Breaking out the big money in order to save their Congressional majority:

At least two influential unions will spend close to $100 million on the 2010 election, with most of those funds going to protect incumbents.

Union officials told The Hill they plan to help endangered members — particularly freshmen — who made politically difficult votes in a year during which an anti-incumbent mood has filled the country.

Anti-incumbent? A bit – but its mostly an anti-Democrat mood. At any rate…

The unions see their very large monetary investment going down the drain. They’ve spent untold millions – stolen from their own members – to advance an ultra-liberal set of politicians to power in Washington, and now they fear power may be lost. They are doubling down.

Will it work? No. Money doesn’t buy elections. Corrupt politicians – especially on the left – think it does, but that is not true. Money can make it easier, but victory comes in spite of money, or the lack thereof.

But the unions will still pour it on – we’ll have a huge blast of union-paid lies aired courtesy of the dues of hard working union members, a large number of which prefer the Republicans. It will be a sad and disgusting spectacle – and it won’t affect the outcome in the slightest.

The great news:

Honolulu City Councilman Charles Djou has won the special election in urban Honolulu’s 1st Congressional District, the first Republican sent to Washington, D.C., to represent the Islands in two decades.

According to the state Office of Elections, Djou leads with 39.5 percent of the vote, followed by 30.8 percent for state Senate President Colleen Hanabusa and 27.6 percent for former congressman Ed Case. The remaining 11 other candidates attracted the rest of the vote.

The first of many such victories, I am sure, for the Republican party in 2010.

UPDATE: In Djou’s words – why he won;

“This is a momentous day,” Djou told a jubilant crowd at state party headquarters. “We have sent a message to the United States Congress. We have sent a message to the ex-governors. We have sent a message to the national Democrats! We have sent a message to the machine.

“We have told them that we will not stand idly by as our great nation is overburdened by too much taxes, too much debt and too much wasteful spending.”

That is it – and that is the ticket for victory in November.

Inquiring minds really do want to know – even in the MSM. Sestak says he was offered a bribe in return for backing out of the Pennsylvania Senate primary. People would like to know who in the White House made the offer:

Gibbs…managed to successfully not answer a question although it was asked of him 13 times in a row…

…So was he offered a bribe or not? ABC’s Jake Tapper took the first shot at Gibbs.

“Jake, I don’t have anything to add to what I said in March,” Gibbs replied.

Back then Gibbs didn’t answer the question either except by saying “whatever conversations have been had are not problematic.”

Tapper politely noted that he didn’t say anything in March. “Then I don’t have anything to add today,” Gibbs replied.

Fair enough. So how about if you don’t have anything to add, just starting from the beginning then? “Jake, I don’t have anything to add to that,” he said.

And on it went. Quite stupidly, too – its not something that will actually go away. In the heat and passion of the campaign, this will just bubble up more and more, especially as a GOP win in Pennsylvania may be crucial to whom controls Congress in 2011. This is the sort of drip-drip-drip scandal of which Watergates and Lewinskys are made.

The MSM is curious about it and I’m certain that Obama’s media team is issuing instructions that the question is not to be raised again. But it might not work as well as it has in the past – Obama is a greatly diminished figure and the MSM might have to start currying GOP favor in order to retain access in DC. Slavish devotion to liberalism does come second to one thing in MSM-land: career.

The Chicago Way politics of the Obama Administration is generating a lot of problems – small and just a bit annoying, for now, but to grow in to grand proportions as time goes on, and especially if Republicans wind up with Congressional power.

Mark Steyn takes note of Obama’s words about Daniel Pearl:

“Obviously, the loss of Daniel Pearl was one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination because it reminded us of how valuable a free press is.”

Now Obama’s off the prompter, when his silver-tongued rhetoric invariably turns to sludge. But he’s talking about a dead man here, a guy murdered in public for all the world to see. Furthermore, the deceased’s family is standing all around him. And, even for a busy president, it’s the work of moments to come up with a sentence that would be respectful, moving and true. Indeed, for Obama, it’s the work of seconds, because he has a taxpayer-funded staff sitting around all day with nothing to do but provide him with that sentence.

I know that even a lot of my fellow conservatives are still working on the “smart guy Obama” theme, but it simply isn’t true. Yes, I know he attended elite universities, edited the law review and got elected President. But, sorry, he’s dumb as a box of rocks.

There is no one with an IQ above room temperature who would make such a bloodless statement regarding the memorial to a man brutally murdered by wicked men. So weak was the statement that it works out as an insult to the memory of Daniel Pearl – he and his family wound up just a prop in an Obama signing ceremony. A chance for Obama to be on TV in a positive light, nothing more.

