Head Harridan of Planned Parenthood Upset With Catholics

And its a badge of honor:

Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards is so upset that the nation’s Catholic bishops are opposed to being forced to pay for abortions in the health care “reform” bills that she has written a new editorial saying so. The editorial is making its way across the pro-abortion blogosphere.

In various letters to members of Congress, the Catholic bishops have made it clear that they support health care reform as long as it does not involve taxpayer-financing of abortion.

Richards, whose top goal at Planned Parenthood is making sure abortion is included and that her centers get government funds from the government-run health care plan, used the tried and true approach of talking about everything other than abortion.

She claims abortion is merely a first step and that the Catholic bishops will begin defining legitimate medical procedures out of universal health care, as if the bishops would begin opposing medical care or surgeries.

Its the same old/same old from PP – worried about the fact that fewer doctors are willing to sully their honor with elective abortions and worried that their time on the government gravy train might come to an end, the PP people are determined to get abortion in the health care bill, force doctors to perform them and, of course, keep themselves at the taxpayer trough.

This poor woman, Cecile Richards, would be well advised to drop it – seriously, to dedicate one’s life to such a cause is just a miserable waste of a life. There is so much good she could do – especially for womens health – but she prefers to gnaw the dry bone of the Culture of Death to the very end.

NY Car Dealers Ditch Obama's "Clunker" Program

The sad truth:

Hundreds of auto dealers in the New York area have withdrawn from the government’s Cash for Clunkers program, citing delays in getting reimbursed by the government, a dealership group said Wednesday.

The Greater New York Automobile Dealers Association, which represents dealerships in the New York metro area, said about half its 425 members have left the program because they cannot afford to offer more rebates. They’re also worried about getting repaid.

Screwed up from start to finish, counter-productive and a waste of money. In other words, a typical, liberal Democrat tax and spend boondoggle.

ACORN Director to Sing

A bit of local news with a national angle:

A former Las Vegas director for a political advocacy group accused of illegally paying canvassers to register voters during last year’s presidential campaign has pleaded guilty to a reduced charge and agreed to testify against the group and another employee.

Chief Deputy Nevada Attorney General Conrad Hafen said Wednesday that Christopher Edwards’ plea deal strengthens a felony case against the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now and Amy Busefink, a former regional voter registration director for ACORN.

Edwards pleaded guilty this week to two counts of conspiracy to commit the crime of compensation for registration of voters.

Now, before we on the right get our hopes up about the law being enforced and other strange hopes to hold while liberal Democrats run the show, it should be mentioned that our State Attorney General is a Democrat. She’s already cooked up an indictment of what everyone assumed was Reid’s strongest 2010 challenger (our Lt. Governor), leaving only little Danny Tarkanian and A Candidate to be Named Later in the field. So, don’t expect too much – the AG might decide to enforce the law vigorously, or she might not. If she does, then she deserves our thanks – if she doesn’t, we won’t be surprised.

But one of the reasons we must fight hard against Obama and his Democrats is because of their ties to corrupt groups like ACORN and the way they are lavishing taxpayer money on these partisan groups – a political party has commandeered the Treasury to support its operatives and we must first stop it, then roll it back and then, when we do regain power, prosecute vigorously. This blow against ACORN is but one, small step – and we must not allow it to drop down the Memory Hole or be treated by the left as an aberration.

HAT TIP: An Alert Reader

Axelrod's Very Big Problem

And a big one it is, indeed:

Two firms that received $343.3 million to handle advertising for Barack Obama’s White House run last year have profited from his top priority as president by taking on his push for health-care overhaul.

One is AKPD Message and Media, the Chicago-based firm headed by David Axelrod until he left last Dec. 31 to serve as a senior adviser to the president. Axelrod was Obama’s top campaign strategist and is now helping sell the health-care plan. The other firm is Washington-based GMMB Campaign Group, where partner Jim Margolis was also an Obama strategist.

