported:
Democrats are looking for someone to blame for their electoral woes — and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Robert Menendez is working hard to make sure it’s not him.
Showing that they’ve learned the lesson of Massachusetts, Menendez and his staff will distribute a memo Tuesday advising Democratic campaign managers to frame their opponents early — and to drive a wedge between moderate voters and tea-party-style conservatives.

This may not be too hard to do.  We must be vigilant in moving toward the same goals, returning America to it's constitutional foundations.

Climategate,Glaciergate, now Amazongate

Read all the spectacular gates at Climate Depot.  They have all the links.
I8 links and stories to all the scandals.  Why this is not getting more big story play in the networks, cable and print media, I don't know. Wait, maybe I do, it doesn't fit their agenda.
Update: Thanks to  http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/ for the link. Now how about you folks reading the whole blog.  http://rockportconservatives.blogspot.com/

Constitutional Scholars Needed

Tony Blankley has an article in the Washington Times of what the 17th amendment has done to harm the 10th amendment. 

To re-empower our states Repeal the 17th Amendment to shift influence out of Washington

It is a detailed discussion so I won't chop it up into segments here.  Go Read It.

The Report Card Shows an F

Newsweek, definitely not a "right-wing rag" has an article about the WMD report:

WMD Panel Gives an F to Obama and Congress for Failing to Prepare for Bioweapons Attack

by Michael Isikoff

The Obama administration and Congress get an F for failing to prepare for a biological terrorist attack—a “national security” risk that is getting greater “by the day,” according to the director of a blue-ribbon federal panel set up to study the issue.

The panel—chaired by former Democratic senator (and intelligence-committee chairman) Bob Graham and former GOP senator Jim Talent—concluded more than a year ago that there was better than a 50-50 chance that Al Qaeda or some other terrorist group would use weapons of destruction somewhere in the world in the next five years.

Since then, the risks of such an attack have only gotten greater, said Randell Larsen, the executive director of the panel, in an interview. “The further we go down the road, the easier it gets to make a biological weapon,” he told Declassified. “It’s getting easier every day.”....

....But the panel says the Obama administration and Congress get the lowest possible grade by failing to respond to one of its most important recommendations: taking steps to prepare vaccines, train medical workers, and conduct environmental cleanups in the event that a terrorist group unleashes anthrax or other biological weapons on the U.S. homeland. One development that underscored how woefully the government is prepared for such an attack was the problems encountered getting and distributing vaccines to deal with the H1N1 virus last year.

Read it all, more disturbing information than you may want to know.

Liberal Medias Drug Addiction?

HOPEIUM - noun as used in this article from Big Journalism:

What a Bringdown: Did the MSM Get Too High on Hopeium?

posted by Ron Futrell

It can be a powerful drug. I’ve seen many of my media friends swept off their feet by its incredible power and influence. Hopeium. Oh, the mere sight or sound of the junk can cause the most callous and caustic reporter to wither and melt like Nancy Pelosi during a free Botox party.

The first time the media heard Barack Obama use the phrase “Hope”, they were hooked.

It explains what caused NBC’s Chris Matthews to get the “thrill up going up my leg”, as Barack Obama spoke. It explains why ABC’s George Stephanopoulos and his wife cried on Inauguration Day. Maybe it explains what Evan Thomas of Newsweek was thinking when he proclaimed Obama is, “sort of god.” Here’s the full quote so you have the context:

I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God.

Timothy Leary would love this. That’s some powerful stuff. High on hopeium.

I like this new word, it's very descriptive word for what happened.  Read it all.

Win An All Expense Trip to Cophehagen

That's what friends and colleagues of Nancy Pelosi did just by traveling with her, and by the way that included her. CBS News (yes, that CBS news) reported the trip costs were over a million  dollars.

Congress Went to Denmark, You Got the Bill

Congressional expense reports there's new light shed on the Copenhagen Climate Summit in Denmark and how much it cost taxpayers.

