Getting Dodd out of the Senate, in and of itself, would be the shining triumph of 2010:

Is Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) really in trouble?

At first glance, it’s hard to believe. Since his first election to the House in 1974, he’s won every campaign by double digits. He crushed his last two Senate opponents by landslide 2-to-1 ratios.

But reports about an alleged special mortgage deal from Countrywide Financial and criticism of his tenure as chairman of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee appear to have dented his popularity, as reflected in a new Quinnipiac poll that suggests the five-term Democrat is highly vulnerable heading into his reelection next year.

A 51 percent majority of Connecticut voters said they “definitely” or “probably” won’t be voting for him, with only 42 percent saying they’d likely support him.

Connecticut, New York, Illinois, Delaware – four enormously safe Democrat seats which now have to be defended in 2010, the first mid-term of a Democrat Presidency. Yeah, Dodd is in trouble – though, of course, the GOP will have to come up with a good candidate. Can’t beat even a creep like Dodd without someone who appeals to the people of Connecticut.

There is a Dump Chris Dodd website, for anyone interested in getting him out of the Senate.

One does begin to wonder if Democrats, on the whole, know what law is, and why we must be a nation of laws, not men:

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius is demanding the Kansas Legislature join with her in violating state law to use the budget crisis to score political points, top House Republicans told Kansas Liberty Monday.

“The Legislature doesn’t have the luxury of operating outside the law,” said House Speaker Mike O’Neal. “Kansas for years has had on the books procedures a governor can follow in times like these, but she’s refused to exercise those options, to the detriment of the state. She’s better than that. It just seems she’s going out of her way to make people upset with the Legislature.”

The latest budget drama began Monday when Sebelius called a meeting of the State Finance Council to seek authority for a $225 million certificate of indebtedness to cover a cash flow crisis.

That meeting ultimately was postponed, Republican legislative leaders said, when they made clear to Sebelius that the Legislature couldn’t authorize additional debt.

O’Neal and House Majority Leader Ray Merrick, in conversations with Kansas Liberty, cited an analysis by Legislative Research Director Alan Conroy that concludes such an action would be illegal because the state wouldn’t be able to cover the certificate by the end of the current fiscal year, on June 30, as required by state statute KSA 75-3725(a).

However, the Sebelius administration contended Monday that approval of an additional certificate of indebtedness would not be contrary to state law.

“Legally we are ready to go,” said State Budget Director Duane Goossen at a hastily called press conference late Monday.

Goossen had created a spreadsheet that he said described how the certificate of indebtedness could be used to borrow money, and that all that was needed was authorization by the State Finance Council. He was less clear on how the money would be repaid, a legal requirement. The certificate would raise internal borrowing to record levels.

The relevant statute is here, and it does appear to agree with the Majority Leader’s assertion about the illegality of Governor Sebelius’ proposal.

Be that as it may, here is what we’ve got – a budget crunch in Kansas will require some cuts in spending which the Democrat governor does not wish to make; the governor cooks up a plan to illegally used debt to cover the shortfall so that she doesn’t have to cut her pet projects; naturally, such a plan would not pass muster with a GOP-controlled legislature, so the governor announces that the people of Kansas won’t get their tax refunds and State employees won’t get paid and then relies on the MSM to use her narrative of events, thus putting the onus on the GOP, which merely wants to obey the law. Its clever politics, but entirely dishonest and in direct contravention of the long-term interests of the people of Kansas…but such considerations aren’t important for Democrats, only power and the spending which creates power matter.

We can now see why governor Sebelius has found herself de-facto excommunicated from the Catholic Church – the dishonesty which propelled her to making immoral moves on the issue of life is the same dishonesty which is now instructing her to break the laws of Kansas. I urge the governor of Kansas to re-think her life’s work…to come to an understanding that politics is not the highest expression of human life and that some times we have to bend to the harsh realities of our times. In the end, remember, its really just a matter of not spending as much as she’d like as soon as she’d like – it profits a man (or woman) nothing to gain the whole world, but lose his soul…governor Sebelius seems to be willing to lose hers over a bit of welfare spending, plus or minus.