This year, AKPD and GMMB received $12 million in advertising business from Healthy Economy Now, a coalition that includes the Washington-based Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America, known as PhRMA, that is seeking to build support for a health-care overhaul, said the coalition’s spokesman, Jeremy Van Ess…

…Axelrod was president and sole shareholder of AKPD from 1985 until he sold his interest after Obama’s victory, government records show. The firm owes Axelrod $2 million, which it’s due to pay in installments beginning Dec. 31. Axelrod’s son, Michael, still works there. He didn’t return a phone call. The firm’s Web site continues to feature David Axelrod’s work on the Obama campaign.

Connections to lobbyists; big payouts coming while holding federal office; nepotism – and all for the evil, wicked, nasty pharmaceutical industry (or, at least, that is how its characterized in lefty talking points). This is the change we wanted? Anyone else besides me smell a rat here? We already know that Obama won’t prevent the trial lawyers from profiting off his health care plan…now we know his people are in the hip pocket of the pharmaceutical industry. It there a special interest – other than, ya know?, the people – which isn’t feeding at the public trough while Obama talks “reform” of the system?

Hugh Hewitt makes the inescapable point:

If it was Karl Rove in a similar set of circumstances, the blogs and some in MSM would already be demanding a special prosecutor. There are lots of questions for Mr. Axelrod, the first one being whether the Bloomberg story is accurate. if the answer is “yes,” the second will be: “Have you lawyered up?”

Phrase of the Day

The left is cooking up a “crazed, gun-toting, right-winger” meme to try and frighten us in to silence, and likely justify gun control at a later date – so, pay heed:

Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms. – Aristotle

AARP Loses 60,000 Members

The story:

The nation’s largest organization for seniors is losing members thanks to its support of a health care agenda that includes rationing health care.

Although the group has not technically endorsed the House and Senate bills specifically, it has put enough of its imprimatur on them that President Barack Obama wrongly said AARP endorsed the bills in a recent town hall forum.

In materials provided to CBS News on Monday, AARP said 60,000 citizens have left its membership rolls in protest over its general support for the government-run health care plan.

In the end, AARP is just another group advocating Big Government – including big government experiments, just as long as the money flows and AARP can latch on to some of it. Its high time that seniors dumped this group.

Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble

In this case, the FDIC (ie, look in the mirror) backed bubble – from Megan McArdle:

We’ve seen fewer bank failures than we had during the S&L crisis. But as this piece from the Wall Street Journal notes, the failures are worse. Three of the five banks that failed on Friday had to tap the FDIC fund to cover more than 50% of their assets.

This highlights the depth of the market crisis. But it also raises questions about what was going on at the Fed. How did it let things get this bad?

Regulators also have been blamed for not taking quick enough action and for allowing zombie banks to limp along. Inspectors general at the Treasury Department and FDIC, which serve as watchdogs, have issued more than a dozen reports that conclude regulators dithered while banks they oversaw plowed ahead with rapid and unsteady growth.

“When you get these failing banks, they are much more like a fresh-caught fish than a fine wine. They don’t get better with age and the losses keep piling up.” said Bert Ely, a longtime banking-industry consultant.

Integrity Bank, of Alpharetta, Ga., was permitted to keep luring deposits paying unusually high interest rates for more than two years after examiners noted deficiencies in its loan underwriting, according to the FDIC’s inspector general. Integrity failed last year, costing the FDIC $295 million.

It’s easy to lay blame in hindsight. But a bank doesn’t just suddenly and for no apparent reason lose half its assets. Clearly, these banks have been trading while insolvent for quite some time, hoping against hope that everything would somehow turn around. Meanwhile, they poured more of their investor and depositor’s assets into pursuing a Hail Mary pass…

The FDIC, by the way, seems to be out of money – used up the last of it with last Friday’s bank failures. The FDIC mantra is “no one has ever lost a penny on an FDIC-insured deposit” – which is true, but never since the FDIC came in to being have this many banks – and this many large banks – failed in such a short time.

