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n Gov. Schwarzenegger’s budget panic attack yesterday – a rightful panic attack, but a politically timed panic attack nonetheless – was a proposal that could doom the political prospects of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and other GOP governors who rejected the Obama stimulus package because of the federal strings attached to it.

Before getting to that, though, I’d like to report that with considerable glee, I found in Schwarzenegger’s proposal a promise to drill for oil offshore if next week’s “budget fixing” (i.e., taxpayer screwing) initiatives fail to pass.  Sure, the Gov is probably just trying to scare the gee-willikers out of California voters with that “threat,” but to me and millions like me, it was yet another great reason to vote against the initiatives. 

Covered way down in most reports on Schwarzenegger’s announcement was his proposal for Medi-Cal cuts. He picked his target for proposed cuts carefully – 225,000 poor children, to tug on the sympathy chords of everyone.  But to whack off their benefits, Schwarzenegger would have to get a waiver, untying California from all the strings that came with the federal stimulus dough.  In accepting the money, Schwarzenegger and other cash-hungry governors had to agree that they could not increase eligibility requirements; now he wants permission to break those chains.

Do you think the other governors will stand idly by?  Every single one of ‘em who took the fed money will pile on with Schwarzenegger, bawling about how they can’t possibly balance their budget without Obama’s gracious and godly help, snipping this string, cutting that requirement.

Schwarzenegger comes begging with considerable clout -  not only California’s fantastic electoral college prize, but also his Schwarzenegger to Shriver to Kennedy to Obama bond, which assures Obama will listen.

And there’s a special prize for Obama, should he give in and urge Congress to even temporarily unbind the states from their obligations under the stimulus package.  Should that happen, Mark Sanford, Haley Barbour, Bobby Jindal and other GOP governors who rejected portions of the package will become easy political targets of their states’ Dem operatives, who have all been attacking them shrilly about their decisions. Now the Dems will have their ultimate “See, I told you so!” moment, and the good gentlemen’s prospects for re-election or higher office will be substantially diminished.

It’s a sweet opportunity for Obama: Be flexible, be gracious, reattach the strings once the vaunted recovery occurs, and obliterate some pesky foes in the process.  He just might go for it … in fact, I find myself wondering if it all wasn’t his Machiavelian scheme in the first place.

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he US Navy has released this photo of our troops boarding a Somali pirate mother-ship and seizing 17 pirates after they attacked an Egyptian vessel.  Also released was this one of the approach before the boarding:

When I first heard of the “motherships” that extended the pirates’ range far beyond the Somali coast, my mind conjured up the only association I had: The Japanese whaler motherships, large, sophisticated meat-packing factories on the sea. To see this tiny rust-bucket put the Somali pirate problem in sharp perspective. They’re a bush-league Mafia using cash, weapons and street smarts to play in the big leagues.

It’s nice to see the show of force, but we’re busting the crack-runners on the corner here, not the criminal brain trust at the top.  Look, it’s easy enough to spot the pirate honcho’s houses along the Somali coasts – they’re the palaces with the satellite antennas on the roof and the new German cars in the driveway.  Knock out one with a Tomahawk, and tell the rest of them to lay off the pirating or they’ll be next. 

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The headline on the Reuters SCOTUS pick update story might imply that President Obama is actually open to different judicial philosophies – or even appointing a white guy – as he ponders his pick to replace Justice Souter: Obama Weighs Wide Range of Candidates for Court. But this is “wide range” in the liberal sense of the phrase.

We learn from the article that Obama is looking at a number of women and possible a Hispanic man as he searches for someone “empathetic” for the court. The names mentioned are all big government liberals who can be counted on to be, at best, sloppy constitutionalists: Solicitor General Elena Kagan, U.S. appeals court judges, Sonia Sotomayor and Diane Wood, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and California Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno.

True to form and precedent, Obama also invited a couple of Republicans, Mitch McConnell and Jess Sessions, in so he could pretend to listen to their thoughts about the nominee, and to warn them to stand back, there was an appointment steamroller warming up.

