Democrats up for re-election this year are fully aware of President Obama’s campaign record, and nowhere is that more apparent than in Pennsylvania, where at least five Democrats have taken the “uh, I can’t make it because I gotta re-arrange my sock drawer” out in response to the invitation to Obama’s speech at Carnegie Mellon this afternoon:

Congressmen Jason Altmire and Tim Murphy have previous engagements. Sen. Bob Casey Jr. and Rep. Mike Doyle are out of town on anniversary trips with their wives. Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato will be campaigning in Philadelphia.

When President Obama and Sen. Arlen Specter land at Pittsburgh International Airport today, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl will receive them by himself.

The rest of the region’s top elected officials declined White House invitations to attend Obama’s speech at Carnegie Mellon University this afternoon, their offices said.

Even Obama’s teleprompter tried to bail but reconsidered after being reminded that it is under contract, and if it didn’t show up, Eric Holder threatened to prosecute TOTUS to the fullest extent of whatever applicable laws the AG hasn’t read yet.

The president is following through on a promise to Democrats (note: Tim Murphy, listed above, is a Republican) that he made in March:

At the same time, Obama intends to lobby wavering House Democrats to vote for a Senate version of the legislation and to support the subsequent reconciliation process, which Republicans have characterized as an unjustified use of majority power. Among the rewards Obama is ready to offer, White House officials said, are election-year visits to competitive congressional districts, where a presidential appearance can bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds.

I guess hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds don’t matter if you think it’s being handed to you by the Grim Reaper.

In other news, President Obama is going to meet with Paul McCartney tonight to see if the former Beatle has any suggestions about how to stop the oil leak in the gulf.

Perhaps the cruelest irony of the horrible Gulf oil spill is that Obama is finally able to live up to the hype and walk on water, but the reason might be his undoing. Then again, maybe not.

Update: Speaking of feeling lonely… There’s somebody in Florida who could use a hug. Oh wait, that was the problem in the first place.

**Written by guest-blogger Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Oops, I guess I should say, “Somebody who works for Joe Sestak offered me a job not to post this, but I decline to say who.”

It was back in February that Joe Sestak told a Philadelphia radio station that the White House offered him a job if he’d drop out of the House race — an offer which would be a felony and could come with all sorts of possible impeachment implications depending on what levels it reached.

Pennsylvania voters ended up sending Specter back home where he belongs to yell at neighborhood boys to get off his lawn (and to accuse the female turf intruders of not acting like ladies), and yet Sestak still refuses to say who made the offer. It looks as if he’s trying to create his own version of “Deep Throat” to keep stringing the mystery along.

On Meet the Press this morning, Sestak slid into Rand Paul’s open spot and tried to keep the mystery afloat:

Rep. Joe Sestak, winner of the Pennsylvania Democratic Senate primary, is refusing to provide more information on what job he was offered by a White House official to drop of that race, although he confirmed again that the incident occurred.

The White House was backing incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) in the primary. Sestak acknowledged in an interview in February that he was offered a position by an unnamed White House official – a potential violation of federal law – but has not offered any specifics on conversation. Republicans are trying to use the issue against Sestak in the November Senate race.

“It’s interesting. I was asked a question about something that happened months earlier, and I felt that I should answer it honestly, and that’s all I had to say about it.” Sestak said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Anybody else has to decide on what they will say upon their role. That’s their responsibility.”

It’s almost as if he’s saying, “Yes, that was true at the time I first said it.” Sestak’s either lying and can’t recant because there’s an election coming up and he’d be Blumenthalling himself into oblivion, or he woke up next to a horse’s head one day and can take his accusations no further, but can’t back out of them either.

His seeming “challenge” to the press is to get the White House to admit it — and you’d have better luck getting Michael Moore to admit he’s actually a capitalist pig. If you accuse an “unnamed” person of a felony, it isn’t “somebody else’s reponsibility” to find out who it was. Try telling the police somebody told you they robbed a bank, and when the cops ask you who it was, answering, “it’s your responsibility to find that out and get that person to admit it.” You’d be at the station being questioned before too long — and that’s where Sestak should be.

