Ok, Democrats, explain this one away:

I just got off the phone with former GOP congressman Rob Simmons, who has declared his candidacy to challenge Chris Dodd. I asked him about the Washington Times story about AIG Financial Services chief executive Joseph Cassano’s 2006 fundraising push for Dodd, asking employees and their spouses to donate the legal maximum, $2,300, and to let Cassano know when they donated. The effort raised $162,000 in six weeks for the Connecticut senator.

“This is a classic case of the conflict of interest that exists when a powerful chairman of an oversight committee puts himself in a position to shake down the people he oversees — and it is a shakedown,” Simmons said. “It’s inappropriate, and it violates the public trust. I believe public office is a public trust — that’s what I learned in the army, and what I’ve followed throughout my career, when I worked for Senator [John] Chafee of Rhode Island and Senator [Barry] Goldwater. You have to hold yourself to a higher standard.”

This, of course, is nothing new – you can go to Open Secrets and find that all manner of politicians get highly coincidental donations. Nancy Pelosi received 33 donations from employees of Amgen in 2007 – 28 of them on the same day. I don’t know about you, but I don’t get together with my fellow employees and set up a “donate to politicians day”. I donate. I’m sure many other people donate at my employer, but the chances of even two of us donating on the same day are small, but you can bet your bottom dollar that something would be screwy if 85% of the donations from people at my firm came in to a campaign on the same day. Clearly, this was coordinated – the only thing we don’t know, because no one will ever look into it, is whether or not any of these donations were reimbursed by the senior executives of Amgen.

With AIG, it seems even more clear that something was up – though we don’t know whether the illegal act of reimbursing donations was made. But Dodd was clearly benefiting from the fact that he held power over AIG, and AIG was determined to placate Dodd. This is just a small example of the nexus of corruption and power which operates like a cancer on our body politic. And this is precisely the sort of thing we must stop if we’re ever to have any real change – and, liberals, if you don’t get on board with getting rid of the Dodds of the world, then you’re just spinning your wheels…you won’t even get your liberalism, because people like Dodd will sell you out in a heartbeat.

Right now, it is looking like Dodd will be in deep trouble next year – let’s hope that, finally, his corrupt political carcass is carried out of the Senate.

Obama may not like wiretapping terrorists to protect his country (he was a vocal opponent to the NSA terrorist surveillance program) but he has no problem nominating someone who secretly taped a conversation between his wife and their priest to use against her in divorce proceedings.

President Obama’s nominee for secretary of the Navy was involved in a divorce that drew national attention for his secret taping of a conversation between his wife and his family priest that he used against her in court proceedings.

The nominee, Ray Mabus, is a former governor of Mississippi and a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and he served in the Navy during the Vietnam War. Mr. Mabus, a Democrat, was a strong supporter of Mr. Obama in the campaign last year.

In 1998, as Mr. Mabus and his wife, Julie (now Julie Hines), sought to work out their marital problems, he surreptitiously recorded a meeting the couple had with the Rev. Jerry McBride, a mutual friend. 

So, is Obama surrounded by incompetant people who didn’t know about this, or is Obama just not concerned with someone who violated the privacy another American citizen? According to the White House, they knew.

A White House official, who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations on a personnel matter, said that officials who reviewed Mr. Mabus’s background knew about the messy divorce and did not view it as material to his potential duties as Navy secretary. 

In response to questions, the White House released a statement Sunday that said, “The president nominated Governor Mabus to be secretary of the Navy because he has the proven leadership and experience our nation needs to serve in this important position.”

So I guess Obama condones secreting tapings of conversations of Americans?

I guess since Mabus’s wife isn’t a terrorist and wasn’t plotting a terrorist attack it was okay.

We stage a come back in the Northeast then we’re set for a huge sweep:

…green Republican shoots are emerging from the spring muck. The most conspicuous one involves the falling fortunes of embattled Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd, up for re-election next year. A new poll has the once seemingly invincible Democrat tied with former Congressman Rep. Rob Simmons, a Republican from eastern Connecticut.

