The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is underway in Washington, DC. Naturally, OWS protesters are there to greet conference-goers and to roll out a welcome mat made of astroturf.

Michelle Fields from the Daily Caller caught up with a demonstrator who claims he’s being paid. Not only does the guy in the video below say that a union local is paying him $60 a day to “Occupy” CPAC, but he also claims everybody in his group is being paid.

Some are clueless as to what it is they’re protesting (note: if the video below isn’t loading try this link):

Does $60 a day meet or exceed Occupy’s “living wage” demand?

If you’re in need of a little cheap afternoon entertainment, check out Jim Treacher’s Occupy CPAC Hippiecam.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Super PAC-men: Obama’s bundlers gone wild!
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2012

The White House didn’t blow a dog whistle for deep-pocketed liberal donors on Monday. No, the administration whipped out a supersized vuvuzela. Blaring message: Let loose the campaign finance-bundling hounds of super PAC war!

President Obama’s campaign manager, Jim Messina, who served as White House deputy chief of staff for operations before assuming 2012 re-election duties, announced the super PAC super-flip-flop in a mass e-mail to supporters and a blog post published on the left-wing Huffington Post website. In a related conference call to major campaign finance bundlers, Messina encouraged these high-dollar donors to start funding Priorities USA Action. That’s the Democratic super PAC founded by former White House staffers Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney.

Super PACs and campaigns are barred from coordinating with each other. Nevertheless, Messina said that “senior campaign officials as well as some White House and Cabinet officials will attend and speak at Priorities USA fundraising events.” Of course, they “won’t be soliciting contributions.” Wink-wink, nudge-nudge.

This brazen about-face for Team Obama is a goldmine of campaign lies, contortions and epic hypocrisy. Let us count the ways.

– A bundle of contradictions. “Bundling” is the rustling up of aggregate contributions from friends, business associates and employees, a practice to circumvent individual donation limits that Obama has long condemned. When he announced his presidential intentions in 2007, candidate Obama decried “the cynics, the lobbyists, the special interests who’ve turned our government into a game only they can afford to play.” He indignantly singled out “the best bundlers” who get the “greatest access” to power.

Last week, Obama acknowledged raising at least $74 million through his team of big-time bundlers who have been showered with access, tax dollars and plum patronage positions. This elite group of Hollywood celebrities (such as open-borders actress Eva Longoria), political cronies (such as Chicago bagman Louis “The Vacuum” Susman) and politically correct businessmen (such as bankrupt Solyndra investor George Kaiser) now totals a whopping 445 gold-card members.

– The roar of the revolving door. In his Monday announcement, Messina bragged about how the White House has enacted “sweeping” reforms to “close the revolving door between government and lobbyists.” In truth, the administration has widened the carousel and removed the brakes. The Obama-cheerleading Fishwrap of Record (The New York Times) itself identified at least 15 bundlers “involved in lobbying for Washington consulting shops or private companies.”

Moreover, “at least 68 of 350 Obama bundlers for the 2012 election or their spouses have served in the administration in some capacity; at least 250 of the bundlers visited the White House, and another 30 have ties to companies that conduct business with federal agencies or hope to do so in the future,” according to a recent iWatch News report. Several first-time 2012 bundlers already have snagged administration posts:

– Norma Lee Funger, of Potomac, Md., who raised between $50,000 and $100,000 for Obama, was appointed last month to the board of trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

– Glenn S. Gerstell, of Washington, D.C., who bundled the same amount, was appointed to the National Infrastructure Advisory Commission last fall.

– Richard Binder, of Bethesda, Md., another $50,000 to $100,000 bundler, was appointed to the Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Integrative and Public Health last spring.

And note: The most transparent administration ever still refuses to disclose recusal orders involving the nearly 100 lobbyists and ex-lobbyists on its payroll.

– Super PAC super-hypocrisy. “Super PACs” are federal political action committees that only make independent expenditures in support of, or in opposition to, candidates. Their birth and growth were fueled indirectly by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission (FEC) ruling in 2010. The decision overturned severe campaign finance restrictions that essentially criminalized certain forms of political speech. As Chief Justice John Roberts put it during oral arguments: “We don’t put our First Amendment rights in the hands of FEC bureaucrats.”

