Senate Republicans report via Twitter that Timothy Geitner, the tax cheat nominated by Barack Hussein Obama, was confirmed 60-34.

The Washington Post reports.

Tim Geithner was confirmed as Treasury Secretary moments ago by the Senate by a vote of 60 to 34, making him the successor to Hank Paulson and the man charged with leading the U.S. out of a global recession.

Geithner was confirmed despite the embarrassment caused last week by his botched tax returns from 2001 – 2004.

Quick recap: While working at the International Monetary Fund, Geithner was audited in 2006 and found that he failed to play self-employment tax in 2003 and ’04. He immediately paid those taxes but did not go back to check his 2001 and ’02 returns, in which he had also not paid the self-employment tax. He did not pay those back taxes until confronted by President Obama’s vetting team last year.

The 60-34 margin was the closest since World War II, Bloomberg said.

SHAME: The following Republicans — there are ten of them — voted to confirm the tax crook:

1. Corker (R-TN)
2. Cornyn (R-TX)
3. Crapo (R-ID)
4. Ensign (R-NV)
5. Graham (R-SC)
6. Gregg (R-NH)
7. Hatch (R-UT)
8. Shelby (R-AL)
9. Snowe (R-ME)
10. Voinovich (R-OH)

1. Adolph Hitler


Thought it would be a good idea to create “the master race.” Thought that the “Jewish Problem” could be handled via their extermination.

2. Josef Mengele (a/k/a “The Angel of Death“)

Mengele selects incoming Jews for labour or extermination in the gas chambers and conducts pseudoscientific medical experiments on inmates, principally infants, young twins, dwarfs and those with genetic abnormalities. He is given his own laboratory block, independent financing and a medical staff.

He is also supported by the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Genetics and Eugenics at Dahlem in Berlin and sends specimens to the institute director, Dr Otmar von Verschuer, his former supervisor at the University of Frankfurt and an expert on the genetics of twins.

Mengele investigates ways to increase human fertility. He tries to find a genetic cause for the disease ‘noma’ (a rare gangrenous condition of the face and mouth), studies physical abnormalities and contagious diseases, conducts experiments with wounds, and attempts to change the colour of inmate’s eyes to blue with injections of chemicals directly into the eyeball. His chief interest is twins.

3. Margaret Sanger:

Founder of Planned Parenthood. Along with being an anti-semite and supporting the genocide of the Negro race, of her most famous sayings,

“It is a vicious cycle; ignorance breeds poverty and poverty breeds ignorance. There is only one cure for both, and that is to stoop breeding these things. Stop bringing to birth children whose inheritance cannot be one of health or intelligence. Stop bringing into the world children whose parents cannot provide for them.”

And:

“The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”

And last, but certainly not least,

4. San Fran Nancy Pelosi, who yesterday famously suggested that “contraception is good for the economy.”

Her interview with Stephanopolous:

No apologies, eh, Nancy? Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.

That’s the way to help the economy. Make sure folks are never born. That’s worked so well in Europe.

But hold your head up proud, Ms. Pelosi. You’re in (in)famous company.

Via Newsbusters – this is hilarious:

Several days before taking office, President Obama traveled to George Will’s home to dine with a handful of conservative media elites. The beltway conventional wisdom suggested that Obama’s aim was to “neutralize potential adversaries” by way of a “charm offensive.” After the dinner, Bill Kristol explained on Fox and Friends that while “no one’s mind was changed,” he would “end up supporting [Obama] on some things.” Charles Krauthammer joked about Obama’s apparent goals, “I am brainwashed entirely. I’m in the tank.”

Just one week later, Obama’s right-wing acquaintances have already shown the futility of engaging in a good-faith dialogue with them. While Obama pushes his vision for the economic recovery package — his first real battle against the conservative establishment — the dinner’s attendees are on a no-holds-barred offensive against it:

Charles Krauthammer: “Look, this is one of the worst bills in galactic history. … FDR left behind the Hoover dam and Eisenhower left behind the interstate highway system. We will leave behind, after spending $1 trillion, a dog run in East Potomac Park.” [Fox News, 1/24/09]

David Brooks: “It is an unholy marriage that manages to combine the worst of each approach — rushed short-term planning with expensive long-term fiscal impact.” [New York Times, 1/23/09]

Bill Kristol: “The stimulus has so much bad stuff in it. … They let the House Democrats get out of control in sort of writing a pork-laden bill. Politically, I think the Republicans have more room too argue for changes and ultimately vote against it.” [Fox News Sunday, 1/25/09]

So, because these conservatives failed to ditch a lifetime of conservative economic philosophy, talking with them was a waste of time, according to liberals. We’re supposed to be so awed by Obama that once he talks to us, we’re supposed to switch over to being Obamaniacs, I guess?

Well, no. Look, if I were to meet President Obama I would call him “President Obama” or “Sir”. He would be treated with the respect due to any person holding the office of the President of the United States of America. I would listen carefully to what he had to say, I would not interrupt while he was talking and I would, if asked, give careful consideration to whatever views he urged upon me. But I wouldn’t cease to be conservative because Obama had dinner with me. As he reached out to me, I would give that extra benefit of the doubt, but when Obama did something in clear contravention of my core beliefs – such as apparently being ok with a “stimulus” bill larded up with pork like never before – then I would declare my opposition.

Only a “tolerant” liberal could get upset over this – upset not just over Obama meeting with people from the other side (for which act I do give him great credit for – he didn’t have to do it, and by so doing it he showed a proper respect towards those who disagree with him), but also upset that the other side is still, after all, the other side.

Mark Steyn over at NRO’s The Corner had bad things to say about TARP and then got this response from a fellow conservative on the matter:

I’m totally with you except in your comments about TARP. This is a real misconception pervading the conservative punditocracy. To suggest that the first $350 billion was “completely wasted” ignores the realities of the situation. At the time TARP was enacted in October, the financial system was on the verge of outright collapse. We’re now in a severe recession, but to have done nothing at that time would have meant reenactment of the worst of the Great Depression. By injecting capital into the system, the TARP money relieved the worst of the risks confronting the system, unfreezing the credit markets. Yes, we can argue about whether this has resulted in propping up some ultimately unsustainable institutions. But the fact is, given the conditions at the time, there really was no choice.

I’m a conservative libertarian, inclined to be extremely skeptical of such large-scale government intervention. In this case, it’s important to recognize that a series of government errors were intimately involved in creating the conditions that led to the crisis – loose money, politically correct and misguided regulatory directives, and irresponsible lending behavior by government-affiliated institutions. So while such intervention is highly distasteful, the extent to which it is being compelled to deal with earlier government mistakes makes it somewhat more acceptable.

I’m a conservative conservative, and it seems to me that in TARP we ended up throwing good money after bad. In the first rush of collapse, I gave my tacit approval to the bail out – now that we’ve seen it fail, I’m opposed to any further such actions. If a company is failing, let it fail – when the dust settles, we’ll be better off for it. And do keep in mind that I work at a large financial institution whose repeated assertions to us employees of continuing financial stability are looked at with increasing doubt…in other words, I’m not at all sure that I’ll have a job next week because there’s a chance my employer might fail. And if it is to fail, let it fail…I don’t want my fellow Americans on the hook for clearing up the mess made by a senior management I view as increasingly incompetent.

The problem here has been the perfect storm of corrupt politics, corrupt economics and funny money. We can’t do anything, at the moment, about the funny money – fiat money is here for at least a while. We can do lots about the corrupt politics and the corrupt economics – corrupt, even if no laws were broken, in the sense that the former betrayed the public trust, the latter betrayed their fiduciary trust. To keep the same corrupt politicians in charge of monitoring the situation while we send taxpayer dollars to the same corrupt businessmen who run the failed firms is the definition of idiocy.

Now, naturally, Obama and his Democrats will bail out the corrupt businessmen and cover up for the corrupt politicians – this as certain as the sun rising in the east. The reason for this is that the corrupt businessmen provide large donations to Democrat campaigns (or, if they haven’t in the past, they will now – if they know whats good for them, know what I mean?) while the corrupt politicians, prosecuted, would risk the worst possible – for Democrats – outcome: a loss of Democrat power. So, we’re just going to go from exceptionally bad to miserably worse in the realm of bail outs – but we GOPers should have nothing more to do with it. Let Obama and his Democrats continue along this path without us so that when it crashes (and its not a matter of if but of when), we’ll bear no further responsibility for it.

