Cruising the Web

Here's a new target for the left: moms who clip coupons. Somehow that is now selfishness.

Sadly, JoAnne Kloppenburg has pulled into the a small lead in the Wisconsin judicial race. Now we'll have a recount. Republicans are pessimistic about how they'll do in any recount. We'll see if Wisconsin is any more pristine than Minnesota or Florida in conducting a recount. Already, miscellaneous accusations of voter fraud are surfacing. Wisconsin, with its same-day registration rules accompanied by no photo id is ripe for such fraud to occur.

Harry Reid throws a hissy fit about the GOP plan for a one-week CR that would keep the funding for the troops going through the end of September. Somehow this is terribly irresponsible. This is mighty fine coming for the leader of the party who decided not to pass a budget last year when he had an overwhelming majority in both houses. That's the reason we're in this fix to begin with.

How convenient. Both the Washington Post and CBS are receiving grants from Obamacare to pay for their early retirement fund. The money comes from a $5 billion grant program for selected companies, states, and labor unions chosen by the Obama administration. Isn't that nice that the Obama administration gets to pick out their own choices to get this money and help out such administration supporters as GE, GM, AFL-CIO, AFSME, and the UMW. And then HHS refuses to give out information about how they're deciding who gets to receive that money. Can you imagine if the Bush administration had done something similar and shoveled money to oil companies and Fox News?

One liberal marvels at the fact that her best friend is a conservative Republican.

Laura Ingraham revisits Debby Wasserman-Schultz's hypocrisy on civility in political speech.

This is one of the most powerful arguments that Paul Ryan is making: "What if the president and your representative saw it coming and could have prevented it from happening?" Ryan said. "What would you think of them if they didn't?"

Ryan's reforms for Medicare are setting the reform agenda. The Democrats are arguing a false choice as if the choice is between Ryan's plan and a free lunch. They want to ignore how Medicare is heading towards insolvency.

Jimmy Carter was his usual disgraceful self in his recent visit to Cuba.

The Washington Post chides Nancy Pelosi's "absurd math."

What better way to ease the tension of a government shutdown than for the female members of the Congressional Black Caucus to go shopping at a local boutique with Rep. Corrine Brown?

And while President Obama says how urgent it is to avoid a government shutdown, he headed out of town to pay tribute to Al Sharpton. Yup, that's more important.

Jacob Weisberg defends Paul Ryan's plan on Medicare and Jennifer Rubin explains why his plan for Medicare is not a radical.

Cruising the Web

Paul Ryan is the guy who is actually trying to save the social safety net while the Democrats are the ones who are endorsing the risky option endangering that security. Their policies are the ones that are piling up trillions of debt and putting us on an unsustainable path while refusing any reform of entitlements. If Republicans can get that message across, they'll be able to challenge the conventional wisdom that the Democrats are the only ones who care about the safety net.

Democratic adviser Doug Shoen begs the President to become a leader on budgetary reform. For example, he could embrace the recommendations of his own deficit commission. Sorry, Obama has voted present.

If Eric Holder were truly outraged about not being able to try KSM in front of a civilian jury, he should have resigned.

David Brooks thinks that Ryan's budget proposal will set the debate for the next two years. And the ball is now in Obama's court. Obama has a choice between coming up with his own counter-proposals or resorting to dishonest demagoguery. Brooks is doomed to disappointment. Thee man he once supported for the presidency will, when in doubt, pick demagoguery rather than a serious approach to government spending.

But then Mickey Kaus thinks Ryan's plan is a "near-suicdal act leading Republicans off the cliff" because seniors will reject anything that changes Medicare as it is now. Sigh. He might be right, but seniors are protected under Ryan's plan. It is the rest of the population that will have to adapt to the fiscal realities of Medicare's unsustainability.

Some of the NFL players on strike, who are under 26 years old, are going to use Obamacare to go on their parents' health care plan while they wait for the new NFL contract to be negotiated.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court race is heading into a recount with Judge David Prosser leading the union backed- candidate JoAnne Kloppenburg by less than 600 votes. Keep your fingers crossed.

