In today’s podcast at 11AM Eastern, Moe Lane of Red State joins in for political commentary.
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At #CPAC09, Rush Limbaugh calls on conservatives to take back nation
It’s always interesting to see how the MSM reports an event that I have witnessed in person. Take, for instance, CNN’s Rush Limbaugh calls on conservatives to take back nation (emphasis added)
Limbaugh’s impassioned keynote speech, punctuated by chest-thumping, fist-pumping and chants of “USA” from the crowd, capped off three days of talk at CPAC focusing on rebuilding the Republican Party.
Chest-thumping, fist-pumping Limbaugh! Next thing you know Limbaugh was going to be swinging from the chandeliers with a Tarzan-like “AwhwhwhwAAAAHH”
Not so.
But perhaps CNN got carried away by noticing the crowd’s reaction to the Limbaugh speech:
“He played to his crowd here,” CNN political editor Mark Preston said. “And this crowd is now energized, something we haven’t seen from Republicans, certainly not conservatives, since the November election.”
Limbaugh had the crowd in his pocket. Nearly everybody who attended CPAC stayed to listen to him, and hundreds of people made the trip especially for the occasion. In any case, it was a very good speech, and Limbaugh raised many points, the most important being,
Conservatism is a universal set of core principles.
How the conservatives translate those principles into bringing their message to the American public and getting elected is the challenge the conservative movement has right now.
Read the transcript here.
Noel Sheppard posted all the videos of the full speech.
And, a side note,
This was the best-attended CPAC so far, and the majority of the people there were very young.
Post edited to add one sentence left out by mistake.
And now for Daschle – and the Google warning?
What’s with the Democrats and taxes?
There’s Charlie Rangel
Tim Geithner
Caroline Kennedy
Now, former Senator Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D
The controversy deals with a car and driver lent to Daschle by a wealthy Democratic friend — a chauffeur service the former senator used for years without declaring it on his taxes.
Never mind the corruption question for the in-kind services,
After being defeated in his 2004 re-election campaign to the Senate, Daschle in 2005 became a consultant and chairman of the executive advisory board at InterMedia Advisors.
Based in New York City, InterMedia Advisors is a private equity firm founded in part by longtime Daschle friend and Democratic fundraiser Leo Hindery, the former president of the YES network (the New York Yankees’ and New Jersey Devils’ cable television channel).
That same year he began his professional relationship with InterMedia, Daschle began using the services of Hindery’s car and driver.
The Cadillac and driver were never part of Daschle’s official compensation package at InterMedia, but Mr. Daschle — who as Senate majority leader enjoyed the use of a car and driver at taxpayer expense — didn’t declare their services on his income taxes, as tax laws require.
During the vetting process to become HHS secretary, Daschle corrected the tax violation, voluntarily paying $101,943 in back taxes plus interest, working with his accountant to amend his tax returns for 2005 through 2007.
Once he got found out,
Daschle reimbursed the IRS $31,462 in taxes and interest for tax year 2005; $35,546 for 2006; and $34,935 for 2007, a Daschle spokesperson said, adding that Daschle had asked his accountant to look into the tax implications of the car and driver five months before Obama won the presidency.
James Joyner notices
A later Tapper report, however, is more problematic:
Mr. Daschle also didn’t report $83,333 in consulting income in 2007.
The Senate Finance Committee Report also notes that during the vetting process, President Obama’s Transition Team “identified certain donations that did not qualify as charitable deductions because they were not paid to qualifying organizations. Daschle adjusted his contribution deductions on his amended returns for 2005, 2006 and 2007 to remove these amounts and add additional contributions.” This adjustment meant a reduction in the amount he contributed to charitable foundations of $14,963 from 2005 through 2007.
These two omissions are much harder to dismiss. Indeed, they look like actual tax fraud — an attempt to conceal a substantial amount of obvious income and to claim deductions to which he wasn’t entitled and which his accountant could easily have verified. He’ll need a humdinger of an explanation.