Until this week, the Obama administration vehemently condemned the Citizens United decision and vowed to eschew super PACs. The entities are a “threat to our democracy,” Obama railed two years ago. The ruling would “open the floodgates for special interests,” he warned. And last July, Obama campaign press secretary Ben LaBolt kept talking the anti-super PAC talk. “Neither the president nor his campaign staff or aides will fundraise for super PACs,” he asserted. Now? President Obama and his wife won’t fundraise for the democracy-undermining super PACs. But countless other Cabinet members and advisers, partying with Obama bundlers gone wild, will.

In 2007, Obama lambasted rival Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards for criticizing independent expenditures while raking in big PAC bucks: “So you can’t say yesterday you don’t believe in them, and today you have three quarters of a million dollars being spent on you. You can’t just talk the talk.”

Obama 2012 campaign motto: Empty talk? Yes, we can!

The People’s President is raising money any way he can — and the fashion world’s 1 percent-ers have stepped up to the plate to help.

Via the WSJ:

At a New York fund-raising event Tuesday called “Runway to Win,” President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign plans to begin selling campaign-themed tote bags, T-shirts and accessories designed by more than two dozen famous designers.

Attendees can purchase a tote bag designed by Derek Lam for $75. A collectible makeup bag created by Richard Blanch with nail polish in Red-y To Win Red, Victory White and Bo Blue is going for $40. And a silk scarf featuring Mr. Obama’s likeness by Thakoon Panichgul is $95. Profits from the sales will go to Mr. Obama’s campaign chest.

Republicans are rightly raising campaign finance questions about the haute couture deals:

“This raises serious questions about whether corporate money, property and employees were improperly used in the design and production of these items without reimbursement,” said Sean Spicer, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee.

Jan Baran, an election lawyer with Wiley Rein LLP, said designers can’t ask employees to work on political projects unless they willingly volunteered their time. “Someone who is paid to do campaign work is not a volunteer,” he said. If the designer or staff are paid by anyone other than the campaign, it would be considered a campaign contribution from a company to a candidate.

The Obama campaign said the gear complies with campaign-finance rules.

“All of the designers volunteered their personal time to create these great designs,” the campaign said, and were “not underwritten with any corporate funds.”

Rap mogul and designer Russell Simmons is defending Obama’s By Any Technically Legal Means Necessary strategy:

Asked on CNN whether selling designer products could violate campaign finance rules – as some Republicans have suggested – Simmons said, “I think the president should use whatever resources he has within the law.”

“The problem is the law the problem is that we allow so much money in politics and there are so many people funding these super PACs that are out of control,” he added. “Until the laws are changed, the president should play by any rules available.”

Question: How much would you pay for this???

***

I’ll have pleeenty to say about Obama’s SuperPAC super-hypocrisy tomorrow.

During the clamor to pass an extension of the payroll tax cut, President Obama asked “What does $40 mean to you?”

His opponents of the way the extension was handled might now be able to counter with, “What does $9,500 mean to you?”

(CBS News) Just before Christmas, American workers got a rare gift from Washington politicians – the current payroll tax cut would be extended for two more months. At the time, both President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner lauded the move to avoid a tax increase for millions of working Americans. But there’s something the politicians weren’t bragging about – the fact that they’re paying for the two-month tax cut with what has turned into a brand new fee on home buyers.

The new fee is a minimum of one-tenth of 1 percent on Fannie Mae- and Freddie Mac-backed loans, and is likely to go much higher. It will be imposed for the next 10 years on most mortgages and refinancings and it lasts for the life of the loan. For every $200,000, it amounts to an extra $15 dollars a month.

It’s bad news for Patty Anderson, who’s buying a home in Virginia. Anderson will save a couple hundred dollars from having her payroll tax cut extended but her mortgage broker told her the new fee would cost her almost $9,500.
[...]
The $35.7 billion collected in fees won’t go into the Social Security fund to replace the lost payroll tax. It goes to the general treasury where Congress can spend it however they please.

Is this outlined in the Homeowners Bill of Rights?

For now, file this under “robbing Peter for decades to pay Peter for a couple of months”:

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Sheriff Joe Biden may only half-heartedly believe what he’s saying here. It’s just that word around Capitol Hill is that if you help convince Nancy that her reunion with the Speaker’s gavel is imminent, there’s a good chance she’ll throw a pretty good stock tip your way, so what the heck.

From The Hill:

House Democrats will win the House in November, swinging the gavel back into the hands of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Vice President Joe Biden predicted Friday.

“Nancy, I think, is not going to be remembered just for being the first woman Speaker,” Biden said, “she’s going to remembered for being the second woman speaker.”

Addressing House Democrats gathered on the Eastern Shore for their annual retreat, Biden said the combination of GOP obstructionism and a strengthening economy will propel the Democrats back into control of the lower chamber after just two years in the minority.

“It’s becoming absolutely clear the decisions that we made … are actually working,” Biden said, speaking softly because he said he’s battling a cold.

It’s sort of a “bad thought, good thought” situation. The bad is that Joe Biden is predicting the Dems will control the House after the election. The good is that in 2010 he predicted the same thing, and, well, you know how that turned out.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Today marks 1000 days since the Senate last passed a full budget.

Pass it on:

From the Heritage Foundation, things that were accomplished in less than 1,000 days…and things that were not:

From my friends at Misfit Politics, it’s the 1,000 Days (without a budget) anthem:

Misfit Politics- 1000 Days (Without Passing a Budget) by Just as Good as Ezra

Update (DP): Some congressional Republicans will be wearing “1000 days” buttons at the SOTU speech tonight:

The Land of Obama Make-Believe
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2012

Where did President Obama go after killing off thousands of Keystone XL pipeline construction and manufacturing jobs? Why, Disney World, of course. Sabotaging work is hard work for Goofy and his pals.

And where’d he head after that? Why, up to Manhattan for more high-priced campaign fundraisers charging up to $38,500 per partier. The business of wining and dining politically connected donors ain’t child’s play, you know.

Obama touted a White House foreign tourism initiative on Thursday with Cinderella’s castle as his backdrop. “America is open for business,” he proclaimed chirpily to the rest of the globe.

Tell that to the Keystone managers in Canada whom Obama and his State Department rebuffed — after years of planning and review — in order to appease militant environmentalists and Hollywood celebs. The Animatronic Divider robotically lambasted Republicans for pushing him to make a decision this week. But Senate and House Democrats issued the sharpest rebukes to White House obstructionism:

“President Obama’s decision on the Keystone XL pipeline is a major setback for the American economy, American workers, and America’s energy independence,” Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., said.

“The rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline permit is a missed opportunity to drastically turn this economy around. This pipeline would have created thousands of new jobs and helped to ensure our energy independence,” Rep. Jason Altmire, D-Pa., lamented.

“This delay is just playing politics with American jobs and American energy security,” Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, pointed out.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle scratched their heads as the job-snuffer-in-chief bolted to Orlando’s fantasyland to promote economic growth. But there’s no more fitting place on Earth for the man whose escapist administration occupies the land of make-believe and no consequences. (Bonus moment: Obama got to shake hands with Mickey Mouse, who infamously turned up on a Florida ACORN voter registration form in 2008. Constituent outreach at its most surreal.)

On the very same day he quashed Keystone, Obama released his first campaign ad of 2012 — hyping his stellar record on energy jobs. It’s Opposite Day at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, 365 days a year. Even more comically, the ad touted his exemplary ethics record by quoting a moldy three-year-old endorsement from left-leaning Politifact. And as bipartisan Capitol Hill outrage over the half-billion-dollar Solyndra solar stimulus bust mounts, Obama had the nerve to sprinkle his inaugural campaign spot with — wait for it — solar panels.

Instead of supporting new infrastructure jobs in America through an energy independence-enhancing project that has bipartisan legislative support on Capitol Hill, the president flew to Disney World to peddle looser visa restrictions in China and Brazil by executive order. He also will expand the Visa Waiver Program (a security loophole-ridden program that was suspended temporarily after the 9/11 terrorist attacks) to speed foreign travel.