All those young people still excited about Barack Obama need to realize that the alternative to a plan such as Paul Ryan's is that they will have to face 88% tax increases to pay for the spending the government will be facing in their future.

Italian art researchers are going to dig up the bones of the woman who is believed to be the model of the "Mona Lisa." What do they hope to discover - what her smile looked like?

Cruising the Web

Jim Geraghty analyzes the Obama campaign announcement video. Notice that there is no achievement of the Obama presidency that they can point to. We're still being told to celebrate the idea of Obama rather than anything he's actually accomplished.

Niall Ferguson looks at the increasingly dark future of the European Union. If the German voters get sick of holding up the rest of Europe, the disintegration will accelerate.

Does a ruling by a Michigan judge that Michigan educators can't be required to have deductions from their paychecks to pay for their retirement health care benefits is unconstitutional since the benefits can't be guaranteed mean that the Social Security deductions from our paychecks are likewise unconstitutional?

How typical that the criticism that Matt Yglesias would pull out for Ryan's Medicare reforms is that it's racist. Is it just reflexive with these people to cry racism when they don't like something or someone?

Now that Richard Goldstone, the former South African judge who voted to uphold apartheid with hangings and whippings, had weaseled out an apology for his blood libel report on Israel, will the United Nations follow suit? Just phrasing the question will evoke bitter laughter.

Could Israel become the newest energy giant? One can but hope.

Even John Kerry and Max Baucus would like Obama to be a grownup and show leadership on getting the Colombia Free Trad Agreement approved.

Time for the adults to take over

Before you read all the hyperbolic demonization of Paul Ryan's budget plan, read Ryan's explanation of what he is doing. It is not a choice between Ryan's plan and some perfect plan that saves our future economy without making any of those nasty choices on entitlements. Our choice is between an impossible fiscal future and finding ways to avoid that disaster. As Tom Coburn writes in the Washington Post, "Congress can choose a path of prosperity over austerity but only if we act quickly. History, and future generations, will not be kind to those who sleep." I'm not optimistic. If they can't agree on the relatively small cuts proposed for the second half of this year's budget, how are they going to reach any agreement on such dramatic, but necessary reforms for every aspect of the federal budget?

We'll now see if Americans are ready for an adult conversation. The Democrats want to continue the fairy tale that they will save us through cutting those mythical entities: waste, fraud, and abuse. We've been hearing that for decades yet the spending keeps rising. We've spent ourselves into a corner and President Obama refuses to lead us out of this mess. He punted in hopes of being able to demagogue his way into reelection. Paul Ryan and Tom Coburn are two men who are willing to treat the American people as adults and take the political risks to address the disaster that is our nation's fiscal future. Bravo for them.

Eric Holder's Defining Moment

Eric Holder said that trying Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the man who planed and executed the 9/11 attacks, would be the "defining event" of his time as attorney general. Well, it sure was. Against all logic and public opinion he announced in his first year that the Obama administration would try KSM in civilian court in New York. It was the Democrats who put the kabosh on that plan. And Holder is not happy. After two years trying to find a way around Congress's limitations blocking funding for civilian trials for Guantanamo detainees and blocking Holder's desire to bring KSM to New York, he had to announce yesterday that KSM will be tries by a military tribunal at Guantanamo, just as the Bush administration had planned.

Holder cast the blame on Congress for blocking his naive plan. Well, remember. That was a Democratic Congress, with a filibuster-proof Senate that told Holder to forget about this nonsense.

As the WSJ notes, it's time for Obama to acknowledge that his demonization of President Bush's policies in fighting the war on terror.

He was right about the "defining" part. His tenure has now been defined by one of the most overwhelming bipartisan Congressional policy repudiations in history.

Mr. Holder's third twist was to assert that he and President Obama still intend to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. But if that ever happens, Mr. Holder will be long gone. Yesterday's Gitmo climb-down came after the Supreme Court rejected appeals from three Guantanamo detainees challenging their indefinite detention. If no other country will take them, the detainees have nowhere else to go.

