Obama will "find savings in" Medicare and and Medicaid . . . hmmm

From today's "Morning Jolt" newsletter (sign up here) at NRO:

2. Obama: Let's Undo That Big Tax Compromise I Made Three Months Ago

I mentioned this yesterday, but as this becomes Tax Hike Week in the Obama White House, I hope the country notices that the president is now seeking to undo the concession he agreed to just a matter of weeks ago. I know all statements from Barack Obama come with an expiration date -- I'm the one who made the axiom! -- but it's kind of striking that he's willing to return to this well so quickly. By this standard, START will be up for renegotiation soon.

Thankfully, Eric Cantor hasn't forgotten: "Mr. Cantor called the debate over top personal-income-tax rates 'settled' by last year's elections and the subsequent tax deal. 'It was then that we all agreed it wouldn't be a good thing if we want to see job creation for taxes to go up,' he said."

It also will include, well, something about spending less on Medicare, but the wording is going to be pretty interesting. The Washington Post hints, "The speech is intended as a declaration of Obama's commitment to seriously tame the deficit while outlining his long-term budget principles -- key components of his campaign for re-election in 2012. After gingerly avoiding any discussion until now of cuts in the government's massive benefit programs for the elderly and poor, Obama will acknowledge a need to reduce spending on Medicare and Medicaid while at the same time tackling defense spending and calling for increased taxes on the wealthy, White House officials said."

The Media Research Center notices the New York Times is spinning already; Obama's plan to spend less on Medicare somehow is completely different from the "cuts" of the other guys: "Examine Calmes'[s] word choice: While she portrays Republican plans as involving a 'shrinking of Medicare and Medicaid,' Obama 'envisions a more comprehensive plan' that includes finding 'savings in Medicare and Medicaid,' as if Obama was making a painless offer. Which phrase will be more palatable to undecided voters nervous over the impact of Medicare cuts?"

What's that? You're not going to "amputate" my leg, you're just going to "find savings in my lower extremities"? Oh, that sounds much better!

HA! -- "Obama turns next to cutting deficit"

This article (especially the WH-press-release-like headline) is laughable Obama turns next to cutting deficit - USATODAY.com:

WASHINGTON — President Obama plans to outline a fresh multiyear plan to cut the federal deficit by raising taxes on the wealthy and limiting government health benefits for the poor and elderly in what the White House says will be a major speech to the nation Wednesday.

'Every corner of the federal government has to be looked at,' White House senior adviser David Plouffe told CNN's State of the Union on Sunday, two days after Obama and congressional leaders struck a down-to-the-wire deal over spending cuts for the remainder of this budget year, which ends in September.

Which reminded me of this splendid cartoon.

Interesting "predictors" of divorce . . .

"Unhappy Marriage: Signs you'll get divorced"; especially this one (sure counters conventional wisdom):

6. If you are currently married but have cohabited with a lover other than your current spouse, you are slightly more than twice as likely to divorce than someone who has never cohabited.

The same study by Ohio State University sociologists that produced this result also found that even those who cohabit only with their future spouses "are still 83 percent more likely to experience a marital disruption relative to those that did not cohabit prior to marriage." Cohabitation statistics are hot buttons, used by some pundits to decry premarital sex and "shacking up." A widely quoted 2003 study by Western Washington University sociologist Jay Teachman found that women who cohabit with anyone besides their future husbands face a raised divorce risk ranging from 55 to 166 percent, but that those who cohabit only with their future husbands face no elevated risk at all.

Anna M. Cunningham (2007): Premarital cohabitation and marital disruption across time: new results from the NSFH 3, paper delivered at the Population Association of America 2007 annual meeting.

It's about FUNDING PLANNED PARENTHOOD

Mike Pence, Chris Smith signal room to move on abortion - Richard E. Cohen and Jonathan Allen - POLITICO.com Folks, this issue is about continuing to fund the controversial activities of Planned Parenthood. You can get all these services (except for ABORTION) somewhere else (and for less $$, frankly).