In case anyone needs reminding, it was the relentless drive of the tourism industry and kowtowing State Department bureaucrats that led to the Bush-era Visa Express Program, which relaxed visa policies, eliminated in-person consulate interviews and opened the door to the 9/11 hijackers. Brazil is just the latest base for al-Qaida and other Islamic jihadi groups. It does not consider Hezbollah or Hamas terrorist groups, and it disbanded its anti-terrorism force in 2009.

The Visa Waiver Program and other efforts to expedite the tourist visa process also pose continuing security risks because — as the Government Accountability Office itself admitted last year — there is still no comprehensive, systematic way to track the 70 million-plus foreign visitors who enter the country on tourist and other short-term visas. Indeed, half of the nation’s estimated 20 million illegal aliens are visa overstayers.

How many of the new Disney foreign tourists whom Obama is touting as America’s economic salvation will fail to return to their home countries after their Obama World visas expire? We’ll likely never know. And Team Obama doesn’t care.

In his opening campaign ad salvo, Obama accuses his opponents of being “untethered to facts.” But this is an administration that believes lowering visa standards and risking homeland security to pump up Disney foreign tourism is a better path to economic recovery than supporting direct American job creation and enhancing energy security. Like the Disney characters he posed with this week, our cartoonish president is wholly untethered to reality.

New logo:

Photoshop credit: Commenter jeffjackie

The Bank of (Democratic Party) America
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2012

Well, isn’t this rich? And I do mean rich. President Obama, man of the people, will deliver his presidential nomination acceptance speech at the Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, N.C. — so that Democratic Party fundraisers can reward big donors with skyboxes and other lavish perks.

As usual, the White House and its allies are trying to camouflage naked partisan money-grubbing in populist garb.

“I think this would be a great opportunity to have tens of thousands of North Carolinians and others outside of the state to see and participate in the convention process,” one North Carolina Democratic Party flack told the Charlotte Observer.

But it’s the heavyweight contributors, not the hoi polloi, to whom convention organizers are catering as they struggle to raise some $37 million to cover the coronation celebration’s costs. The self-proclaimed Party of the 99 Percent is reportedly busy creating special-access VIP packages for the 1 percent — under the illusion of throwing open its doors to the masses. DNC officials refuse to disclose fundraising updates until after the convention, even as they champion their own “openness and accessibility.”

And no doubt, Obama will use his stadium-size pulpit to “stand up” to the very same “fat cats” who’ll be watching him while sipping Courvoisier in their DNC-appointed luxury seats.

Such is the audacity of progressive cognitive dissonance.

Despite the DNC’s vaunted promise to ban business donations and first lady Michelle Obama’s faux-folksy public relations campaign for a “people’s convention,” Bank of America (headquartered in North Carolina and Charlotte’s largest corporate presence) will be front and center at the festivities. No surprise. The Democrats and Bank of America have maintained a long, lucrative relationship as reciprocal bailout buddies.

During the 2010 midterm elections, former DNC chairman and ex-Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine secured a $15 million revolving line of credit at BofA and then finagled another $17 million loan from the taxpayer-bailed-out bank. According to Federal Election Commission records, BofA accepted as collateral the DNC’s donor mailing list. Yep, its donor mailing list for $32 million in loans. As investigative reporter Richard Pollock asked at the time: “What message does a largely unsecured $32 million credit line for the Democratic Party send to thousands of cash-starved small businesses across the nation who can’t secure any credit even with tangible assets?”

Message: crony business as usual.

Bank of America is to sweetheart loans and Democratic Party payoffs as Paula Deen is to sugar and bacon grease:

– The massively troubled bank raked in a middle-of-the-night, taxpayer-funded $45 billion banking bailout in 2008 and an estimated $931 billion in secret federal emergency loans.

– In 2008, BofA’s political action committee gave its biggest contributions to Barack Obama totaling $421,000.

– After purchasing junk mortgage company Countrywide, BofA agreed to pay $50 million in restitution payments for Countrywide subprime loan fraudster and Democratic fat cat Angelo Mozilo and one of his underlings.

– BofA forked over payoffs to self-declared bank terrorist outfit NACA (the taxpayer-subsidized Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America).

– BofA also capitulated to a Jesse Jackson shakedown. And it forked over at least $2 million to the ACORN Housing Corporation — which has had a long history of fraud and abuse that goes back decades.

– The financial giant teamed up with the open-borders lobby (including newly appointed Domestic Policy Council chief Cecilia Munoz’s former employer, the National Council of La Raza) to offer illegal alien home loans.

No word yet on whether Obama’s Greek columns from the 2008 convention will make a return appearance this fall. But if they do, they may yet be emblazoned with a new red-white-and-blue Bank of Democratic Party America logo.

Optics be damned. The coffers must be filled.

They just couldn’t help themselves.

This weekend’s one-year anniversary of the Tucson massacre passed quietly and respectfully.

And then femme-a-gogue Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz had to open her big mouth:

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., speaking in New Hampshire this morning, reminded her audience of the tragic Tucson shooting last year — and also insinuated that the Tea Party, which she said regards political opponents as “the enemy,” has enhanced divisiveness in Congress and had something to do with the shooting, at least indirectly.

“We need to make sure that we tone things down, particularly in light of the Tucson tragedy from a year ago, where my very good friend, Gabby Giffords — who is doing really well, by the way, — [was shot],” Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic National Committee chair said during a “Politics and Eggs” forum this morning. “The discourse in America, the discourse in Congress in particular . . . has really changed, I’ll tell you. I hesitate to place blame, but I have noticed it take a very precipitous turn towards edginess and lack of civility with the growth of the Tea Party movement.”

How dare her. How dare her.

After a year of unhinged Tea Party-bashing and false accusations from New Tone Democrats, the DNC and DWS have done nothing to tone down their own poisonous, hypocritical vitriol.

“Tone things down?” Practice what you preach, trash mouth.

***

Previous:

“Civility Watch” post archive.

“New Tone” post archive.

“Civility police” post archive.

Obama’s Super-Czar Is on the Loose
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2012

Here is the operating motto of the Obama White House: “So let it be written, so let it be done!” Like Yul Brynner’s Pharaoh Ramses character in Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments,” the demander in chief stands with arms akimbo issuing daily edicts to his constitution-subverting minions with an imperious wave of his hand. His entourage of insatiable usurpers never rests.

Can’t delude legislators into adopting a $1.5 billion Kabuki summer-jobs makework boondoggle? Create an unfunded program through executive fiat.

Can’t muster up a filibuster-proof majority for radical nominees? Czar-ify ‘em.

Can’t get Congress to approve vast wild lands designations? Grab them under cover of a holiday lame-duck session.

Can’t get the illegal alien bailout DREAM Act passed on Capitol Hill? Executive-order it.

“So let it be written, so let it be done!”

In keeping with the dark and defiant habits of this administration, the new head of the half-billion-dollar Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was sworn in behind closed doors on Wednesday night. The nomination of former Democratic Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to serve as Dodd-Frank regulatory enforcer had been soundly defeated in the Senate before Christmas. But as I reported last month, progressive zealots funded by billionaire George Soros goaded Obama to ignore the Senate’s constitutionally grounded advice and consent role.

At his left flank’s urging, Obama vowed to follow in President Theodore Roosevelt’s footsteps (TR recess-appointed 160 officials during a recess of less than one day) and install Cordray even though the Senate technically remained in pro forma session. Fresh from his Hawaii vacation, Obama returned to Washington and for once delivered on a promise.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters Thursday that the administration expects no retaliation for the end-run around the deliberative process. Playing the pharaoh’s helper, Carney airily dismissed widespread bipartisan questions about the legality of the power grab as “esoteric discussion.”

The GOP knew the installation of Obama’s latest super-czar was coming a month ago, but is now scrambling to respond. Republicans will get clobbered with the class warfare card again unless they forcefully counter the Democrats’ narrative of the president’s “bold” actions for “middle-class Americans.”

Obama’s liberal media supporters have rationalized the tyrannical maneuver as a response to GOP “nullification.” But it’s those who oppose common-sense reforms of the gravely flawed Dodd-Frank law — a 2,600-page monstrosity that no lawmaker read before passing it — who are obstructing good government.