As McArdle puts it, the banks were “hoping against hope” for some miracle turn around to hide the bad loans on the books – as it is, the entirety of the global financial system is currently hoping against hope. Hoping that something, anything, will turn up and allow them to survive – with bankruptcies rising, loan impairments shooting through the roof and no area of the global economy healthy enough to absorb the blow and lead the way out, we’re facing a complete financial collapse akin to – but probably far worse – than that which followed upon the collapse of Creditanstalt in 1931.

Even in Vermont?

Interesting:

Self-identified conservatives outnumber self-identified liberals in all 50 states of the union, according to the Gallup Poll.

At the same time, more Americans nationwide are saying this year that they are conservative than have made that claim in any of the last four years.

In 2009, 40% percent of respondents in Gallup surveys that have interviewed more than 160,000 Americans have said that they are either “conservative” (31%) or “very conservative” (9%). That is the highest percentage in any year since 2004.

Only 21% have told Gallup they are liberal, including 16% who say they are “liberal” and 5% who say they are “very liberal.”

Thirty-five percent of Americans say they are moderate.

I sure know we’re heavily outnumbering liberals here in Nevada – Harry won’t even hold a real town hall. He’s cooked up some bogus get together where you have to pay $50 to listen to him drone on about whatever it is he thinks is happening. Its a sad day for liberalism when the Senate Majority Leader daren’t show his face in his home State.

More importantly, the pendulum swings – or, more accurately, the people realize they’ve been had by Obama. He did, after all, run as a post-partisan healer. Remember? No, seriously – it was all over his campaign message and echoed from sea to shining sea by the MSM that Obama was a different kind of politician.

Stop that. Stop laughing. No, I’m not making that up. Its just as well known as the fierce, moral urgency the left had to end the war. The war in Iraq. Yeah, that war – the one they were protesting against until….well…until January 20th, now that you think about it….

Anyways…unless by some chance Obamunism works (stop laughing, drat you all!), we’re heading for some fun times for GOPers and conservatives.

Celebrating Racism…

…because it’s okay from the left.

Wise Latina. The catch phrase of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s Senate confirmation hearings has since taken on a life of its own, generating sales of T-shirts, note cards, dog jerseys and even thongs.

Sotomayor uttered her now famous words on several occasions — and her critics on many more. And while the newest Supreme Court Justice sought to explain the phrase, her supporters have embraced it.

“At 55, I better have some wisdom,” said Joyce Saenz Harris, a retired food writer in Dallas who recently bought a “Wise Latina” T-shirt.

“It just kind of struck me as funny,” said Saenz Harris, whose family originated from Mexico. “I have known a lot of wise Latinas in my life: my mother, my grandmother, my aunts. I thought, ‘Hey this is something I identify with, something I can aspire to.’”

Look how far we’ve come… Sotomayor’s racist comment that “a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” has now been boiled down to something that is apparently marketable. Perhaps I should start selling shirts that say “typical white person.”

Howard Dean Reminds Us He's Insane

Geesh:

Apparently, libtalkers aren’t the only ones asserting that conservatives want Obama dead. After a week of reckless rhetoric from the left side of the dial, along comes Howard Dean to show them how it’s really done!…

…STEPHANIE MILLER: I saw you (Howard Dean) on Keith Olbermann last night. You really do believe we’re going to have a public option.

HOWARD DEAN: At the end of the day, I think we will. First of all, the president is a very smart guy and he knows very well this can’t work without a public option. Secondly, you know he’s run into a rough patch in the Senate, mostly because of Democrats, honestly.

The Republicans, they have no interest in this Bill. They’re using the 1994 playbook. Let’s kill the bill and kill the president…… or, kill the president’s term. Although there are sort of angry people out there I get very nervous about this stuff. I don’t like it at all…

Its getting to be almost a wish on the left. Howard, knock it off – there’s no conservative bogey-man gonna come git ya, or the President. We’re just having fun knocking you about and we’re going to crush you in 2010 and 2012. But we don’t want you harmed, nor Obama – this is the best recruitment tool we’ve ever had!