Ryan: A Man, A Plan

If the President really thought that a Federal shutdown was "inexcusable", the remedy is at hand: pass the Paul Ryan Plan.

Sure, parts of it are a bit shaky. He underestimates the rise in medical costs, but a later repeal of ObamaCare probably takes care of that. It offloads some Federal costs to the states, but that may well turn out to be a good thing. Talk about "market choice!"

Et cetera.

The fact is, the Ryan Plan is the closest thing anyone has come up with that actually addresses the deficit and the realities of a government beset by debt costs and overly-generous entitlements. It works without setting off a firestorm of angry special interests (and least the significant ones). We could end up with a budget and then deal with the greater issues of entitlements and debt service.

If the GOP has an actual plan, imperfect though it may be, and the Democrats are doing the usual piecemeal shuffle, which would you choose? To reject the Ryan Plan when you have no real plan of your own is, in fact, "inexcusable."

More Clinton Collateral Damage

The indictment of a top Northern Virginia fundraiser last week is the latest in a series of criminal cases that have ensnared campaign donors to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who relied heavily on wealthy bundlers in her failed 2008 bid for the presidency.

Federal grand jury indictments handed up in Alexandria allege that Galen Capital Group Chairman William P. Danielczyk Jr. and his treasurer illegally reimbursed nearly $190,000 in donations to Clinton's 2006 and 2008 campaigns, sometimes with corporate funds.

via Several big donors to Hillary Clinton now facing criminal allegations.

That's what happens when you back the wrong horse. Rely upon the Clintons to distance themselves as far as possible from this poor schnook. After all, he is of no further use to them.

"Wall of Debt"

Interest payments on the national debt will quadruple in the next decade and every man, woman and child in the United States will be paying more than $2,500 a year to cover for the nation's past profligacy, according to figures in President Obama's new budget plan.

via Obama budget plan shows interest owed on national debt quadrupling in next decade.

Every President needs a legacy. Now Barry has one.

Show Us The Money

Two years ago, the popular new president had Democratic majorities in Congress as he released a sweeping budget plan that introduced a New Deal sequel with dramatic proposals on health care, energy and the economy and a full embrace of government's central role.

The Obama of 2011, as demonstrated by Monday's budget rollout, seems resigned to operating in a far more constrained fashion as he plunges into policy combat for the first time with the GOP's House majority.

In declining to embrace the most difficult ideas proposed by his bipartisan deficit commission, such as cutting Social Security benefits, eliminating a home mortgage tax deduction or making structural changes to the tax code, the president deferred tough decisions that many in both parties say are necessary to fix the country's fiscal problems.

via Federal Budget 2012: Obama releases budget, GOP calls for deeper cuts.

Meaningless, really, since under the Pelosi/Reid Congress we never had a finalized 2011 Budget.

Asleep At The Switch

According to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, all was well in the Persian Gulf emirate of Bahrain just two months ago, when she paid a visit. "I am very impressed by the progress Bahrain is making on all fronts -- economically politically, socially," she enthused at a town hall meeting. Speaking of the ruling al-Khalifa family, she said, "I think the commitment to democracy is paramount."

Now, however, Bahrain is at the forefront of the continuing Arab uprising -- the only Persian Gulf state where the popular protests of Tunisia and Egypt have spread. On both Monday and Tuesday thousands of protesters gathered in the center of Manama, the capital, only to be frontally attacked by riot police. So far, two have been killed. The demonstrators nevertheless managed to reach a central square, dominated by a statue of a pearl, that they are calling "Tahrir," or "Liberation" square in honor of the Egyptian revolution. Their demand is the same as that in Cairo: genuine democracy.

via PostPartisan - Blindsided in Bahrain.

The State Department seems to out to lunch and Panetta’s CIA is no better.

Melting Pot

...when it comes to keeping racial statistics, the nation is in transition, moving, often without uniformity, from the old “mark one box” limit to allowing citizens to check as many boxes as their backgrounds demand. Changes in how Americans are counted by race and ethnicity are meant to improve the precision with which the nation’s growing diversity is gauged: the number of mixed-race Americans, for example, is rising rapidly, largely because of increases in immigration and intermarriage in the past two decades. (One in seven new marriages is now interracial or interethnic.)

via Counting Mixed-Race America Grows Ever More Complex - NYTimes.com.

