Adam Lambert performed his hit song ‘For Your Entertainment’ at Sydney’s Mardi Gras celebration while wearing a spiked, diamond encrusted codpiece. The act was completed by half naked male dancers, while Adam was taped thrusting about.

The next day, he performed his new song, ‘Whataya Want From Me’ on Australia’s Sunrise morning show.

Adam Lambert’s album has remained on the Top 50 sales chart all but one week since its debut in November of 2009.

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Poll: American less respected under Obama

1.  A majority of Americans say the United States is less respected in the world than it was two years ago and think President Obama and other Democrats fall short of Republicans on the issue of national security, a new poll finds.

The Democracy Corps-Third Way survey released Monday finds that by a 10-point margin — 51 percent to 41 percent — Americans think the standing of the U.S. dropped during the first 13 months of Mr. Obama’s presidency.

“This is surprising, given the global acclaim and Nobel peace prize that flowed to the new president after he took office,” said pollsters for the liberal-leaning organizations.

On the national security front, a massive gap has emerged, with 50 percent of likely voters saying Republicans would likely do a better job than Democrats, a 14-point swing since May. Thirty-three percent favored Democrats.

“The erosion since May is especially strong among women, and among independents, who now favor Republicans on this question by a 56 to 20 percent margin,” the pollsters said in their findings.

Wisconsin AG charges ACORN with voter fraud

2.  Five Wisconsin residents have been charged with criminal counts of voter fraud in the November 2008 general election, state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen announced today.

Two of those charged, Maria Miles and Kevin Clancy, are workers for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the embattled community group.

“The complaint alleges that Miles and Clancy submitted multiple voter registration applications for the same individuals, and also were part of a scheme in which they and other (special registration deputies) registered each other to vote multiple times in order to meet voter registration quotas imposed by ACORN,” Van Hollen states in the release.
Dan Rather: Articulate Obama couldn’t sell watermelons

3. Dan Rather:  Part of the undertow in the coming election is going to be President Obama’s leadership. And the Republicans will make a case and a lot of independents will buy this argument. “Listen he just hasn’t been, look at the health care bill. It was his number one priority. It took him forever to get it through and he had to compromise it to death.” And a version of, “Listen he’s a nice person, he’s very articulate” this is what’s been used against him, “but he couldn’t sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.”

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Just last week I commented that something didn’t seem right with the intended resignation of Democrat Congressman Eric Massa.  I pointed out that the Congressman voted against the health-care Bill and I was of the opinion that he was being set up.  Well, here we are one week later and Congressman Massa is confirming my instincts.

The liberal Congressman from Massachusetts unleashes in this radio interview.  He comments on how his Party is destroying the country, how the Unions are bribing and threatening Congressman, and how a naked Rahm Emanuel assaulted him in the showers of the Congressional gym.  Listen to it for yourself.

From City Hall:

“I was set up for this from the very, very beginning,” he said, on what Massa insisted would be the last broadcast of the Sunday morning show on WKPQ 105.3 FM in Hornell. “You think that somehow they didn’t come after me to get rid of me because my vote is the deciding vote in the health care bill? Then, ladies and gentlemen, you live today in a world that is so innocent as to not understand what’s going on in Washington, D.C.”

According to Massa, the sexual harassment complaint stemmed from an incident during a wedding on New Year’s Eve last year. Sometime soon after midnight, Massa said, a drunken male staffer made a lurid comment to Massa about dancing with one of the bridesmaids at the reception.

“A staff member made an intonation to me that maybe I should be chasing after the bridesmaid. His points were clear and his words were far more colorful than that,” Massa said. “And I grabbed the staff member sitting next to me and said, “Pal, what I really ought to be doing is fracking you.’ And then [I] tussled the guy’s hair, and left.”

Massa said that another staff member—disturbed by Massa’s statement—reported it to the House Ethics Committee. Massa said the staffer to whom he directed the comment never was involved with the complaint.

“That staff member never said to me he felt uncomfortable,” Massa said. “He never came to me, he never said a word to me. In fact, he never went to anybody.”