As Senate Republicans have been pointing out for months, Dodd-Frank threw out judicial review, removed CFPB from the congressional appropriations process, provided five-year tenure protection for the director and transferred the agency from the Treasury Department to the opaque and unaccountable Federal Reserve.

Obama and Democratic leaders themselves recognize the recklessness of vesting so much unfettered power in a single individual. In 2009, Obama floated a bipartisan board to oversee enforcement. Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois, Charles Schumer of New York and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island all co-sponsored legislation backing a commission. Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Barney Frank was also an original sponsor of a bill creating the very kind of five-member panel Republicans have proposed.

The House passed these and other structural reforms last year, but the Senate has failed to act, and the White House insists on demagoguing reformers. Moreover, taxpayers remain in the dark about how and how much the CFPB is spending, because Dodd-Frank allows the agency to draw funds from the Federal Reserve’s operating expenses. Out of sight, out of mind.

This is not “bold.” It’s jackboot. It won’t benefit “middle-class Americans.” It’ll line lobbyist pockets, soak taxpayer dollars and fuel a Beltway rule-making bonanza. It’s not about reining in Wall Street abuses. It’s about consolidating bureaucratic authority and granting unprecedented immunity to a single super-cop from congressional and public oversight.

Where, ahem, are those Occupiers when you need them?

***

Related – John Yoo on Cordray and the use and abuse of executive power.

The Year in Obama Scandals — and Scandal Deniers
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011

With 2011 drawing to a close, it is time to account. As an early-and-often chronicler of Chicago-on-the-Potomac, I am amazed at the stubborn and clingy persistence of President Barack Obama’s snowblowers in the media. See no scandal, hear no scandal, speak no scandal.

Dartmouth College professor Brendan Nyhan asserted in May — while Operation Fast and Furious subpoenas were flying on Capitol Hill — that “one of the least remarked upon aspects of the Obama presidency has been the lack of scandals.” Conveniently, he defines scandal as a “widespread elite perception of wrongdoing.”

So as long as left-wing Ivy League scribes refuse to perceive something to be a scandal — never mind the actual suffering endured by the family of murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, whose death came at the hands of a Mexican cartel thug wielding a Fast and Furious gun walked across the southern border under Attorney General Eric Holder’s watch — there is no scandal!

Self-serving much?

Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum likewise proclaimed: “Obama’s presidency has so far been almost completely free of scandal.”

This after the year kicked off in January with the departure of lying eco-radical czar Carol Browner. In backroom negotiations, she infamously bullied auto execs to “put nothing in writing, ever.” The previous fall, the White House’s own oil spill panel had singled out Browner for misleading the public about the scientific evidence for the administration’s Draconian drilling moratorium and “contributing to the perception that the government’s findings were more exact than they actually were.”

The Interior Department inspector general and federal judges likewise blasted drilling ban book-cooking by Browner and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who falsely rewrote the White House drilling ban report to doctor the Obama-appointed panel’s own overwhelming scientific objections to the job-killing edict.

In February, federal judge Martin Feldman in Louisiana excoriated the Obama Interior Department for defying his May 2010 order to lift its fraudulent ban on offshore oil and gas drilling in the Gulf. He called out the administration’s culture of contempt and “determined disregard” for the law.

This spring saw rising public anger over the preferential Obamacare waiver process (which I first reported on in September 2010). Some 2,000 lucky golden ticket winners were freed from the costly federal mandates — including a handful of fancy restaurants in Aloha Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco district, the entire state of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s Nevada, and scores of local, state and national Big Labor organizations, from the Service Employees International Union and Teamsters on down. Meanwhile, as The Hill newspaper reported last month, other not-so-lucky Republican-led states seeking waivers, such as Indiana and Louisiana, were rejected.

But it wasn’t just Republicans objecting to the president’s arbitrary Obamacare fiats. In July, congressional Democrats turned on the monstrous federal health bureaucracy known as the Independent Payment Advisory Board. The constitutionally suspect panel — freed from normal public notice, public comment and public review rules — would have unprecedented authority over health care spending and an expanding jurisdiction of private health care payment rates.

