Blogs For Victory

Read it and weep, Democrats:

As he prepared to take a job in the White House at the end of last year, David Axelrod sold the political consulting firm that helped elect President Barack Obama for $2 million to a group of consultants who helped steer Obama’s campaign.

According to a disclosure form released Friday evening by the White House, the firm, AKP&D Message & Media, paid him $897,000 last year, when it had basically turned itself into an arm of the Obama campaign, which paid the company $2.5 million.

The disclosure indicates that Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe — the “P” in AKP&D and still an influential political consultant for Obama and the Democratic National Committee — was not among the buyers, though he’ll remain a senior adviser to the firm.

Instead, Axelrod reported the new owner is a “newly formed S corporation” owned by Obama campaign vets John Kupper, John Del Cecato and Larry Grisolano.

Kupper and Del Cecato — the “K” and “D,” respectively — handled research and for the campaign and also wrote many of its ads. Grisolano is a Los Angeles-based strategist who handled direct mail for Obama’s campaign.

This is a new day in Washington? This is something other than business as usual? This is open, honest government which only speaks for the people?

I’m telling ya, liberals, you’ve been taken for suckers – Obama might be a leftist, but those who elevated him to power did it for the money and the power, and now they are running the show behind the scenes while Obama reads the script off a teleprompter.

You’ve been had – wake up!

This is the Hope and Change we got:

A top city official says City Council President Monica Conyers pulled strings to get her brother, an ex-con with a violent record, a job in the building department that was to last only 120 days but was extended for two years.

“She came up to me, handed me his resume and said ‘You should hire him. He’s a good guy,’ ” said Amru Meah, director of Building & Safety Engineering.

Reggie Esters, 38, was fired from the $30,500 job last summer on claims of chronic absenteeism. About the same time, he was charged with 10 felonies stemming from allegations he brandished a shotgun at two people, according to court records. He pleaded guilty to one count and faces sentencing April 17.

Records obtained this week by The Detroit News show Esters submitted a resume showing he worked continuously for two construction firms from 1999 to 2006. State records show he was incarcerated for assault and weapons charges for much of that time.

Meah said Conyers wanted her brother hired as a $50,000 inspector, but he wasn’t qualified and wouldn’t pass a license exam. Instead, he was hired as an investigator who checked if businesses are properly licensed.

Conyers, whose maiden name is Esters, said Meah is wrong. She denied that Esters is her brother, despite papers filed in Wayne County Probate Court in 1976 that identify them as siblings with the same parents, Robert H. and Alice Esters.

“I have no idea what Mr. Meah is talking about,” Conyers said.

Calls to Marlon Evans, Esters’ attorney, were not returned.

The city has no rules against hiring felons and Meah said he didn’t know of Esters’ record until a reporter told him about it Thursday.

“Human Resources is supposed to check that,” he said.

Mrs Conyers is the wife of Representative John Conyers (D-MI), who is Chairman of the House Judiciary committee – you know, the people’s watch dog for Justice in the United States. Conyers is also the guy who was leading the charge to impeach President Bush.

Ok, Democrats – I’m waiting for you to call for Conyers immediate resignation because you know darned well that if this were a GOP House member who’s wife had got her felon brother a job, you’d be demanding the GOPers head on a platter.

The news story:

North Korea fired a long-range rocket on Sunday, provoking international outrage and prompting the U.N. Security Council to call an emergency meeting.

The reclusive communist state said a satellite was launched into orbit and circled the earth transmitting revolutionary songs. But both the U.S. military and South Korea said it had failed to enter orbit.

Analysts say the launch was effectively a test of a ballistic missile designed to carry a warhead potentially as far as Alaska.

It was the first big challenge for U.S. President Barack Obama in dealing with the North, whose efforts to build a nuclear arsenal have long plagued ties with Washington.

“With this provocative act, North Korea has ignored its international obligations, rejected unequivocal calls for restraint, and further isolated itself from the community of nations,” Obama said, speaking on a European tour.

Which statement from our President is the merest boilerplate – now comes the question: what do we do?

