For possibly giving them a Republican governor:

Should Janet Napolitano, Barack Obama’s pick for homeland security chief, be confirmed as expected by the Senate, Napolitano will need to step down from her current position as governor of Arizona.

The state has no lieutenant governor, and its laws dictate that the governor, who is a Democrat, be replaced by Secretary of State Jan Brewer – a Republican.

The Associated Press reports that Brewer, who would be governor through 2010, “had a reputation as a fiscal hard-liner and conservative on social issues while a legislator in the 1980s and 1990s, so her taking over the governorship would mean a new approach from Napolitano’s direction.”

There are plenty of good things about the Obama Administration – Obama, Biden and Hillary are out of the Senate; Napolitano is out of Arizona; Emanuel is out of the House…the benefits just keep rolling in. With a little luck, Obama will appoint so many senior Democrats than when his liberal Administration crashes and burns, it will gut the Democrats for a generation.

But I’m not too hopeful that actual justice will be done:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi released a statement late Wednesday, on Thanksgiving eve, that she expects a House Ethics committee report on the questioned dealings of Ways and Means Committee chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) to be completed by Jan. 3.

Pelosi’s statement followed two days of renewed questions regarding Rangel, after a New York Times article reported he “was instrumental in preserving a lucrative tax loophole that benefited an oil-drilling company last year, while at the same time its chief executive was pledging $1 million” to help fund a new City College of New York school of public service that will be named in Rangel’s honor.

This latest New York Times story was followed the next day by an editorial in the same paper, which called on Pelosi to ensure the ethics investigation was moving forward. “We hope that Speaker Nancy Pelosi is shocked into action. She should insist that the ethics investigation move forward — and that Mr. Rangel relinquish his chairmanship during the inquiry. If Mr. Rangel continues to resist, the speaker should permanently reassign the gavel. In a deep economic crisis, the committee, and the country, cannot afford the distraction,” the Times editorialized.

The Washington Post jumped into the fray as well, writing Saturday that Rangel “should step aside as chairman while the ethics committee expands its inquiry.”

Given what happened to DeLay, Rangel should be forced to resign – but, be that as it may, this is the central test as to whether or not Pelosi’s Congress will really be something new, or just more of the same. To a lesser degree, it is also a challenge to Obama – if there is a whitewash or some sort of special treatment given to Rangel, then it will be up to Obama to make clear that he is displeased with such an outcome – if he doesn’t, then that will be yet another indicator that “pay for play” is still the name of the Democrat’s game.

If by “change” you mean “keep things almost exactly as they are now“:

After eight years as senator from New York, Hillary Clinton is trading places, moving from Congress to the incoming administration.

On Monday, President-elect Barack Obama announced that he asked his former rival to be his secretary of state.

That means the scramble begins to replace Clinton on Capitol Hill. Among those mentioned to take her seat as New York’s junior senator is her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

This appointment is only for two years – then a special election in 2010 to fill the remainder of Hillary’s term through 2012. The real worry: Chelsea Clinton will turn 30 on February 27, 2010…and then be old enough to be a Senator. We could have endless Clintons here…the long, national nightmare might never end!

The runoff between Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss and Democrat Jim Martin – Real Clear Politics aggregate of recent polls has Chambliss up by 4.7 points. All in all, it looks like the GOP will pull out a win here, though we must work hard – this could end up being the 41st GOP Senator.

As a side note, after our crushing defeat in 1992, it was Georgia’s Senate race which signaled the turn of the tide – coming hard on our defeat, it ushered in a period of victory which culminated in the 1994 mid-terms. History doesn’t actually repeat itself, but lets get a victory in Georgia and hope its an omen of our resurgence.

The best medicine we can find:

Jindal may not be a candidate in 2012. If he’s got to run for re-election in 2011, it would be hard to wrap up that campaign in November and put one together in Iowa for January. But he’s only 37, so it might be more realistic to put him on the 2016 or 2020 list of possibilities.

He said in an interview, “We have to match our actions with our rhetoric,” adding, “Republicans were defending spending they would absolutely criticize if it were proposed by the other side.”

Jindal said the GOP had to rid the party of corrupt officials, and “we have to be the party of solutions. We need to apply our conservative principles to the issues Americans care about – health care, energy costs, economic challenges and international threats.”

He pushed a tough ethics bill through his legislature to make Louisiana more attractive for growth. Next, he plans to push health-care reform.