Obama’s health and human services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, faced separate legal questions over her overseer role in a hair-raising document-shredding case when she served as governor of Kansas. In October, a district judge in the Sunflower State suspended court proceedings in a high-profile criminal case against the abortion racketeers of Planned Parenthood. Bombshell court filings showed that Kansas health officials “shredded documents related to felony charges the abortion giant faces” and failed to disclose it for six years.

That same month, Bloomberg News columnist Jonathan Alter gushed: “There is zero evidence … of corruption. Where is it?”

Alter’s declaration of the “Obama Miracle” came just weeks after the politically driven half-billion-dollar Solyndra stimulus “investment” went bankrupt, prompting an FBI raid and ongoing criminal and congressional probes of the solar company funded by top White House bundler and visitor George Kaiser.

As Solyndra and an avalanche of other ongoing green subsidy scams erupted, so did the LightSquared debacle — a federal broadband boondoggle involving billionaire hedge fund managers and Obama donors Philip Falcone and George Soros. In September, two high-ranking witnesses — William Shelton, the four-star general who heads the Air Force Space Command, and National Coordination Office for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing Director Anthony Russo — exposed how the White House had pressured them to alter their congressional testimony and play down concerns about LightSquared’s interference threat to military communications.

The White House continues to block efforts to gain information about the Federal Communications Commission’s approval of a special waiver for the company, even as new government tests this month showed that the company’s “signals caused harmful interference to the majority of … general purpose GPS receivers.”

The Obama White House closed out the year with Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri demanding a probe of the smelly $443 million no-bid smallpox antiviral pill contract with Siga Technologies — controlled by big lefty donor Ron Perelman. Then there was the small matter of massive voter fraud in Indiana, where a Democratic official resigned amid allegations that “dozens, if not hundreds,” of signatures were faked to get Obama on the state primary ballot in 2008. And while Americans busied themselves with the holidays, White House and Democratic campaign officials were dumping more than $70,000 in contributions from another deep-pocketed contributor — scandal-plagued pal and former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, who oversaw the collapse of MF Global.

All this — and so much more — yet erstwhile “conservative” journalist Andrew Sullivan of Newsweek/The Daily Beast scoffed, “Where are all the scandals promised by Michelle Malkin?”

There’s none so blind as those who will not see.

The people of Nebraska whom he betrayed and embarrassed won’t be shedding any tears.

All together now: DLTDHYOTWO.

Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska will announce today that he is retiring after two terms, a serious blow to Democratic efforts to hold onto their majority in the chamber next November.

Nelson is scheduled to hold a press conference back home in Nebraska as early as today to make his decision official, said several Democratic insiders close to the leadership.

The 70-year-old Nelson was considered one of the most endangered Democratic incumbents this cycle. GOP-affiliated outside groups have already dumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into TV ads bashing Nelson, while the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spent over $1 million on their own ad blitz to bolster his image.

The Cornhusker Kickback was not forgotten. Or forgiven.

Entrenched incumbents of ALL political stripes, you’re on notice.

Who is Kevin McNulty? One happy man. The White House and entrenched incumbent Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey gave him a surprise early Christmas gift — and New Jersey politicos are grumbling. According to the New York Post, McNulty was nominated to a federal judgeship for which he hadn’t been previously mentioned. McNulty, it turns out, is New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer’s brother-in-law.

The collective response: “What the…?”

Not sure why there’s so much surprise and befuddlement. There’s never a holiday for cronyism:

Sen. Charles Schumer’s brother-in-law was quietly nominated this month to a federal judgeship in New Jersey — a move that has some in the Garden State crying political foul, The Post has learned.

Kevin McNulty, who is married to Schumer’s sister, Fran, was named to the US District Court by the White House late on Friday, Dec. 16. According to a boilerplate quote, President Obama believes McNulty is a “distinguished individual” who “will serve the American people with integrity and a steadfast commitment to justice.”

Obama vouches for his “commitment to justice?” Uh-oh.