McConnell left the meeting unimpressed:

I thought empathy implied you were on somebody’s side before you heard the case.

Oh, please, Mitch. Don’t let little things like that get in the way of the Obamafication of the Court.

As Obama checks out the gals, he might want to check in with us. According to Gallup, two-thirds of us don’t think the selection should be made based on gender, and three-quarters of us don’t think it should be made based on race. We curry to that old-fashioned belief that excellence in the law should be the only criteria – shame on us for being so illiberal!

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orry about that – Cheat-Seeking Missiles crashed this morning and my meager efforts to rebirth it failed so I had to turn again to He Who Raises the Dead, the proprietor of Okie on the Lam and blog designer extraordinaire.

After a bunch of digging and talking with the server folks, Dale identified the Twitter boxes as the culprit and deactivated them for the time-being, hence the two big black boxes under the Media Bias 2008 box.  A small price to pay for coming back from the dead!

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In good news for the sane faction – and bad news for Obama and his Warmie supporters – it looks like his promised “rape the economy to save the planet” plan is crashing. The other CSM reports this morning:

With many Americans now in financial straits, the main climate-change bill in Congress is also in trouble. Polls show that a majority in the US are against setting caps on such climate pollutants. Concerns about global warming, once high, have dropped dramatically. Only 34 percent say they believe it is primarily caused by human activity.

A consensus draft bill may appear in coming days from a House committee, but it will probably be watered down. The original target of cutting carbon gases 20 percent by 2020 (from 2005 levels) could drop to 14 percent.

And instead of collecting some $624 billion in revenue from the selling of pollution permits to industry, most of those permits would be given away free of charge, in what is called a cap-and-trade system. There would be little money to fund clean energy or subsidize the poor for higher costs.

Gosh, and all this is happening on the eve of a big global warming summit in Copenhagen (which could use a little warming … brrr!), potentially foiling Obama’s #1 policy initiative – to get other countries to like us after that nasty Bush.

The genesis of this Warmie downfall is money. They want a whole lot of money to disincentivize fossile fuels and falsely pump up alternatives. A whole lot: The Congressional Budget Office now estimates the cost of the Obama/Warmie scheme at $1,600 per year per family – and that’s just cutting greenhouse gases by 15 percent, not the 20 percent. Still, according to the other CSM, the Dems are still pushing for a 14 percent cut.

Since the $1,600 a year applies also to those who pay no taxes, either they’d have to start paying up, or their share would be offloaded to the rest of us, putting the burden closer to $2,500 a year – all to trash the economy and do nothing measurable to “save the planet.” Which doesn’t need saving.

The Obama admin is responding in a style that has become typical of it: It’s checking out its wording. Its hired an “ecomarketing” firm to check the messaging; that firm has recommened, as has been widely reported, dropping the phrase “global warming” for “deteriorating atmosphere” and using “the dirty fuels of the past” instead of citing carbon dioxide. (Of course the “dirty fuels of the past” aren’t of the past – they’re good for over 95 percent of what we’re burining today, and they’re not as dirty as they were in the past, but that’s another story.)

Of Obama’s word games, the other CSM says:

Such rhetorical shenanigans reflect a reluctance to trust the American people to make the right decision for themselves. They must be given unbiased estimates on the price of acting against climate change.

And not just that – the price tag must be measured agaisnt the benefit, and when the people see no discernable benefit at considerable cost, they might begin seeing Obama as more of a snake oil salesman and less of a messiah.

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In good news for the sane faction – and bad news for Obama and his Warmie supporters – it looks like his promised “rape the economy to save the planet” plan is crashing. The other CSM reports this morning:

With many Americans now in financial straits, the main climate-change bill in Congress is also in trouble. Polls show that a majority in the US are against setting caps on such climate pollutants. Concerns about global warming, once high, have dropped dramatically. Only 34 percent say they believe it is primarily caused by human activity.