Massa said he learned that a complaint had been filed against him Feb. 8 but that he believed it was only over a minor campaign finance issue. Massa said he only learned of the sexual harassment complaint after he announced he would not run for re-election on Wednesday over what he says is a fatal recurrence of cancer.

As for the charge that House Democrats set him up, Massa said he only came to belief after reading two articles on Sunday morning before his broadcast: An Associated Press article in which House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer discussed the ethics investigation, and a Roll Call article about how the recent departure of several Democrats from the House would help pass health care legislation. Massa said he believes he was the swing vote that would decide the fate of the bill—and that Hoyer’s decision to disclose details of the investigation proves Democratic leadership was out to get him.

With Massa’s resignation, Democrats now need only 216 votes in the House to pass the bill.

Massa also described a profanity-filled conversation he had with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel after he voted against the president’s health care legislation last year. Massa called on Emanuel to resign for his own use of profane language during the phone call.

“Rahm Emanuel is son of the devil’s spawn,” Massa added. “He is an individual who would sell his mother to get a vote. He would strap his children to the front end of a steam locomotive.”

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From the AP:

The Iraq War drama “The Hurt Locker” won best picture and five other prizes Sunday at the Academy Awards, its haul including best director for Kathryn Bigelow.

Bigelow is the first woman in the 82-year history of the Oscars to earn Hollywood’s top prize for filmmakers.

“There’s no other way to describe it. It’s the moment of a lifetime,” Bigelow said. “It’s so extraordinary to be in the company of my fellow nominees, such powerful filmmakers, who have inspired me and I have admired, some of them for decades.”

Among those Bigelow and “The Hurt Locker” beat are ex-husband James Cameron and his sci-fi spectacle “Avatar.” Bigelow and Cameron were married from 1989-91.

Cameron was seated right behind Bigelow at the Oscars and joined a standing ovation for her, clapping vigorously and saying, “Yes, yes” after she won.

First-time winners took all four acting prizes: Sandra Bullock as best actress for “The Blind Side”; Jeff Bridges as best actor for “Crazy Heart”; Mo’Nique as supporting actress for “Precious”; and Christoph Waltz as supporting actor for “Inglourious Basterds.”

The Oscar marks a career peak for Bridges, a beloved Hollywood veteran who had been nominated four times in the previous 38 years without winning. Bridges, who played a boozy country singer trying to clean up his act, held his Oscar aloft and thanked his late parents, actor Lloyd Bridges and poet Dorothy Bridges.

“Thank you, Mom and Dad, for turning me on to such a groovy profession,” said Bridges, recalling how his mother would get her children to entertain at parties and his father would sit on the bed teaching him the basics of acting for an early he landed on his dad’s TV show “Sea Hunt.”
“I feel an extension of them. This is honoring them as much as it is me,” Bridges said.

Bullock, an industry darling who had never before been nominated, won for her role as a wealthy woman who takes in homeless future NFL star Michael Oher, who was living on the streets as a teen.

The award wraps up a wild year for Bullock, who had box-office smashes with “Blind Side” and “The Proposal” and a flop with “All About Steve,” which earned her the worst-actress trophy at the Razzies the night before the Oscars.

“Did I really earn this or did I just wear you all down?” Bullock asked the Oscar crowd. Bullock gushed with praise for her fellow nominees, including Meryl Streep, who she joked is “such a good kisser.”

The supporting-acting winners capped remarkable years, Mo’Nique startling fans with dramatic depths previously unsuspected in the actress known for lowbrow comedy and the Austrian-born Waltz leaping to fame with his first big Hollywood role.

“I would like to thank the academy for showing that it can be about the performance and not the politics,” said Mo’Nique, who plays the heartless, abusive welfare mother of an illiterate teen in the Harlem drama “Precious: Based on the Novel `Push’ by Sapphire.”

Mo’Nique added her gratitude to the first black actress to win an Oscar, Hattie McDaniel, the 1939 supporting-actress winner for “Gone With the Wind.”