Getting harder to pigeon-hole race. This is a problem for the quota-mongers like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

Hot Air About Hot Air

WASHINGTON — Congressional Republicans on Wednesday opened a formal assault on the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases, raising doubts about the legal, scientific and economic basis of rules proposed by the agency.

The forum was a hearing convened by the energy and power subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee to review the economic impact of pending limits on carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases. But much of the discussion focused instead on whether climate science supports the agency’s finding that greenhouse gases are a threat to health and the environment; that finding is what makes the gases subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act.

Lisa P. Jackson, the E.P.A. administrator, was subjected to more than two hours of questioning, some of it hostile, about proposed limits on emissions from factories, refineries, power plants and vehicles.

via Republicans Assail E.P.A. Chief on Greenhouse Gas Limits - NYTimes.com.

Ms. Jackson ran the NJ Department of Environmental Protection and few people were impressed. Putting her in charge of global warming is a bit out of her league.

Take A Ride On the Reading

Speaking about the need for high-speed rail, Vice President Joe Biden commented that, "If we don't get a grip, folks, they'll not only be teaching us, they're gonna own our kids."

What?

via ComPost - Joe Biden: 'They're gonna own our kids' without high-speed rail.

This from Amtrak's most frequent rider...

Talk Like An Egyptian

Caught flat-footed and totally unprepared for Egypt’s uprising, the Obama administration has been offering a series of excuses. It was, officials claim, quietly supporting reform all along. The CIA never warned that Egypt might blow up. No one could have anticipated what has happened in Cairo since Jan. 25.

The claim on reform is easily dismissed. Anyone who has been following Egypt for the last two years knows the administration’s record of coddling President Hosni Mubarak, cutting funds for Egyptian democracy programs, and eschewing criticism of the regime’s repression.

But another part of the record also needs clearing up: In fact, the White House was warned, publicly and repeatedly, that Egypt was approaching a turning point and that the status quo was untenable — not by an intelligence agency, but by a bipartisan group of Washington-based experts who pleaded, in vain, for a change of policy..

via PostPartisan - The Egypt warnings Obama ignored.

More liars.

Tearing Up the Constitution

Judge Roger Vinson’s ruling striking down the health-care law’s individual mandate and, with it, the rest of the statute, may or may not stand up in higher courts. But it’s more convincing than some arguments I’ve read on the other side…

The only consideration is whether Congress has enacted the mandate pursuant to one of its enumerated constitutional powers.

via PostPartisan - Give me liberty or give me health care.

If the Supreme Court allows Congress to impose health insurance under the Interstate Commerce clause, then there are no longer any restraints on their power to control our lives.

Harry Reid: Liar

The Senate majority leader made an impassioned plea on behalf of the new health-care law on the Senate floor Tuesday, one day after a federal judge struck it down as unconstitutional….

Reid argued that it is time to “stop re-fighting yesterday’s fights” and ticked off the benefits that he said were already flowing from the bill, including the claimed $4 billion in restitution and fines. He also argued that repealing the law would “add a trillion dollars to the deficit,” which is a claim we have debunked before. But is it possible that a bill that passed just 10 months ago has already yielded $4 billion from health care fraudsters?

…it is clear where the figure came from—an announcement by the Department of Health and Human Services that a new report showed that health care fraud prevention and enforcement efforts had recovered more than $4 billion in fiscal year 2010. The agency said this figure was a single-year record. The government’s fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, so that would mean the health-care law would actually have been in effect for just six months in the time period covered in the report. But the HHS news release never claims the new health-care law had anything to do with the successful enforcement efforts. It instead attributes the success to action taken in 2009 — the creation of a Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team focused on preventing waste and fraud in the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

via Fact Checker - Harry Reid's imaginary $4 billion credit to the health-care law.

Why we should expect the truth from these people at this point is just plain naive, but give Reid credit for lying really, really big.

Flo Rida

Florida freshman Republican Rep. David Rivera hasn't had a smooth first month in office. To say the least.

Last Friday, the Associated Press reported that Rivera paid himself nearly $60,000 in unexplained campaign reimbursements over the eight years he served in the state legislature. He's already under criminal investigation for failing to disclose $137,000 in loans from a company co-owned by his mother.

via The Fix - How much trouble is David Rivera in?.

Scoundrels know no party.