Naturally, inquiries from the White House Press Corps to Press Secretary Robert Gibbs have been answered in an honest and forthright fashion. Just kidding — the typically wormy Gibbs has been tangoing around the questions so much that he’s a shoo-in to win the next Dancing with the Stars, and The One hasn’t talked to a reporter in an open Q & A since Chris Matthews’ very first Obamagasm, so that option is off the table.

Here’s a complilation of Gibbs’ answers up to the end of last month.

And here’s an impressive array of quite a few of Sestak’s half-assed accusations and Gibbs’ non-confirmals and nonexistent denials — the overall scumbag factor is high in this:

Strange — coming from people being accused of a crime, you might expect a denial flatter than Keira Knightley, but that’s apparently not to be. As for Sestak, hearing a politician say “honestly” that many times set off so many alarms over here that ADT just called to make sure everything was okay.

Just to be safe, let’s put all of them in jail until we get this sorted out.

If this keeps up, Pat Toomey’s campaign ad is already made: “Tough on crime? He won’t even report somebody who committed a felony right in front of his face!”

(h/t Pundit and Pundette)

**Written by guest-blogger Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Turncoat Pa. Sen. Arlen Specter has issues with conservative women.

Huffington Post has issues with conservative women.

They’re a perfect match.

Via Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

Radio listeners in the City of Brotherly Love got a dose of just the opposite yesterday when Michele Bachmann took to the airwaves with Republican-turned-Democrat Sen. Arlen Specter.

The Stillwater Republican congresswoman, appearing on conservative talker Dom Giordano’s radio show, took some on-air flak from Specter after repeatedly talking over him. The senator eventually became irate and told her to “act like a lady.” (edited audio of the exchange below, hear the full recording here)

The show was broadcast on 1210 AM WPHT and hosted in Washington on the anniversary of Barack Obama’s inauguration.

Specter had asked Bachmann what she has proposed or supported this year and was in the middle of criticizing her answer when she interjected.

“Now wait a minute. I’ll stop and you can talk,” Specter said. “I’ll treat you like a lady. So act like one.”

“I am a lady,” Bachmann replied.

Specter later went after Bachmann for saying she voted for “prosperity.”

“She said ‘I voted for prosperity,’” Specter said. “Well prosperity wasn’t a bill.”

“Well why don’t we make it a bill?” Bachmann responded.

“Now wait a minute, don’t interrupt me,” he said. “I didn’t interrupt you. Act like a lady.”

Allahpundit reminds us that Specter’s done the whole “lady” routine with another tough conservative woman — Laura Ingraham.

Just because he debates like a girl doesn’t mean we have to…

Today, Benedict Arlen just made it official:

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter took another step in his political transformation on Tuesday, telling hundreds of labor activists that he will support legislation that would make it easier to form unions.

In a speech at the AFL-CIO convention, Specter also boldly predicted a compromise version of the bill would be passed in Congress this year.

“We have pounded out an employees’ choice bill which will meet labor’s objectives,” Specter told cheering union delegates.

Specter’s assurance was a reversal from his stance earlier this year, when he declared on the Senate floor that he could not vote for the Employee Free Choice Act.

Since then, Specter switched from the GOP to the Democratic Party, giving Democrats a 60-vote majority in the Senate.

Facing a strong primary challenge from Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Sestak, Specter is counting on union support to help him hold onto his seat. Sestak is not speaking at the convention.

Specter spoke just hours before President Barack Obama was set to address the delegates. Later Tuesday, Obama was to attend a fundraiser for Specter in Philadelphia, where he was expected to tell donors how crucial Specter is for pushing through the White House agenda.

Card check = massively boosting union rolls = massively boosting Democrat voter rolls = permanent GOP minority.

You’re a real patriot, Sen. Specter.

***

Update: President Obama is speaking at the AFL-CIO. According to Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter Salena Zito, Obama singled out Specter for praise and cooed: “The White House is pretty nice, but there’s nothing like being back in the House of Labor.” (It’s a duplex.) He then claimed that when organized labor succeeds, America succeeds.

Tell that to the Boeing workers who just decertified their union.

Yesterday, over 50 religious leaders from a diverse range of faiths and denominations came to Washington, DC to lobby members of Congress on support of the Employee Free Choice Act. The newly-formed coalition of religious leaders and people of faith–Faith Leaders for Workplace Fairness–publicly announced their support for the labor reform bill on a conference call with press last week, calling the legislation a “moral imperative” and a civil and human right.