Good man:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) told “Fox News Sunday” this morning that he would not support the stimulus package as the House Democrats have written it because it includes too much wasteful spending.

The stimulus currently includes $275 billion in tax cuts and doesn’t include Republican input or a spending timeline, McCain said.

“There should be an end point to all of this spending.say two years…The plan was written by the Democratic majority in the House primarily. So yeah, I think there has to be major rewrites, if we want to stimulate the economy,” McCain said. “I am opposed to most of provisions in the bill. As it stands now. I would not support it.”

McCain wouldn’t say whether he would filibuster it.

“We need serious negotiations,” he said. “We’re losing sight of what the stimulus is all about and that is job creation.”

Of course, I don’t think we “lost sight” of what the stimulus is all about – in the sense that it always was about Democrats rewarding their contributors and buying votes. If any jobs were created along they way, Democrats would be ok with that…as long as they weren’t created in Republican districts, of course.

The GOP must make it clear – as McCain has done – that this Obamanomics boondoggle is all Democrat, all the time. This plan, as presented, will fail miserably and cause our already weak economy to collapse completely – when everything goes smash, we don’t want any GOP fingers on it because Democrats will brazenly blame us for failure if they can put even one GOPers name on it in a leadership position. We want our hands clean and our party able to credibly state that we warned when it was proposed, offered solid alternatives and opposed it when it came up for a vote.

Sherman Frederick at the Las Vegas Review-Journal hopes that adulthood comes to some on the left, even if it comes late:

In case you missed it, when President George W. Bush was announced to the crowd, some booed loudly, shocking even the commentators on the official Obama network, MSNBC. One section of onlookers sang, “Nah nah nah nah, hey hey hey, goodbye.” And, finally, as Bush left the White House, one deep thinker took the opportunity to give the “one-finger salute,” thus saying more about himself than anything else.

This from a movement that fancies itself all about peace, love and global karma.

Now look, it would be a mistake to paint all Democrats and Obama supporters with the actions of these few on Inauguration Day. And, according to news reports, some in the crowd tried hard to shush the boo-birds. That is a hopeful sign.

But let’s also not ignore the obvious. There is a growing faction of the American left that seeks revenge more than righteousness.

Intolerant of dissenting views, this faction thinks as comedian Janeane Garofalo does that some members of the opposing political party should be “jailed.” Terrorist acts (such as mailing envelopes of white power to Mormon temples because the gay marriage vote in California went the church’s way) are seen by this faction as understandable and acts of legitimate political expression.

There is also an ugly racial component to it. We first saw it with Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who said, among other things, that white America had deliberately inflicted black Africa with AIDS.

When the Rev. Wright first hit the national stage, we hardly knew what to make of his irrational and separatist statements. Consequently, we pretty much ignored the substance of Wright’s racially divisive rhetoric and focused on it as a day-to-day political story. It made us more comfortable, I think.

But in light of the things we saw at the inauguration, it may be time to revisit the dangers of intolerance and hate — no matter the color of the person who makes them — and nip this ugly mean streak in the bud.

As our president said, it is time to grow up.

The word “tolerance” to the left means “agree with the left”, but real tolerance means “you may do your business without let or hindrance from me”. One doesn’t have to like President Bush and his supporters, but in a pluralist, democratically governed republic, one does have to tolerate them…and part of tolerance is not doing hateful things to them, such as booing their presence at a solemn moment, or demanding they be arrested for imagined crimes. We here on the right were soundly beaten at the polls last November, and that should be satisfaction enough for liberals – but its not, as we see in so many comments and actions by liberals since the election.

The ugliness of the left stems, I believe, from the fact that their worldview isn’t true – defending a false front, they are forced ultimately to rely upon intimidation and the politics of personal destruction to maintain their position. What this means is that as things go forward towards ultimate disaster for liberalism, our liberals will become more rather than less nasty – only those who admit their error completely will be able to free themselves from an all-consuming hatred and bitterness.

If you think that in 2008 we saw the most nasty, hate-filled and dishonest campaign possible from the liberals, then you just haven’t seen 2012, yet.