“I want to thank Miss Hattie McDaniel for enduring all that she had to so that I would not have to,” she said, adding thanks to Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry, who signed on as executive producers to spread the word on “Precious” after it premiered at last year’s Sundance Film Festival.
“Precious” also won the adapted-screenplay Oscar for Geoffrey Fletcher.

“This is for everybody who works on a dream every day. Precious boys and girls everywhere,” Fletcher said.

Waltz’s award was presented by last season’s supporting-actress winner, Penelope Cruz, who gave Waltz a kiss as he took the stage.
“Oscar and Penelope. That’s an uber-bingo,” Waltz said.

Though a veteran stage and TV actor in Europe, Waltz had been a virtual unknown in Hollywood before Quentin Tarantino cast him as the prattling, ruthless Jew-hunter Hans Landa in his World War II saga.

“Quentin with his unorthodox methods of navigation, this fearless explorer, took this ship across and brought it in with flying colors, and that’s why I’m here,” Waltz said. “This is your welcoming embrace, and there’s no way I can ever thank you enough.”

“Avatar” won three Oscars, for visual effects, art direction and cinematography, beating “The Hurt Locker” for the latter. “The Hurt Locker” also won out over “Avatar” for film editing, sound editing and sound mixing.

With nine nominations each, “The Hurt Locker” and “Avatar” came in tied for the Oscar lead.

“Hurt Locker” screenwriter Mark Boal, who won the Oscar for original screenplay, thanked Bigelow, calling her an “extraordinary and visionary filmmaker,” and dedicated his Oscar win to the troops still in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with those who did not make it home. Boal also affectionately recalled his father, who died a month ago.

Missing from the onstage celebration for the “Hurt Locker” win was producer Nicolas Chartier, who was banned by the academy from attending the Oscars because of e-mails he sent urging members to vote for his movie — an academy violation.

“Up” earned the third-straight feature-animation Oscar for Disney’s Pixar Animation, which now has won five of the nine awards since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences added the category.

The film features Ed Asner providing the voice of a crabby widower who flies off on a grand adventure by lashing thousands of helium balloons to his house.

“Never did I dream that making a flip-book out of my third-grade math book would lead to this,” said “Up” director Pete Docter, whose film also won for best musical score.

Pixar has a likely contender in the wings for next Oscar season with this summer’s “Toy Story 3,” reuniting voice stars Tom Hanks and Tim Allen.
Argentina’s “The Secret in Their Eyes” pulled off a surprise win for foreign-language film over higher-profile entries that included Germany’s “The White Ribbon” and France’s “A Prophet.”

“Crazy Heart” also won for original song with its theme tune “The Weary Kind.”

The song category typically comes late in the show, after live performances of the nominees that have been spaced throughout the ceremony. Oscar producers tossed out those live performances this time in favor of montages featuring the songs and footage from the films they accompany.

“The Cove,” an investigation into grisly dolphin-fishing operations in Japan, was picked as best documentary.

Oscar hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin opened the show with playful ribbing of nominees. They also made note of Oscar organizers’ decision to double the best-picture category from five films to 10.

“When that was announced, all of us in Hollywood thought the same thing. What’s five times two?” Martin said.

Leaders of the Academy widened the best-picture category from the usual five films to expand the range of contenders for a ceremony whose predictability had turned it into a humdrum affair for TV audiences.

Oscar ratings fell to an all-time low two years ago and rebounded just a bit last year, when the show’s overseers freshened things up with lively production numbers and new ways of presenting some awards.

The overhaul continued this season with a show that farmed out time-consuming lifetime-achievement honors to a separate event last fall and hired Martin and Baldwin as the first dual Oscar hosts in 23 years.

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Last year Obama said that private and government health-care can coexist.  To support his argument, he pointed to the US Post Office and FedEx. Let’s discuss this.

The Post Office announced that it was running a huge deficit and was exploring ways to keep it afloat.  Some of the ideas being floated are to cut services to 5 days a week, reducing benefits to its employees, and increases rates.  Is this what we can expect to happen with government run health-care; cutting services or in the case of health-care, not covering those things that are now covered by health-care; increasing premiums; and slashing the payments that doctors, nurses, and physicians receive for their work?  I’m just asking.  After all, Obama himself, used the comparison to support his case for government-run health-care.