The UN will be perfectly useless – even if an appearance of strength is immediately issued, we know that it will eventually fall flat on the fact that China is not interested in curbing North Korea because a rampaging North Korea serves China’s interests vis a vis the United States and Japan. The international community, outside of UN action, will be heavy with denunciations the light on action. At the end of the day, any real action will have to be American action of a unilateral nature.

Does it serve our best interest to make a big deal out of this? Is rote condemnation sufficient for the moment and now we can move off to other things? If North Korea is permitted to get away with this, will this just be the first step in making missiles capable of hitting all of the United States, thus opening us up to nuclear blackmail?

Discuss.

Well, he passed away this evening – likely from a stroke, almost certainly with no pain and without knowing it was happening. He had received absolution and died a good son of the Church. He kept his mental faculties up to the end – I had seen him just this afternoon. He seemed to have a bit of a stroke while I was there, but when in hospice one doesn’t call 911. He held my hand tight – a sign of affection he was normally not given to, and that is really when I knew the end was very near…

He was born in California to George Childs and Elizabeth Noonan – “Papa George” and “Nana Liz” to their multitude of grand children. George, Sr. was a veteran of the First World War and was quite a character; Elizabeth was an incredibly strong influence – mostly towards the requirements of being a Christian gentleman.

In 1944, at the age of 17, in great folly or great bravery, he joined the United States Marine Corps and served in the Saipan campaign. The memory of the Corps remained to the end among the fondest memories of my father, and the thing he was most proud of. Love of country was intrinsic to my father, and he imparted this strongly to all of his children.

After the war, my father worked in varied aspects of the aerospace industry – including, at times, working on NASA’s space program and, most notably, being part of the team which brought the F-117A Stealth Fighter to life. To work in science and to do math was a grand love and adventure of my father’s life – married to a physicist, my late mother, Barbara Jane Noonan, the talk around the family often ended up revolving around things scientific. One of the last memories I shared with my father was how, when I was about 12, my mother woke the whole family up in the middle of the night shrieking that she needed to – immediately – know the orbital rotation of Venus. Such things were usually far beyond his 5th child and 3rd son – a much greater influence on said son was his father’s philosophic bent of mind.

Dad was more Catholic than the Pope, went the family jest – too the end adhering to the Church and its teachings and, being the sort of man he was, always willing to offer a stout defense of all Catholic dogmas to all comers. I’ve never actually met another man with a stronger sense of the truth of Catholicism and the real history behind its growth and development. While I was a stubborn child and unwilling to follow where he led in this matter, I eventually accepted my Catholic legacy with gratitude – to me, to not have the Church is to not have anything at all. Upon my own death, my thanks will be to me father for transmitting me this precious gift, the finest ever given.

I shall miss him – I shall miss having to make his coffee, do his laundry, take him out to play blackjack, helping him get his scotch and soda. I will, please God, see him again along with all the faithful departed, but there is a gap in my life which will not be filled while I remain confined within the circles of this world. That gap shall be placed next to that once filled by my mother, and next to others similarly missing their proper element of my life. But it is with great joy that I contemplate my father, glorified, and seeing Our Lord, face to face.

Thank you all for your prayers during this trying time in my life and the life of my family.

“Hear the word of the LORD, O nations, and declare it in the coastlands afar off; say, `He who scattered Israel will gather him, and will keep him as a shepherd keeps his flock.’

For the LORD has ransomed Jacob, and has redeemed him from hands too strong for him.

They shall come and sing aloud on the height of Zion, and they shall be radiant over the goodness of the LORD, over the grain, the wine, and the oil, and over the young of the flock and the herd; their life shall be like a watered garden, and they shall languish no more.

Then shall the maidens rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old shall be merry. I will turn their mourning into joy, I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow. – Jeremiah 31:10-13

The Guardian’s John Crace translates the train wreck of an answer Barack Obama gave in response to a simple question.

Just goes to show you how much of Barack Obama’s image can be credited to his teleprompter.

Because now its going to go broke even sooner than expected – woohoo! Extra bad national bankruptcy! Double Plus Good!

…according to the CBO, per Heritage, “the Social Security surplus will only be $16 billion this year, and only $3 billion next year”; it will show a deficit, or “go negative,” in 2011.

How can this be happening? I thought Pelosi, Reid, and the left all assured us several years ago that there was “no crisis.”

That they did. In May 2005, during the Bush administration’s weak attempt to build support for partial privatization of the system, “Pelosi accused President Bush of creating a crisis and manufacturing an issue.” Before that, in late 2004, as it became clear that Bush would try to mount such an effort, the pair jointly said, “We cannot support any plan that relies on massive and irresponsible increases in debt, which could destabilize financial markets and lead to large tax increases.” The current irony of that joint statement is provided at no extra charge.

The fact is that a crisis has been building for decades. It has seemingly come out of nowhere only because the POR (Pelosi, Obama, Reid – ed note) economy’s recession has sharply reduced Social Security tax receipts. Any recovery in collections arising from an economic comeback will necessarily build on a smaller base. That is why Social Security is on track to go negative six years earlier than was anticipated just a year ago. If February’s monstrous stimulus package doesn’t reignite job growth, it will probably go negative in fiscal 2010. The “save” part of Team Obama’s risible “save or create jobs” goal will do nothing to increase Social Security tax collections.

Once Social Security goes negative, we will have come to the point so many have long feared we would reach. To cover the system’s cash drains, the government will have to, in some combination, raise taxes, borrow more, or reduce benefits, year after year after year.

More importantly and tragically, the “no crisis until 2040 or so” crowd, which has been lying all along, will have accomplished what I believe has been their long-term goal, which is making even partially privatizing Social Security politically and financially unachievable. It appears that they’ve “won.” The economy and personal liberty have lost.

We certainly won’t be able to borrow, and no Democrat will ever think of a genuine cut in spending, so the only thing Democrats will be willing to do it raise taxes…and it doesn’t matter if any particular tax increase merely pushes off economic doomsday by two years…that is the time frame Democrats live in: election by election. To them, its ok to “solve” the problem for just one election cycle because, if they win, then they can just “solve” it again – we are dealing with the most monumentally stupid people to ever be involved in human governance, dear people.

All it would have taken is just a small bit of partial privatization and this would have been avoided – but Democrats were afraid that if we, the people, had an extra 1% of our income to invest, we’d be the people making a mess of it!

Jennifer Rubin takes a stab at it:

…Democrats and their media spinners, who just days before the race declared this would prove the president’s enduring popularity and the electoral potency of his stimulus plan, have grown hushed. They mumble that it doesn’t mean much of anything. Just move along; nothing to see here.

But in fact it may mean something important. When a district which voted Democratic by a 62-38% margin drops to 50-50% in five months something is happening.

Stu Rothenberg declared “Tuesday night offered Republicans a small but important bit of evidence that they have turned the corner.” And he disputed the Democratic spin that registration figures favoring the GOP make this a supposedly “safe” district for Republicans, noting that Barack Obama and Kirsten Gillibrand carried the district in 2008 as did Democrats Eliot Spitzer and Hillary Clinton in 2006, and Sen. Charles Schumer in 2004. He notes:

Talk of a stunning Murphy surge from far back is ridiculous and ignores normal campaign dynamics. … I can’t see why Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen (Md.) and DNC Chairman Tim Kaine would be confident that Murphy will expand his lead. I don’t know who will eventually win, but more Republican than Democratic absentee ballots have been received, according to GOP sources…

…The National Journal’s Hotline echoed this theme:

But whether Scott Murphy (D) or Jim Tedisco (R) ultimately emerges from the morass of attys and absentee ballots as the NY-20 victor, new polling suggests GOPers may be the ones with bragging rights. … But almost as important for GOPers, our polling shows that indies are now up for grabs. That bears out what we saw in NY-20, where, according to the last Siena poll, Tedisco actually led among indies. When was the last time GOPers were competitive among these voters? It’s been awhile.

The party failed in ‘06 and ‘08 because its base was apathetic and because indies moved en masse to Dems. If the base reactivates, and if the party can continue to stay competitive among indies, ‘10 could get interesting.

What the results show, to me, is that the 30 or Democrats who are currently representing seats which were fairly safe GOP prior to 2006 are in deep trouble as long as Obama is pushing hard core leftism in economics. While such districts may not be open to a GOP comeback based on social issues, they are open based on economics – and, right now, Obamunism sucks eggs with fiscal conservatives and economic libertarians. A properly crafted GOP message on what will almost certainly be the core issue of 2010 – the economy – could lead to a GOP gain of 30+ seats, and perhaps even a GOP House majority. The Senate is more problematic as there are vulnerable GOPers…but now that Dodd is in trouble and NY and IL will have Senate races, things might work out to a significant GOP gain there, as well (though I’d put a GOP Senate majority in the realm of “miracle”).

As the economy continues to tank and 2010 approaches, look for the vulnerable Democrats to seek cover – but there are also stories out there where the left, convinced that Democrats will win big in 2010 (where they get this idea I have no clue – its monumentally stupid, but leftists seem to take it as an article of faith that the nation has swung hard left and will just become more so as time goes on) are already putting pressure on centrist Democrats to toe the Obamunist line. Caught between two fires, “blue dog” Democrats might be crushed utterly…with the few survivors switching to GOP after the 2010 election.

As for what is best for the GOP – I’d like to see 46 GOP Senators and 210 House GOPers…just enough to thwart the worst of Obamnuism, but not enough to allow Democrats off the hook for full responsibility as we head towards 2012. If Obama’s programs work out as bad as I think they will then a Democrat-controlled government in 2012 will be toxic and if we GOPers then craft a good campaign we’ll win a crushing victory, and then have the power to revolutionize American politics by making American government more in tune with the Founder’s principles.

Iowahawk strikes again.

The news story:

Ann Holmes Redding has what could be called a crisis of faiths.

For nearly 30 years, Redding has been an ordained minister in the Episcopal Church. Her priesthood ended Wednesday when she was defrocked.

The reason? For the past three years Redding has been both a practicing Christian and a Muslim…

…The Diocese of Rhode Island, where Redding was ordained, told her to leave either her new Muslim faith or the ministry. A diocese statement said Bishop Geralyn Wolf found Redding to be “a woman of utmost integrity. However, the Bishop believes that a priest of the Church cannot be both a Christian and a Muslim.”

For crying out loud, if you ordain women as priests you’re already pretty far off the Christian ranch; when you ordain as a Bishop a man who left his wife in order to have a gay love affair you’ve left Christianity waaaay the heck back there…and so what is the problem with this woman being a Moslem and a priest? She’s not supposed to be the latter, anyways, and if one is willing to violate the commands of God like that, what harm in denying God?

Oh, I know she believes she’s not denying God – but from a Christian perspective, she is: Christians believe that Jesus is God; God from God, light from light, true God from true God, as it were. To hold to Mohammad’s heresy one has to first deny the divinity of Christ. Its a rather curious thing for the Episcopalian Church to find this as the thing to stand firm on – go have an abortion on your way to the gay pride parade, and the Episcopal Church has no problem…become a Moslem, something no more heretical than the Episcopal Church at its inception, and that is out of bounds?

Very strange – but, also, a useful illustration as to just why “mainline” Protestant churches are in rapid decline.

Interesting:

Former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, became Catholic on Sunday, the first of thousands that will join the Church at Easter.

The U.S. bishops’ conference reported Tuesday that around 150,000 are scheduled to join the Catholic Church this Easter.

The press release noted that “the numbers show the growth and vitality of the Catholic Church in places where it has traditionally been a small minority.”

The Archdiocese of Atlanta estimates that 513 catechumens, who have never been baptized, and 2,195 candidates, who were baptized in another Christian community and are seeking full communion with the Catholic Church, will enter the Church this year, not including infant baptisms.

Tony Blair, Robert Bork, Sam Brownback…rumor has it that former President Bush is on the path to conversion, and Mikhail Gorbachev was spotted praying at a shrine to St. Francis of Assisi not too long ago…now Newt Gingrich enters the fold. As a Catholic “revert” (born Catholic, drifted away, came back) I can partially understand what these people go through as they enter the Church, but as someone who has never been other than Catholic, I don’t have any insight into just why they turned towards Catholicism…other than, of course, the workings of the Holy Spirit.