It’s not enough to say Republicans oppose a health-care system run entirely by the government, he said. “We have to offer real solutions – refundable tax credits, electronic record keeping, reinsurance for catastrophic illness and preventative-care incentives.”

On the other hand, Jindal might eschew a run for re-election in 2011 and just start working on his 2012 program…a lot of this will depend, I believe, on how Jindal views his chances…if Obama is very strong by, say, February of 2011, then Jindal might view his best chance as being 2016. On the other hand, if Obama is weakened seriously by that point, then 2012 is the time to get in. Be that as it may, Governor Jindal is right – we have to offer solutions rather than criticism and we have to be true to our GOP and conservative principles.

Maintaining low taxes and strong defense will remain staples of the GOP program, but we also have to start figuring out what we’ll do to, say, change the debate on Life from a debate over whether abortion, itself, should be legal to a debate over what sort of people we are in respect to life. Our ultimate goal is an America which welcomes each new person, allows them maximum personal liberty in a well-ordered social structure and defends this society from all enemies, foreign and domestic, who would seek to overthrow it.

So, how do we get there? That is the question we must ponder and come up with answers for. It may be that Obama’s policies grease the skids on our return to power, but we can’t count on that – even if it happens that way, if we haven’t carefully thought out what we want to do, having power in our hands will be an exercise in futility. In the long run, it is better if we win convincingly after campaigning on a clear set of conservative programs designed to advance our overall world view – that is the way to cement our power and reforms into the American body politic.

Demographic collapse isn’t just an European problem:

Japan’s workers are being urged to switch off their laptops, go home early and use what little energy they have left on procreation, in the country’s latest attempt to avert demographic disaster.

The drive to persuade employers that their staff would be better off at home with their wives than staying late at the office comes amid warnings from health experts that many couples are simply too tired to have sex.

A recent survey of married couples under 50 found that more than a third had not had sex in the previous month.

Many couples said they didn’t have the energy for sex, while others said they found it boring.

A quarter of the men surveyed said they were “too tired” after work, while just under a fifth of women said intercourse was “too troublesome”. A study by Durex found that the average couple has sex 45 times a year, less than half the global average of 103 times.

“It’s a question of work-life balance,” the association’s head, Kunio Kitamura, told Reuters. “This is not something that the individual can tackle alone. The people who run companies need to do something about it.”

Japan’s birth rate, at 1.34 – the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime – is among the lowest in the world and falls well short of the 2.07 children needed to keep the population stable.

If the rate persists, demographers warn that Japan’s overall population will drop to 95 million by 2050 from its 2006 peak of 127.7 million.

The consumerist, careerist social model is dying – Japan, as it turned out, imported the very worst Judeo-Christian civilization had to offer…not our Sermon on the Mount, but our corporate behemoths and shallow popular culture.

As I’ve said before – and will keep saying – the issue of Life is the most important issue we face, and the crucial thing for us to do is to end abortion and start having that hope which welcomes new life into the world. All our machines and all our banks and all our glittering cities will be worthless if there is no one living. In political rhetoric we were to build a bridge to the 21st century and all we’ve ended up doing is building an expressway to the graveyard.

There is no question – there is no dispute – that a rational person can put to the proposition that we must have children, as a society, or we will cease to be. Only a turning away from the social paradigm brought to us by liberalism all those ages ago during the so-called “Enlightenment” can save us – we have to start living; living as human beings, not as mere cogs in a socio-economic machine designed to endlessly grind out consumer goods faster and cheaper. Progress, in 2008, means figuring out just where we turned aside from our humanity and then – as far as possible – getting back there and keeping on the human path, rather than the materialist, determinist path of mindless robots doomed to destruction.

Victor Davis Hanson notes:

I think we are slowly (and things of course could change) beginning in retrospect to look back at the outline of one of most profound bait-and-switch campaigns in our political history, predicated on the mass appeal of a magnetic leader rather than any principles per se. He out-Clintoned Hillary and followed Bill’s 1992 formula: A young Democrat runs on youth, popular appeal and charisma, claims the incumbent Bush caused another Great Depression and blew Iraq, and then went right down the middle with a showy leftist veneer.