A video clip from On the Record. Shows you what we missed having in our Executive branch, and makes you long for 2012…

Judith Woods in the Telegraph gives an excellent run down of the Patten scandal and when anyone with moral sense reads it, the reasons for the affair jump right out:

..Alfie’s dad, Dennis – father of nine, or possibly 10 children by various mothers – wearing a bizarre devil mask…

…Neighbours of “the couple” in Eastbourne report that children barely into their teens routinely have sex behind the hedges in gardens…

…Chantelle and Alfie shared a room, with her parents’ blessing, when he stayed at her house…

…Chantelle, one of five children, whose parents are both unemployed, says she was on the pill, but had forgotten to take it…

…Britain has the highest underage pregnancy rate in western Europe, despite channelling substantial resources into sex education for children as young as five…

Sex education for five year old children; parents unemployed but able to wallow indefinitely on the public dime; unmarried dad who has managed to convince many women to have sex with him; different sex children able to sleep in the same room together…this is what happens when you have this sort of situation. All that Master Alfie did was what we told him to do – he’s not at fault, and anyone who complains about his role in this affair is directing ire in entirely the wrong direction.

And this is liberalism – no judgments of a moral character, valueless education, welfare dependency. And this is just what stodgy, boring old Christians said would happen if we allowed morality to fade, failed to impart morals into children and created a welfare State. There is another bit in the article which must be noted:

While nobody would wish to return to the days when gymslip mothers were stigmatised…

Oh, yes we bloody well do – or, at least, we’d better wish to return to such days, and this time also do a much better job of stigmatising the boys who father such children out of wedlock, too (though don’t buy revisionist history which holds that such boys got off scott free). We can’t police every action people do – and this means that, ultimately, only public shaming will keep such gross immorality under control. People get what they want – what we wanted was a disgusting, nauseating society which has 13 year old boys having sex, and that is what we got. If we want to have a society which doesn’t have situations like this – and I’m talking the whole situation, not just the 13 year old father – then we have to ask for it.

And asking for it means starting to act like men and women and insisting upon decent behavior as the price for being permitted in society.

Roland Burris, who was picked to fill Barack Obama’s barely used Senate seat, let the cat out of the bag this past week that Rod Blagojevich wanted him to raise $10,000 for his campaign in exchange for the Senate appointment. 

Should he stay or should he go? Obviously this news, which he did not reveal during testimony during the impeachment trial of Blagojovich, really puts a bigger stain on his record, but I for one don’t see him resigning, but I do see him having a number of primary challengers in 2010 and probably getting knocked out.

Thoughts?

Victory Davis Hanson issues the prediction:

Will Obama and company, through inspired diplomacy, solve any lingering tension from the Bush administration over missile defense in Europe, the soon-to-be Iranian bomb and missiles, or the European so-so role in Afghanistan? Will they find a novel, kinder, and gentler way to thwart possible al-Qaeda Mumbai-copycat killers here at home, to defang North Korea, to talk sense to the Russians to stay in their confining borders, and to persuade Hamas to act more like Fatah?

I seriously doubt it. Instead, this serial apologizing, promising a new age of listening and togetherness, and trashing the Bush administration will have two consequences: Enemies will begin to think there is a tad less likelihood now that the U.S. will respond forcefully to a terrorist attack (since “Bush did it” in the past) without first consulting allies, trying to find a diplomatic solution, or going to the U.N.; and, second, friends will slacken a bit, knowing that our prime interest is in the means of multilateralism rather than any objective ends: one now “dialogues” over troops in Afghanistan, and “discusses” whether to follow through on missile defense, and “listens” to “all the parties” like Syria and Iran for “constructive” suggestions about Middle East peace. In short, a bad idea to trash the past when much of it was good, and point happily to the future when it may well be far worse.

We are setting ourselves up for a repeat of Jimmy Carter’s “Our kindness and intellect will save the world,” but this second time as farce.

It is just back to September 10th…back to the days of trying to do the impossible: convince wicked people that they should stop being wicked and trying to convince well-meaning cowards that bravery is preferable. The wicked, though, will view our willingness to “dialogue” as a sign of infirmity of purpose, while the cowards will be off the hook because we give them what appears to be an honorable exit from bravery. Such moral changes as Obama proposes as our foreign policy is not the province of hack politicians, but of religious saints…Obama’s foreign policy is actually the proper business of the Vatican, and the Vatican is already working on it and slowly having some success, but as it takes a change of heart – person by person – it is a long process, and won’t stop another major terrorist attack on the United States, nor Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, nor Russia from trying to rebuild its empire.

