Vice President Joe Biden gave a speech this weekend on a US Navy ship. Fortunately the “Mission Accomplished” banner was nowhere to be seen, however in his comments he told a story about something that Admiral Mullen, the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a secret, hush hush meeting with the President. “I can’t tell you the event because it’s classified, but I can tell you what happened,” the V.P. said.

You can’t tell us that it was about the recent pirate hostage rescue, Joe? How come?

Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter’s announcement Tuesday that he is abandoning the Republican Party is the latest sign of a shift in the political wind. GOP spokesmen have been hard at work painting Specter as a political opportunist, switching to the Democratic Party in order to avoid losing the coming Republican Primary to a well funded, more “conservative” opponent, Pat Toomey, head of the Club for Growth. I would call it self defense.

The Club for Growth is, or has, a PAC, which supports Republican candidates for Congress. Here is a quote from the Club for Growth website “The primary tactic of the separate Club for Growth PAC is to provide financial support from Club members to viable pro-growth candidates to Congress, particularly in Republican primaries.” The most important part of that statement is “particularly in Republican primaries.” In fact what the Club for Growth does is to target Republicans in Congress that do not follow their hard line anti tax, anti regulation, leave the driving to us, pro big business posture. The Club for Growth is helping to destroy the Republican Party by driving out moderates.

Often, after a Club for Growth candidate wins a primary, the Democrat wins the general election. Case in point, my own Congressman, Wayne Gilchrest. After seventeen terms in office, as a very popular Congressman, he was beaten in the primary by a Club for Growth supported opponent, State Senator Andy Harris. My new Congressman is Democrat, Frank Kratovil. Andy Harris remains in the Maryland State Senate. It is fairly easy for a well funded candidate to torpedo a popular moderate Republican, when only Republican voters are involved, but much harder to sell a right wing agenda to the general public, which is not in tune with the Club for Growth’s extreme pro business political philosophy.

Removing moderate Republicans from office and replacing them with Democrats causes the Republican Party to become more narrow in it’s focus and obviously smaller. In the next couple of years I predict we will see more self defense defections like Specter’s. Maine’s Olympia Snow could well be next.

I got another one this morning, an email from David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s campaign manager, asking for a donation. Plouffe’s email says that it is to help overcome the negative messages of those defenders of the status quo who are calling for Obama to fail. I guess he means Rush.

Excuse me, but I was under the impression that President Obama had the resources of the entire executive branch of the U.S. government at his disposal. Why does he need another $25 from me? Come 2011, 2012 I will be ready to donate to his reelection campaign, assuming he continues to have policies that I approve of. I’m not donating to operating budget of the White House.

I see, according to the omniscient Wikipedia, that Plouffe does not even have a job with the Obama White Hose. He’s writing a book about the campaign. Do I get a copy of the book for my $25?

Photo from LIFE Magazine archive.

When is an earmark bacon and when is it pork? The total cost of the earmarks is less than 2% of the total spending bill. Each of them is for a project that a Congressperson or a Senator asked for in order to benefit that Congresspersons constituents. They go back to their districts and brag about the fine projects that will help the people of their districts, providing much needed jobs, infrastructure or whatever. Republicans do it. Democrats do it. They talk trash about their neighbor’s pork even while they are bragging on their own bacon. Hey, if it smells like bacon it came from a pig. Bacon and pork are indistinguishable.

We can make fun of studies of the sleeping habits of bears in Montana, overhead projectors in Illinois or fish waste processing plants in Mississippi but when you look at individual projects they do seem to be beneficial and not as outlandish as their critics pretend. Maybe the Federal Government should get out of the business of funding school construction, funding research, highway building and job creation. Arizona is doing without, since John McCain refuses to play the game . . . er, he does refuse to bring earmark money to Arizona right?

President Obama wants to bring more transparency to the earmark process but not to eliminate them. He would like to see all earmarks published on a website with the names of their Congressional sponsors attached. It will be interesting to see how that works for him. Congresspeople and Senators loves them some earmarks. They don’t care to have a lot of people looking over their shoulders, though.

Well I guess people didn’t like Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s response to President Obama’s address last night to a joint session of Congress, at least that’s what I hear. People seemed to think that there was something lacking in his style or his presentation. Now I watched most of Gov. Jindal’s response last night, until I grew bored with the repetition of tired themes like walking to school in a Louisiana blizzard ten miles uphill both ways with a bucket of milk from the family farm in one hand and a basket of eggs in the other, to pay the tuition for his private education because his family refused to accept a handout from the public schools. I finally turned it off and went to bed, knowing that the liberal media would fill me in in the morning.

One person has stood by Bobby Jindal, though. Good old Rush, he knows a good Republican when he sees one. Bobby is colorful and young and has that je ne sais quoi about him that just might be the thing to bring the party Rushing back. I love a good logical argument, devoid of ad hominem attacks. You can always count on Rush to be precise, logical and factual. Give him a listen, you might learn something.

P.S. Another defender of the good Governor is my good conservative friend Jon Swift.

This time the host is The Political Octagon, a blog with more than a slight rightward tilt. That’s OK, this is America where one blog is just as good as another, if not a darn sight better, even with one leg shorter than the other.

The photo at left comes from that other carnaval that they have down in Rio this time of year. For some reason pictures like this increase my blog traffic. No idea why.

A brief announcement appeared on the White House Blog this evening, stating that Senator Gregg had “withdrawn his name” from consideration for the post as Commerce Secretary. Earlier today, in the Senate, Gregg had abstained from voting on the stimulus package. I guess that his lack of support for the President’s policies and programs didn’t sit so well.

Partisanship is rising quickly again in Washington. I predict that President Obama is going to start taking a much less conciliatory stance toward the Republican minority. Not too soon for me.

There had been a call for applications for “political appointment” jobs in the Obama administration on the blog. Maybe I’ll put in for commerce Secretary. I better get my resume in before Joe the Plumber scoops up the job.

Update: Republicans “Emboldened” by Gregg’s withdrawal. WTF? When are these guys going to stop digging the hole they’ve gotten themselves in?

You can't make this stuff up.

Hot news! Samuel “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher is on Capitol Hill, advising Congressional Republicans on strategies for opposing the stimulus package. This is an indication of just how committed the loyal opposition is to bipartisanship, effective gorvenment and to solving the fiscal crisis. Amazing!

Feb. 3rd is the traditional Blogroll Amnesty Day, a day when obscure  blogs all over the world link to other obscure blogs in a vain attempt to lift each other by their collective bootstraps. Blue Gal, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo and Jon Swift have launched the amnesty early, so I’m joining in. This year Skippy has made some new rules, making B.A.D. a kind of voluntary meme, which relieves the real problem of bloated blogrolls, which the original B.A.D, the really bad B.A.D, which Jon Swift will tell you about, happen in the first place.

the basic rule for blogroll amnesty day weekend is simply this: take a moment to write a post linking to (and pointing out to your readers) 5 blogs w/traffic smaller than yours. this inclusive and magnanimous yet easy-to-do gesture will not only expose your readers to new voices and those voices to new readers, it will foster a sense of community, support and all-around kumbaya amongst the progressive infrastructure.

I am trying very hard to follow Skippy’s rule about not making that joke about this blog’s relative level of readership. Meanwhile I am going to introduce you to these five, which may or may not be galactically famous, what do I know?

Siberian Light, The Russian Blog, came to my attention last year, through a post in Windows to Russia. Andy Young lives in Irkutsk, which I always thought was just a spot on the RISK board, and writes about Russia in a fair and balanced way, although I don’t think he ever worked for Fox news.

Idiot’s Guide to Blogging is written by Raivyn who, even though she spells her name funny and is not an Edgar Allen Poe fan to my knowledge, has a lot of good advice for aspiring blog stars. She is also a musician, which is a nice thing to be.

Your Neighborhood Reverend is an impostor! Surely no real man of the cloth would brag about squiring a “traveling bra” around Memphis, showing her the sites.

Linus’s Blanket is not a comic strip. It’s a thoughtful blog filled with book reviews, however the author apparently feels a strange kinship with Linus Van Pelt.

Whitehouse.gov, is a brand new blog, written by some guy named Macon Phillips, which will never get much of a readership until the author adds some LOLcats or something to relieve the dryness, but I’m willing to lend a hand to a beginner. Macon should give that old guy in the sidebar a haircut and a new set of dentures, too, IMHO.

If you would like to join in Blogroll Amnesty Day, just follow the instructions above and drop Jon or Skippy an email at the appropriate address (shown on their blogs.)

A  few friends and I, who like to pretend we’re a band, did a benefit concert for a local,non profit, venue on a Sunday afternoon in January. No tomatoes were thrown so it seems to have gone over well. This is just a snippet of one song, Dave Guard’s “Scotch and Soda.” I’m the old looking guy on the right. The lighting was truthful unflattering.