Contrary to myth, New England is not firmly sewn in the Democratic bag. Three of the states — Connecticut, Vermont and Rhode Island — have Republican governors. Meanwhile, independents make up huge voting blocs throughout the region.

In Connecticut, 45 percent of registered voters are independents. Only 34 percent are Democrats, and the remaining 21 percent Republican.

True, a Democrat took away Simmons’ House seat in 2006. But the three-term rep lost it by only 83 votes and in a dismal year for Republicans nationally. In recent elections, two other Connecticut House Republicans, Nancy Johnson and the aforementioned Shays, were defeated but not trounced.

“All those Republicans lost because of George W. Bush,” Kenneth Dautrich, an adviser to Republican Gov. Jodi Rel, told me. “He’s gone.”

Like a ticking time bomb, 2010 approaches for the Democrats.

The news story:

House Republicans, who put Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on her heels as they voted unanimously to reject the economic stimulus bill two months ago, are now pointing fingers.

The unity of the GOP Conference was strong when all Republicans voted, on two separate occasions, to oppose the stimulus championed by President Obama, who had approval ratings in the 60s at the time. While many Democrats touted the passage of the stimulus, they privately acknowledged that the extent of the Republican opposition surprised them. But that harmony has been fractured, days before a special election in New York that some Republicans characterize as a must-win.

Some of the differences appeared Thursday over how they handled the rolling out of a much anticipated budget alternative, “The Republican Road to Recovery.”

Standing before television cameras, Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.), Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-Ind.) and other members — including the top Republican on the Budget Committee Paul Ryan (Wis.) — couldn’t answer specific questions about their spending plan.

After weeks of promising a comprehensive alternative to the president’s budget that Republicans have painted as excessive, bloated and wasteful, Boehner was unable to provide specific information about their proposal.

His colleagues were unable to answer line-items questions as well. Boehner dismissed those details as “just a bunch of numbers.”

Even though aides insist that GOP leaders had no intention of releasing their full budget substitute, the press event was a public relations disaster.

“It looked like a disorganized blunder,” one GOP aide said. “It’s the worst messaging snafu at a time when the party can’t afford one.”

I’ll have to go along with the “blunder” judgment on this – I heard one House GOPer try to defend the lack of detail on the Laura Ingraham show and it was a very pathetic performance by a Congressman who is clearly a conservative and a smart man who yet came out and tried to pull a political fast one. You can’t do this, House GOP – you have to put out alternate plans in detail and let the American people know where we wish to lead them. While opposition to Obamunism will carry us a long way – especially as the economy craters – the only path back to power is the path of ideas, and ideals. You’re not fooling anyone, House GOP – well, you could make a stab at fooling Democrats, but the key to victory for us isn’t fooled Democrats (that is a requirement for Democrats to win, not us) but an energized GOP base. And that only comes when there’s a clear plan.

Additionally, we can’t have plans which are just recycled plans of the past – the American people do, indeed, want change. They voted Obama into office pretty much on the strength of change in spite of clear doubts about Obama’s ability pre-election. Obama is now going forward with a massive increase in the corrupt and unworkable status-quo and therein lies our great opportunity: As Obama flounders around with socialism, we have a chance to revamp conservative economic ideas for the 21st century. We’ve won the tax battle and we’ve won the wasteful spending battle – no American politician outside the precincts of the kookiest of kook left will campaign on a promise to raise taxes and massively increase spending (hard as it is to recall, Obama ran as a fiscally responsible tax-cutter). Now we need to change the argument to what sort of America do the American people wish to have.

Obama has his vision for America – massive government, atrophied individual liberty. What do we want? I’ll tell you one thing, fellow conservatives, if we go out there and merely campaign on low taxes, spending cuts and a defense of capitalism, we’re going to lose the debate. To be sure, we still may do quite well in 2010 in an anti-Obama backlash…but if we want the real power to change things, we’re doing to need to be elected for something and not just against some one. What do we want? That is the vital question and we must answer it – the House GOP had a fantastic opportunity to answer it, and blew it.

Fortunately, Obama is almost certain to give us many more chances to make a case for a new, conservative program for America. All we need to do is craft it – and this will take some gigantic steps out of the box. I’ve got some ideas brewing in the brain, and I’ll start to share them over the next couple weeks. But here’s a chance for any GOPer with a mind to do so to start thinking – what do we want?

The way we answer that question will in a large sense determine the course of American history for the next 50 years. Well answered, we’ll win power and be able to change America – badly answered, and Obama’s socialism will be our fate.

As I sat in the comfort of my easy chair the other night, with my laptop, typing away with every light in the house lit to celebrate “earth hour,” it gave me comfort to know that other people were celebrating “earth hour” in similar fashion.

People like Algore:

Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” may have inspired many to participate in yesterday’s “Earth Hour” by switching off their lights from 8:30 p.m. to 9 p.m., but maybe the former vice president didn’t get the memo.

Drew Johnson, the president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, decided to drive by Gore’s mansion in Nashville at 8:48 p.m. and records that floodlights were on illuminating the driveway
leading up to the main quarter.

“I pulled up to Al’s house, located in the posh Belle Meade section of Nashville, at 8:48 p.m. – right in the middle of Earth Hour,” he wrote on his blog. “I found that the main spotlights that usually illuminate his 9,000 square foot mansion were dark, but several of the lights inside the house were on.”

He added: “The kicker, though, were the dozen or so floodlights grandly highlighting several trees and illuminating the driveway entrance of Gore’s mansion. I [kid] you not, my friends, the savior of the environment couldn’t be bothered to turn off the gaudy lights that show off his goofy trees.”

Well, of course Algore left the floodlights to his driveway on–how else could passers-by otherwise realize that he had turned some of the lights to his stately mansion off? I mean, it is, after all, about appearances, isn’t it?

And the hypocrite enviro-whacko socialists, who want to utilize the false doctrine of “climate change” to push forward their unholy agenda of bringing America to its knees in their ushering in a new stone age, still tried to utilize yesterday as a raison de etre to push for economy-stifling U.N. resolutions (emphases added):

WWF called the event, which began in Australia in 2007 and grew last year to 400 cities worldwide, “the world’s first-ever global vote about the future of our planet.”

The United Nations’ top climate official, Yvo de Boer, called the event a clear sign that the world wants negotiators seeking a climate change agreement to set an ambitious course to fight global warming.

The event was initiated with hopes of impacting talks in Bonn this week to craft a deal to control emissions of the heat-trapping gases supposedly responsible for “global warming.” The talks are due to culminate in Copenhagen this December.

“Earth Hour was probably the largest public demonstration on climate change ever,” de Boer told delegates from 175 nations. “Its aim was to tell every government representative to seal a deal in Copenhagen. The world’s concerned citizens have given the negotiations an additional and very clear mandate.”

Again, What global warming? Will someone, somewhere go up to Yvo de Bozo and the rest of his fellow travellers, give them a good, swift slap upside the head, and tell them to knock it off with their charade, already!?!

And now I see this:

In response to a question about cap and trade a couple of days ago, Obama said this:

“I actually think the science around climate change is real. It is potentially devastating. … If you look at the flooding that’s going on right now in North Dakota, and you say to yourself, ‘If you see an increase of 2 degrees, what does that do, in terms of the situation there,’ that indicates the degree to which we have to take this seriously.”

Has Barack Hussein Obama stepped foot inside Fargo this past Winter? Has Barack Hussein Obama even bothered to glance at the weather channel to check on what the weather has been before he made that ridiculous, assinine statement?!? I guess the clueless quiz-boy from Chicago never got the memo that Fargo, along with the rest of the great plains and the upper midwest, had one of the coldest friggen winters on record! We haven’t warmed one degree globally since nineteen-friggen-ninety-eight!

The desperation of the socialist environmental movement to re-make our nation and by extension the globe into one, big third-world ghetto, devoid of identity, devoid of prosperity, and devoid of individual liberties by way of this sham is nothing less than pure evil. The example of Algore above is proof positive that the perpetrators of this shameless sham have absolutely no intention of living the draconian lifestyle they wish to foist on the rest of humanity.

For the sake of ourselves and our progeny, this sham has to stop, and it has to stop now.

We need to flood Washington, D.C. with protesters that make the Iraq war protests look like a bridge club meeting. We need to make our voices loud and clear. Make no mistake–we have to let these bozos know in no uncertain terms that we’re not going to sit by idly while these clowns attempt to turn this entire nation into a third world medieval collective of thatched huts, in the name of something that doesn’t exist.

In the name of all that is good, in the name of our future as a nation, we must not, to paraphrase Dylan Thomas, go quietly into that long, good night!

Make no mistake. President Barack Hussein Obama, along with his socialist fellow travellers in congress and globally, has declared war against the prosperity of this nation, and by virtue of these sham policies intends to reduce our economy, and with it our fortunes, our futures and our lives into an unrecognizable mass of rubble.

We must take our nation back! We must defeat them in the arena of ideas. We must melt their switchboards. We must defeat them at the ballot box.

As Benjamin Franklin so famously quoted,

“We must all hang together; or most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

No surprise at all:

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has delayed a series of proposed immigration raids and other enforcement actions at U.S. workplaces in recent weeks, asking agents in her department to apply more scrutiny to the selection and investigation of targets as well as the timing of raids, federal officials said.

A senior department official said the delays signal a pending change in whom agents at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement choose to prosecute — increasing the focus on businesses and executives instead of ordinary workers.

“ICE is now scrutinizing these cases more thoroughly to ensure that [targets] are being taken down when they should be taken down, and that the employer is being targeted and the surveillance and the investigation is being done how it should be done,” said the official, discussing Napolitano’s views about sensitive law enforcement matters on the condition of anonymity.

And, of course, allowing the cases to be tied up in courts as business owners have legal teams to dispute ICE actions…meanwhile, the actual law breakers – the illegal immigrants – are essentially let off the hook, thereby ensuring that the human smuggling operations across our borders not only continue, but increase…with, naturally, the inherent risk that it won’t be just maids and drywallers coming across, but also the odd terrorist or two, or fifty.

Short of trying to deport all 12 million or so illegals in country, the best means of striking illegal immigration is to go after the illegals actually at work in America – remember, the reason they come here is to make money to send back home; if we continually disrupt what they are here to do, they will become progressively less likely to come across…and this, in turn, will de-fund the gangs causing Mexico all sorts of trouble as well as forcing the Mexican government to deal with the root cause of illegal immigration: Mexico’s horrifically corrupt and massively discriminatory economy which freezes out Mexican’s or all or mostly Indian descent.

But, of course, to take action against illegals is something the race-baiters in American cannot tolerate. The mere thought that America might gain control of its borders sends them into a foaming-at-the-mouth rage. And, of course, they donate heavily to the Democrat party, and now its time for the Democrat party to pay up for the campaign cash. So, keep that in mind, boys and girls: illegal immigration will continue and America will be less secure because Obama needed campaign cash last year.

This is a fine thing – if you are a liberal elite who lives a highly sheltered life and are extraordinarily unlikely to suffer any consequences of illegal immigration. For everyone else, its a bit of a raw deal – and the rawest deal is that given to the illegals, who will continue to be triply exploited – by the Mexican government which sends them north to earn foreign exchange for Mexico; by the gangs which have sealed tight the northern border of Mexico in order to control – and charge – the human cargo coming north (and, by the way, showing that the border can be secured, if one wishes to do it); and, finally, by rich Americans who neither care about native and legal-immigrant workers, nor about the illegal workers…all that matters is high profits, low costs and cheap domestic servants.

Early in the morning he came again to the temple; all the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them.

The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such. What do you say about her?”

This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once more he bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.

But when they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the eldest, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus looked up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and do not sin again.”