CBS News Investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports official filings and our own investigation show at least 106 people from the House and Senate attended - spouses, a doctor, a protocol expert and even a photographer.

Read the Congressional Expense Report

For 15 Democratic and 6 Republican Congressmen, food and rooms for two nights cost $4,406 tax dollars each. That's $2,200 a day - more than most Americans spend on their monthly mortgage payment.

CBS News asked members of Congress and staff about whether they're mindful that it's public tax dollars they're spending. Many said they had never even seen the bills or the expense reports.

Copenhagen Congressional Junket

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., is a key climate change player. He went to Copenhagen last year. Last week, we asked him about the $2,200-a-day bill for room and food.

"I can't believe that," Rep. Waxman said. "I can't believe it, but I don't know."

But his name is in black and white in the expense reports. The group expense report was filed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. She wouldn't talk about it when our producer tried to ask.

At least Mr. Waxman has a record of being dedicated to working on global warming, for that I will give him a pass on going to the summit; the others, not so much.

Read all the links in the article to get the full story.

don't bring home the bacon (PORK)!

Chuck Todd seemed to understand that concept. From Newsbusters we find this:
Chuck Todd: Obama Can't Buy GOP Votes Because of Tea Parties

NBC's Chuck Todd on Sunday said the Tea Party movement has made it impossible for President Obama to buy the Republican votes he needs to pass his agenda.

Appearing on "Meet the Press," Todd told his fellow panelists, "I think the most striking thing about the minority party today...is that a Republican can't go home, and it's mostly because of this tea party crowd, cannot go home and sell a piece of pork that they got from Washington."

In Todd's view, this makes it tough for Obama because "it's not as if he can trade, you know, go and have these trades with a Susan Collins or Olympia Snowe, or let's say Lamar [Alexander]... or something like this, because they're not getting a benefit at home of bringing something back"

I wouldn't be so bold as to say "Mission Accomplished", but this is a thrill to read. See the whole transcript or watch the video here.

Is It Morning in South America?

Sometime we forget how politics in the southern portion of our hemisphere will affect us.
The Washington Post has an editorial on what has been happening while we were pre-occupied with other news.  I think it is part of the trend that seems to taking Europe to a more conservative point of view.  

How Hugo Chavez's revolution crumbled

By Jackson Diehl
While the world has been preoccupied with the crisis in Haiti, Latin America has quietly passed through a tipping point in the ideological conflict that has polarized the region -- and paralyzed U.S. diplomacy -- for most of the past decade.

The result boils down to this: Hugo Chávez's "socialism for the 21st century" has been defeated and is on its way to collapse.

During the past two weeks, just before and after the earthquake outside Port-au-Prince, the following happened: Chávez was forced to devalue the Venezuelan currency, and impose and then revoke massive power cuts in the Venezuelan capital as the country reeled from recession, double-digit inflation and the possible collapse of the national power grid. In Honduras, a seven-month crisis triggered by the attempt of a Chávez client to rupture the constitutional order quietly ended with a deal that will send him into exile even as a democratically elected moderate is sworn in as president.

Last but not least, a presidential election in Chile, the region's most successful economy, produced the first victory by a right-wing candidate since dictator Augusto Pinochet was forced from office two decades ago. Sebastián Piñera, the industrialist and champion of free markets who won, has already done something that no leader from Chile or most other Latin American nations has been willing to do in recent years: stand up to Chávez....

.... The outcome is a victory for the United States, which was virtually the only country that backed the democratic election that broke the impasse. Honduras is the end of Chávez's crusade to export his revolution to other countries.

Read it all.

We've Been Had - Feeling that Global Warming Pressure

Watts Up With That has the story.
BREAKING NEWS: scientist admits IPCC used fake data to pressure policy makers

The IPCC is now damaged goods. Pachauri is toast, and nobody will be able to cite the IPCC AR4 again without this being brought up.

