Anyone want to start a pool on how short Obama’s honeymoon period will be?

The chairman of the Senate Rules Committee has parted with many of her Democratic colleagues and says that the Senate should seat former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California said Tuesday that Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, however tainted by corruption charges, has the right to appoint someone to President-elect Barack Obama’s former seat. The Rules Committee decides whether Burris is qualified to serve.

Feinstein said that blocking Burris would have ramifications for other governors’ appointments.

It will also have ramifications for black turnout in 2010, possibly costing Democrats a large number of House and Senate seats. As I said before – eventually, Reid will back down. Only a voluntary Burris surrender will alter this iron-clad eventuality.

And, drat it all, when an Islamo-fascist buys you he darn well insists you stay bought:

Al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader lashed out at President-elect Barack Obama in a new audio message Tuesday, accusing him of not doing anything to stop Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip, according to an intelligence monitoring center.

The recording purportedly by Ayman al-Zawahiri was al-Qaida’s first comments on the Gaza crisis since Israel launched its offensive against the Islamic militants of Hamas on Dec. 27.

On a more serious note – liberals, they hate us for what we are, not what we do. There is nothing Obama can do which will get those who hate us to stop hating us. Only God can so move hearts – all we can do is fight them and hope to convince the non-haters that we will emerge victorious.

…and he just went on for several minutes saying a whole lot without actually saying anything.

This what we’re going to have to put up with for four years?

Can’t think of anyone better:

Meg Whitman fired the starting gun on the race to succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger as California governor on Monday when the former chief executive of eBay abruptly resigned from the boards of three companies.

Ms Whitman, who continues to own a 2 per cent stake in eBay, the internet auction site, worked on John McCain’s presidential campaign and has privately expressed interest in running for California governor in 2010 as the Republican candidate.

Her resignation on Monday from the boards of eBay, Procter & Gamble and DreamWorks Animation is the clearest signal yet that she is considering a run for the post.

“She’s potentially a very credible candidate,” said Dan Schnur, a Republican strategist who worked on Mr McCain’s presidential campaign in 2000. “She attracted very positive views as a surrogate for McCain last year and has developed a very extensive political network.”

The election in November next year for one of the most powerful positions in American politics promises to be hotly contested. Term limits will prevent Mr Schwarzenegger from running a third time but a range of other candidates are contemplating campaigns for governor of a state that would be the world’s eighth largest economy if it were a separate country.

In the Democratic corner, Antonio Villaraigosa, the mayor of Los Angeles and an ally of Barack Obama, and Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco, are considering running.

Diane Feinstein, California’s senior senator, would be the overwhelming favourite if she stood as the Democratic candidate. However, she was recently nominated chairman of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee, becoming the first woman to lead it in its 32-year history. Having secured that role, she is considered unlikely to mount a campaign for state governor.

Liberal as California is, I can’t imagine Whitman losing to Villaraigosa or Newsom, while Feinstein would be a heavy favorite to win if she were the Democratic nominee. Villaraigosa’s racist, anti-American background does him no harm in Los Angeles and would be a plus for him in San Francisco, but won’t play in the rest of the State. Newsom would probably lose Los Angeles (though doing very well in the ultra-liberal ‘burbs of Brentwood, Malibu, West Hollywood, etc.). Feinstein would entirely shut the GOP out in San Francisco and Los Angeles and make a huge play for the GOP strongholds of the inland empire and Orange County. Meanwhile, Whitman is the sort of person a California GOPer and moderate likes – successful, but not brash; sort of conservative, but not too much.

In a Feinstein/Whitman contest, I’d lay money on Feinstein, but wouldn’t count Whitman out – though even against the weaker candidates, Whitman will carry the millstone of Schwarzenegger ’round her neck just as McCain had to carry Bush’s legacy in to November. On the other hand, California Democrats have been making such a hash of things, and Schwarzenegger has moved so far left, that it might be possible for the GOP in 2010 to tie the Govinator to the Democrats and run against the whole mess in Sacramento (and, Arnie – love ya, buddy…but you should have stuck to your fiscal conservative guns).

This is just the first in what I believe will be many strong GOP candidates to announce for major offices in 2010 – in the normal course of events, the GOP will have a bounce-back from our drubbing in 2006/08. Add in a possible recession stretching in to 2010. Add in possible Obama meltdown as President. Add in a strong GOP message with interesting and new faces and voices. Mix that all together and we could get the perfect GOP wave.

We could write about the slow disintegration of Team Obama, but we prefer to just watch it and laugh up our sleeves about it.

So, have at it on your own, boys and girls.