Lautenberg and his aides have given no public explanation for the decision to go with McNulty even though the latter had never been publicly touted as a contender for the job, which carries life tenure and a $174,000-a-year salary.

“No one knows why he did it,” said one person involved in the nomination process. “Everyone thinks it’s all about 2014 and Frank making sure he has Chuck in his corner.”

The White House declined to comment, as did McNulty.

…People involved in the judicial-nomination process in New Jersey told The Post they believe the surprise nomination was a naked political maneuver by the 87-year-old Lautenberg to stay in Schumer’s good graces. Lautenberg is worried that party elders will try to push him out of his beloved Senate seat because of his advanced age — something that Schumer, one of the party’s top opinion makers and fund-raisers, would be able to stop.

“McNulty came out of left field,” said another source involved in the Jersey judicial politics. “McNulty’s not a dumb guy, but people were just, like, ‘How’d that happen?’ ”

To be fair, McNulty seems to have a solid résumé. But the timing and manner of the nomination smack of desperate pandering by a Beltway barnacle clinging to power.

Bah-humbug.

The measure that was agreed upon yesterday passed this morning by unanimous consent:

The U.S. Congress passed a two-month payroll tax cut extension eight days before its scheduled expiration after House Republicans dropped their objections under growing political pressure.

The plan will go to President Barack Obama for his signature. It would extend a two-percentage-point payroll tax cut, continue expanded unemployment benefits and head off a reduction in Medicare payments to doctors through February. Lawmakers plan to negotiate on a longer-term extension in the new year.

“I hope this Congress has had a very good learning experience, especially those who are newer to this body,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, told reporters after his chamber’s action today. “It seems that everything we’ve done this past year has been a knock-down, drag-out fight. There is no reason to do that.”
[...]
The deal that House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, and Reid, a Nevada Democrat, agreed to yesterday also calls on Obama to accelerate approval of the Keystone XL Canadian oil pipeline.

President Obama will sign it soon, if he hasn’t already, and then it’s off to Hawasia tout de suite:

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Last I heard, the House vote on the Senate-approved plan that would extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment for two months (which also includes a provision for the job creator that dare not speak its name) was to take place this evening.

At this time, the odds of House passage are slim to none:

Speaker John A. Boehner said Monday that the House would reject a Senate plan for a two-month extension of payroll tax relief and unemployment benefits, and called on Congress to work through the holidays if necessary to find agreement on longer-term legislation.

But Senate Democratic leaders said they had no immediate plans to call the Senate back to work out a deal with the House, leaving the fate of the legislation, which would also prevent a 27 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors, unclear.

Harry Reid said he will not re-negotiate the deal:

“I will not re-open negotiations until the House follows through and passes this agreement that was negotiated by Republican leaders, and supported by 90 percent of the Senate,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in a statement.

The pomegranate trees are calling the Senate Majority Leader home for the holidays, Mr. Speaker. Have you no heart?

Meanwhile, Boehner played the Rick Astley card over the weekend, saying he’ll never give up on Obama:

Despite the partisan atmosphere in Washington and the quagmire on Capitol Hill, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) says he’s not abandoned efforts to cut bipartisan deals with President Barack Obama.

Boehner, though, added that the partisan stalemate is not his fault, or the GOP’s.

“I never give up, and I’ll never give up on this president and this process to try to help do what the American people sent us here to do ,” Boehner declared on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Boehner was responding to Obama’s assertion that Republicans will oppose anything that he supports in order to see a Republican win the White House.

If President Obama is so sure the Republicans will oppose anything he’s for, why doesn’t he just come out and support the Keystone pipeline? Problem solved.

Update: No vote until Tuesday:

The U.S. House of Representatives will vote on extending an expiring payroll tax cut tomorrow, delaying a plan to hold a vote on a two-month extension tonight.

“The plan is for us to meet in the morning and do this in the light of day,” Representative David Dreier, the California Republican who heads the House Rules Committee, told reporters as he left a meeting of House Republicans. “There was a great sense of this whole notion of acting in the dark of night.”

Good call. The “dark of night” votes should be reserved only for congressional pay raises and other assorted sneaky odds & ends.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe