Faced with a rising concern among voters about increasing gas prices, congressional Democrats are fecklessly attempting to avoid calls for expanded coastal drilling. Rather than risk upsetting their radical green base, the Dems are hiding behind three bogus arguments that simply don't comport with reality. The Dems are trying to convince voters that rising oil prices are caused by greedy speculators, price gouging by oil companies, and corporations refusing to explore land for which they have been awarded leases.

I'm on the road and can't link to the story, but the latest effort by congressional Democrats involves legislation threatening to strip oil companies of their leases if they don't work to extract oil from the lands associated with the leases. This policy ignores the fact that many of these leases either don't have sufficient deposits of oil associated with them, or have oil whose extraction would prove far too expensive to be profitable for the oil companies.

The more that the Democratic Party becomes associated with an opposition to expanded drilling, despite polling that shows increasing public support for more permissive drilling, the more their candidates will begin catching flak on the campaign trail. I wouldn't be surprised to see individual candidates begin to break from the party line to innoculate themselves from rising voter anger as we draw closer to the November election.

In a New York Post column sure to forever endear her to the left side of the blogosphere, the lovely Kirsten Powers takes a swipe at the net-roots.  Kirsten -- get ready for the angry, castigating e-mails.

Chicago Tribune correspondents David Jackson and Ray Long report that Senator Obama, while a member of the Illinois State Legislature, had a very checkered experience with the provision of state grant money to religious and charitable organizations.  Some of the projects weren't completed and, in at least two instances, some of the money went unaccounted for. 

The grant proposal from CEF, an offshoot of Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH coalition, declared that the "centerpiece" of its work would be creation of a venture fund for private equity investment on the South Side and in adjacent south suburbs. But the investment pool was never launched.

Obama arranged the grant to CEF before revelations in 2001 that Jackson had fathered a child out of wedlock with its one-time executive director. There is no connection between the Illinois grant and a sizable payment that the nonprofit made to Jackson's former mistress upon her departure.

Nevertheless, state records show that Illinois officials had trouble getting CEF to thoroughly account for its spending and warned the group in a 2004 letter it could be barred from future state grants if it wasn't more forthcoming. There is no indication in state records that the group complied with the demand, yet it has continued to receive state funds for unrelated projects.

and... 

Obama was also involved with another faith-based charity called Charisma that in 1998 nearly lost a $40,000 state grant sponsored by another South Side lawmaker because it failed to file required legal documents with the state.

Charisma, formed in 1995 with a goal of promoting youth programs, was run by a board that included the Rev. Leon Finney Jr. and other South Side ministers as well as Vince Lane, the one-time Chicago Housing Authority chief later sent to prison in an unrelated loan fraud scheme. Obama was the group's original registered agent, typically a lawyer hired by corporations to act as a doorkeeper for legal papers.

The grant, for a summer youth academy, was stalled and Charisma involuntarily dissolved by state officials until the tardy legal paperwork was filed.

Obama's association with Charisma ended in 1999, but controversy over the group continued. State officials had to prod the charity to detail how the $40,000 grant was spent, and the required report was condensed to three lines and filed two years past the due date. In 2004, the Illinois attorney general's office canceled the charity's registration because it failed to file required expense and income reports with the state. Even so, state records show Charisma has received at least $819,000 in state money after it lost its charity status.

In addition to the money awarded to Jackson's group, Obama also directed state money toward a project run by the controversial Reverend Michael Pfleger. 

And another $225,000 in Obama-linked grants went to a church group affiliated with Obama's friend, the Rev. Michael Pfleger. The money paid for improvements at a community center used for youth programs and a job training and placement center. He is the controversial Roman Catholic priest whose derisive remarks from the pulpit about Sen. Hillary Clinton caused a stir near the end of the Democratic primary campaign.

Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass writes about the panic on the Left resulting from the newly-emerging political persona of Barack Obama.  From the column:

Greedily, they drained the kegs once full of sweet Obama Kool-Aid, drained them to the dregs and mopped up the remains with stale crusts. The inevitable happened—the pain that comes as everything finally becomes clear, in the rosy-fingered light of a terrible dawn.

Obama used them to crush the Clintons, but now the left is finally realizing it's been betrayed, on issue after issue, with Obama changing his positions in order to defeat a tired and disillusioned Republican Party in November.

They're at the dance now and he's the one with the keys and he's the only ride they've got. And they don't like it.

He has flip-flopped again and again, on campaign finance, on government eavesdropping of overseas phone calls, on gun control and even Iraq. Future President Obama now says he'll listen to his generals about when to withdraw. He didn't say he'd listen to the commissars of the blogosphere.

Read the whole column. 

Political pundit and former White House Press Secretary Tony Snow
passed away this morning after losing a valiant battle with cancer.
His warmth, humor and electric wit will be greatly missed.

Here's more "change we can believe in" from Senator Empty Rhetoric:

On Jan. 14, 2000, Obama and Smith announced the Englewood Beautification Plan at Englewood High School. Obama promised to help raise $1.1 million. He was running then to unseat U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, but lost in the Democratic primary.

The beautification project, planned near and under L tracks between 59th Place and 62nd Place, was outside Obama's state Senate district but within the congressional district.

"I will work tirelessly in Springfield and in Chicago to raise public and private dollars to fund this worthy endeavor," Obama said then.

In 2001, at Obama's direction, a $100,000 Illinois FIRST grant went to Smith's group. The garden site was part of Rosewood Estates, an affordable-housing development being built by the group, whose unpaid board chairman was Brian Washington, a Sun-Times security guard.

