Still growing out there:

The United States now has 642 cases of the new H1N1 flu, with two deaths, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

CDC officials have said they expect the new swine flu to spread to all 50 states, to cause severe disease and some deaths, although most cases have been mild.

Mexico has confirmed 42 deaths and said it was impossible to get samples from about 70 more people who died of flu-like illness recently. Globally, more than 1,600 cases have been reported in 23 countries.

We have a critical case here in Las Vegas now, too. I’m glad the panic is dying down, but this is going to be a problem and the worst of it may very well be yet to come.

You expected something different?

With the ethics troubles of Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) continuing to make headlines — and headaches for Democratic leaders — Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) on Tuesday again deferred any action on the matter to the House ethics investigators.

“I’ve historically said and continue to believe the ethics committee should, in fact, look at any specific allegations of rules violations that have occurred,” Hoyer told reporters at his weekly press conference.

And I’m sure that cracker-jack ethics committee is right on this.

Keeping in mind that there is no love lost between Hoyer and Murtha we can still see that Democrats circle the wagon when one of their own is in trouble. The only thing which will possibly move House Democrats to force Murtha out is if a poll comes out showing Murtha would be defeated next year – as we saw with the Jefferson case, even an indictment isn’t sufficient for Democrats to call one of their own to account. This from the party which called for Republican Foley’s head because he wrote a few dirty e-mails! I love the stench of hypocrisy in the morning.

From NRO’s The Corner:

…The British Home Secretary thinks that by making public the ban on Michael Savage she’s “naming and shaming” him. But she’s shaming only herself and her country. This kind of stuff is very weird from a senior cabinet minister of a G7 nation:

“I think it’s important that people understand the sorts of values and sorts of standards that we have here, the fact that it’s a privilege to come and the sort of things that mean you won’t be welcome in this country,” Ms Smith told GMTV.

“Coming to this country is a privilege. If you can’t live by the rules that we live by, the standards and the values that we live by, we should exclude you from this country and, what’s more, now we will make public those people that we have excluded.”

How many members of King Abdullah’s entourage at the G20 summit the other week live by Jacqui Smith’s “standards and values”? Come to that, how many British subjects live by the “standards and values” of the countries they visit and trade with? The idea of ideological enforcement at the border is repugnant to a free society…

Flicking through the radio dial I have, from time to time, come across Savage’s show – usually much to my regret. Perhaps long-term listening would put a different perspective on it, but what I’ve gleaned is a clear lack of understanding of the issues facing our nation coupled with a bullying attitude towards callers who disagree. I’m a big fan of hard-hitting polemics – I like it very much when people go at it with gusto…provided one doesn’t slide down in to the gutter and, especially, provided one doesn’t lose a good sense of humor about the whole thing. People like Medved, Rush and Ingraham manage to finesse this very well…Savage doesn’t.

Be that as it may, Savage has a show which has attained a level of popularity and thus he’s not likely to be going away any time soon – and all banning him from Britain does is simultaneously grant him massive, new publicity as well as violate the very concept of freedom. As long as Savage isn’t actively inciting people to criminal acts, he should be allowed to say whatever he pleases without let or hindrance…and as long as his advertisers are willing to shell out for spots on his show there is no reason for anyone to in any way, shape or form attempt to boot him out of the public square.

He is what he is – and I pray he’ll learn to gentle his tongue, but it is not my business to do it for him. Britain has placed a stain upon its honor as well as upon its tradition of free speech.

If he thought this about the minimal government of his time, imagine how fast he’d raise a new Continental Army against our current monstrosity:

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. – George Washington

Which is bad news for all, but really bad news for those public-sector employees – especially in the US – who have funded the Democrat party for decades on the promise that they would be taken care of, lavishly, forever:

All around the world, pension tension is growing. You’re only beginning to see what I’ve been predicting for a long time. It’s one huge mess. Here is a small sampling of global pension tension:

…

* Connecticut Treasurer Denise Nappier said on Monday the state is terminating its investment agreement with Dallas-based private equity firm Aldus Capital LLC, after it was caught up in the criminal and civil probe of the New York State pension fund.

* Teacher pension tsunami is expected across Pennsylvania. A bubble in the number of teachers expected to retire in the next decade and a 30 percent drop in the total value of the Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System’s (PSERS) assets last year in the souring economy means districts contribute more to the teachers’ retirement fund.

* Minnesota teachers are asking state lawmakers for a $223 million bailout for their pension fund. The Education Minnesota teachers’ union, their retirement association and other groups are asking the state Legislature for between $207 million and $223 million over four years to put their pension fund on sound footing.

* The protracted economic downturn has chewed up nearly a quarter of the value of Ohio’s five public pension plans, forcing their leaders to more seriously consider unpopular options such as dialing back cost-of-living increases and even raising retirement ages.

And that is just a sample of the sample, as it were. Lesson to be learned: You can’t spend your way into wealth. No, really – I’m not kidding: you have to earn wealth, not just have it showered upon you by a government which has to steal it from others. Eventually, the Piper has to be paid.

The economic bow is over-stretched. To be sure we, the people, played a large role in this with our irresponsible credit card borrowing (Me? Guilty.) and our housing speculations – but the primary culprit has been a government essentially commanding us to produce less and less wealth and rely ever more on government hand outs and crazy-quilt investment plans which are based, ultimately, on the productivity of slaves in China and sweated labor elsewhere in the Third World. We have to re-trench – we have to cut spending until revenues significantly exceed spending and thus start to pay off the debt we’ve wracked up. Meanwhile, we have to do everything in our power to encourage Americans to make, mine and grow things.

There is really no other way out of this mess – fiscal hocus-pocus by Obama and his Democrats might put a temporary healthy sheen on the economy, but that is like putting lipstick on a corpse. We need new life, and the only way we’re going to get that is by working hard and sacrificing.

Its not like we’re not noticing it:

Several events in the past few months — and in particular the response of the media and governmental organizations to statements and actions by Pope Benedict — have made clear that the Pope and the Church face an increasingly hostile secularism.

The international attacks on the Pope, by governments and the media alike, most recently on the solution to the AIDS crisis in Africa, show an increasingly secular orthodoxy. This outlook places no value on Christian morality and is willing to ignore facts in its quest for a secular, valueless solution to any social problem.

Pope Benedict’s discussion of this phenomenon in the European context goes back many years. As Europe abandons its Christian roots, it increasingly creates a future where religion has no place in the public square. Some commentators have gone so far as to refer to European “Christianophobia.” After all, polling shows that a third or less of people living in Britain, Germany, Italy and France say that religion plays an important role in their lives.

Speaking to a group of European politicians in 2006, Benedict encouraged them to support the Christian heritage of the continent, and warned of the dangers to democracy of excluding Europe’s Christian tradition from a public role.

While there are strong roots of liberty in the Roman Republic and the Athenian democracy, the fact of the matter is that what we consider “democracy” and “republic” today are outgrowths of Christian thinking. The very idea that an individual has rights which everyone is bound to respect is a Christian ideal – Athenians and Romans restricted rights to a tiny class of citizens, and even in this a lot of the rights accrued to a group rather than to an individual. Over many centuries Christians pondered on such things as the State, the individual, the Church, etc, etc, etc and arrived at the conclusions best expressed in our sublime Declaration of Independence – that all men are created equal, are endowed with rights and that governments exist to secure rights. Here in 2009, secularist bigots presume that they can have this sort of thing without the Christian underpinnings. They are quite wrong.

Over many centuries, and often with great struggle, the desire was an ever better application of Christian principles. Is not the poor man the brother in Christ of the rich man? Then how can the rich man tell his brother he may have no say in government? Is not the black man the brother in Christ of the white man? Then how can the white man enslave his brother? If not the woman the sister in Christ to the man? Then how can the man say that his sister is not equal in rights? On and on it goes – what is good is based on the Christianity at the base of our civilization – and if you take it away, then you may as well try to prop up a building after taking away its foundation.

We’re dealing with fools, and self-destructive fools, into the bargain. They think that they are enlightened because they are ok with rampant pornography. To them, the ability to be blase’ about sexual depravity is proof of intellectual superiority. Standing athwart them and advising them of the error of their ways is Christianity – and there seems to be nothing so annoying to these faux-enlightened fools than those who point out how wrong they are. And so, they attack us – and attack the Church, especially. They do this because they believe they can cure the emptiness in their lives by taking away the example of what living a full life involves.

The really odd thing is that it is we, on our side of the debate, who will save them, in a certain sense. It is Christians who will defend liberty and prevent the complete destruction of the civilization the secularists live off of and don’t understand in the least. Because we respect the individual, we will even respect individuals who are being the worst fools mankind has ever seen – and in return for this grand service, we can expect to be reviled. The latest assault – revolving around Pope Benedict’s correct statements on the efficacy of condoms as an AIDS preventative – are just part of the long-standing and increasingly shrill attack on religion in general and Christianity in particular. They do very much want to destroy us – first by driving us out of the public square, then by driving us underground.