Well, at least it wasn’t pay-to-play, like Bill Richardson, Blago, Anibal Acevedo & the Philly fundraisers and Jim McGreevey.
But fear not: Jake Tapper assures us that, if Daschle doesn’t get the health and human services post, he’ll still be director of the new White House Office on Health Reform.
The fact that his wife is a lobbyist whose company “does represent numerous health interests” presents no problems at all.
And now for a side note on the Google warning:
While I was researching this post, the search daschle’s wife lobbyist yielded results which carried “This site may harm your computer” warnings, which in turn directs to a Google warning page. To get the Washington Post link I used, I had to cut & paste the link.
It reminded me of how quickly Google defused the Obama google bomb, but it’s also happening with searches involving Republicans. What’s going on?
UPDATE
Here’s the Google explanation, via Sissy,
If you did a Google search between 6:30 a.m. PST and 7:25 a.m. PST this morning, you likely saw that the message “This site may harm your computer” accompanied each and every search result. This was clearly an error, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience caused to our users.
What happened? Very simply, human error. Google flags search results with the message “This site may harm your computer” if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously. We do this to protect our users against visiting sites that could harm their computers. We work with a non-profit called StopBadware.org to get our list of URLs. StopBadware carefully researches each consumer complaint to decide fairly whether that URL belongs on the list. Since each case needs to be individually researched, this list is maintained by humans, not algorithms.
We periodically receive updates to that list and received one such update to release on the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here’s the human error), the URL of ‘/’ was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and ‘/’ expands to all URLs. Fortunately, our on-call site reliability team found the problem quickly and reverted the file. Since we push these updates in a staggered and rolling fashion, the errors began appearing between 6:27 a.m. and 6:40 a.m. and began disappearing between 7:10 and 7:25 a.m., so the duration of the problem for any particular user was approximately 40 minutes.
Thanks to our team for their quick work in finding this. And again, our apologies to any of you who were inconvenienced this morning, and to site owners whose pages were incorrectly labelled. We will carefully investigate this incident and put more robust file checks in place to prevent it from happening again.
What’s with the Dems and taxes?
Just this morning I was posting on Timothy Geithner’s blatant disregard for taxes, now we have this headline:
Housekeeper and Taxes Are Said to Derail Kennedy’s Bid
Problems involving taxes and a household employee surfaced during the vetting of Caroline Kennedy and derailed her candidacy for the Senate, a person close to Gov. David A. Paterson said on Thursday, in an account at odds with Ms. Kennedy’s own description of her reasons for withdrawing.
I guess the patriotic duty and religious experience involved in taxpaying applies only to us, the unenlightened non-Democrat hoi-polloi, then?
NY Post: CAROLINE KENNEDY ENDS SENATE SEAT BID
And why is that?
MAKES DECISION AFTER LEARNING SHE WASN’T GOING TO BE PICKED AS SENATOR
Caroline Kennedy tonight withdrew her name from consideration to replace Hillary Clinton in the U.S. Senate after learning that Gov. David Paterson wasn’t going to choose her, The Post has learned.
Reasonable enough.
The question remains, is Andrew Cuomo a shoe-in, then?
Turkey holds Iranian explosives heading to Venezuela, transition purgatory, and other news items
Turkey holds suspicious Iran-Venezuela shipment
ANKARA, Turkey – Turkey was holding a suspicious shipment bound for Venezuela from Iran because it contained lab equipment capable of producing explosives, a customs official said Tuesday.
Suleyman Tosun, a customs official at the Mediterranean port of Mersin, said military experts were asked to examine the material, which was seized last month, and decide whether to let the shipment to go to Venezuela.
Authorities detected the equipment during a search of 22 containers labeled “tractor parts,” Tosun said. They were brought to Mersin by trucks from neighboring Iran, he said. Turkey’s Interior Ministry said an investigation was under way.