Already, Obama has gone back on his word; the very word he gave in his address to Congress when Joe Wilson called him a liar.  Obama stated that health-care would be paid for by those who paid their premiums.   In the Senate bill being negotiated, there are a series of taxes that are being included. These taxes include an increase in the payroll tax.  This is on top of the soon to expire Bush tax cuts that will see the average middle income tax increase by 7%.  As a reminder, these were the Bush tax cuts:

• A reduction of individual income tax rates from 15, 28, 31, 36, and 39.6 percent to 10, 15, 25, 28, 33, and 35 percent;
• An increase in the child tax credit from $500 to $1,000;
• A phased-in reduction in estate taxes, and a one-year repeal in 2010;
• A big expansion of tax-favored retirement savings plans;
• Reduced the individual capital gains tax from 35% to 15%.

In Obama’s budget, the President allowed for the expiring of these cuts while claiming that he “wasn’t increasing taxes on the middle class.  In fact, Obama often touts his tax “cuts” he “gave” to the middle class that averaged around $400 per year.  Again, the president has been a little loose with the truth.  Those filing their 2009 taxes learned that this $400 was nothing more than a tax credit and would be deducted from their their 2009 return.  In essence, you would have gotten the $400 back anyways.

The question should be asked, if Obama’s health-care bill will save money and increase services then why is he having to deceive and lie about its cost?  Is his health-care program really going to cost us less?  Let’s think about this.  If Obama is promising me that his health-care plan will cost me less than my employer’s United Health-Care plan (I pay $138 a month), but he’s increasing my taxes by $302 per month how is this making sense?  This health-care plan is not about reducing cost, if it was then we would have Tort Reform tied to any plan before the Congress, this is about the socialization of this country and that is why a majority of Americans are opposed to this legislation.

Let’s go back to the drawing board and develop a plan that covers pre-existing conditions, includes Tort Reform, rewards those who live a healthy life through diet and exercise, penalizes people like Obama who smoke, cuts fraud, waste, and abuse in Medicare, and is run by the private sector.

It’s hard to believe it’s Sunday already.  For me, it’s come much too fast.  As many of you know, I’ve taken over management of a new property– it has been keeping me very busy.

Long hours have become the norm for me… and working through the weekends… well, that become the norm too.  I’m not complaining, I love my job.  I’m one of those people who doesn’t like to leave something hanging.  I end up thinking about it all day and it drives me crazy.  Because of this, I tend to work until I’m too tired to concentrate… or until American Idol is scheduled to come on.

This was my first full weekend off and so far it’s been very relaxing.  I can’t tell you the last time that I slept 10 hours straight.   I feel great–  well rested and energized.

As things settle at work and I get back to a more reasonable work week, you can count on me opining on the latest news.  For now, I’m off to the store to get the Sunday paper-  who wants to miss an opportunity to take advantage of a good sale.

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Does Harry Reid and his liberal cohorts in Congress get it?  36,000 lost jobs isn’t bad, but wait… 248,000 created in a month by Bush was terrible. I’m mean honestly, do these people have any integrity?  I’m so looking forward to the day when we have 3 lost jobs- Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama.  Maybe then we can actually create real jobs.

And then we have this in the news:

From the AP:

A new congressional report released Friday says the United States’ long-term fiscal woes are even worse than predicted byPresident Barack Obama’s grim budget submission last month.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts that Obama’s budget plans would generate deficits over the upcoming decade that would total $9.8 trillion. That’s $1.2 trillion more than predicted by the administration.

So Obama’s budget creates more debt than all previous Presidents since the founding of our country.  Yes, this is the guy who promised to reduce the deficit, go “line by line” to eliminate waste, to veto any bill that had earmarks… I guess what he really meant by change was changing his mind.