Its not like Obama had to get up there and preach a crusade – but some statement along the lines of, “the shocking murder of Daniel Pearl reminded us, once again, that those who search for truth are endangered by those who live by lies”, or some words to that effect. Didn’t have to mention Islam; didn’t have to use the word “terrorism” (though, of course, it was all about that) – a thousand ways present themselves to make a statement which has a bit of vigor, does honor to the fallen and yet goes with whatever is passing for American foreign policy at the moment.

So, as I said, anyone with any sense at all would have immediately seen that the statement prepared was hideous. Obama could not fail to see it unless he’s some sort of mindless puppet who has skated through life. Someone who simply likes to be the center of attention and is happy to let others call the shots. Its either that or he simply must be the most insensitive man alive.

Stupid or mentally deranged, your pick – but its one or the other for Obama.

Nothing good can come of the Culture of Death – this is just more proof of that:

Women who refuse requests from their husbands or boyfriends to have abortions are often finding themselves subject to violent attacks that sometimes result in their deaths. That’s the finding of a new report from the Elliot Institute, which calls the problem a “widespread epidemic.”

The new report, Forced Abortion in America, is drawing attention to attacks on pregnant women and girls in order to prevent them from continuing their pregnancies.

It points out a “widespread epidemic of unwanted, coerced and forced abortions taking place in the United States.”

The report notes how research suggests most abortions are likely unwanted or coerced, with one survey of women who had abortions finding that 64 percent said they felt pressured by others to abort.

Death is something never to be sought – it comes to us all, of course, but it is not something we are supposed to court. Our natural inclination is to live – life is good, and God has written that on our hearts. When we choose death, when we go out of our way to inflict it without cause, we have chosen evil. And out of that evil, worse will follow.

The Culture of Life is the only rational position to hold – it is in line with human nature and expresses the truth of our condition. We must end this scourge of abortion in order to regain a rational society.

So much for cobbling together a bunch of unproductive, demographically declining socialist welfare States:

…The euro has many flaws, but its weakest link is Greece, whose fundamental problem is that for years it spent too much, earned too little and plugged the gap by borrowing in order to enjoy a rich man’s lifestyle. It flouted EU rules on the limits to budget deficits; its national accounts were a moussaka of minced statistics, topped with a cheesy sauce of jiggery-pokery…

…This is why the euro, in its current form, is finished. The game is up for a monetary union that was meant to bolt together work-and-save citizens in northern Europe with the party animals of Club Med. No amount of pit props from Berlin can save the euro Mk I from collapsing under the weight of its structural dysfunctionality. You cannot run indefinitely a single currency with one interest rate for 16 economies, when there are such huge fiscal disparities.

What was once deemed unthinkable is now, I believe, inevitable: withdrawal from the eurozone of one or more of its member countries…

Of course, even the more “work and save” types of northern Europe aren’t really healthy, either. They’re just not as bad off as the “play and spend” types. But the fact of demographic decline means that Europe is finished, long term, unless they start having children. Even if they can figure out a way to integrate Moslems in to European society, that will be a temporary fix – Moslem birth rates are dropping like a rock, too.

The whole concept of the Europe Union was built on a false premise – that a welfare-dependent people have a future. The Euro is very much finished – but in a real sense, it never had a chance. The money jugglers in the various finance ministries and the European Central Bank might be able to animate the corpse for a while longer, but the rot won’t stop – doom is certain for the Euro and the European Union.

But don’t get too cocky, my fellow Americans. Outside the fact that a collapse of the Euro would take us down, too, there is the fact that our structural problems are like Europe’s, just not as bad at the moment. We, too, are not having children. Our source of immigration, like Europe’s, also has a collapsing fertility rate. We’re just a decade or two back – less if Obama gets his way on a fast-track to Euro-disaster.

What to do? Well, lots of policy prescriptions – lower taxes, lower regulation, subsidiarity, etc…but, ultimately, only a return to Truth will fix what ails us. We forgot about God, set ourselves up as if we could do it on our own, and disaster has been the result. The answer is obvious.

From Allahpundit:

…It’s possible, I suppose, that the guy who created the page simply took it down himself, but why he’d do that before the day is over and without any sort of farewell post escapes me. We got a bunch of e-mails this morning claiming that the page had been removed briefly and put back online shortly thereafter, so maybe this is FB’s version of a compromise: Leave it up for most of the day, then censor it a few hours early as a sop to the nuts who are freaking out in Pakistan. If so, it’s a neat illustration of Matt Welch’s point that the more urgent threat to free speech comes not from bomb-toting jihadis but from western media that’s overly eager to avoid giving offense…

I suspect “chicken” will best describe what caused the problems with the Face book page.