Much was made over Comrade Obama being administered the oath a second time to remove any lingering doubt about whether or not he was legitimately installed as president.

This brings up an interesting question… If White House counsel Greg Craig felt taking the oath again was necessary to silence Obama critics by removing “any lingering doubt” why doesn’t Obama show us his real birth certificate, given the more significant and real doubts surrounding his legitimacy to be president?

Now steps onto the stage of world history a man apparently quite conscious that the Supreme Law of the United States prevents him from being president of the United States.

For why else would anyone hire lawyers and expend millions of dollars to avoid producing a $12.50 birth certificate to show eligibility under the Constitution? ‘Midst the rhythmic chants of a delirious, sycophantic media, inaugural splendor will substitute for simple proof that the United States of America will have a constitutionally legitimate president.

If Obama is not eligible, legally, the United States of America will have no president. A usurper will wield such power as few men have ever held, having no constitutional warrant. However beloved of the media or adored by racialist groupies, and irrespective of public support, Obama will be a tyrant, in the original sense of the word (from the Greek tyrannos meaning one who wields power to which he has no lawful claim). As he sends young soldiers to die, even the appearance of his usurpation of presidential powers will insult their sacrifice and thwart the Constitution they give their all to preserve. Even as he utters the oath – hand on Lincoln’s Bible – he will betray it, not upholding, protecting and defending the Constitution, but subverting it.

President Bush was never fully accepted as President by a number of left-wingers because they felt the election of 2000 was stolen. if Obama wants to silence those who question his legitimacy, all he has to do is show us the birth certificate. Otherwise these questions will remain and plague him for the next four years, and beyond, as one day someone will be able to uncover the truth, and if it its found that Obama was constitutionally ineligible to be president… well, who knows what the ramifications will be in that cirumstance?

Kristol offers some cautions and some hope:

Republicans, newly liberated, need to resist calls to shackle themselves to prematurely announced agendas and already anointed leaders. This is the time for a thousand Republicans to bloom. Congressmen used to looking to the White House for guidance or approval–or fearing disapprobation–should show some healthy ambition and unleash their inner policy entrepreneur. Backbenchers need to come forward with heterodox ideas. There should be vigorous debate. Disharmonious disarray is in the short term much less of a danger than a false and stultifying unity.

Everyone looks back nostalgically to 1993-94, the last time Republicans were out of power, but that example is a bit misleading. In 1992, Clinton had won only 43 percent of the vote, and the Republicans had gained congressional seats. The successful Reagan years remained fresh in voters’ minds. The task was simply to reclaim and revivify the Reagan agenda. The task today is both harder and less well defined.

The situation is more like 1977. For one thing, given the unlikelihood of Republicans taking back Congress in 2010, it requires a four-year horizon rather than a two-year one. More important, it requires serious rethinking in fundamental areas. Consider how far the party moved from 1977 to 1980. It was a period of vigorous, even hectic, political, policy, and institutional entrepreneurship, among conservatives both old and new. Thanks to the controversial efforts of backbenchers like Jack Kemp and Bill Steiger, the party rejected green eyeshade budget-balancing and embraced pro-growth supply-side economic policies. Thanks to the emergence of the neoconservatives, Kissingerian détente gave way to Reaganite freedom-fighting. Religious conservatives moved en masse to join the ranks of the GOP. All of this in four years.

The revival of the GOP has to come from the ground up and from outside Washington – from the ground up because we need fresh blood, new faces and bold, new ideas of reform; from outside Washington because the healthy contempt most Americans feel for the people who run government is simply going to get stronger and broader-based as Obama and his Democrats set America rolling on the slow-motion train wreck which will be the Obama Administration. We don’t want to be identified at all with what is going on in DC, except in as much as we can be involved in opposing the clearly bad bits of Obamanomics and offering those bold, new proposals as a counterweight to the Democrat plans.

It is time that we started looking our selves in the mirror and realizing that there’s no Reagan out there to come rescue us. Indeed, if we pay close attention we’ll realize that Reagan wasn’t able to do half what he wanted because the GOP simply sat around waiting for Reagan to do it. No one man can ever do it all (and Obama should pay attention to this truth…but I don’t think he even suspects it exists) – each must play his part, large or small, to advance the cause. If we want to have a conservative government in the United States which will undo the social, political and economic damage liberalism has inflicted over the past decades, then we’re going to have to make it happen – person by person, precinct by precinct, State by State until we get it done.