It does exist, and it is growing:

Bahrain will donate a plot of land to build a new Catholic church in the country. The decision by King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa comes in response to a request Pope Benedict XVI made to the Gulf State when its new ambassador presented its credentials last 18 December.

“Everyone is aware today that because of the rising number of Catholics, it would be desirable for them to have more places of worship,” the Pope said during the audience with Naser Muhamed Youssef Al-Belooshi, first representative of the Arab kingdom to the Vatican.

About 80 per cent of the 800,000 people living in the country are Muslim (60 per cent Sunni and 20 per cent Shia). Catholics represent about 10 per cent, mostly foreign workers from Asian nations.

Bahrain became the first country in the Persian Gulf to build a Catholic church, the Sacred Heart Church, which will celebrate its 70th anniversary this year, since it was inaugurated with a Christmas Midnight Mass in 1939.

Relations between the Holy See and the Gulf kingdom saw significant progress in 2008. Not only did the Vatican receive the first ambassador from Bahrain, but King Hamad met Pope Benedict XVI as well. After the meeting on 9 July the sovereign issued an official communiqué inviting the Holy Father to visit the country.

Over the past year, we’ve had as our associate pastor a foreign priest who has spent time in the Gulf Region and it was he who first brought to my attention the tacit approval given to Christian worship in some of the Gulf States – the Gulf States have imported a great deal of labor and, as it turns out, a lot of it hails from Catholic areas of Asia. Meanwhile, Evangelicals have also been busy and have, indeed, gained converts in the Islamic world. Boiled down, the concept of the Arabian penninsula being entirely Moslem is rapidly collapsing in the face of the demographic facts of Christian immigration. And for these Moslem nations, its either become tolerant or lose their labor force. Most are turning towards toleration – and there is even some discussion about opening a Catholic Church in Saudi Arabia, something which would have been entirely unthinkable even just a few years ago.

A good deal of this progress is resultant upon the quiet diplomacy of the Holy See – patience and tact do go a long ways. But, additionally, there are also the winds of change blowing…including those winds brought forth by the US actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The times, they are a-changing, and wise Moslems know they have to bend a bit with the wind, or break. The Islamo-fascists, of course, refuse to bend – but they are more and more being marginalized as Islam begins to develope hope for a better tomorrow, and becomes ever more familiar with the inhuman and, indeed, un-Islamic savagery of the Islamo-fascists.

There should be no turning back from this, and only the most cowardly surrender on the part of the United States can undo the good work well begun.

Seems that Obama didn’t mention this to Feinstein:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Senate’s incoming Intelligence committee chair, slammed President-elect Barack Obama’s choice of Leon Panetta as director of the CIA Monday.

“I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA Director. I know nothing about this, other than what I’ve read,” Feinstein said in a statement. “My position has consistently been that I believe the Agency is best-served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time.”

A Feinstein spokesman told CNN’s Dana Bash that the California senator found out about Obama’s pick after her staff showed her a New York Times report.

“The President-elect will now have a chance to make his arguments,” the spokesman said. “Her next move is to listen.”

Feinstein is the new chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. While Panetta’s political career — as a congressman, and as President Clinton’s chief of staff — spans three decades, he has little hands-on intelligence experience.

Curiously enough, when I first heard of the Panetta appointment, I was pleased. Now, don’t get me wrong – Panetta is just another liberal, as far as that goes, but he’s also one of the few adults in the senior ranks of the Democratic party and if we’re to have a liberal in charge of CIA, might as well have one who knows the difference between, as it were, poop and shinola. But DiFi seems displeased – allegedly on grounds of Panetta not being a career intel person. As for me, that is one of the grand advantages of our way of government – we can get people from outside the asylum to check up on the inmates from time to time (that said persons are sometimes crazier than the internal loons is a risk we run – but Panetta isn’t one of the screwballs).

Its not like the Democratic bench is chock full of talent, ya know? Any party which can’t find replacements for Byrd and Ted Kennedy is a party facing a famine of talent. With Richardson out (yes, he’s got his questionable activities, but he’s also one of the few adults in the party) it becomes more important than ever to obtain and retain the few first rate Democrats we have. It would be a sad thing if DiFi obtains Panetta’s scalp over a pettifogging (and rather cowardly) bias towards alleged experts.

Once again, so much for the so-called “most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to re-write House rules today to ensure that the Republican minority is unable to have any influence on legislation. Pelosi’s proposals are so draconian, and will so polarize the Capitol, that any thought President-elect Obama has of bipartisan cooperation will be rendered impossible before he even takes office.

Pelosi’s rule changes — which may be voted on today — will reverse the fairness rules that were written around Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America.”