The Daily Mail’s David Rose in the UK broke this story, it is mind boggling fraud to prod “government action” and grants. Emphasis in red mine.

From the Daily Mail:

The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.

Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.

Folks, this has cost a fortune of OUR money, from all the scientists who used this scam to get grants, change our laws, our school books, plus who knows what else. Our whole way of thinking has been changed as a shrewd political power grab by those who want to change our way of living by the luddites and neo-luddites,  The Greenies.

Sarah Palin Wins Again

Another one of those nusiance ethics lawsuits against Sarah Palin has been shot down.
According to the New York Times:
Ruling Backs Palin’s Use of Private E-Mail for State Work

An Alaska judge has sided with former Gov. Sarah Palin in a lawsuit over e-mail messages, finding that state law does not forbid the use of private e-mail accounts to conduct state business.

The ruling Friday by Judge Patrick J. McKay of Anchorage Superior Court stems from a lawsuit filed by a critic of Ms. Palin, Andree McLeod. Ms. McLeod argued that Ms. Palin and the governor’s office had a responsibility to save e-mail messages related to state business as public records, regardless of the accounts they were sent through.

The issue arose from a 2008 records request by Ms. McLeod that showed that Ms. Palin and members of her staff had been using private e-mail accounts. The traffic uncovered, though, was heavily redacted for what were deemed reasons of privacy. Ms. McLeod argued through her lawyer that use of private accounts obstructed the people’s right to inspect public records.

Her opponents have blinders on if they still do not understand why she had to resign to save the state for another Republican governor, further moneys spent on harrassment lawsuits and having a governor who had to spent time away from state business fighting said nusiance lawsuits.

GOP the beneficiary of public discontent

“Pride goeth before destruction,” the Good Book says, “a haughty spirit before a fall.” Republicans learned that proverb the hard way in 2006.

Jonathan Gurwitz of the San Antonio Express News nails it with this column that details how the Democrats are repeating the same pattern that cost the Republicans the last election. Below is an excerpt of his key point. (Click Here to go read the whole thing.)

Democrats swiftly unlearned all the lessons of the GOP's mighty fall. They criticized the prodigal spending of the Bush years, then doubled down on bailouts, clunkers and a pork-laden stimulus. They pledged to clean out the culture of corruption, then protected the leadership positions of John Murtha and Charles Rangel. They said they would keep lobbyists out, then quietly crafted exceptions that put influence peddlers into the Obama administration.

They promised transparency, then slammed the doors shut for back room deals on the most important legislative measure in a half-century. They vowed to post bills online 72 hours in advance, then voted in the dead of night on legislation they had not even read. They talked about an America that was purple, then tried to ram through a true blue agenda that is a radical shift from the constitutional principles of limited government.

The worst mistake, however, was this. In one short year of one-party, supermajority rule, pretentious Democrats have turned every nonconformist into a political enemy.

Did you Hear This Good News?

Just another of the good news stories for us this week.
Shhh…US Marines Wrap Up Mission in Iraq– Victorious

Shhh… Don’t tell anyone. It may make George W. Bush look good. It may make Republicans look good.
It may shine light on the democrat’s awful record on national defense....  
The US Marines pulled out of Anbar Province today victorious....
  ...If we had a responsible media in this country this would be front page news.
Sadly, we don’t.
Thank you US Marines.
Thank you US military.
Thank you Republicans for standing strong.
Thank you George W. Bush.

This is from Gateway Pundit. I'm only putting some of it here, for more and photos go here.

Unions and the government bureaucracy

From Townhall.com
Most Union Members Are Govt Workers, Not Private Sector
Posted by: Meredith Jessup

From today's New York Times comes this gem of info:

For the first time in American history, a majority of union members are government workers rather than private-sector employees, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced on Friday.

In its annual report on union membership, the bureau undercut the longstanding notion that union members are overwhelmingly blue-collar factory workers. It found that membership fell so fast in the private sector in 2009 that the 7.9 million unionized public-sector workers easily outnumbered those in the private sector, where labor's ranks shrank to 7.4 million, from 8.2 million in 2008...

This is not a big surprise but it is alarming.  Read it all.

Attn B.H.O. -- It Is This Simple

Less is more at 4-Block World

Fascist, what does it mean? Who are the fascists?

If you are in doubt, read this article in the American Thinker    
      Dusting Off the Political F-Word
      by Mark W. Hendrickson, Ph.D.

Its use is shunned in polite company. It coarsens political discourse. Its introduction into conversation raises hackles and stirs emotions. It carries so much connotative baggage that its denotative significance is often totally eclipsed. It is a verbal bomb-thrower's delight: a virtual slap in the face, a dismissive epithet, the ultimate insult, shorthand for "You're a bad person and beneath contempt." I refer, of course, to the political F-word: "fascist."

This is an important work with background on what fascist actually are, and more importantly who they are. Read it all.

Another Home Run from Mark Steyn

Of course, he always hits it out of the park.  Read this one, it will make you laugh even though it is way too true. It's printed in the Orange County Register.

Mark Steyn: Brown's truckin', Obama shifts into reverse

So what went wrong? According to Barack Obama, the problem is that he overestimated you dumb rubes' ability to appreciate what he's been doing for you. "That I do think is a mistake of mine," the president told ABC's George Stephanopoulos. "I think the assumption was if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on this provision or that law or if we're making a good rational decision here, then people will get it."

But you schlubs aren't that smart. You didn't get it. And Barack Obama is determined to see that you do. So the president has decided that he needs to start "speaking directly to the American people."

Too long for here, read it all here.

Did They Really Need a Poll to Figure This Out?

From the Washington Post

New poll finds voter anger drove results of Mass. election

by Dan Balz and Jon Cohen

Dissatisfaction with the direction of the country, antipathy toward federal-government activism and opposition to the Democrats' health-care proposals drove the upset election of Republican senatorial candidate Scott Brown in Massachusetts, according to a post-election survey of state voters.

The poll by The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University's School of Public Health underscores how significantly voter anger has turned toward Democrats in Washington and how dramatically the political landscape has shifted during President Obama's first year in office.

I guess you have to remember the Washington Post does have an agenda; is inside the beltway;  just doesn't really get what is going on here in flyover country and finds it hard to believe not everyone, even in Massachusetts, is wedded to belief in "the Kennedys" and the liberal agenda. 
There is a lot more information in the article, read it here.

Hold Congress Accountable

Mayor Bloomberg is not my favorite politician but he has hit the nail on the head with this one.

Bloomberg Blasts Obama's War On Wall Street, Says Congress Salaries Should Be Held In Escrow For 10 Years Until We See How Their Laws Worked Out
by Henry Blodget

New York mayor Mike Bloomberg is outraged by Washington's attack on his city's primary source of tax revenue. And he has lobbed in a tit-for-tat plan to hold Congress accountable, too.

Go read the rest of the story.

My Sentiments Exactly

From Real clear Politics
RNC Slams Specter for Being 'Rude and Arrogant'
by Tom Bevan

Seeking to capitalize on Snarlen(sp) Arlin's blunder the other day, RNC Co-Chairman Jan Larimer released the following statement:

“Senator Specter's rude and arrogant comments yesterday were not only disrespectful to Congresswoman Bachmann, but demeaning to all women. Senator Specter should immediately apologize to the Congresswoman and to all of his constituents for such disgraceful behavior. Women should never be treated as second class citizens. It's clear Senator Specter has spent too much time in Washington, and this November I am confident Pennsylvanians will choose a new direction.”

I started a draft post on this subject earlier this morning. This is a better way to put it. I had also included some remarks by Sarah Palin quoted in Gateway Pundit.