And thus we must battle them – and never let our love for them, our desire for peace and our natural desire to not be slandered prevent us from standing up for our beliefs. We will be called all sorts of horrific names; MSM outfits will portray us as idiots when not violent racists; popular culture will continue to hold us up for ridicule. Its all good – the worse they get, the better we shall get…provided we show the proper courage commanded of us.

Guess so, but its been axed. I guess I gotta watch more TV…

If the puzzle pieces don’t fit together, just break off a piece and make them fit:

What’s a big obstacle to getting a health care overhaul bill out of the Senate? The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), according to Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus.

The Montana Democrat has repeatedly said he’s having trouble getting congressional actuaries to score savings in the health proposals he’s shown them—partly because many are new ideas without economic data to help generate a score, and in other cases because they are ideas that almost everybody believes will eventually lower spending. Apparently, the CBO’s strict scoring rules won’t allow for a savings-friendly interpretation.

“The slight challenge we have is getting numbers and estimates from CBO,” Baucus said. Scoring savings is a necessity for offsetting a health bill’s costs, and Baucus says he is continuing to push the CBO to show savings where it can.

“Otherwise, health care reform is in jeopardy,” he said at a hearing today.

In other words, we have a plan which we know will cost a vast amount of money and we have claims that un-tested actions will reduce costs…and the Democrats pushing the new spending want the un-tried stuff included in the mix not because they have faith in it, but because they don’t want to present another several trillion dollar bill to the American taxpayer…especially after Americans have become increasingly dismayed over the last massive, new spending program (ie, TARP).

I think we can rely upon it that whatever comes out of Congress and the White House will not be the whole truth. They simply will not tell us exactly what is going on because they know full well that full disclosure means massive public opposition. So much for “hope and change” – its now “hide and confuse”.

And show they haven’t the first clue about what it means to be a Christian:

With partially nude photos of her popping up on Web sites questioning her Christian credentials, Miss California USA Carrie Prejean has fired back, claiming the racy pictures are just modeling shots and vowing to continue her battle against same-sex marriage.

“I am a Christian, and I am a model,” Prejean said in a statement released overnight to the media. “Models pose for pictures, including lingerie and swimwear photos. Recently, photos taken of me as a teenager have been released surreptitiously to a tabloid Web site that openly mocks me for my Christian faith. I am not perfect, and I will never claim to be.”

There could very well be some photos out there of me at a younger age which demonstrate me acting in un-Christian ways. What of it? Proof that I’m a sinner? Thanks for the news flash. So, too, with Ms. Prejean – ok, so you leftists “caught” her: oh, my goodness – she did something she maybe shouldn’t have!!! Well, that’s it, then; she’s got no right to speak of her Christian faith and her opposition to gay marriage is completely null and void…make one mistake, and that is it for all time.

At least, that is how it goes with ignorant leftists and their amazingly stupid views of Christians and Christianity. Catch a clue, leftists: we’re not arguing that everyone must be sinless, we’re just saying that sin shouldn’t be done and shouldn’t be encouraged. Geesh – this ain’t rocket science, ya know?

Fire away, leftists – you only harm yourselves, not Ms. Prejean and not any Christian. All you do is cause us to pray for you, as Our Lord commanded…and that, in the end, is far more important than anything else we do, because it might eventually move you to become one of us, and understand how foolish you’ve been, and the bottomless well of love which is waiting for you, if you’ll just ask to have it.

The Obama Administration’s Air Force One Photo Op gaffe, which cost $328,835, is now truly $328,835 gone down the drain as the photos taken during that 9/11-esque stunt won’t be released to the public.

The $328,835 snapshots of an Air Force One backup plane buzzing lower Manhattan last week will not be shown to the public, the White House said yesterday.

“We have no plans to release them,” an aide to President Obama told The Post, refusing to comment further.

The sole purpose of the secret photo-op, which sent thousands of New Yorkers running for cover, was to take new publicity shots of the presidential jet over the city.

“The photos . . . are classified — that’s ridiculous,” Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., said.

The photos have not technically been “classified,” a White House aide said, but they are being kept from public view.

New Yorkers said they could not understand how a president who shares intimate snapshots from the White House could justify keeping these secret.

“So we’re not gonna see the fruits of this cruel joke?” said Frank Antonelli, 39, one of the Wall Street traders spooked by last week’s flyover.

“I’m not surprised. Obama . . . wouldn’t further all the bad publicity by putting out those pictures.”

This White House truly is the most incompetent… hell, some of them can’t even spell.