Nothing can be left off the table and no area of the country can be conceded to the Democrats – while it is certain that prayer in public schools and banning abortion won’t play well in, say, Los Angeles there is the fact that there are plenty of people in Los Angeles who want strong defense, low taxes, secure borders, less burdensome regulation, etc, etc, etc. We can put candidates up all over the country, and we should – because conservative ideals are for everywhere; because liberalism is bad everywhere and must be opposed; because if we even get the liberals to spend 10% of their effort holding their own, that works to our overall advantage.

While adhering to the core values of conservatism (limited government, low taxes, free markets, individual liberty, etc), we must be willing to mix it up and play take away from liberalism. We have to change the terms of the debate – we have to cease having the debate being over whether or not we’re rat bastards and change that debate into a question of who can best govern the United States in the interests of the average American?

This will be fun:

President Obama warned Republicans on Capitol Hill today that they need to quit listening to radio king Rush Limbaugh if they want to get along with Democrats and the new administration.

“You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done,” he told top GOP leaders, whom he had invited to the White House to discuss his nearly $1 trillion stimulus package.

One White House official confirmed the comment but said he was simply trying to make a larger point about bipartisan efforts.

I’m reminded, now, about that incident early on in Obama’s campaign where he took a reporter to task for daring to mention his rather large ears – I wonder if our President is one of those really sad political specimens who is kept awake at night with anger over a hostile media mention? The best way to thwart someone is to rattle them – get under their skin and get them concentrating on fighting you, rather than carrying out their plan.

In a battle between Obama and Limbaugh, you have to go with El Rushbo – because Rush doesn’t care what Obama thinks about him…but Obama seems to care about what Rush thinks.

UPDATE: Byron York over at NRO got comments from Rush on this:

To make the argument about me instead of his plan makes sense from his perspective. Obama’s plan would buy votes for the Democrat Party, in the same way FDR’s New Deal established majority power for 50 years of Democrat rule, and it would also simultaneously seriously damage any hope of future tax cuts. It would allow a majority of American voters to guarantee no taxes for themselves going forward. It would burden the private sector and put the public sector in permanent and firm control of the economy. Put simply, I believe his stimulus is aimed at re-establishing “eternal” power for the Democrat Party rather than stimulating the economy because anyone with a brain knows this is NOT how you stimulate the economy. If I can be made to serve as a distraction, then there is that much less time debating the merits of this TRILLION dollar debacle.

Obama was angry that Merrill Lynch used $1.2 million of TARP money to remodel an executive suite. Excuse me, but didn’t Merrill have to hire a decorator and contractor? Didn’t they have to buy the new furnishings? What’s the difference in that and Merrill loaning that money to a decorator, contractor and goods supplier to remodel Warren Buffet’s office? Either way, stimulus in the private sector occurs. Are we really at the point where the bad PR of Merrill getting a redecorated office in the process is reason to smear them? How much money will the Obamas spend redecorating the White House residence? Whose money will be spent? I have no problem with the Obamas redoing the place. It is tradition. 600 private jets flown by rich Democrats flew into the Inauguration. That’s fine but the auto execs using theirs is a crime? In both instances, the people on those jets arrived in Washington wanting something from Washington, not just good will.

As I’ve said, the whole thing here is power – Democrats want it and never want to surrender it. The desire for power is bound up in a lot of things but it goes at bottom to a desire to work the socio-economic levers of society by people who genuinely believe they are smarter than everyone else. Our Democrats fixate on college degrees and presume that a person who has one is inherently smarter than the person who doesn’t. There is a belief that a person is a plumber because he isn’t smart enough to become a lawyer or a tenured college professor. It doesn’t enter their heads that some people are just not interested in the sort of things Democrats are interested in – and when you really believe you are smarter than those sad, downtrodden individuals who bitterly cling to God and guns you get really, really ticked off when they fail to pay court to you. Limbaugh gets under liberals’ skin for the same reason President Bush did – because he doesn’t give a darn what liberals think.

