Merry Christmas, General Motors, Chrysler, and the UAW.

The 13.4 is the immediate number, with another $4-odd billion to follow.

Can you hear the buzz saw cutting off that big log of cash? I knew that you could.

I mean, the list of “non-friendlies” Barack is adding to his administration gets longer by the day…

Rahm Emanuel and John Podesta were once fierce, effective members of Team Clinton. Now their bull-dod talents will serve the man who exchanged pointed insults with Hillary as they clashed bitterly to win the democratic nomination.

Both Podesta and Emanuel will have to have their sleeves lengthened weekly as they find themselves caught between Barack and Hillary during certain (and likely, frequent) bouts of loyalty tug-of-war.

Susan Rice – Her elevated post as US Ambassador to the UN to cabinet level places her essentially on the same level doing the same job as Hillary, and with Rice having been an avid Obama supporter throughout the campaign, her level of favorability will give her an advantage over Hillary when conflicts arise.

Betty Currie – Bill Clinton’s former personal secretary, the woman who ran interference, keeping Hillary at bay… shuffling Lewinsky to her “appointments” and delivering gifts… Ken Star called Betty the “enabler”. Now Betty is answering phones for John D. Podesta.

Bill Richardson – His endorsement of Obama ws seen as a most wicked act of betrayal. You can’t tell me THAT won’t inspire some tense moments.

Now we have Ray LaHood… the man who presided over the very humiliating impeachment of her husband…

I keep waiting fro Obama to announce that Monica will be his Personal Shopper or something…

Yeah, I was kinda bummed when we lost the White House.
And, with the economic situation… Well, they say laughter is the best remedy when you’re feeling down.

But, I tell ya. I am now starting to believe that Barack is the best thing that could happen right now.
I mean, come on.
You just can’t buy this kind of entertainment.

I have known and watched Ray LaHood’s career since 1992, when he was former Rep. Bob Michel’s Chief of Staff. LaHood is the very definition of a RINO, and in many ways, he is worse than a Chafee, a Jeffords, or a Hagel.

To start with, he wasn’t wielding the Speaker’s gavel that day because he was an enthusiastic supporter of impeachment. To the contrary, he was there because he had one useful skill in Congress — with the departure in the previous Congress of Bob Walker, he knew parliamentary procedure better than any other Republican serving at the time. Also, Ray has always loved the media spotlight, so you couldn’t have pried him out of that chair with a crowbar since he knew every TV on Earth would be showing his face later that night.

In fact, media opportunism has defined the career of Ray LaHood from the very beginning. With regards to burning other Republicans with his quotes in the media, he takes a back seat to no one. Not even John McCain over the last twenty years has been as consistent an ally for the media and Democrats as LaHood when they are looking for a Republican to bash his party colleagues on the Hill and attempt to portray them as extremists.

Disappointed that his old boss Michel retired too early to benefit from the 94 GOP Revolution, LaHood became an early and incessant critic of Newt Gingrich and the GOP majority, regularly giving quotes to the liberal media that Newt and crew didnt know what they were doing, and were ‘extremists’. He was the source of much griping that helped undermine the GOP in the PR war over the government shut down in 05, a historic defeat for conservatives.

Not content with just the ‘extremist’ theme, LaHood became the go-to guy for the media and the Demcratic Washington establishment on their next issue, the lack of ‘civility’ in Congress. For all non-Beltway readers, ‘civility’ is a DC term similar to ‘bipartisanship’ — you are ‘civil’ if you give in to all Democratic demands and compromise your core principles on legislation, and you are ‘uncivil’ if you fiercely defend conservative causes and values in debate on the House floor or committee, or treat Democrats in the minority the way they treated us when we were there. According to the Beltway media, the new GOP was harsh, partisan, and removed all civility from Washington. And who was ready to step to the microphone to endorse this viewpoint??? None other than Ray LaHood, who denounced his colleagues as uncivil and then organized the high-profile ‘Hershey retreats’ to restore ‘civility’ to Congress. Attended by Ray, about 20 RINOs, and over 100 Democrats, these retreats went on for a few years in the mid to late 90s and further helped undermine the conservative agenda in the House by presenting an opportunity for our RINOs to conspire with Democrats and receive media praise for selling out the agenda.

Of course, when it came to bashing the GOP to the media, LaHood never rested. In 1998, he gave an interview to the Springfield, IL newspaper criticizing his conservative GOP colleague John Shimkus, who was running a tight race for re-election that year. Shimkus had had the temerity to oppose a piece of LaHood pork called “American Heritage Rivers’ that was an initiative by the greens that would have greatly restricted barge traffice on the rivers in Illinois, hurting Illinois farmers and the state economy. Shimkus opposed it, and LaHood trashed Shimkus to his hometown newspaper as being anti-environment, etc, and Shimkus had a tougher reelection than he should.

In October 2004, LaHood took shots at conservative Congressman Phil Crane in the newspapers in Crane’s district and the Chicago Tribune. Crane, while way past his prime, was at least a reliable conservative vote. The criticism of Crane from RINO LaHood was perhaps decisive in convicing life long suburban GOP voters in the district to go ahead and vote for Melissa Bean. Now, Bean is an entrenced Democrat incumbent in what used to be the strongest GOP district by base vote in IL.

LaHood’s sins go beyond just his media quotes. He is a reliable liberal vote in Congress on many issues. He couldn’t wait to get on the appropriations committee, and when he finally made it on during his third term, he became a business-as-usual pork barreler. He is horrible on energy independence votes. He is against drilling in ANWR. He is against OCS drilling. He is against oil shale production. In fact, he and his fellow Illinois RINO congressmen Tim Johnson and Mark Kirk are three of the absolute worst GOP members on all issues regarding the environment and energy. I was deeply and personally involved in the attempts of Congress to pass a sound energy production bill in 2006, one that would have opened the OCS to drilling, stepped up oil shale production, and made a great number of other positive changes to promote energy independence, changes significant enough that had they been enacted, we would not have seen the energy mess we experienced in 2008. The biggest roadblocks in our way for success in the House were folks like Ray LaHood, Tim Johnson, Mark Kirk, and the Florida GOP members — in the Senate, the biggest problem was one Sen. John McCain. LaHood is also a RINO on immigration, guest workers, spending, and many other issues.

So, the bottom line is this. Hillary could care less that LaHood will be in Cabinet meetings with her. She and her supporters know him for what he is, a RINO who agrees with them on most major issues. There is no doubt in my mind Obama picked him to be the ‘token Republican’ knowing he was a RINO, and will give him the additional role of being the ‘Republican’ who will constantly scold and harangue the Hill GOP for ‘excessive partisanship’ and ‘incivility’ every time they oppose any Obama initiative. Get used to the media showing many clips of Transportation Secretary LaHood bashing his fellow Republicans for being ‘too conservative’, there will be a lot of it for the next several years. I was happy when LaHood retired, and had hoped we had seen the last of him. Evidently, he has one more Republican-betraying/conservative-bashing mission he must perform before we are rid of him permanently.

P.S. To any Red Stater thinking that LaHood’s fellow RINO Mark Kirk would be a good candidate to run for The One’s vacated seat, think again. I was hoping against hope that somehow he would lose his seat in Congress in November. Kirk is a combination of LaHood/McCain/Jeffords/Hagel, only younger and more arrogant. He is not the future of the IL GOP. People like Peter Roskam and John Shimkus are the future of the IL GOP, not a guy like Kirk who is ideologically opposed to real conservatives.