Even our liberal friends here should be repulsed by this.

Victor Davis Hanson hits the nail right on the head, again:

There is something especially nauseating about the latest Middle East war — scenes of worldwide Islamic protests with photos of Jews as apes, protesters (in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida of all places!) screaming about nuking Israel and putting Jews in ovens, parades of children dressed up with suicide vests and fake rockets, near constant anti-Semitic vicious sloganeering, Gaza mosques stuffed with rockets to be used against civilians — all to be collated with creepy Hamas rhetoric about the annihilation of Israel. This is the world in which we now live.

Almost no other issue in recent memory has illustrated the moral bankruptcy of much of the international community. Hamas has no pretensions, like the PA, of being a governing authority; it used violence to rout the PA and then bragged that its charter pledging the destruction of Israel remained unchanged. Israel evacuated Gaza; Gazans in response looted their own infrastructure, alienated both the PA and Egypt,and then sent off more than 6,000 rockets against Israeli civilians, while eagerly becoming a terrorist puppet of theocratic Iran.

Nothing could be more clear: either the fact that a constitutional republic was trying to avoid civilian casualties while a terrorist organization was intent on killing Jewish civilians as it used its own citizens as shields to protect mostly young male terrorists; or the world’s craven reaction to all this.

Again all very creepy — the stuff of Tolkien’s Mordor. It is now clear that the so-called and much praised “international community,” the hallowed U.N., the revered EU, all pretty much are indifferent to the survival of a democratic Israel, or are actively supportive of its terrorist Hamas enemy. Only the U.S. (for now) stands by a constitutional state in its war against a murderous terrorist clique, with annhilation its aim and religous fascism its creed.

People who have read my stuff for a while know that I frequently refer to the modern era as the Age of Lies – we have just so much untruth passed off as truth that it gets overwhelming at times. There are those who are neither Israeli nor Arab (and thus have no dog in the hunt) who have been convinced that Israel is the evil aggressor in all of this. Only a society awash in lies can believe such a thing – and keep in mind, this has nothing to do with the worth of Israel’s current military operation. You can justifiably state that Israel should not be attacking right now – that is a rational position one can hold…but to hold that Israel is other than the aggrieved party and that Hamas is wicked is to be either a liar, or a complete fool.

As a for-instance in our pervasive the lies are: We’ve heard it reported that hundreds of Palestinians are dead. What is the source? The Hamas terrorists. Oh, you can probably find some report from some ostensibly non-partisan group saying this or that about casualties…but the battle is on going and no one in Gaza has the time to actually go around verifying the number of dead, and whether or not any particular dead person is civil or military. In other words, other than the certainty that people have been killed in the fighting, we have no other information which can be classed as news about the number of dead in Gaza. And yet, day after day, there goes the MSM toting up the body count as if they’ve actually got a verified number and each time an Israeli bomb lands there’s someone trotting over to the crater and counting the dead. Of course, they don’t – they’re calling their contacts at Hamas and the Hamas people are just making up numbers which sound horrific, knowing that whatever number they give out will be faithfully transmitted by the MSM. And this leave aside the entire issue of whether or not we should even ask Hamas for their views – we didn’t pause to get Goebbles’ view, did we?

To be fair about this, my side of the aisle has its share of lies on this matter, too. I do wish that those who advocate an aggressive stance against terrorism (a position I adhere to) would leave off the name-calling and callousness towards our enemies. For full disclosure, I used to do that, too – but with age comes (hopefully) some wisdom and I think I better understand the necessity of remembering that its our brothers and sisters on the receiving end of those Israeli planes and artillery pieces. Some of them are actually wicked and bent on evil, but most are just poor people bamboozled into supporting wicked acts, or people just caught in the cross fire and trying to keep their heads down until its all over. The truth is that they are people and have a claim on us – yes, even the person right now arming a rocket to be fired at Israeli citizens has a claim on us. A lesser claim, to be sure, than the Israeli citizens, but a claim none the less.

The truth is that war is a nasty business – but, also, that it isn’t the worst thing which can happen. The truth is that Israel, warts and all, is on a much higher moral plane than the people in Hamas. The truth is that Hamas started this battle. The truth is that a democracy must be permitted to defend itself against non-democratic enemies. The truth is that the enemy targets civilians. The truth is that Israel does not target civilians. The truth is that all decent and right thinking people want peace. The truth is that those who run Hamas are neither decent nor right thinking. Keep truth in mind as we go through this terrible time – and once the fighting is over, remember that the truth requires us to, as Lincoln said, “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

I only scored 16 on the Obama test.