“Experts from Turkey’s Atomic Institute determined there were no traces of radioactive material, but said the equipment was enough to set up an explosives lab,” Tosun said. “We have asked the military to send experts to determine whether to resume the shipment.”
In view of that, this news item is particularly foolish, if it’s true, Obama May Use Chavez as First Test for Talking With Adversaries (h/t Maggie)
Venezuela may provide a useful first test for Obama’s pledge to engage rather than isolate antagonists. While President Hugo Chavez is one of Washington’s noisiest critics, frayed relations would likely be easier to mend than those with nations such as Iran and Cuba, whose leaders are even more hostile toward the U.S.
…
Some Obama advisers privately suggest the president-elect might reach out to Chavez, proposing cooperation on a few issues of mutual interest — drug enforcement, energy, poverty — while asking Brazil and other neighbors to encourage the Venezuelan leader to negotiate in good faith in the interest of regional harmony.
The “mutual interests” are diametrically opposite when it comes to drug enforcement and energy, and Chavez is doing his darnest in keeping his people poor.
Chavez Cuts Off Cheap Oil, Useful Idiot Joe Kennedy Hardest Hit , and, on another Kennedy, Sour Caroline: Public support drops 31 points for Kennedy appointment
Israel’s Quiet Nightmare: Words are Worth a Thousand Pictures.
Maria sends The real story of Israel’s Gaza operation
Astounding Update on Gaza Beach (2006): Father played with unexploded ordnance
Video of Hamas using Gaza UN school to fire mortars at Israel
UPDATE
Via Dan, Hamas Fires From Crowded School; 30 Reported Killed
Booby-Trapped UN School Blows Up When IDF Returns Fire
Signs I’d Love to See at a Peace Rally
Via Larwyn,
I GUESS UKRANIANS, and Europeans in general, would be applauded by the world’s intelligentsia if they started lobbing “homemade rockets” at, say, Belgorod, considering Russia’s strangling by cutting off a vital resource, gas, precisely during a severe cold wave across the continent, no?
Egypt’s Mubarak to EU: Hamas must not be allowed to win in Gaza
Capgras Syndrome? That’s the delusion, named for the French shrink Jean Marie Joseph Capgras, that “a close relative or friend has been replaced by an impostor, an exact double, despite recognition of familiarity in appearance and behavior.” (See here for more.) How could Obama, who promised Change, assemble an administration virtually indistinguishable from that of Bill Clinton? How could he add insult to injury by asking Bob Gates, George W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense, to stay on? How could he pick Lawrence Summers as his top economic advisor? Didn’t Obama know that Summers had trespassed on one of the most sacrosanct of prohibitions by offering an independent thought touching on what David Stove called “the intellectual capacity of women”? How dare he?
Also from Maggie, Transition purgatory
Dozens of national-security and regional experts who worked intensively as volunteers on policy teams for the Obama campaign — writing talking points, doing debate prep, checking facts, following RUMINT, and rebutting opposition attacks — have grown anxious and quiet as they await word on what jobs they might (or might not) be offered in the new administration.
The Heritage Foundation has a hub for new policy research and conservative alternatives, Economic Stimulus, Rapid response. 7 Reasons to Kill the Obama Stimulus Bill
Mean-Spirited Minnesotan Steals a Senate Seat and The joke’s on us, while Senate Democrats put off plans to seat Franken
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid yielded to Republican threats and agreed on Monday not to immediately seat fellow Democrat Al Franken, whose razor-close victory in Minnesota faces legal challenges.
Senate Republicans had planned to disrupt the opening of the new Congress on Tuesday by blocking Franken’s swearing-in.
And in another ugly fight, Senate Democrats vowed to block, at least for now, the seating of fellow party member Roland Burris whose appointment by embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich carries a whiff of political scandal.
A whiff? Very understated, that!
My friend Scrappleface is back and in great shape! Laura Bush Inks Deal for Tell-All Memoir Brochure, Bill Clinton: CIA Pick Panetta Can Keep a Secret
Last but not least, my latest post, Bolivia Launches State-Run Media…which will be sponsored by Iran and Venezuela.