Second, we will come, through the Obama prism, to see that Bush’s sins were largely the absence of rhetorical skills, unfortunate shoot ’em braggadocio in 2003-4, the federal response to Katrina, and a certain administration haughtiness about the problems in Iraq between 2002-6, but not most of his policies that included prescription drugs, No Child Left Behind, AIDs relief in Africa, the removal of two odious regimes, and consensual governments in their places, a framework at home to stop 9/11-type terrorism, and good working partnerships with key allies abroad such as Britain, Germany, France, Italy, India, et al, and a pragmatism in handling rivals like Russia and China.

In short, given all that, Obama’s victory (predicated on painting Bush as a Hoover/Nixon redux), more so even than perhaps a John McCain’s, may do more for Bush’s reputation that anyone ever imagined. And the Mumbai mess (over there, not here) will only empasize all this, as an array of old 9/11-era experts who used to warn us about radical Islam, then, in the subsequent respite at home, screamed that Bush fabricated a war against terror against bogeymen, and now in their third manifestation are paraded once more out to warn us about?—why, yes, radical Islam!

Indeed – and, in fact, I’m sticking by my prediction that no matter who won in 2008, we will have cause to miss President Bush in the by and by, and probably not too long after he leaves office. Good, bad or indifferent, President Bush passed the main test of leadership: the ability to make a decision and carry it through. Most people like to dance around the edges when analyzing politics and power – as for me, I deal with the reality, and that mostly revolves around the supreme difficulty in making a decision, especially a decision upon which lives will be at risk.

The great leaders and captains of history are all those who made a decision – One has only to contrast the two British governments of the World Wars. The first had Churchill in it, but a man unwilling to make decisions at the top, and thus the British war effort of the First World War drifted into deadly failure only modestly redeemed by a victory of exhaustion at the end of the war. The second had Churchill at the top and able to make decisions and carry them through, and thus the British war effort in the Second World War had clear direction, much lower cost and eventual overwhelming victory.

If we had had a ditherer on 9/11/01, things would have gone a lot differently over the past 7 years, and almost certainly for the worse. It took courage to launch us into Afghanistan – that mattress grave of Empire; it took courage to secure our nation against outside attack; it took courage to liberate Iraq; it took courage to order the Troop Surge once the liberation of Iraq had transformed into an anti-insurrectionary struggle. Again and again President Bush has shown the courage to make decisions – and trust me on this, even if you think they were bad decisions, a bad decision is better than no decision.

Now we’re going to get Obama at the top – the man who voted “present” a very large number of times. The man who threw his whole early political life under the bus when it became a millstone ’round his political neck. The man who promised hope and change and has appointed the dregs of the worn out and corrupt Clinton Administration. It may be that Obama – blessed with youthful energy and a keen appreciation for politics – will rise to the occasion. It is to be prayed that he will – but, in the end, the only thing Obama may end up doing is making us long for President Bush.

While the Obamessiah may have been somewhat successful in selling the American electorate on the possibility of a neo-socialist government, the chances of a permanent left turn in American politics, if Chavez’ Venezuela is any kind of harbinger, are slim to none.

Frontline on PBS has an interesting show online called The Hugo Chavez show, which, wittingly or unwittingly, chronicles a host of paralells with and harbingers of what may come with an Obama administration.

In The Hugo Chávez Show, FRONTLINE producer Ofra Bikel and Ofra bike racks travels to Venezuela to offer an illuminating portrait of the Venezuelan president. Through interviews with former government officials, Chávez associates and ordinary Venezuelans, FRONTLINE chronicles Chávez’s ascent to power and his efforts to use the powers of the presidency to stay there.

The film also reveals the key role of the media—or, rather, Chávez’s savvy use of the media—in his rise to power.This report begins by introducing viewers to Aló Presidente—or “Hello, President“—a weekly televised show that often runs five to eight hours and features Chávez speaking directly to the people, explaining government policy and mixing in a smattering of songs, poetry and whatever else strikes his fancy.

“Chávez is easily caricatured because he can be funny; he can seem buffoonish on his Aló Presidente,” journalist Jon Lee Anderson tells FRONTLINE. “He sings; he gets involved in wordplay. … He’s probably the world’s first virtual president in the age of the communication revolution.”

Given the press’ coronation of “The One,” allowing him to amble about the campaign trail without delivering anything more than a softball, I believe that Barack Hussein Obama may well be the world’s second virtual president.

FRONTLINE investigates beyond the boundaries of the president’s show, discovering grand schemes that remain unfinished and a host of public officials blamed for any dissent. FRONTLINE interviews Nelson Mora, a committed community organizer who dared to raise questions about a government relocation plan and was subsequently humiliated by the president on live television. “At that moment, I felt bad. I closed my eyes and felt tears,” says Mora. “And I said, ‘My God, why does the president treat me like this, the commander in chief, the leader of this process?'”

Joe the Plumber, anyone? WGN Radio, anyone?

More paralells in the piece abound:

Yet it was Chávez’s keen grasp of the power of the media that propelled him to power, observers say. FRONTLINE recounts how Chávez got his first taste of the media limelight when he participated in a failed 1992 coup. Much to his military compatriots’ surprise, Chávez—who was commanding the group’s forces in Caracas—agreed to surrender in exchange for a chance to go on the air and address his comrades and the people. The failed coup would send Chávez to prison for two years, but the media exposure planted the seeds of a folk hero in the making.

“Chávez failed militarily, totally,” says Alberto Barrera, author of the international best seller Hugo Chávez. “But he triumphed in terms of public relations. The public Chávez who was born was born not out of a military or political victory, but out of the ratings.”

And the paralells get even more creepy:

Upon his release from prison in 1994, Chávez began laying the groundwork for his eventual rise to the presidency in 1998. The Hugo Chávez Show recounts the highs and lows of Chávez’s 10-year tenure. His political successes included pushing through laws that sent Venezuelan society veering to the left and injecting billions of dollars in oil revenue into socialist government programs.

But here’s where the rays of hope start coming in:

Cracks are also showing in Chávez’s much-vaunted revolutionary programs. In The Hugo Chávez Show, FRONTLINE speaks with workers in various socialized cooperatives who say Chávez’s government has failed to provide needed resources, or even to pay them for the work they have done.

“I am among the poorest people in Venezuela,” says cooperative worker Maria Rengifo. “The president has to know, in order to form a cooperative, we have to have income. … He has to know what’s going on. Why aren’t they functioning? Why aren’t they producing? Why isn’t there anything to produce?”

Welcome to Socialism/Communism 101, Maria. And welcome to Obama’s vision for America, my fellow Americans (whether or not you voted for him).

With frustration building and food shortages common, Venezuela’s crime rate has soared, with murders, robberies and kidnappings for ransom occurring frequently. “It’s shocking to come nearly a decade on and see that most of what Hugo Chávez was railing in anger about being left with—a failed society, misery, insecurity, unequal distribution of wealth—is still here,” Anderson tells FRONTLINE.

Obama voters (and unfortunately, the rest of us) are about to suffer a similarly painful lesson as Captain Candyman maneuvers the U.S.S. United States on a decidedly port-wise list.

Hopefully the American electorate’s tolerance for sea-sickness will be decidedly more short-lived than a decade, and a righting of the ship will take place in four (or perhaps even only two) years.

Meanwhile, sit back, and enjoy the “show.”

They wanted to have a baby seal clubbing tour, but liberals got outraged over the inhumanity of that:

In what could easily become the most offensive Christmas offer ever a Planned Parenthood affiliate is offering Christmas gift certificates. Purchasers can use them to give the gift of abortion even though the group claims that’s not its purpose or intent.

“Looking for an unusual, yet practical gift this holiday season? Planned Parenthood of Indiana (PPIN) is now offering gift certificates for services or the recipient’s choice of birth control method,” the abortion business says.

The gift certificates can be purchased in increments of $25 online at the group’s web site or for any amount at some of PPIN’s 35 statewide facilities.

While PPIN president and CEO Betty Cockrum says they can be redeemed for contraception, birth control and legitimate medical services like breast exams and Pap tests, they can also be used to pay for abortions.

“Why not buy a loved one a gift this holiday season that they really need,” Cockrum says in a press release LifeNews.com obtained. “The gift certificates are also a wonderful idea for that person in your life who puts everyone else first.”

“Please join Planned Parenthood of Indiana and give the gift of health this holiday season,” she adds.

According to Chrystal Struben-Hall, PPIN’s vice president, buyers of gift certificates can give the gift of death, too.

She confirmed to WISH-TV that they can be used for abortions, even though that’s not the intended purpose.

“They really are intended for preventative healthcare. We decided not to put restrictions on the gift certificates so it’s for whatever people feel they need the services for most,” she said.

Is someone you know about to be, in President-Elect Obama’s phrasing, “punished” with a baby? Well, here’s you chance to put a little hatred and death under their Christmas tree…

Get the picture? Have at it, boys and girls.