The lobbying day begin with an early a.m. prayer breakfast at the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center, where clergy, union members and political figures gathered to hear uplifting music sung by a multicultural choir, and pray for the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. “Unions are indispensable for a just social order,” said Dr. Joseph Fahey, a Manhattan College religious studies professor and founder of Catholic Scholars for Worker Justice. “They are not something that just gains better wages and working conditions for workers—on a far wider level, we won’t have a just social order unless we have unions to bring justice to workers and their families.” The event featured speakers that included SEIU’s Anna Burger, Rev. Sue Gaeta of the Gamaliel National Clergy Caucus and SEIU Virginia home care worker Athena Jones. Longtime labor supporter Congresswoman Donna Edwards (D-Md.), also appeared at the breakfast to give a speech, telling the crowd that “the faith community has always been on the side of workers.”

At the press conference afterwards held with Sen. Tom Harkin (the original sponsor of the legislation in the Senate), the senator called the Employee Free Choice Act “one of the real social justice issues of our time,” expressing his determination to get legislation passed in 2009 that will restore balance and fairness to the organizing process.

Meantime, the SEIU continues to press Arlen Specter, who tells its activists that he’s “working on a compromise.” Translation: the final betrayal is on its way!

Three weeks ago, my friend Senator Arlen Specter added one more feat to his long and impressive career — he became a Democrat.

http://my.barackobama.com/Specter

For the 9,997th time: Good riddance.

Via Philip Klein at the American Spectator:

Sen. Arlen Specter backed out of speaking at a Tuesday conference on the global effort to silence speech critical of Islam, citing a scheduling conflict, but the Council on American-Islamic Relations has taken credit for his decision.

In February Specter introduced legislation in the U.S. Senate aimed at protecting American authors who have been sued under plaintiff-friendly libel laws overseas. He was scheduled to speak about the trend, known as “libel tourism,” at a Washington conference being sponsored by the Legal Project of the Middle East Forum, the Federalist Society Center for National Security Law, and the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression.

CAIR branded it an “anti-Islam” conference and launched a petition drive last Friday protesting Specter’s appearance, and on Monday the pressure group took credit for getting him to cancel.

Tolerance of dissent is not a CAIR value.

Fortitude is not a Specter value.

They deserve each other.

On April 28, Benedict Arlen made his party switch official. He said he would not change his opposition to card-check, to which I replied: “Snort.”

On May 5, Specter met with the corruptocrats at the SEIU and another union has launched ads pressuring the chameleon to change his colors again.

Presto, change-o, here comes the “compromise” (that’s Specter-ese for sellout):

Specter had come out against the bill in March, disappointing labor leaders. They had hoped he would be the crucial 60th vote needed to overcome an expected GOP filibuster of the Employee Free Choice Act.

The Pennsylvania senator has since switched from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party, and he said he’s been meeting with labor leaders and fellow senators in hopes of coming up with a compromise he could support.

President Barack Obama said on Thursday that he hoped a compromise could be worked out.
“How do we make it easier for people who want to form a union to at least get a vote and have an even playing field?” Obama said in response to a question during a town hall meeting in Rio Rancho, N.M. “How do we do that, but at the same time get enough votes to pass the bill? That’s what we’re working on right now.”

Specter wouldn’t elaborate on the negotiations about the legislation, but said he is “hard at work trying to find some way to find an answer.”

The bill is a top priority of labor groups.

Card check = massively boosting union rolls = massively boosting Democrat voter rolls = permanent GOP minority.

What a way for Arlen Specter to perpetrate his final betrayal.

It still looks like a bogus medical research, but Specter has quietly “clarified” the fundraising front by making its connection to his reelection explicit on the front page.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant. For Specter’s germs, we need extra-strength cleanser.

Slimeball.

And the fine print buried at the bottom of the home page:

Here is how you file an FEC complaint.

Here are the FEC rules governing disclaimer notices on fundraising solicitiations, which Specter’s website do not seem to follow — unless you are reading it with a magnifying glass:

How and Where must the Disclaimer Appear?

11 CFR 110.11(c)(1).

***

The Specter camp will point to the disclosures at the bottom of the “Donate Now” page (which you have to click through on the front page to access) as evidence of FEC compliance.

“Clear and conspicuous?”

You be the judge.