KSM and his fellow murderers will now be tried by military commissions of the kind that President George W. Bush proposed in the earliest days of the conflict formerly known as the war on terror. Someone should write the headline: Holder vindicates Ashcroft, as in Mr. Bush's first AG. Or how about: Current State Department Counselor Harold Koh vindicates John Yoo, the much-maligned Bush Justice Department official whose views on Presidential power have also been increasingly adopted by Team Obama.

Somehow we doubt we'll hear the same moral denunciations we once heard about Mr. Bush's policies. The Europeans are mute about Guantanamo, and Newsweek hasn't come up with any more pseudo-scoops about Gitmo guards desecrating the Quran. Mr. Holder made clear he's not about to apologize, much less thank his predecessors for their foresight, but we suppose his vindication of Guantanamo is enough.

All that moral preening that Obama made when he was on the campaign trail has been revealed to be just that - a posture he adopted without much thought about the ramifications of his policy pronouncements. And we can now indeed define Eric Holder by his deserved failure.

Cruising the Web

Oops! Interior Secretary Ken Salazar vastly overstates an announcement about opening up a sale of Wyoming coal by a factor of ten.

Unbelievable! NYU is having a guest speaker, a professor from Rutgers, whose argument is that Josef Stalin was “one of the greatest heroes of modern history.” When historians debate how many deaths of his own citizens Stalin was responsible for with estimates ranging from about 10 to 50 million, calling him a great hero of modern history is so upside down that we have to wonder what Rutgers is thinking of to give this guy a job and why NYU would invite him to their campus. Do they also invite in Holocaust deniers?

Ed Morrissey thinks that the White House anti-bullying initiative should take a look at the unions in Wisconsin.

Jimmy Carter is back again to be a useful idiot for his "friend," Fidel Castro.

Randy Barnett explains the ludicrous logic about the federal government mandating people buy health insurance. It's a slippery slope.

Hmmmm. Google's CEO wants Google to remove from its search engine information about his political donation to Barack Obama.

Here's a story about what some dedicated students led by one of my colleagues at my school have been doing to help the blues stay alive in our state.

Cruising the Web

Here's a depressing factoid: "It gets worse. More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined. We have moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers. Nearly half of the $2.2 trillion cost of state and local governments is the $1 trillion-a-year tab for pay and benefits of state and local employees."

Here is the real reason why the public unions are opposing Governor Walker's limitation on public unions. They don't want to lose the government's acting as bookkeeper taking unions dues automatically out of government workers' paychecks and sending the money to the unions. Since Mitch Daniels ended collective bargaining for public workers and the government's role as union dues-taker, they've lost that automatic hand in workers' pockets. "Today, 1,490 state employees pay union dues in Indiana, down from 16,408 in 2005." And that is why they'll go to the barricades to stop further erosion of their dues-taking ability.

And that fear is why the unions are putting the muscle on businesses that would prefer to stay neutral on the whole question.

Find out what happened when Carlos Boozer rented his house to Prince. Apparently, Prince has very idiosyncratic ideas about interior decorating.

Ah, one question answered: how Donald Trump gets his hair to look the way it does. The mystery of why he'd want it to look that way is still not answered.

If Newt Gingrich is supposed to be so smart, why is he making so many gaffes?

Charles Krauthammer slams the administration for its continued obsequious attempts to cozy up to Syria's Bashar Al-Assad. That Hillary Clinton would even think of the word "reformer" to describe Assad demonstrates the moral bankruptcy of this administration's naiveté in thinking they can "engage" with that region's anti-American dictators.

This is what the Democrats' blocking of the free-trade agreement with Colombia has gotten us: Colombia has just signed a free-trade agreement with Canada which will hurt U.S. companies that won't be able to compete with Canadian companies which sell many of the same commodities. Perhaps President Obama would like to travel to the states that export wheat, corn, and beef or machinery and auto parts and explain why he has allowed them to lose business in Colombia because he will not support the free-trade agreement that has been languishing around for years.

Another day, another element of the Democrats' health care law to appall us. There is a bailout provision to allow the government to help subsidize early retirement costs for unions, state public employees, and corporations.

Walter Russell Mead explains why the operation in Libya is not a model for future international interventions.