“Little Shop of Horrors” brought McCain votes

Todd S. Purdum has written a particularly scathing article about Gov. Sarah Palin in the August issue of Vanity Fair magazine. In the lengthy piece, It Came from Wasilla, the author low-rides on anonymous sources from within the former McCain presidential campaign, who unload on the onetime Republican Vice Presidential running mate.

In view of the fact that many credit Sarah Palin with returning recalcitrant Republicans to the fold and bringing their much needed votes with them, Purdum’s absurd slam lacks resonance.  Living in Washington. D.C., he might have missed seeing the numerous bumper stickers on cars driving around McCain’s home state of Arizona that had pointedly cut the name ‘McCain’ off.

The Alaska governor, whom Purdum refers to as the “first indisputably fertile female to dare to dance with the big dogs,” came onboard at the request of Sen. John McCain, who was looking to expand his base and recoup the woman’s vote, which had been steadily slipping from his grasp.

It’s worth remembering that Purdum, the magazine’s national editor, is married to Vanity Fair contributing editor, Dee Dee Myers, a committed liberal who was Bill Clinton’s White House Press Secretary — clearly exposing this venture as an all-in-the-family, left-leaning gambit.

Michael Steele: “A GOP comeback is emerging”

RNC Chairman Michael Steele, under fire within his own ranks over the extent of his authority to administer funding, delivered a fiery speech today to the Republican National Committee’s annual state chairmen’s meeting in Maryland. The topic? The future of the GOP.

“We have turned the page, we have turned the corner. No more looking in the rear-view mirror, from this point forward, we will focus all of our energies on winning the future,” he said.

Steele declared the GOP comeback is already emerging, citing the attendance at Lincoln Day dinners, county events and tea parties across the nation as proof. “Republicans may be the minority party at the moment, but we represent the ideas and concerns of the majority of Americans,” he said.

Steele maintains the principles of the Republican Party are timeless, but that the GOP campaign playbooks of the past are no longer sufficient tools for winning elections. He hopes to take the key pillars of the Republican Party — low taxes, strong defense, less government involvement — and apply them to strategies and messages that are relevant in today’s world.

Steele told the assembled state Republican leaders that “candidate Obama was very moderate in his views, but President Obama could not possibly be further to the far left. We are going to take this president on with class; we are going to take this president on with dignity. This will be a very sharp and marked contrast to the shabby and classless way that the Democrats and the far left spoke of the last president.”

Watch the video of Chairman Michael Steele’s speech here.

Another “progressive” McCain

Meghan McCain, who blogs on The Beast in such cerebral pieces as Why Republicans Don’t Get the Internet, My Beef With Ann Coulter and Quit Talking About My Weight, Laura Ingraham, has lassoed a high six-figure book contract.

To get a glimpse of Ms. McCain’s mindset, The Beast carries such articles as The Impressive Hypocrisy of the GOP and GOP R.I.P. But then again, she freely admits voting for John Kerry, and only registered as a Republican last Father’s Day as a gift for Dad during his presidential campaign, so should we be surprised?

Besides blaming her father’s failed campaign for putting her “dating life” (aka “libido”) on life support, she penned a children’s picture book about her father titled, My Dad, John McCain, published to coincide with the primary election.

Her latest effort will “explore what it means to be a progressive Republican in the party today,” and “delve into what it means to love the Republican Party, while not always fitting in.”

She will also “touch on topics ranging from what the party needs to do to attract others like her, to the importance of technology in reaching out to younger voters, to what needs to be done to keep young people passionate and involved in politics in the future.”

The blockbuster is scheduled to be published in the spring of 2010.

We can’t wait.

Obama’s illegal alien aunt gets private deportation hearing on April Fool’s Day

The nation’s immigration courts are reportedly so clogged that nearly 90,000 people accused of being in the United States illegally waited at least two years for a judge to decide whether they must leave — among the bottlenecks in the drive to more strictly enforce immigration laws. One of those cases involves President Barack Obama’s illegal immigrant aunt.

Seeing Red AZ has previously reported on Barack Obama’s Aunt Zeituni Onyango, a Kenyan native, living on the public dole in taxpayer subsidized housing in Boston. That was November 1, 2008.

Her upcoming April 1, deportation hearing will be closed to the public. Onyango was previously ordered deported in 2004, and disregarded the order. After the buzz about her caused discomfort during Obama’s presidential campaign last fall, she did what any concerned aunt would do under the circumstances — she fled Boston to stay with relatives in Cleveland. Now she is back in the comfort of her Boston public housing.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer, covering the Washington D.C. inaugural events reported: One special guest who commanded attention at the party [of over 900 paying guests] was Zeituni Onyango, 56, Obama’s aunt from Kenya who has been in this country illegally and is getting help in her immigration fight from another ball guest, Cleveland attorney Margaret Wong.

Wanna place any bets on the outcome? Who do you think will be the April Fool?

Obama’s eligibility to serve subject of Keyes appeal

A lawsuit filed on behalf of Ambassador Alan Keyes, a candidate for president on California’s general election ballot last year, challenging President Obama’s eligibility to hold office under the requirements of the U.S. Constitution will be appealed, according to a lawyer working on the case.

WND has reported on dozens of legal challenges to Obama’s status as a “natural born citizen.” The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.”

Some of the lawsuits question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama’s American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.

Other challenges have focused on Obama’s citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.

Further, others question his citizenship by virtue of his attendance in Indonesian schools during his childhood and question on what passport did he travel to Pakistan three decades ago.

Adding fuel to the fire is Obama’s persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers. While his supporters cite an online version of a “Certification  of Live Birth” from Hawaii, critics point out such documents actually were issued for children not born in the state.

Napolitano rejects increased border security funding

In real language what does “budget neutral” mean when it comes to securing the border?

The Hill reports that Homeland Security chieftain Janet Napolitano has assured a senate committee that her department doesn’t need more money to fight crime along the U.S.’s southern border, saying she’ll pay for it with the funds she has.

At a meeting of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-CT) said he requested an additional $380 million in funds for enhanced border protection.

But Napolitano said she thought that the agency’s existing funds would cover the costs of the administration’s presence in the border region.

“These actions so far are designed to be budget-neutral,” she said. “What I have done is identify other activities that are less urgent … to be able to move these resources where I think they are needed most.”

As governor of Arizona, Napolitano was a free-wheeling spender, who eagerly grabbed every dollar she could and spent it with grand flourish — leaving our previously flush state in dire straights. Her newfound thriftiness raises more than a few questions.

As the crime wave associated with violent drug cartels increases and continues to move into American cities, will the need for securing the border become less intense as illegal aliens morph into political refugees? That ploy would definitely change the dynamics as far as reconstituting the Comprehensive Immigration Reform scheme which previously raised the ire of Americans from coast to coast — ultimately killing the measure. Temporary Worker Plan is the new, less provocative terminology now in use, having passed muster with focus groups.

President Obama is an ardent  ”reform” advocate who promised Hispanic voters during his campaign that he wouldn’t wilt under the weight of public opposition. And as the governor of John McCain’s home state, Napolitano was an early and important Obama endorser.

Connect the dots.

Give it a rest, Meghan

She became a Republican as a Father’s Day surprise, in a display of “commitment” to her Dad. It’s worth mentioning that at the time, he was the GOP nominee for the U.S. Presidency.

Yep! It’s Meghan McCain, the 24-year-old Columbia University graduate, who last week was whining that the campaign negatively affected her…. ahem, shall we say “private life.” She called it a libido killer.

Previously, she slammed Gov. Sarah Palin, who was responsible for bringing a sizable chunk of voters to her father’s floundering ticket. “Sarah Palin is the only part of the campaign that I won’t comment on publicly,” blasted Meghan.

And for that matter, she’s not too keen on newly elected RNC Chairman, Michael Steele, either.

Now John’s shallow daughter pummels lawyer, six-time NYT best selling author, television personality and syndicated columnist Ann Coulter, a woman who has actually accomplished something.

When that task became too much, she asked her blog readers under the post “Sleep with the lights on,” to help her decide an appropriate tattoo, the self-confessed lover of body “art” should get next to commemorate the rigors of her daddy’s campaign.

The mighty big elephant in the GOP room

When Michael Steele, was elected chariman of the Republican National Committee (RNC) last month, he was the recipient of praise from the Log Cabin Republicans, who issued a statement saying he “believes in a big tent GOP” and “is an inclusive leader who will bring a new energy and a new vision to the GOP at a critical time.”

OneNewsNow reports that a conservative activist group is urging Steele to refrain from courting homosexual activists within the GOP. Illinois-based Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH) is calling on socially conservative Republicans to contact party chairman Steele and ask him not to promote the agenda of the Log Cabin Republicans.

This is based in part on a highly charged and unrepudiated display of anti-Christian bigotry from Jamie Ensley, President of the Georgia Log Cabin Republicans (LCR) and party officer, as he smeared Americans For Truth as a “radical Christian domestic terrorist group” and compared AFTAH to Germany’s Nazi Party.

During the campaign last fall, Ensley made the following comment, printed in the homosexual publication the Washington Blade: “In Georgia, as far as McCain goes, people are making up their own mind about it. I get a lot of phone calls and e-mails from our members asking if we have made an endorsement and we haven’t. We’re waiting for the national LCR to make an endorsement and then we’ll follow them.”

Making it clear that the Log Cabin Republicans align with bedmates over party issues, Ensley said a number of gay Republicans are drawn to Obama for his stance on gay issues. “We call them Obamicans,” he joked.

Eventually the GOP group begrudgingly endorsed the Republican nominee.

But the issues are far broader than lack of commitment to the Republican party. AFTAH points to what has taken place, without parental knowledge or input, in the Canadian schools in British Columbia.

Homosexuality is now promoted as an “alternate lifestyle” equivalent to traditional marriage. The course is only the first part of a larger K-12 curriculum resulting from a Human Rights complaint settlement by the government with a pair of homosexual activists, Murray and Peter Corren.

It was revealed in 2006 that the provincial government had signed the settlement contract with the two men, giving them unprecedented control over the content of the curriculum. The contract stipulated that the education ministry would meet with the men every six months until September 1, 2007 to allow them to oversee the development process. Parents cannot opt their children out of the indoctrination.

The Vancouver Sun reported that among the “key learning concepts” in the new course are “ableism, ageism, anthropocentrism, consumerism, cultural imperialism, extremism, feminism, fundamentalism, heterosexism, humanism, racism, sexism and speciesism.”

Heterosexism is defined as a “prejudice against homosexuals on the assumption that heterosexuality is the norm.”

That’s a mighty big elephant in the room.

President Jon Kyl in 2012? McCain prefers him to Sarah Palin

Excerpted from last night’s CNN “Larry King Live” interview with John McCain:

KING: Oh, by the way, if she ran — Palin — you would support her?

MCCAIN: Well, look, I don’t…

KING: Or you don’t get involved in the primaries?

MCCAIN: Yes. I think it would be — I don’t know who’s running, for one thing, because, for example, my friend Jon Kyl, my colleague from Arizona. So it would be improper…

KING: He might run.

MCCAIN: …to — now, wait a minute. Jon would be astonished to hear that I said that.

KING: Let’s (INAUDIBLE).

MCCAIN: But he’s a great leader in the Republicans in the Senate.

KING: Yes.

MCCAIN: But let me just say, I don’t know who’s running and all that, but I will always be grateful to Sarah Palin for her friendship and her strong principles and leadership.

The entire transcript is available here.

Obama: “Everybody’s going to have to have some skin in the game”

In an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week,” President-elect Obama warns that his campaign promises will take longer than he expected to carry out, and that Americans will face more of a burden than many have realized.

“I’m focused on a pretty heavy lift, which is making sure we get that reinvestment and recovery package in place,” Obama said.

“George, I want to be realistic here: Not everything that we talked about during the campaign are we going to be able to do on the pace we had hoped,” Obama said.

Obama also hinted at future tax increases and spending cuts, according to Politico.

“Everybody’s going to have to give,” Obama said. “Everybody’s going to have to have some skin in the game.”

Pretty fancy talk for a Harvard Law School grad. Either that or a bit of shuckin’ and jivin’.