Attentive readers know that I would not participate in such a thing – offering egregious insult is un-Christian. I’ve got enough personal failures in following Christ, I don’t need to add to them. That said, it is disturbing the way so many people are fearful of Islam.

I doubt much that there is an actual concern for the religious sensibilities of Moslems involved here. The people who took this down have no problem with the pages where the following sentiment is expressed:

I despise in your face christians, all ways trying convert everybody. (expletive deleted) scumbags should be executed, i’d pay to see it

So, it must be just rank fear – they are afraid of a violent reaction from Islamists if they allow the “Draw” page to continue. It is, of course, a real fear – but the answer to it is not to cravenly delete anything which might offend Moslems bot, rather, to either make a policy of absolute free speech, or a policy banning any insults to religious doctrine. Either would be more courageous than what is happening now.

UPDATE: Jewish Business Magazine says it was a hack job, not an act of cowardice.

People, I guess, don’t like what they see:

President Barack Obama has seen has approval ratings decline in the aftermath of his selecting pro-abortion Solicitor general Elena Kagan for the open Supreme Court position. Obama’s approval ratings are at one of their lowest points in the last month and heading back down to their health care-dominated levels.

The Rasmussen Reports daily presidential tracking poll for Thursday shows 45% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the president’s performance.

That compares with 53 percent who disapprove — giving Obama an overall -8 percentage point approval rating.

Among the most passionate voters on either side, 42 percent of voters strongly disapprove of Obama’s performance in office while just 26 percent strongly approve – a -16 point rating among the most ardent voters.

I think it might be because she’s so clearly a hack – just someone appointed to do as the left demands in Court issues. Everyone expected a mindless drone for the left out of Obama – but not, perhaps, someone so clearly drone-like.

Obama just keeps missing his chances to really make his mark on American history – to do the things he said in the campaign. There are scores of people out there – including a few “wet” Republicans – Obama could have appointed, assured a pretty liberal Justice and yet not been so clearly ideological in his action.

And as time goes on, I don’t see it even remotely dawning on Obama how out of touch he’s become.

On the floor on the US House:

From The Hill:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a message for Republicans this fall: Bring it on…

…Despite some predictions of a huge GOP wave this fall, Pelosi says it’s not going to happen: “One thing I know for sure is that Democrats will retain their majority in the House of Representatives.”

When one realizes that Critz ran against ObamaCare and in favor of gun rights and against DC – ie, against Pelosi – then the message one takes away is that Pelos is simply hoping to duplicate her efforts of 2006 and 2008: she wants to run in GOP and conservative districts with centrist, “blue dog” types who, once elected, will be slavishly devoted to Pelosi and the liberal agenda.

To be sure, she must expect that a lot of Democrats will lose in November – but she’s expecting to moderate the losses to the point where 218 people have “D” after their names on November 3rd. And, truth be told, she can do that – entirely within the realm of possibility. If – and its a big if – the voters in various districts can be essentially fooled as badly as they were in 2006 and 2008.

I don’t think, however, she’ll be as successful as the hopes. The peculiarities of the PA-12 special won’t carry over even in to the PA-12 general in November. There’s at least an even money chance that in the re-match, Burns will come out on top (a lot of that will be determined by how well Toomey does at the top of the PA ticket…if he wins, he might carry a few over the finish line with him). The impending Djou win in the Hawaii special is probably more indicative of November.

Good to keep in mind that Democrats in the special elections leading up to 2006 lost and lost and lost…and then won. It can work like that – and I think it will.

Like this – back in PA, Sestak is riding high from his amazing, come-from-behind win over entrenched, establishment-backed Arlen Specter. And yet Rasmussen has him, in that blue State, only up by 4 over Toomey who has been off the public radar while Specter and Sestak battled it out. That is the sort of bounce which vanishes – and Toomey’s first post-primary ad will, I think, be highly effective in starting to define Sestak as too liberal for Pennsylvania.

I still make no public predictions beyond my 30-35 House seat gain of earlier. Pelosi would be happy with that – and so would I: she’d be happy she gets to continue to be boss, I’d be happy that she and her Democrats would get full blame for the upcoming double-dip heading in to the 2012 cycle. But the ultimate outcome of November will be defined by two things:

1. Public anger about government as an entity.

2. The GOP’s ability to craft a message appealing to this.

The first is a given, the second is up to the GOP. Right message properly presented and the results in November will be astounding. Absent that, the GOP will still score gains, but not of any historical significance. We’ll see how it comes out.

UPDATE: Either convinced they can win or composing a political suicide note, Democrats look for big tax and spend bill before Memorial Day.

Bring it on, Nancy!