Certainly one of the most famous passages of the New Testament. To me, the most important part is Jesus’ strict command to the woman not to sin again. In my understanding, the fact of forgiveness is easily obtained from a merciful Lord, but the expectation is that once forgiven, a person must not do that thing again. This precludes any plan to sin, ask for forgiveness and just mindlessly go back to the sin just completed. Additionally, it strikes me as vastly important that we, in our corporate actions, take careful notice of our own actions and what is motivating us to desire some particular, public action.

Discuss.

My father has now been taken to a Hospice. Days, perhaps a couple weeks, are what remain. While his body is in very bad shape, his mind remains sharp and he’s entirely aware of what is happening. When my mother-in-law passed away last month, she was not aware of what was happening for the last 10 days. Now I’ve seen it both ways – knowing and not knowing – and while it may be easier on the dying to be unaware, there is no doubt that it is easier on the family if the dying person is unable to communicate. To contemplate your own impending death is a fearsome thing especially when you literally don’t know from moment to moment if this is your last. For someone like my father, who has always liked everything laid out and squared away, this has been a bit of a torment.

Fortunately, Our Lord came to my father in the form of the Blessed Sacrament and upon taking it, my father became very much at peace. We know what is coming, and with faith in our Savior, we are ready to do what is fitting. 2009 certainly hasn’t been the best of years, but one must remain aware that others still have it worse and, of course, the trials we are given are a gift from God.

I ask all to pray for my father and my family that we will be at peace and in all things completely trusting in God.

When the Lord knows that good health is necessary for our soul’s welfare, He sends it to us; and when we need sickness, He sends that too. Sickness makes us discover who we are.

— St. Theresa of Avila

…the government, led by comrade Obama, is telling private business how it should be run.

The Obama administration asked Rick Wagoner, the chairman and CEO of General Motors, to step down and he agreed, a White House official said.

On Monday, President Barack Obama is to unveil his plans for the auto industry, including a response to a request for additional funds by GM and Chrysler. The plan is based on recommendations from the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry, headed by the Treasury Department.

The White House confirmed Wagoner was leaving at the government’s behest after The Associated Press reported his immediate departure, without giving a reason.

General Motors issued a vague statement Sunday night that did not officially confirm Wagoner’s departure. 

Down with Big Brother. Down with Big Brother. Down with Big Brother.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Some banks want to bail out of the bail out.

Gay Patriot notes another double standard for Democrats and Republicans:

During last fall’s presidential campaign, Barney Frank likely served as an inspiration to some bloggers eager to score points with the far left when he became one of “the first Democrats to publicly say Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s family background, including the pregnancy of her unwed teenage daughter, should be fair game for campaign discussion.“

If the daughter of a candidate for Vice President is “fair game” for campaign discussion, it follows that the daughter of the sitting Vice President should be “fair game” for political discussion.

Apparently the mainstream media doesn’t think so.

Starting yesterday, Drudge has been linking a number of articles reporting that a “‘friend’ of Vice President Joseph Biden’s daughter, Ashley, is attempting to hawk a videotape that he claims shows her snorting cocaine at a house party this month in Delaware.“ Yet, except for a few New York area papers (Newsday, NY Post, NY Daily News), the “old media” have not picked up on this story.

In an ideal world, this wouldn’t, indeed, likely shouldn’t be news. But, it seems that whenever the child of a Republican politician is caught up in a scandal, the MSM, following the lead of Democrats like Frank, calls their private lives “fair game.”

It should not be in the news at all – a family going through such a rough patch deserves the chance to deal with it absent intense media coverage. But that only goes, in the MSM, for the children of liberal Democrats. Heck, the MSM even started to pick up on the absurdly false rumor that Palin’s Down’s Syndrome child was actually her grand-son and she was covering up…the worst sort of tabloid trash gets reported about GOPers (including “fake but accurate” stories), while even the largest crimes and misdemeanors are given a pass when it comes to liberals.

Its really rather sad – what we get out of the MSM is the worst of all worlds: a poisoned political atmosphere where one side’s crimes are covered up.