A consensus draft bill may appear in coming days from a House committee, but it will probably be watered down. The original target of cutting carbon gases 20 percent by 2020 (from 2005 levels) could drop to 14 percent.

And instead of collecting some $624 billion in revenue from the selling of pollution permits to industry, most of those permits would be given away free of charge, in what is called a cap-and-trade system. There would be little money to fund clean energy or subsidize the poor for higher costs.

Gosh, and all this is happening on the eve of a big global warming summit in Copenhagen (which could use a little warming … brrr!), potentially foiling Obama’s #1 policy initiative – to get other countries to like us after that nasty Bush.

The genesis of this Warmie downfall is money. They want a whole lot of money to disincentivize fossile fuels and falsely pump up alternatives. A whole lot: The Congressional Budget Office now estimates the cost of the Obama/Warmie scheme at $1,600 per year per family – and that’s just cutting greenhouse gases by 15 percent, not the 20 percent. Still, according to the other CSM, the Dems are still pushing for a 14 percent cut.

Since the $1,600 a year applies also to those who pay no taxes, either they’d have to start paying up, or their share would be offloaded to the rest of us, putting the burden closer to $2,500 a year – all to trash the economy and do nothing measurable to “save the planet.” Which doesn’t need saving.

The Obama admin is responding in a style that has become typical of it: It’s checking out its wording. Its hired an “ecomarketing” firm to check the messaging; that firm has recommened, as has been widely reported, dropping the phrase “global warming” for “deteriorating atmosphere” and using “the dirty fuels of the past” instead of citing carbon dioxide. (Of course the “dirty fuels of the past” aren’t of the past – they’re good for over 95 percent of what we’re burining today, and they’re not as dirty as they were in the past, but that’s another story.)

Of Obama’s word games, the other CSM says:

Such rhetorical shenanigans reflect a reluctance to trust the American people to make the right decision for themselves. They must be given unbiased estimates on the price of acting against climate change.

And not just that – the price tag must be measured agaisnt the benefit, and when the people see no discernable benefit at considerable cost, they might begin seeing Obama as more of a snake oil salesman and less of a messiah.

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ancy Pelosi’s lame defense of her ignorance regarding the use of harsh interrogation techniques is hanging like a thread on the derrier of an over-dressed S&M Folsom Street Fair reveler back home in her district.  CNN reports today that she knew, oh boy, did she know:

A source close to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now confirms that Pelosi was told in February 2003 by her intelligence aide, Michael Sheehy, that waterboarding was actually used on CIA detainee Abu Zubaydah.

This appears to contradict Pelosi’s account that she was never told waterboarding actually happened, only that the administration was considering using it.

Sheehy attended a briefing in which waterboarding was discussed in February 2003, with Rep. Jane Harman, D-California, who took over Pelosi’s spot as the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

This source says Pelosi didn’t object when she learned that waterboarding was being used because she had not been personally briefed about it — only her aide had been told.

The source said Pelosi supported a letter that Harman sent to the administration at the time raising concerns. The source asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of matters discussed in classified intelligence briefings.

Faced with a complete meltdown of their integrity (something that can happen at room temperature, BTW), the Dems rose to her defense – by attacking the CIA, natch. Here’s Politico:

Democrats charged Tuesday that the CIA has released documents about congressional briefings on harsh interrogation techniques in order to deflect attention and blame away from itself.

“I think there is so much embarrassment in some quarters [of the CIA] that people are going to try to shift some of the responsibility to others — that’s what I think,” said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who sat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and was briefed on interrogation techniques five times between 2006 and 2007.

Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said he finds it “interesting” that a document detailing congressional briefings was released just as “some of the groups that have been responsible for these interrogation techniques were taking the most criticism.”

Asked whether the CIA was seeking political cover by releasing the documents, Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said: “Sure it is.”

Levin, Durbin and Feinstein … what do they remind me of … oh yeah, that’s it.