Rather than trash an American President and issue apologies for imaginary wrongs done by the United States, President Obama needs to realize that in a world of cowards and wicked men, the duty of the United States is to be the steely bulwark of liberty and human decency…and this means confronting the coward to cajole him into being brave, and sternly warning the wicked that evildoing will result in destruction, swift and sure. Right now, Obama is storing up a legacy of woe for the United States, and death for innocents who are counting on Obama to protect them.

Details over at Michelle Malkin. Just the beginning – wait until the economy is in the tank; we’ll have a Two Million Conservative march on DC…

Wife, mother, grand-mother, great-grand-mother, Dolores Wilinski went home to be with the Lord on this Sunday, February 15th.

In a life of gentleness and good sense, Dolores was one of those rays of light which make life on this Earth bearable.

This man will always be thankful that Dolores took him in to her heart as a son and became for him a second mother.

Its the only way to interpret this Rasmussen poll result:

Forty-nine percent (49%) of U.S. voters trust their own judgment more than President Obama’s when it comes to the economic issues affecting the nation.

Thirty-nine percent (39%) trust the president more in a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Twelve percent (12%) are not sure whose judgment is better.

Obama has never held a real job – for anyone who has ever held a real job to figure that Obama has better economic judgment is to have the mentality of a slave, looking for a Master do to all the thinking for you. Now, some of that 39% is made up of people who have never had a job, like Obama, but most of it is probably made up of people like that McDonald’s employee at the Town Hall…looking for Master Obama to make things all better for him…

We do need to bring back a test for voting – “Do you wish to be a slave?”, answer “yes” or “maybe”, and you don’t get to vote…

Yes, you read that correctly: in a Treasury report (PDF), the “total present value of future expenditures in excess of future revenue” is $42.97 trillion dollars. This is over the next 75 years – which means that over the next 75 years, we’ll have to come up with that money, unless you think there is more than $40 trillion we can borrow out there. Remember, this is expenditures in excess of revenues…in other words, the real annual deficit over the next 75 years is about $570,000,000,000.00. And this is before TARP II and Obama’s “spendulus” package. We’re in a position where we need to figure out how to spend half a trillion dollars less per year, and Obama wants to spend trillions more than we’re already over spending.

This is from the smart guy who replaced President Bush.

A very large part of this annual deficit is, of course, in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And this, dear liberals, is why we conservatives started yammering on about how we need to fix entitlement spending because its already horrible, and the longer we wait to start fixing it, the harder it will be to fix. Thank you, very much, for already screwing the pooch on this one. And you did it simply for a partisan, campaign issue…a few votes, to you, was more important than the future economic health of the United States of America.

Anyways…

As I’ve said before, we’re bankrupt. We tried the liberal model for the past 75 years – with some modifications by Reagan and Bush which, because of liberal intransigence, ended up merely putting off the day of reckoning – and it has failed. There is, as they say, no free lunch – and the tab has now come due. We have to pull back – spend less, make more, save more.

If we really want to get out of this, we have to immediately cease all non-essential government spending, start the long process of privatizing entitlements and set up our economic regulations in such a manner as to encourage wealth creation. We do this, and we can get ’round this problem in a decade or two…don’t do it, and it will just get worse and worse each year, perhaps masked at times by a prosperous year or two, but ultimately there will come a when we’ve taxed, borrowed and printed every red cent we can, and there are still people with their hands out.

And, liberals, there is some good news I can impart to you here – you don’t have to give up your dreams of bonanzas of government spending. But you do have to give up your dreams of borrowing and printing your way into the funds for doing it. Set up a budgetary system which is balanced with a “rainy day” set aside each fiscal year, and in a few years you’ll find that even with a balanced budget and swiftly reducing federal debt that you’ve got just oodles of taxpayer cash to play with…but you have to live within your means.

And, hey, I’m not the first person to say this to you of late – Obama did, too. Of course, he was lying about it. But did you think he was lying about it when he said it? If you didn’t, then don’t you think you should busy yourself holding him to his promise? Its either that, or the course you’re heading down will result in a very large Republican majority in the by and by…and then even if there are oodles of cash, we won’t let you play with it…

Your choice.