Plans called for more than 50 homes, but only a dozen were built, Smith said.

The remaining $1 million for the botanic garden was never raised.

Instead of adhering to his lofty commitment to work tirelessly in Springfield and Chicago to fund the project, Senator Obama foreshadowed his more recent and well-known flips with this precursor flip:

Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said through a spokesman he wasn't responsible for monitoring the work; the staffs of Gov. Blagojevich and former Gov. George Ryan were.

But what was the stated reason offered for why the work wasn't completed?

Kenny B. Smith, whose nonprofit group got the money, said it was spent legitimately, mostly on underground site preparation. But he admitted Thursday that the garden is a lost cause because other government money never came through.

"We gave up," said Smith, who heads the Chicago Better Housing Association. "It was a losing battle."

So much for "Yes We Can!"  He's a young man in a hurry with a pattern of saying what he needs to for the expedience of the moment.

I'm a believer that a good experience with a company's customer service department should be acknowledged.

I own a Dyson vacuum cleaner.  Recently there was a, shall we say, mishap, that caused one of the short brushes to malfunction.  I called Dyson to order a replacement part.  The customer service rep told me that the problem wasn't covered by warranty (I didn't think it would be), but that he would go ahead and send me a replacement brush ($23) for no charge anyhow.  And not only would he send me a replacement brush for the left side of the vacuum, but one for the right side as well. 

He then asked me how the end caps were holding up.  I told him I didn't know since I didn't have the vacuum with me at the time.  Guess what?  He's going to send me two replacement end caps as well, again at no charge.

These parts don't add up to a whole lot of money, and it's not like I needed a significant engine part, but the ease and cooperation provided by Dyson was very impressive.

Senator Barack Obama seems willing to try and leverage his skill in reading words off a teleprompter to vault himself into the presidency.  Now he wants to show everybody what an accomplished orator reader he is by using the historic and politically significant Brandenburg Gate in Germany as a backdrop.

I've got a better idea for the inexperienced Senator from Illinois.  Give up politics and sign a deal with a publisher to read books on tape.  He'd make a fortune, with the added benefit of posing no harm to the United States.

Richard Baehr wrote an article published by Real Clear Politics entitled, "How McCain Could Win."  Give it a read.  Here's a key excerpt:

Since entering the Senate, Barack Obama has compiled, in his limited number of votes, the most left wing record of all 100 US Senators. There is reason for Obama to be pivoting right while there is still time to change the script. John McCain on the other hand, has one of the most independent voting records in the Senate. Obama is far closer to Bernie Sanders, the socialist Senator from Vermont, than John McCain is to George Bush. But a hundred million dollars worth of negative ads will have George Bush morphing into John McCain so as to keep the focus on Bush and his unpopularity.

HT:  Hugh Hewitt 

Having had the chance to read more stories about Jesse Jackson's anti-
Obama comments -- some of which reveal just how vulgar those
sentiments actually were -- has thoroughly convinced me of Jackson's
bitterness. The question really becomes whether Jackson's remarks,
although inadvertently caught on microphone, will send a signal to
some in the African-American community that they need not support
Senator Obama's candidacy.

The Chicago Tribune's political blog discusses what Reverend Jesse Jackson believed were off-mic comments about Senator Obama recorded following an interview on Fox News:

Fox has begun to release excerpts of the video, including one where Jackson whispers that Obama is "talking down to black people." It is also believed that Jackson at one point talks about Obama having part of his male anatomy "cut off."

Jackson quickly apologized for the remarks:

Rev. Jesse Jackson formally apologized to Sen. Barack Obama today for disparaging comments he made during a recent off-air moment following an interview expected to air this evening on Fox News.

"If in this this thing that I've said in a hot mic statement that's interpreted as distraction, I offer apologies for that because I don't want to harm or hurt to come to this campaign," Jackson said at a news conference inside his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition headquarters on Chicago's South Side. "It represents too much of the dreams of so many who've paid such great prices."

Jackson said he did not want his remarks, still not fully known, to distract from the Illinois Democrat's presidential bid. "I hope what we've done in this situation does not distract from that message," he said.

Reverend Jackson's statement created a weird situation where his son, Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., felt compelled to level some very pointed criticism toward his father: 

"I'm deeply outraged and disappointed in Rev. Jackson's reckless statements about Sen. Barack Obama. His divisive and demeaning comments about the presumptive Democratic nominee -- and I believe the next president of the United States -- contradict his inspiring and courageous career," he said in a statement.

"Reverend Jackson is my dad and I'll always love him," he continued. "He should know how hard that I've worked for the last year and a half as a national co-chair of Barack Obama's presidential campaign. So, I thoroughly reject and repudiate his ugly rhetoric. He should keep hope alive and any personal attacks and insults to himself."

I can't help but think that Reverend Jackson's comments might be borne out of a resentment of Senator Obama's success.  I really believe that Reverend Jackson thinks that the honor of being the first African-American to win a nomination for the presidency should have been his.  I also think there might be a generational issue at play, where Reverend Jackson believes that his generation of the Civil Rights movement is more deserving to be seen as the rightful leaders of the African-American community.  I thought this statement by Reverend Jackson was interesting:

Jackson repeatedly stressed his "54-year journey" in the civil rights movement and that he believes Obama has taken the effort to a new level. "I wish Dr. King could see this," he said.

I know it's just conjecture on my part, but I see the above sentiment as having been made by Reverend Jackson to highlight his own worthiness while at the same time compensating for his awareness of an underlying generational resentment.