Not quite sure what to make of this, but it goes to show that money alone does not a good campaign make.  Just read that opponents of Proposition 8 outspent supporters of the ballot measure by over $3.5 million dollars:

More than $83 million was donated to support or oppose the ballot initiative that abolished same-sex marriage in California, according to campaign filings released Monday.

The new filings cover the weeks immediately before and after the Nov. 4 election. They show that elected officials, businesses, churches and individuals poured more than $28 million into the campaigns during the contest’s closing days.

The final tallies show that opponents of Proposition 8 raised $43.3 million in 2008 and had a little more than $730,000 left on hand at year’s end. The measure’s sponsors raised $39.9 million and had $983,000 left over.

Of course those totals don’t include the “value” of the efforts by volunteers on both sides of the initiative.

Note the use of the passive in this AP piece on the confirmation of Eric Holder as Attorney General: “Holder also will have to rehabilitate a department that under President George W. Bush was criticized for injecting politics in hiring career officials and firings of U.S. attorneys.”

Oh, and who criticized it for injecting politics into the administration of justice?  Amazing that a “news agency” could run an entire article on Holder’s confirmation, dwell on the policies of the previous Administration, but barely mention Holder’s record as the second in command in the Clinton Justice Department, also criticized for politicization.

The article basically rehashes the standard Democratic criticisms of the Bush Administration Justice Department.  And this is all we get about Holder’s controversial tenure in the Clinton Administration:  “Even his critics agreed that Holder was well-qualified, but they questioned his positions and his independence.”  Um, they did more than question.  Here are just a few of the troubling things in his record.

Once again, we see the MSM helping Obama “by not reporting” troubling details of his team, instead turning their attention to alleged scandals in the Bush Administration.   Like some of our critics, they’d rather berate Bush than consider Democratic misdeeds.

There was something else in the AP article which said a lot about how both leading Democrats and the media few politics:  “Holder’s chief supporter, Sen. Patrick Leahy, said the confirmation was a fulfillment of civil rights leader Martin Luther King’s dream that everyone would be judged by the content of their character.”  It’s almost as if they assume that the historical nature of the appointment obscures Holder’s controversial record.

I do share Dr. King’s dream that people be judged by the content of their character.  And if we were to so judge Holder, just looking at his record, we’d find Holder not qualified to serve as the chief law enforcement officer of the United States.

In an excellent piece, which, to some degree at least addresses a point some readers have been debating in the comments sections to other posts, Michael Barone suggests that the GOP go upscale by “downplaying the cultural issues that were an important reason for Republican victories from 1980 to 2004.”

Instead, they should target younger voters by pointing out that Democratic policies limit our choices. “Republicans,” he contends, “can argue that their policies will let you choose your future.” Seems like he favors pushing a freedom agenda, adapting Ronald Reagan’s ideas to the world today. Good plan.

Not only does Barone offer the right approach to Republican rebuilding, he also understands the qualities of a woman likely to be one of those at the helm of our party for years to come. Noting the appeal Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has to “downscale voters,” he observes:

Despite the scorn the media heaped on her, she has excellent political instincts and seems capable of developing the knowledge base that would make her a credible presidential candidate in the future.

Numerous people, included this Democrat, who have worked with (or otherwise come into contact with) the 2008 Republican Vice-presidential nominee have called her a “quick study.”

The more Palin familiarizes herself with national policy at the federal level, the more she’ll overcome the image created during the campaign by awkward moments in interviews with aggressive reporters that hurt her image. Note how her detractors all focus on interviews she conducted before the Vice-Presidential debate. They all but ignored her performance after that.

Once Sarah Palin gained a greater command of the issues, got accustomed to the style and format of these exchanges, as well as the agenda of the national news media, she came across much better in such settings.

I mean, if Sarah Palin kept doing poorly in such exchanges, wouldn’t her detractors focus on more than just the Couric and Gibson interviews?  Barone has it right.  Once she develops that knowledge base, she will become a credible presidential candidate.

Oh, and with anything my Michael Barone, just read the whole thing.

. . . and for mistakes less significant than Daschle’s.

This headline, Daschle apologizes for failing to pay taxes, suggests the Democrat believes an apology enough save his nomination.

Well for a Democrat it just might work, but if he were a Republican:

If a Bush appointee got rich off of Wall Street in this climate, had a chauffeur from one of his fat cat cronies, had unpaid taxes that amounted to more than what most people make in a year, and then the administration tried to fix it behind closed doors. Democrats would call for his head and would demand ‘accountability.

That observation led Glenn to remark, “will Republicans have the guts to do the same?”

If they want to stand for anything, they’d better. Despite Obama’s campaign rhetoric to change the way business is done in Washington, he has appointed a lot of Beltway hacks to his team, those who, like Daschle embody the way Washington really works.

A Republican couldn’t get away with just an apology. He would have to withdraw his nomination and admit not just the error of his ways, but also of his ideology, as if his ideology were responsible for his misdeeds.

So, is Daschle’s ideology responsible for his misdeeds? Or just his arrogance? If the latter, this speaks poorly of the individuals the president has tapped for his cabinet.

It seems some believe that the rules that apply to the average American don’t apply to them.

UPDATE (JohnAGJ): A quote that Hot Air amusingly calls “delicious irony”:

“Make no mistake, tax cheaters cheat us all, and the IRS should enforce our laws to the letter. ” Sen. Tom Daschle, Congressional Record, May 7, 1998, p. S4507.

Days after a major storm hits, the death toll remains unknown, relief has still not reached areas impacted by the disaster. People are running short of food, some homes uninhabitable.  Many people are complaining about the slow response “from the state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.” The president hasn’t visited the region.

Sound like Katrina in 2005.  Well, it’s Kentucky this week.  Oh, and another thing the Bluegrass state disaster has is in common with Hurricane Katrina: the state hit hardest had a Democratic governor at the time of the catastrophe.

And yet, where’s the media giving us minute-by-minute coverage of how bad things are and how much wanting the federal response?

Recall, four years ago, how up in arms they were when then-President Bush didn’t react forcefully enough to the tsunami that lashed south Asia? Well, while this disaster is not nearly as catastrophic, according to the White House, all that President Obama has done is to sign statements declaring the state a disaster area.

No public statement of support (at least not as I write this). Shouldn’t the media be outraged? Shouldn’t we be outraged at his indifference?

Oh yea, he’s a Democrat and is, by definition, compassionate. It’s just Republicans who are heartless.

(H/t Instapundit.)

UPDATE:  The Anchoress asks “why isn’t the president down there, hugging people? Why was he schmoozing congress with steak dinners* while people were suffering?” Read the whole thing.

Instapundit reader C.J. Burch observes, “What Katrina taught the media was that they could hurt Bush by lying. What 2008 taught them was that they could help Obama by not reporting at all. What will 2009 teach them? I shudder to think.”

UPDATE FROM Bruce (GayPatriot): Where is the outrage from Kanye West and Spike Lee?  What does Barack Obama have against poor white people in Kentucky?!?!

UP-UPDATE FROM Dan: Bruce, have you noted that none of our critics in the comments section have taken issue with my basic point about the Administration’s lackluster response to the disaster and the MSM’s silence?

UP-UP-UPDATE from Bruce (GP): Dan….. and this surprises you, how?   The basic strategy that liberals use in public discourse is to avoid the original question, then lie and then make up new facts and then revise history.  Our critics do it well.

UP-UP-UP-UPDATE from Dan Steve Gill asks, “where is President Obama?”

While millions are struggling were struggling with the dangerous and deadly icy conditions President Obama had the thermostat in the Oval Office cranked up like a “hothouse” growing orchids. On Thursday — while millions in Tennessee and Kentucky did not have access to shelter or food — Obama hosted a cocktail party at the White House and served up fancy martinis and an appetizer menu that featured mouthwatering wagyu steak costing $100 a pound.

He also wonders where’s the outrage?

Despite the president’s difficult first dozen days in office, given his intelligence and political gifts, he could change course should the national interest require such a shift. With his charisma and rhetorical gifs (when speaking from prepared text), he could more easily communicate that change.

I am less confident of his deputy’s ability to lead. The more I watch Joe Biden, the more I pray for the president’s health. He doesn’t seem to have ever had an original thought, serving more as a barometer of liberal conventional wisdom than anything else. Whatever his Democratic peers believe he does too.

People confuse his experience with wisdom, as if just because he’s been in the Senate for so long, chairing two committees, he must necessarily have a deep understanding of the way the world works. Well, he does know the way Washington works.  And the way its winds blow.

Just look at how he treats his predecessor, calling the distinguished Wyomingite “one of the most dangerous vice presidents.” He didn’t say this because he believed it to be so, but because it is the conventional wisdom of his political peers and their allies among the punditry and in the MSM.*

While Biden served on the Senate Foreign Relations for decades, he’s been wrong on nearly every significant foreign policy issue since he first took office.  In public appearances, he seems especially obsequious to the president, kind of like the geeky kid in high school, all of a sudden becoming the head jock’s right-hand man.

Let us hope Obama senior adviser David Axelrod was just being politic when he said Biden’s “insight and experience dwarf any minor gaffe or misstep.“  Because the only insight the vice president’s gained for that experience is that Democrats look smart in Washington when they repeat the conventional wisdom of theirpartisan peers.

* (more…)

Pop.  Pop.  Pop.  Pop.   That’s the sound of heads exploding from San Fran to Seattle by leftists who want to protect Al Qaeda, not Americans.

Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool – LA Times (h/t – The Corner)

The CIA’s secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba.

But even while dismantling these programs, President Obama left intact an equally controversial counter-terrorism tool.

Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism — aside from Predator missile strikes — for taking suspected terrorists off the street.

The rendition program became a source of embarrassment for the CIA, and a target of international scorn, as details emerged in recent years of botched captures, mistaken identities and allegations that prisoners were turned over to countries where they were tortured.

The European Parliament condemned renditions as “an illegal instrument used by the United States.” Prisoners swept up in the program have sued the CIA as well as a Boeing Co. subsidiary accused of working with the agency on dozens of rendition flights.

But the Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.

That’s funny, I thought the American Left told me it was one of the WORST parts of “Bush’s War.”  In fact, wasn’t there even a leftist Hollyweird movie, that made little, called “RENDITION”.   My, oh my.

Pop.  Pop.  Pop.

Score one positive mark for President Obama.

Exit Question: Will the anti-Bush liberals who comment at GayPatriot now support this terror-fighting tool?  Or are they just tools?

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

2nd runner-up – Al Roker.  Why?

Winner, and Worst Man In The World - Keith Olbermann.   Hey, NBC Sports.   Keep “Mr. Dyspeptic” on your left-wing radical “news” cable channel.  Don’t ruin my football with this jackass.

Worst Moment Yet-To-Come: Springsteen at halftime. [RETRACTED:  See comment #18]

Go Cardinals.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Perhaps some other blogger or wit has already found that really witty remark I’ve been looking for ever since it dawned on me this morning the delicious hypocrisy of those dubbed Leona Helmsley Democrats.

I mean, isn’t it such Democratic politicians ever eager to hike our taxes? Shouldn’t they, to show their sincerity, be the first to pay?  A Republican tax-evader could at least say non-payment was a matter of principle for him. That wouldn’t (& shouldn’t) help in a court of law.

Our reader SoCalRobert caught this telling remark from the former Senate Minority Leader: “tax cheaters cheat us all, and the IRS should enforce our laws to the letter.”

Senate Republicans should take those words to heart and not hesitate to vote against Daschle’s confirmation. And heck, so too should their Democratic colleagues. It’s the principle you know. Don’t they want to encourage rich people to pay their taxes?

UPDATE: “Any Republican nominee who tried to maintain his nomination under such circumstances would be laughed out of town.” This just reiterates that point.