Sarah Palin sent out a Facebook message today in support of the March for Life that is being held on Friday. She told her supporters that real advocates are pro-life.

Life News reported:

“The pro-life movement is pro-women, and it empowers women with the message that we are strong enough and smart enough to be able to pursue education, vocations and avocations while giving life to a child,” she writes today.

“This movement is largely run by women. In fact, many of the earliest leaders of the women’s rights movement were pro-life – women like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Alice Paul, the author of the original Equal Rights Amendment in 1923, who said, ‘Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women,’” the Feminists for Life member adds.

I think both these events show an anti-woman bias exists in liberals. Arrogance and believing a feminists would take away the most feminine part of her body, her unborn child, seems to be extremely anti-woman to me.

From One of my favorite Bloggers

Tools of Renewal
Obama thinks a chicken can make a living by eating its own eggs.  Everything he tells us goes against common sense, history, and basic economics. Borrowing only leads to prosperity when you reasonably anticipate that the borrowed money will enable you to make enough money to repay it. Otherwise, the result is bankruptcy. Can a nation declare bankruptcy? I guess so, but it won’t protect us from harsh consequences. We may weasel out of our debts by devaluing the currency, but we’ll all become poorer, and we’ll have to pay higher interest to China the next time they lend to us. This is how bad credit works. Everything costs more. But it’s worth it, so we can have essential government services, such as the subsidy of multimillion-dollar studies to tell us why trout can’t fly.

The Defeat of the "Kennedy Seat"

From the Wall Street Journal:
The Fall of the House of Kennedy
The battle over who defines the work and institutions that make a nation thrive and grow.
by Daniel Henninger

....Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts will not endure unless Republicans clearly understand the meaning of "the machine" that he ran against and defeated.....

....The central battle in our time is over political primacy. It is a competition between the public sector and the private sector over who defines the work and the institutions that make a nation thrive and grow.

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy planted the seeds that grew the modern Democratic Party. That year, JFK signed executive order 10988 allowing the unionization of the federal work force. This changed everything in the American political system. Kennedy's order swung open the door for the inexorable rise of a unionized public work force in many states and cities.

This in turn led to the fantastic growth in membership of the public employee unions—The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the teachers' National Education Association.

They broke the public's bank. More than that, they entrenched a system of taking money from members' dues and spending it on political campaigns. Over time, this transformed the Democratic Party into a public-sector dependency.

This is a long and detailed article, a very important one, go read it all.

Limited Government

That's all we want. We want it locally, in our states and nationally.  I keep coming back to this headline
Brown’s Victory: The Declaration of Independents

What do independents want? In a word, limited government

I love that headline, it says it all. But there is more:

In the aftermath of Scott Brown’s stunning upset election victory in Massachusetts, pundits will be debating the meaning and political implications for weeks to come. However, one fact is incontrovertibly clear. The race hinged on the independent voters.

In Massachusetts, 50% of the registered voters are independent, as opposed to 37% Democratic and 12% Republican. In this week’s election, independents voted overwhelmingly for Brown, giving him a 52-to-47% victory — in a state where Barack Obama easily won 62% of the vote in 2008. This enormous swing shows that the independents represent a powerful political force that neither party can take for granted.

Independents are also the driving force behind the tea party rallies. Many tea party supporters have been quite explicit in warning that their opposition to the policies of our current Democratic president and Congress should not be mistaken as automatic support for the Republicans.

There is a lot more, go read it all.  It was written by Paul Hsieh.
So what do the independents want? In a word, limited government.

McCain/Feingold Bill

The Supreme Court has ruled against some of it.  ABOUT TIME!!!
Go here and here to read about it.

I Hope This is the Final Word on Healthcare

From YahooNews/AP
Pelosi: House lacks votes to OK Senate health bill
by Alan Fram

WASHINGTON – Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that she lacks the votes to quickly move the Senate's sweeping health overhaul bill through the House, a potentially devastating blow to President Barack Obama's signature issue.