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The mainstream media and Democrats are up in arms over the above slide that was used in a recent PowerPoint presentation by the Republican National Committee.  I’m a bit confused as why they would be upset about it.  Do the mainstream media and Democrats have such memories as to forget the mockery of President Bush and other Republicans?  Did they forget this, and this, and this, and this?

From the Guardian:

The Republican party’s national organising committee was furiously backpedalling after an embarrassing document lampooning Barack Obama and other Democratic leaders as ‘evil’ was found in a hotel room.

The PowerPoint document, reported by the Washington news website Politico, was delivered by the Republican National Committee’s head of fundraising to a closed meeting of select party officials and major donors held in Boca Grande, Florida, last month.

In discussing how to motivate donors to give, a section of the presentation is headlined “The Evil Empire” and carries a picture of Barack Obama made up to look like Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker in the Batman movie The Dark Knight. Democratic party congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are also caricatured as Cruella DeVille and Scooby Doo.

Politico said that the 72-page document was sent to it by a Democrat, who found the original in the hotel where the meeting was held. on 18 February. Sources at the event said a presentation involving the document was given by the RNC’s finance director Rob Bickhart and finance chairman Peter Terpeluk, who was ambassador to Luxembourg under the Bush administration.

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From the Politico:

Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) will not seek reelection after only one term in office.

According to several House aides – on both sides of the aisle – the House ethics committee has been informed of allegations that Massa, who is married with two children, sexually harassed a male staffer.

Massa, whose departure endangers Democrats’ hold on a competitive seat, told POLITICO Wednesday afternoon that no one has brought allegations of misconduct to him.

Asked about the sexual harassment allegations, Massa said: “When someone makes a decision to leave Congress, everybody says everything. I have health issues. I’ll talk about it [later].”

Massa recently suffered from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and he has said that his experience with cancer drove his interest in running for office so he could help reform the health care system.

A 20-year Navy veteran, Massa was elected to office last November. He serves on the Agriculture, Armed Services and Homeland Security committees.

Massa is scheduled to hold a conference call at 3:30 this afternoon to announce his decision, which came as a complete surprise to several of his freshman Democratic colleagues in the New York delegation.

Massa has played a gadfly-like role in the House, calling for a single-payer health care system at a conference of liberal activists last year despite representing a Republican-leaning district. He was one of 39 House Democrats to vote against health care legislation; he said it didn’t do enough to control costs.

As a freshman representing New York’s most Republican House district, Massa was one of the most endangered Democrats in the delegation. Republicans had been aggressively targeting his seat and landed top recruit Tom Reed, the Republican mayor of Corning, to challenge him.

Massa is now the 15th House Democrat to announce retirement plans, with 11 of them leaving districts that Republicans are aggressively contesting. House Republicans face 19 retirements within GOP ranks, but most of their departing members hail from safe seats.

Massa’s departure also adds to the woes of New York Democrats, who have been on the defensive this week amid a scandal surrounding Gov. David Paterson, who announced he wasn’t running for election, and the tribulations involving embattled Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), who stepped down as chairman from the House Ways and Means Committee Wednesday.

Massa’s departure could scramble the Republican field since the filing deadline is not until July. Potential candidates include: Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks, state Assemblyman Brian Kolb and state Senator Kathy Young.

Massa defeated former GOP Rep. John “Randy” Kuhl (R-N.Y.) in 2008, narrowly winning by a two-point margin.

Nancy, still running the most ethical Congress in history?

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From the Wall Street Journal:

A string of electoral defeats and the great unpopularity of ObamaCare can’t stop Democrats from their self-appointed rendezvous with liberal destiny—ramming a bill through Congress on a narrow partisan vote. What we are about to witness is an extraordinary abuse of traditional Senate rules to pass a bill merely because they think it’s good for the rest of us, and because they fear their chance to build a European welfare state may never come again.

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The vehicle is “reconciliation,” a parliamentary process that fast-tracks budget measures and was created in 1974 as a deficit-reduction tool. Limited to 20 hours of debate, reconciliation bills need a mere 50 votes in the Senate, with the Vice President as tie-breaker, thus circumventing the filibuster. Both Democrats and Republicans have frequently used reconciliation on budget bills, so Democrats are now claiming that using it to pass ObamaCare is no big deal.

Yet this shortcut has never been used for anything approaching the enormity of a national health-care entitlement. Democrats are only resorting to it now because their plan is in so much political trouble—within their own party, and even more among the general public—and because they’ve failed to make their case through persuasion.

“They know that this will take courage,” Nancy Pelosi said in an interview over the weekend, speaking of the Members she’ll try to strong-arm. “It took courage to pass Social Security. It took courage to pass Medicare,” the Speaker continued. “But the American people need it, why are we here? We’re not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress.”

Leave aside the irony of invoking “the American people” on behalf of a bill that consistently has been 10 to 15 points underwater in every poll since the fall, and is getting more unpopular by the day, particularly among independents. As Maine Republican Olympia Snowe pointed out in a speech last December, Social Security passed when Democrats controlled both Congress and the White House, yet 64% of Senate Republicans and 79% of the House GOP voted for it. More than half of the Senate Republican caucus voted for Medicare in 1965. Historically, major social legislation has always been bipartisan, because it reflects a durable political consensus.

Reconciliation is the last mathematical gasp for ObamaCare because Democrats can’t sell their policy to Senator Snowe, any other Republican, or even dozens of Democrats. This raw exercise of political power is of a piece with the copious corruption and bribery—such as the Cornhusker kickbacks and special tax benefits for union members—that liberals had to use to get even this far.

Democrats often point to welfare reform in 1996 as a reconciliation precedent, yet that bill passed the Senate with 78 votes, including Joe Biden and half of the Democratic caucus. The children’s health insurance program in 1997 was steered through Congress with reconciliation, but it, too, was built on strong (if misguided) bipartisan support. The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 that created Schip passed 85-15, including 43 Republicans. Even President Bush’s 2001 tax cuts, another case in reconciliation point, were endorsed by 12 Senate Democrats.

The only precedent within historical shouting distance is Ronald Reagan’s 1981 budget, which was controversial because it reshaped dozens of programs. But the Senate wasn’t the problem—it ultimately passed the budget 80 to 14. The real dogfight was in the Democratically controlled House, where majority rules have always obtained, yet Reagan convinced 29 Democrats to buck Speaker Tip O’Neill. Reconciliation, in other words, wasn’t used to subvert the 60-vote Senate threshold, but rather to grease the way for deficit reduction.

The process was designed for items that cut spending or affect tax revenue, to meet targets in the annual budget resolution. Democrats want to convert it into a jerry-rigged amendment process: That is, reconciliation wouldn’t actually be used to pass ObamaCare per se. Instead, it would be used only to muscle through substantive changes to the bill that passed the Senate on Christmas Eve, without which 216 House Democrats won’t vote for it. So Democrats would be writing amendments to current law that isn’t in fact law at all—and can’t become law without those amendments.

President Clinton preferred to use reconciliation to pass HillaryCare in the 1990s, but he was dissuaded by West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, who argued that it would be an abuse of the process. Mr. Byrd, author of a four-volume history of Senate rules and procedures, told the Washington Post last March that “The misuse of the arcane process of reconciliation—a process intended for deficit reduction—to enact substantive policy changes is an undemocratic disservice to our people and to the Senate’s institutional role,” specifically citing health reform and cap and trade.

***

Regrets, they’ve got a few. Yet these Democratic Sinatras will still do it their way. President Obama is expected to endorse reconciliation in remarks this morning.

The goal is to permanently expand the American entitlement state with a vast apparatus of subsidies and regulations while the political window is still (barely) open, regardless of the consequences or the overwhelming popular condemnation. As Mr. Obama fatalistically said after his health summit, if voters don’t like it, “then that’s what elections are for.”

In other words, he’s volunteering Democrats in Congress to march into the fixed bayonets so he can claim an LBJ-level legacy like the Great Society that will be nearly impossible to repeal. This would be an unprecedented act of partisan arrogance that would further mark Democrats as the party of liberal extremism. If they think political passions are bitter now, wait until they pass ObamaCare.

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