If I understand it right, a federal agency is supposed to take direct attacks on it by the president silently, then sit back, gagged and blindfolded like an interrogation recipient, as the Dems lie about what they knew, when they knew it and who told them, further damaging the agency’s ability to function.

That might be OK if we were talking about the DMV here, but we’re not; we’re talking about the CIA, whose efforts have kept our country free of terrorist attack since 2001 – something the Dems can hardly lay claim to as they work feverishly to expose our country to greater risk in the name of protecting the freedoms of those who would take our freedoms away. I mean the terrorists, not Barbara Boxer.

The CIA document in question, which provided attendees, dates and content of various briefings, was requested by Congress, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), to be exact.  The CIA is overseen by Congress and responds to its requests, which is a good thing if the Dems request the document, but is a cover up if the GOP does.

This is why the Founding Fathers saw the need for good education, and didn’t believe the Republic could survive without it.  That the Dems can get a majority of the vote only means a majority of the people aren’t paying attention.

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From the look of it, Barack Obama picked a good nominee to head up the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration – the nanny agency dedicated to involving the federal government in what should be the private (or at least state) process of making logical decisions to protect our safety.

Chuck Hurley has been the chief exec of Mothers Against Drunk Driving since 2005, so he’s got a good understanding of the issues. While at MADD, he pushed the states to pass tough drunk driving laws and laws requiring ignition interlock devices on the cars of first-time offenders, so they would have to pass a blood alcohol test before being able to start their cars.

Prior to that, he was an Illinois state senator who worked with Obama to strengthen the state’s car safety laws.

Sure, Hurley has veered way over the top, like when he compared drunk driving to terrorism, and I’m not a big fan of NHTSA over-regulation of cars and worry that the agency will strip all the fun from cars under the anti-car Obama admin.  As a free marketeer, I also oppose the NHTSA’s big stick approach to mandating safety, while at the same time demanding higher fuel efficiency standards that make cars inherently less safe.

So is that what messed up his nomination?  No, not even close:

Some environmental groups had questioned Hurley’s commitment to tougher fuel efficiency requirements and his ties to automakers. MADD has received funding from several auto companies, including General Motors Corp., Toyota Motor Corp., Ford Motor Co. and others. (source)

Last time I checked, it was legal to manufacture cars, and legal for car manufacturers to support private sector charities that endorse car safety. But the intolerant left, and the ultra-intolerant green movement will have none of Hurley, who obviously has a deep personal commitment to car safety, because of the taint of auto money.

So on this Obama Drama, we give the president good marks for what appears to have been a well reasoned nomination – and an F for throwing the nominee under an NTSA-approved bus, once the all-powerful green lobby started screeching.

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o it’s a mixed message from Donald Trump this morning:  Carrie Prejean can keep her Miss California crown despite speaking her mind on gay marriage … and also despite posing for photos wearing nothing but wee bits of underwear while a teen.

Trump, then, came down on the side of true free speech in realizing that reflecting the views of a majority of Americans – even if they are reprehensible to Hollywood and the radical gay lobby – is not grounds for losing a beauty pageant crown. Let’s hope that was an easy decision for him; it certainly should have been.

The second part of the decision – dealing with the photos – is more problematic.  It would be nice if beauty queens and the girls that for whatever reasons see them as role models could look upon nude and semi-nude modeling as a categorical non-starter, and stripping (to use the word) Prejean of her crown for the photos would have sent that meessage.  But Trump recoginzed that in this liberal era, he could hardly recognize her real First Amendment rights (speech) and deny her phony First Amendment rights (expressing herself by posing without much on).

Tweeter pinkelephantpun passed along this re-tweet today, which pretty much sums up the left’s viewpoint of the matter:

RT @BiasedGirl Tolerant Lib of the Day: RT @ian_roberson: I really hate Miss California, I hope that bitch loses her crown and goes to hell!

Shall we discuss the relative prospects for Hell-going?

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Or is it a good argument against gun control?  I’m so confused.

Hat-tip: Well, the Web site’s name is too profane to mention.

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