Pelosi, D-Calif., made the comment to reporters after House Democrats held a closed-door meeting at which participants vented frustration with the Senate's massive version of the legislation.

On The Precipice

George Will writes on the Democrats in today's Washington Post:

"We are on the precipice of an achievement that's eluded Congresses and presidents for generations."

-- President Barack Obama, Dec. 15, on health-care legislation

Precipice, 1. a headlong fall or descent, esp. to a great depth.

-- Oxford English Dictionary

Trying to guarantee Americans the thrill of the precipice, the president dashed to Massachusetts on Sunday, thereby conceding that he had already lost Tuesday's Senate election, which had become a referendum on his signature program. By promising to cast the decisive 41st vote against the president's health-care legislation, the Republican candidate forced all congressional Democrats to contemplate this: Not even frenzied national mobilization of Democratic manpower and millions of dollars could rescue one of the safest Democratic seats in the national legislature from national dismay about the incontinent government expansion, of which that legislation is symptomatic.

Because the legislation is frightening and unpopular, Democrats have had to resort to serial bribery to advance it. Massachusetts voted immediately after the corruption of exempting, until 2018, union members from the tax on high-value health insurance plans. This tax was supposedly the crucial component of what supposedly was reform's primary goal: reducing costs.  

Read it all.

The Republican's New Problem

I don't think they get it. I didn't listen to any of the pundits today. Or read many of them. I was busy working to pay my taxes which will be due soon. But I want to send a message to Republicans now. And this is it:

You're next.

That's right. If you look at the "how" politics is done, there's not much difference between you and the elitist, socialists on the left. Oh yes, the Democrats definitely screwed the pooch this year, bribing and back-room dealing in ways that haven't been seen since bribery was made illegal. But in general, I have not forgotten that Republicans are just as bad.

They haven't reigned in government spending any time recently.
They haven't turned down sweetheart deals or pork for their states and districts.
They haven't taken a stand against the imminent domain ruling by the Supreme Court.
They haven't said no to lobbyists and special interests.
They haven't stood up and said, "NO! You cannot charge Navy Seals for punching captives!" (Especially after that training we put them through. We should reward them for capturing them alive.)
And they've been afraid to say those two little words that we all know are the inevitable conclusion of being patient with Iran. (Bombs away...)

So looky here Republican Representatives and Senators. You may be thinking you're on a comeback due to the Massachusetts win.

You're not. That win was a demonstration that Americans know right from wrong. Most of you do not. The members of congress with the fortitude to do the right thing is a very short list. And most of you are not on it. Washington, D.C., is currently a diseased political system. A machine that needs re-engineered. Replaced.

Not everyone, but most of you. So guess what...

You're next.

Lessons for Republicans, too

Vodkapudit quotes Professor Bainbridge:
Stephen Bainbridge on what ought to happen next:

The Democrats have now fumbled their opportunity, but that doesn’t mean that those of us who were fed up with Bush and the K Street Gang are ready to forgive and forget the GOP failings. They are going to have to convince us that they are again worthy of our trust.

How does the GOP go about doing so? Unlike some, I have no interest in seeing the GOP join hands with Obama for a few rounds of Kum Bay Yah followed by swallowing some version of Obama-lite. The GOP needs to articulate a positive program.

Yep. As the Tea Party movement shows, there’s a lot of voter frustration with the Democrats. And the fact that voters had to start a new movement, rather than flocking to the GOP, shows the Republicans — least the ones in Washington — still don’t get it.

Do they get it in Texas?  Do they get it in Rockport?  That may be our next job.

There is No Joy in Lake Wobegon

Garrison Keillor is upset with us. If you know his works watch out, he might start throwing tomatoes. h/t Michelle Malkin.

Note to Tea Partiers: Wake up and Smell the Coffee
by Garrison Keillor

The tea partiers are enjoying their day in the sun, but coffee is the beverage preferred by most Americans, and we don't have time to gang up and holler and wave our arms -- we prefer to sit quietly with coffee in hand and read a reliable newspaper and try to figure out what's going on in the world. Great heaps of dead bodies are moved by front-loaders and dumped, uncounted, unidentified, into open pits in a stricken country while people feast and walk treadmills on enormous cruise ships sailing a hundred miles off the coast en route to the Bahamas and Jamaica. That's the real world, not the paranoid hallucinations of the right.

(Yes, Garrison, that is all the fault of us right wingers, RC note)

And your high school civics teacher would not have given you a high mark for saying, as the Rev. Robertson did, that the earthquake in Haiti was God's judgment on voodoo. God has tolerated voodoo in Washington for years and not seen fit to shake the city yet. Priests and mojo men dance around the Capitol every day, waving skulls on sticks, scattering their magic powders, trying to stop progress with a hex, and God is content to observe them. So do we coffee drinkers. Government is in the hands of realists and in the end we shall prevail.

I'm not sure Mr. Keillor is still living in our real world. He's told too many tales I would guess, and doesn't know the difference between Lake Wobegon and real life in America, where the right wing works hard, whether or not they are above average and the clouds are not cloudy all day.  (okay, he never said that last part, its a cowboy song.)

Rasmussen Reports on Massuchesetts and the Tea Party Movement

We saw some of the results of the Tea Party Movement at work in Massachusetts last night.  A "money bomb,"  an online money raising fund by bloggers for Scott Brown raised more than $1,000,000 in 24 hours, much of it from Tea Partiers across the country. All of it by conservatives.  If you don't understand the importance of this go here to research it.
http://www.bing.com/search?FORM=IEFM1&q=money+bomb+for+Brown

From Rasmussen Reports today see how many Tea Partiers  are in Massachusetts - a liberal state.

A Rasmussen Reports Election Night survey finds that Massachusetts voters are evenly divided over the so-called Tea Party movement. Forty percent (40%) of those who voted in today's special election for the U.S. Senate have a favorable opinion of the Tea Party movement, while 41% regard it unfavorably.

Those figures include 23% with a Very Favorable opinion of the Tea Party movement and 29% with a Very Unfavorable opinion.

Most of those who earn between $60,000 and $100,000 a year have a favorable opinion of the movement.

Looking back, 51% of Massachusetts voters say the bank bailouts were a bad idea. Fifty-six percent (56%) also don't like the bailouts for the auto industry.Data released earlier in the evening showed that the health care issue was most important for voters in today’s election. Twenty-two percent (22%) of Democrats voted for the Republican candidate Scott Brown.

Thank You Massachusetts

title and article from American Spectator by Manon McKinnon

You stood up for yourselves, you went to the polls and -- hallelujah -- you did a great thing for the rest of us. Unlike you, we have been politically helpless to stop this march to dependency, this latest power grab, and this next government expansion into our lives that is wrongly dubbed "health care reform." You alone had the chance to stop it, and you did by electing Scott Brown to the United States Senate. You are America's heroes!
Long before you even went to the polls the opposition's excuse crowd was explaining why you were going to reject their candidate. You thought Martha Coakley was dull or arrogant or uninterested or unfriendly. She took breaks from campaigning; she didn't go door to door or stand in the cold to shake hands; and she made awful gaffes. Like she didn't even know who Curt Schilling is. So all those talking heads took to the airways to say what a lousy candidate she is, no wonder she lost. Certainly, they insisted, the choice made by the voters of the Bay State had nothing -- absolutely nothing -- to do with those issues that motivated the folks at all those town halls last summer. And definitely you were not thinking of the same issues that produced those events named after the original Boston Tea Party -- such as too much taxing and spending and government intrusion into our lives. Nope. You elected the candidate who feels the same way you do, but only because Ms. Coakley does not know a Red Sox from a Yankee.

But the rest of us suspect that you did have some other thoughts. We have a hunch that issues such as independence, self-reliance, individual initiative, and local responsibility are as much on your minds as they are on ours. That you know our freedoms are worth keeping and that you -- and we -- don't like being asked to give them up. Whether you call yourselves Democrats, Republicans or Independents, turning your rights and responsibilities over to bureaucrats is lousier than even Martha Coakley's campaign. So thank you, Massachusetts, thank you so much.

More Than One Victory to Celebrate Today

From Fox News:
Obama's TSA Nominee Withdraws Amid 'Political Agenda'

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration's choice to lead the Transportation Security Administration is withdrawing his nomination.

In a statement, Erroll Southers says he is withdrawing because his nomination has become a lightning rod for those with a political agenda. Obama tapped Southers to lead the TSA in September but his confirmation has been blocked by Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, who says he's worried Southers would allow TSA employees to join a labor union.

The White House says the president has accepted Southers' decision with great sadness.

I don't have much blogging time this morning but there is a  huge back story behind this, I may find the links and post them later today.

Email from 912 Coalition

A message to all members of THE 912 COALITION

Congratulation Fellow Patriots! The first of many battles has been won... the but revolution continues. Please join your State and Congressional District today to make sure we have the boots on the Ground need for 2010! Please... if you have not done so join your State Coalition NOW at: http://the912coalition.ning.com/page/state-communities

A Flock of Dead Ravens

I love that phrase, particularly when I see it in this context:
Tight Massachusetts race alarms California Dems

"For Boxer, a favorite Republican target, a GOP win in Massachusetts would be a particularly dark sign representing "not just the canary in the coal mine," said Wade Randlett, a leading Silicon Valley fundraiser for Obama. "It's the flock of dead ravens landing on the lawn."

Go read it all, this is way down in the article in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Al Queda Still Wants to Kill us by the 1,000's

Human Events highlights some details from a new book that shows the intelligence acquired from Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and how it has helped prevent many additional attacks against the US and other western nations.
This is only an excerpt from their article but it shows the how serious the information from KSM is.

Years later, an observant CIA officer notices that the activities of a cell being followed by British authorities appear to match KSM’s description of his plans for a Bojinka-style attack.

In an operation that involves unprecedented intelligence cooperation between our countries, British officials proceed to unravel the plot. On the night of Aug.9, 2006 they launch a series of raids in a northeast London suburb that lead to the arrest of two dozen al Qaeda terrorist suspects. They find a USB thumb-drive in the pocket of one of the men with security details for Heathrow airport, and information on seven trans-Atlantic flights that were scheduled to take off within hours of each other:

United Airlines Flight 931 to San Francisco departing at 2:15 p.m.;

Air Canada Flight 849 to Toronto departing at 3:00 p.m.;

Air Canada Flight 865 to Montreal departing at 3:15 p.m.;

United Airlines Flight 959 to Chicago departing at 3:40 p.m.;

United Airlines Flight 925 to Washington departing at 4:20 p.m.;

American Airlines Flight 131 to New York departing at 4:35 p.m; and

American Airlines Flight 91 to Chicago departing at 4:50 p.m.

They seize bomb-making equipment and hydrogen peroxide to make liquid explosives. And they find the chilling martyrdom videos the suicide bombers had prepared.

Today, if you asked an average person on the street what they know about the 2006 airlines plot, most would not be able to tell you much. Few Americans are aware of the fact that al Qaeda had planned to mark the fifth anniversary of 9/11 with an attack of similar scope and magnitude....

....In addition to helping break up these specific terrorist cells and plots, CIA questioning provided our intelligence community with an unparalleled body of information about al Qaeda....

...And in his first 48 hours in office, President Barack Obama shut the program down.

Read the whole article, it is a frightening account of our lack of intelligence to protect our country at the present time.