I guess Feinstein means well . . .

I have long contested that most liberals are well-intended even though they're wrong . . . the mixture of elitism and (candidly) wanting compels them to espouse all manner of flawed policy positions.

And this is a good example. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) appears (video) to be hand-wringing over what to do now that we're engaged in military action in Libya . . . "let's send in the International Military Court police!!" (Hat Tip to NRO's Morning Jolt who recommends sending in Team America World Police. Though Lefties typically get a political pass for their failed policies based on good intentions, this example is just troubling.

For forward-looking GOP, there's no turning back . . .

From Jim Geraghty's National Review Online Newsletter, "Morning Jolt":

I'm reminded of The Hunt for Red October, and the anecdote that the defecting Soviet submarine captain, Marco Ramius, shares with his crew, "When he reached the New World, Cortez burned his ships. As a result his men were well motivated." To go back on their pledges to cut government would be suicide in 2012; there's no way the Republicans can win a spending race with Obama. Presuming Republicans decided to completely ignore the deficit and debt, Obama could simply promise to double whatever the GOP proposed spending. There's no turning back. Republicans can either go down swinging, standing up for the concepts of limited government that they spent the past two years touting, or they can lose by a landslide.

The opposition's message, every cycle, is essentially, "Vote for us for free ice cream." The fiscally conservative message is, "There is no more free ice cream, and in fact the ice cream has never been free." If selling that message were easy, we would never have gotten into this mess.

I think there is more upside to (verifiably) doing what they said they would do than there is to trying to avoid being cast as the bad guy. Not to mention, things are different (media-wise and as far as political organizations) now than when Bill Clinton avoided any blame for shutting down the government way back when. The American public just isn't as lemming-ish as it has been in the past. Heck, a bunch of Americans are still skeptical of Obama's claims that he is a devout Christian (via Drudge).

Sounds like the KGB to me

Well, Media Matters is dropping all pretense ("Media Matters' war against Fox") of not being a propaganda arm of the Left (ironically, MM vilifies FoxNews for being a propaganda arm of the GOP).

Watchdogging is one thing, but the tools at Media Matters are actually attempting to destroy an opposing voice. Losers.

Simplifying Pi?: Article a Hoax, But Hits Close to Home

Whew, the "Simplifying Pi" post at Huffington Post was a hoax.

Gee, if Conservatives (and Republicans) weren't so stupid, Liberals wouldn't have fallen for this hoax and American students wouldn't fair so poorly in math and science, ya know?

Thanks for shedding some light on this subject Jennifer Welsh . . .

Jalen Rose and "Uncle Toms"

You may have not heard about the tempest in a teacup surrounding the "Fab Five" documentary about the 1991 University of Michigan B-ball team. The controversy centers around the seemingly gratuitous statement in the movie by Jalen Rose that Duke recruited “black players that were ‘Uncle Toms.’" Rose is trying to spin his comment as something he thought "when [he] was 17 years old" or as meaning something other than what-every-other-American-knows-it-means, but the sad thing is that he is blatantly not backing off of the comment.

Bottom line, those sentiments are racist. It's the whole "acting white" issue, and it's sad that a marvelously fortunate and exceptional black person like Jalen Rose can't grasp that, more often than not, success in life is the result of things like working hard, making wise decisions, and acknowledging time-tested social norms.

Grant Hill, a former player at Duke U. summed it up when he wrote on the NYTimes blog,

To hint that those who grew up in a household with a mother and father are somehow less black than those who did not is beyond ridiculous.

America's in trouble race-relations-wise and in general as long as "being black" means what Jalen Rose seemingly thinks it does.

SHAME? Try PRIDE.

The Left (posing as "Labor") in Wisconsin is trying to tag Walker and the GOP with the word "SHAME." Uh, try "PRIDE." Gov. Scott Walker on mob scene in Madison . . .

Nashville in the news!!!

Nashville gets a shout out in this report about controversy surrounding hearings about American radicalization of Islam within the U.S. chaired by Congressman Peter King (R-NY) ("King draws fire"):

Melvin Bledsoe, whose son allegedly attacked an Army recruiting center in Arkansas, said in written testimony obtained by Fox News that Americans are ignoring the issue. He plans to describe how his son, Carlos, was radicalized when he went off to college in Nashville, Tenn. In his testimony, Bledsoe will explain how his son's personality changed and how, when he returned home for the holidays in 2005, he told his family he converted to Islam. From that point, he changed his name and eventually traveled to Yemen.

"Some Muslim leaders had taken advantage of my son. But he's not the only one being taken advantage of. This is going on in Nashville and in many other cities in America," Bledsoe plans to say. "In Nashville, Carlos was captured by people best described as hunters. He was manipulated and lied to. That's how he made his way to Yemen."

Phil Zuckerman, clueless about Christ

I just read an article by Phil Zuckerman, writer and wannabe-psychoanalyst of the Huffington Post, plainly asserting that Jesus Christ would be a Democrat (essentially). As my first boss and mentor used to say, "wrongo mooseface." Phil Zuckerman: Why Evangelicals Hate Jesus:

The results from a recent poll published by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (http://www.pewforum.org/Politics-and-Elections/Tea-Party-and-Religion.aspx) reveal what social scientists have known for a long time: White Evangelical Christians are the group least likely to support politicians or policies that reflect the actual teachings of Jesus. It is perhaps one of the strangest, most dumb-founding ironies in contemporary American culture. Evangelical Christians, who most fiercely proclaim to have a personal relationship with Christ, who most confidently declare their belief that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, who go to church on a regular basis, pray daily, listen to Christian music, and place God and His Only Begotten Son at the center of their lives, are simultaneously the very people most likely to reject his teachings and despise his radical message.

I've always enjoyed it when the moralistic, judgmental Liberals declared, "you can't legislate morality." Of course, every law is someone's morality. And Zuckerman's confusion on this point is a close cousin to his cluelessness on another point . . . that is, that there is a distinction between what an individual ought to do and what government ought to do (or force citizens to do).

Liberals (now "Progressives") are all about legislating morality, and their policies more often than not pick "winners and losers" and expand government at the expense of liberty.

Chip Forrester wields the "F" Word

Wow. In the weekly Tennessee Democratic Party Members' email to me and the millions of other supporters on their list (cough), Chip Forrester, the Democrats' Chairman, is calling Gov. Bill Haslam a fascist for attempting to rein in the out-of-control public employee Unions. I assume the follow up email will expound on how the story that Adolph Hitler--leader of the National Socialist Party in Germany, outlawed unions. Give me a break.

Proposal Could Punish Women for Miscarriages

I think this bill is wrong-headed, (Georgia Lawmaker's Anti-Abortion Proposal Could Punish Women for Miscarriages - FoxNews.com), but it is quite apparent that Planned Parenthood is hoping to seize on the bill (which has been introduced and rejected--by the GOP, for the past 8 years) to distract from the organization's negative publicity of late. And how's this line from the PPFA spokesperson for IRONY:

"This type of initiative in Georgia and the recent attacks on publicly funded contraceptive programs nationally are out of step with the needs of women and families and out of step with American values," she added.

More vital services from PPFA . . . not

From the FRC newsletter . . .

Planned Parenthood's Mammosham

Before you sign up to race for the cure, maybe it's best to get up to speed on what, exactly, you're running for. A few years ago, the Susan G. Komen Foundation, which raises millions of dollars a year for breast cancer research, admitted that it gives a portion of its proceeds to Planned Parenthood. When people grilled the Foundation on their partnership, Komen tried to tamp down the controversy by saying that Planned Parenthood "provides vital services." Considering the latest news, they might want to change that statement to "refers for vital services." Apparently, Planned Parenthood doesn't need our tax dollars for free mammograms--because they don't offer them! Pro-lifer Jill Stanek did some digging, and it turns out that one of the organization's biggest arguments for government funding is completely invalid. "If [the pro-life provisions in this budget] ever becomes law," Cecile Richards has warned, "millions of women in this country are going to lose their health care access, not to abortion services, to basic family planning--you know, mammograms, cancer screenings, cervical cancer."

That's interesting, Stanek says, because not one Planned Parenthood in America performs mammograms. Even the organization's website tells women to "ask your local health care provider, health department, or staff at your local Planned Parenthood center about where you can get a mammogram in your area." Obviously, Richards and friends will stoop to any level of deceit to keep the government checks rolling in. Meanwhile, what business does Susan G. Komen have funneling money to an organization that a) does nothing to prevent breast cancer, and b) lies that it does? There are plenty of respectable health clinics out there (1,200, in fact) that would host the screenings without promoting abortion--a procedure that may have more to do with causing breast cancer than curing it.

Indiana temper tantrum . . .

Wow. Any parent will tell you that you never win giving in to temper tantrums. Indiana kills 'right-to-work' bill - Jennifer Epstein - POLITICO.com:

"Republicans in Indiana’s state senate on Wednesday killed a proposed “right-to-work” bill that would have reduced the power of unions in the state.
. . . .
"Democratic legislators fled the statehouse on Tuesday to block a vote on the proposed bill, following a similar move by Democratic lawmakers in Wisconsin over that state’s proposed legislation to limit collective bargaining rights for public sector unions."

Democrats only believe in majority rule when they're in the majority.

Democracy=negotiate? Who says?

Wisconsin governor calls on Democrats to come home | Reuters:

Wisconsin Democratic senate minority leader Mark Miller told CBS' "The Early Show" on Monday that public employees had agreed to economic concessions and the governor needed to be open to a compromise on other matters.

"The governor has not done anything except insist that it has to be his way, all or nothing," Miller said. "The governor needs to recognize that this is a democracy and in a democracy you negotiate."

"The unions, the public employees, have agreed to the economic demands, all they ask is they be able to retain the workers' rights and we are supporting them on that," he said.

Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin, a nonpartisan advocacy group, said that while the Democrats won't want to stay away for too long, there's nothing the Republicans can do to compel them to come back if Walker is unwilling to negotiate.

"There doesn't seem to be a lot of pressure from the districts for the senators to come back," Heck said. "And let's face it -- it's a budget repair bill that doesn't have to be done until June. There's no rush."

The GOP senate needs to start voting on all the things that don't need more than a simple majority to make a quorum. Seems like these Democrats are sore losers.

Nice signs, false sick notes from Wisconsin

'Fake' Sick Notes Given to Wisconsin Protesters Amid Anti-Union Bill Faceoff - FoxNews.com: Nothing like integrity to bolster your position; and here were two nice slogans from the counter protestors in Wisconsin:

"Your Gravy Train Is Over . . . Welcome to the Recession" and "Sorry, we're late Scott. We work for a living."

SOME of the WI union's collective bargaining privileges . . .

There's quite a bit of sloppy reporting on Dems' WI tantrum. In particular, most news outlets are leading or headlining with the phrase "stripping public workers of collective-bargaining rights." That's not accurate, though it certainly bolsters the argument for calling the proposed legislation "controversial." From the WSJ:

The governor's proposal, part of a bill aimed at overcoming a $137 million deficit in the current budget and a projected $3.6 billion hole in the next two years, would allow collective bargaining on wages, but not pensions and health care. Workers would be required to pay more for both. And raises would be limited to the inflation rate, unless voters approved steeper boosts.

For Democrats, the end justifies the means

Budget Battle: Democrats Who Left State are Located: