OK so Jazz is on the road with his candidate today and unable to host so it's up to ME to fill in as main host.  You can join us by clicking on the Blog Talk Radio icon in the right sidebar.  Today we will be talking about Eric Massa's escapades, whether earmarks are part of Congress's Constitutional budget setting process as Sen Bennett believes, Bart Stupak's remarkable revelation about health care reform and anything else that strikes our fancy.

Join Gary Gross from Let Freedom Ring Blog, Jazz and I in 25 minutes - 8am Mtn, 10 eastern.

Would he really have said something that overt and inflammatory?  I never would have believed this in my wildest nightmares!  Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) is talking about the state of health care reform negotiations and boy is he disappointed.....

Sitting in an airport, on his way home to Michigan, Rep. Bart Stupak, a pro-life Democrat, is chagrined. “They’re ignoring me,” he says, in a phone interview with National Review Online. “That’s their strategy now. The House Democratic leaders think they have the votes to pass the Senate’s health-care bill without us. At this point, there is no doubt that they’ve been able to peel off one or two of my twelve. And even if they don’t have the votes, it’s been made clear to us that they won’t insert our language on the abortion issue.”…

What are Democratic leaders saying? “If you pass the Stupak amendment, more children will be born, and therefore it will cost us millions more. That’s one of the arguments I’ve been hearing,” Stupak says. “Money is their hang-up. Is this how we now value life in America? If money is the issue — come on, we can find room in the budget. This is life we’re talking about.”

Emphasis in the original.  Now Allahpundit is rightly skeptical.  I mean after all what good could ever come to the Democrats or the pro-choice movement if this were really the case?

It was a 5 on 1 smackdown in the Utah House lounge and Rep. Mike Noel (Kanab) came away the victor.  Kudos to Fox13 for not only catching this on camera but for filming the entire 8 minute long exchange. (HT Paul Chesser at American Spectator)

To set the stage - Rep. Noel greets former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson in the House Lounge.  Former Mayor Anderson is accompanied by at least 4 Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) supporters.  Mayor Anderson apparently starts the conversation with an accusation that Rep. Noel does not support "renewable" energy...

President Obama, at his campaign stop in Pennsylvania earlier this week, to the obligatory pot shot at Republicans - and it ended up backfiring on him.  While declaring that the "time for talking was over" President Obama said...

“I got all my Republican colleagues out there saying ‘No, no, no, we want to focus on things like costs.’ You had 10 years. What happened? What were you doing?”

(Video after the jump)

Senator Bennett is at it again.  In trying to do the right thing (saving jobs aerospace jobs at ATK and other companies) he attempted to defend the indefensible.....

Gee - I wonder who he could POSSIBLY be talking about....

Last December, the White House hosted a much touted "jobs summit".  One of the emphasized options from the summit were so-called "green" jobs.

Exhibit A: the Administration's ongoing push to create "Green Jobs." The Administration touts environmental initiatives not only as a way to improve quality of life and discourage climate change, but also as a way to employ more Americans. Accordingly, last week's summit included a breakout session called "The Innovation Agenda and Green Jobs of the Future."

The Green Jobs conceit goes like this: the government should offer tax credits and impose regulations that lead businesses to implement environmentally-friendly practices. This will create jobs doing what's needed to qualify for the credits or comply with the regulations. Most importantly, carbon regulation (most likely in the form of Cap and Trade) will lead to investments in technology that reduces carbon emissions.

President Obama highly touted Spain's success generating green jobs.  The problem is the TRUTH does not match the President's hype - again...

That is the question that the ACLU asks in this full page ad that they took out in Sunday's New York Times.

Candidate Barack Obama vowed to change the Bush-Cheney policies and restore America ’s values of justice and due process.  Many of us are shocked and concerned that right now, President Obala is considering reversing his attorney general’s decision to try the 9/11 defendants in criminal court…As president, Barack Obama must decide whether he will keep his solemn promise to restore our Constitution and due process, or ignore his vow and continye the bush-Cheney policies…

"As president, Barack Obama must decide whether he will keep his solemn promise"?????  Have these people not been watching this first year - a year where EVERY CAMPAIGN PROMISE ever made has had a shelf life of days to weeks?  I can't believe that they were able to that with a straight face.

About a month ago, I wrote a post critical of Rep. Jim Matheson based on his vote to raise the US debt ceiling for the second time in less than 6 months.  Defenders of the irresponsible spending were quick to jump to Congresses defense with cries of "but, but....they passed PAYGO".  At the time I quickly dismissed those defenses and this editorial from Scripps Howard News Service is a great summation of why I was so dismissive of "The PAYGO Fraud".

When a White House statement refers to a "bedrock principle," it means something slushy and soft and not really a principle at all, but a gimmick, still one more fraud to fool the public, a joke of the kind that must keep presidential aides rolling on the floor in laughter at all the fools who cheer them on.

Forget the Glenn Beck/Michelle Malkin debate on the Massa story, Logical Lady Carol Platt Liebau (whom I absolutely adore) has the definitive word on why conservatives should not be so quick to jump on the Eric Massa bandwagon.

Iraqi's took to the the polls last week to vote in their parliamentary elections (same thing as our Congressional Mid-Term elections).  Voter turn out is expected to be in the 62.4% range of eligible voters - 9% higher than the State of Utah had for the 2008 Presidential elections!

Let me repeat that for emphasis - a country that has NO history of representative politics is participating in representative politics in larger numbers than a state that has a 114 year HISTORY of electoral participation.

This Michael Barone column in the DC Examiner dovetails into what I wrote yesterday about small business generation and taxes.

No one would include Perry on a list of serious presidential candidates, including himself, even in the flush of victory. But in his 10 years as governor, the longest in the state's history, Texas has been teaching some lessons to which the rest of the nation should pay heed.

They are lessons that are particularly vivid when you contrast Texas, the nation's second most populous state, with the most populous, California. Both were once Mexican territory, secured for the United States in the 1840s. Both have grown prodigiously over the past half-century. Both have populations that today are about one-third Hispanic.

But they differ vividly in public policy and in their economic progress -- or lack of it -- over the last decade. California has gone in for big government in a big way. Democrats hold big margins in the legislature largely because affluent voters in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area favor their liberal positions on cultural issues.

Thanks to the internet, I still manage to keep track of goings on back in the old district (back in MN).  When I got my latest online edition of the old hometown newspaper I was very happy to see that Rep. Mike Beard (Shakopee) is still fighting the good fight for small business development.

The Small Business Caucus is proposing legislation to:

• Create an angel investor tax credit.
• Expand the research and development credit.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of the state grant and loan resources available to Minnesota’s small businesses.
• Encourage the deposit of state funds into local and community banks.
• Create a one-stop portal to connect small businesses with existing resources through the state Department of Employment and Economic Development.
• Streamline Minnesota Pollution Control Agency regulations.
• Create a fast-track small-business registration process.
• Create a study comparing the challenge of business start-ups in Minnesota to neighboring states.

Rep. Jim Matheson is fighting for re-election on two fronts this year.  One (of course) from the Republican Party and the other from the far left.  City Weekly has a very well written article on the challenge from the left.

While he has challengers to the political left and right in his 2010 race for reelection, Matheson is favored to win, perhaps proving that he can slip by progressives in the political sphere as easily as he did protesters in Millcreek Canyon.

After all, his approval ratings are as high as ever, and each time he’s reelected, it’s by a wider margin. Matheson supporters argue that that proves he’s doing his job: Utah’s 2nd District is conservative, and therefore Matheson needs be moderate, both to win re-election and represent his constituents. His moderate politics have turned Republican-leaning independents into Democrat-leaning independents and widened the Democratic Party’s appeal in Utah.

Jim Matheson, honestly represents the Democratic Party that I grew up with and was initially alligned with...the Democratic Party of John fitzgeral Kennedy and Herbert Horatio Humphrey.  Sadly that Democratic Party has been replaced in many areas with the "Progressive" movement that we see today.

Yesterday, President Barack Obama appointed Scott Matheson Jr to fill an open seat in the 10th Circuit Appellate Court.

Now I don't think ANYONE can argue Matheson's qualification as it certainly appears that he is eminently qualified for the seat.  What can and IS being argued today is the TIMING of said appointment.  For the announcement of said appointment came mere hours before President Obama hosted Matheson's brother Rep. Jim Matheson, whom President Obama desperately needs to vote FOR the President's health care reform bill in the House.

In response to a previous post, an anonymous Utah commenter made mention of HB 150.  Now it's not like I don't have anything else going on (like work, an active high schooler, a husband who is working on finishing our based etc) but I did sit down to start reading HB 150. 

Now "anonymous" seemed to equate what went on in the Lower Merion School district with what is proposed in HB 150.  As usual when dealing with anonymous drive by commenters, the truth was no where NEAR what was implied.  For the record, the comments left were...

Guest Seen HB 150 - Administrative Subpoena Amendments?

LL What does that have to do with school districts guest? Be more specific please....

Guest It has to do with spying on your kids ... and just about everybody else.

LL No I hadn't - link please?

Well of course anonymous didn't provide a link because he/she KNEW that there was nothing similar between what happened in the Lower Merion School district and what is proposed in HB 150.