The End of the Subsidies, and other early morning must-reads
Today promises to be a very busy day, but here are a few must-read posts:
Yoani Sanchez continues to post from Cuba: The end of the subsidies
The final speech by Raúl Castro reaffirmed the idea of ending subsidies. Hearing that phrase, we tend to think only of the end of the quota of rationed food we Cubans receive. But the call to do away with symbolic prices and unnecessary “free” services is a double-edge sword which could end up hurting whomever wields it. If we were to be consistent in eliminating paternalism, we’d need to start by reducing the burden of maintaining this obese state infrastructure that we feed from our own pockets. Workers who produce steel, nickel, rum or tobacco, or who are employed in the bar of a hotel, receive a minuscule portion of the sale of their production or of the real cost of their services. The rest goes directly to subsidize an insatiable State.
Go read it all.
Jon Swift has his Best Blog Posts of 2008 (Chosen by the Bloggers Themselves), a monumental roundup of the bloggers’ bests. Thank you, Jon.
Doug Ross found Hamas playing Family Feud: Hamas has a website survey: should it continue rocket attacks?
GM Roper, a Friend I Haven’t Met Yet, looks at a Hamas demonstration and has reason to ask, More Paliwood?
Prof. Richard Landes notices the Revealing Silence at the Egyptian Border: Why does Hamas victimize its own? Richard is blogging from Israel.
Sister Toldjah Gotta love liberal “social engineering”
Via Betsy, Top Ten Marketing Flops Bigger Than Caroline Kennedy
Ilya Somin has A Tale of Texas Takings, “a typical case of the use of eminent domain for the benefit of private interest groups under a thin veneer of advancing the public interest.”
The party of hope, change and nepotism: Oh Come Emanuel!
It looks like nepotism is the order of the day: Zeke, and you shall find.
Rahm Emanuel’s Brother Joins White House Team
A second Emanuel is heading for the White House.
Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a prominent bioethicist at the National Institutes of Health–and the brother of incoming White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel–will serve as a senior counselor at the White House Office of Management and Budget on health policy, two Democratic officials said Thursday.
Zeke Emanuel will work closely with Department of Health and Human Services secretary-nominee Tom Daschle to formulate a national health insurance program and to try to curb the swelling cost of health insurance without adversely impacting health care.
Two Emanuels in the White House might sound like a voluble combination, given Rahm Emanuel’s penchant for yelling, but his brother is known for being suave and soft-spoken.
Zeke joins the equally soft-spoken Kennedys:
Caroline and Chris and Ted and Bobby Jr.
Not as soft-spoken, but keeping it all in the family, Hillary Clinton. Will Bill become an Ambassador?
And of course, who’ll be in West Virginia?
UPDATE
More nepotism, via Conn Carroll: Dems embrace dynasty politics,
Joe Biden’s Senate seat may go to his son Beau. Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar, Obama’s pick for interior secretary, could end up being replaced by his brother, Rep. John Salazar.
And Obama’s own seat could go to the son of the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. – less likely now in light of developments in the Rod Blagojevich scandal – or to the daughter of Illinois’ current House speaker.
How do you spell s-p-e-c-i-a-l e-l-e-c-t-i-o-n?
Shane posts on the Top Ten Most Pathetic Political Quotes Of 2008. He’s right on the money, but I must give honorable mention to Pres. Bush:
“I’ve abandoned free market principles to save the free market system“.
UPDATE
Rick Moran:
Let’s get something clear. What Bush and Obama are doing has nothing to do with “saving” the free market” and everything to do with saving the hides of politicians who are responding to the cries of frightened people by overturning sound economic principles in favor of corporate handouts to failing companies who gambled and lost and now want the taxpayer to subsidize their recklessness and incompetence.
Since it’s Advent, and I used it in the title, here it is:
No, other than the name, it has nothing to do with the post, but wouldn’t want you to get bored, would you?