It is bad enough that Limbaugh disagrees; much worse is the fact that Limbaugh never once, not even when he was knocked flat by personal failings, sought the good will of liberalism. Limbaugh can’t be bought and he can’t be intimidated and with millions of listeners day after day, he has a larger overall effect on public attitudes than anyone in politics, including the President of the United States. And therein lies the battle with Rush – Democrats from Obama on down remember that on that glad morn 16 years ago, Democrats thought they had it all. After a 12 year interregnum, Democrats were back in full control of all branches of government and they believed they’d never be out of power again – America had changed, there had been demographic shifts, religious right types were turning off moderates, the people had woken up from their GOP-noise-machine-induced slumber and realized that investing in America via government spending was better than the newly-discredited free market. And then there was Rush – and he was not at all coincidentally identified by National Review magazine as the leader of the opposition in 1993. And what a leader – in 1994, the Democrats’ 40 year grip on the Congress was broken largely as a result of Limbaugh relentlessly hammering away at the failures of the Democrat Congress and President Clinton.

Democrats don’t want a replay of this – so, they want to break the GOP Congressional leadership away from the GOP base and they want to marginalize Rush Limbaugh. If they can do that, then by 2013 (presumptively at the start of Obama’s second term and with a continuing Democrat Congressional majority), Democrats will be able to get more than half the population relieved of any taxation at all and also get half the population in some way dependent upon government spending for their living – voila!, we’re a socialist State with a permanent liberal/left majority no longer having to worry itself about those troublesome conservatives.

It won’t work, of course – because where the GOP is being led is outside of Washington, DC. We hope that the GOP leadership in DC wakes up to the fact that uniform opposition to Obama is the name of the game for a resurgence in GOP power…but if they prefer to listing to the dying MSM and decide to cooperate with Obama, then we’ll just have to flatten the entire governing establishment from the outside, just like we’ve done it before.

That is what he will deserve to be called if his plan to close Gitmo goes through… as it has already been docmented that terrorists who have already managed to use our system to against us have rejoined al Qaeda.

The emergence of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee as the deputy leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch has underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order President Obama signed Thursday that the detention center be shut down within a year.

The militant, Said Ali al-Shihri, is suspected of involvement in a deadly bombing of the United States Embassy in Yemen’s capital, Sana, in September. He was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists before resurfacing with Al Qaeda in Yemen.

His status was announced in an Internet statement by the militant group and was confirmed by an American counterterrorism official.

“They’re one and the same guy,” said the official, who insisted on anonymity because he was discussing an intelligence analysis. “He returned to Saudi Arabia in 2007, but his movements to Yemen remain unclear.” 

Bleeding hearts may treat examples like this and other examples with skepticism, but sadly, that is exactly what these terrorists want. It is the same thing with allegations of torture. It was reported a few years ago that al Qaeda’s strategy was to make false claims of torture… those claims would help them take advatage of the American court system, and of course the media.

An al Qaeda handbook preaches to operatives to level charges of torture once captured, a training regime that administration officials say explains some of the charges of abuse at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

[…]

A directive lists one mission as “spreading rumors and writing statements that instigate people against the enemy.”

If captured, the manual states, “At the beginning of the trial … the brothers must insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them by state security before the judge. Complain of mistreatment while in prison.”

American bleeding hearts have given credence to bogus claims of torture,  which has been the primary justification for closing Gitmo.

One has to wonder if part of al Qaeda’s strategy was to get sleeper cells in America to campaign for Barack Obama. I wouldn’t be surprised if they did.

UPDATE: Captain Ed explains how al-Shihri got released.

How did Shirhi get released?  He told the Gitmo tribunals that he only traveled to Iran and Afghanistan to get carpets for his family’s store.  The Pentagon’s dossier on Abu Sayyaf showed that he trained at a terrorist camp outside of Kabul, went to Iran to bring extremists into Afghanistan, and wanted to assassinate a writer on which a mullah had placed a fatwa for his writings.  Shihri was fortunate that his review came at a time when the Bush administration was getting enormous pressure to reduce the number of inmates at Gitmo, and Shihri went into the Saudi rehab program.  A year later, Shihri disappeared — and now he’s running the AQ network in Yemen.