The Right View Wisconsin

Recommended Reading (01/30/10)

Here are, in my view, interesting, noteworthy columns and articles from the past week that I highly recommend. 


More Washington

“As my colleague Rich Lowry put it after the Massachusetts vote, the public thinks Obama doesn’t get it, and Obama thinks the public doesn’t get it. And as he’s got the microphone, he’s gonna keep talking at you until you do get it. The ever tinnier, more perfunctory sophomoric uplift at the start and finish can’t conceal the hope-killing, jobs-slaying, soul-sapping message in between, which is perfectly consistent, and has been for two years. As President Obama sees it, whatever the problem — from health care to  education, banking to the environment — the solution is more Washington."


Let’s be Clear: It Was a Boring Speech

“Obama could have announced a plan to rein in these entitlements. That would have been a mission worthy of his boilerplate. Instead, he meandered for more than 70 minutes, ending up with a speech that seemed to be mostly about himself.”

Democrats’ Political Suicide Pact

“I'll leave the in-depth analysis to others, but here's the recap: Obama was Charlie Gibson and America was Sarah Palin. He looked down his nose, through the teleprompter, at the American people and in the most ‘me-centric’ way imaginable, said: ‘Electric trains are wicked-cool. America sucks. Capitlaism sucks. The Supreme Court sucks. It's Bush's fault. Oh, yea – the jobs thing. I'll start my spending-freeze diet tomorrow. Give Perez Hilton a machine gun. Bama knows best. I'll never quit. It's Bush's fault. Hopey-changey. Peace-out’."

The Second American Tax Revolt

“As my father, Ronald Reagan, once said, 'Our federal tax system is, in short, utterly impossible, utterly unjust and completely counterproductive, it reeks with injustice and is fundamentally un-American... it has earned a rebellion and it's time we rebelled' I agree and that’s why I am enthusiastically now helping FairTax.org with pending legislation to replace the income tax entirely with a fair, progressive and honest national consumption tax aptly called the FairTax.”


Scott Brown: “People aren’t Stupid”

"People out there are disgusted," he says, shaking his head. "Especially with any one party dominating government and talking down to them. They want straight talk, no BS. A focus on jobs and what really creates them. They want problem solvers in office, and it helped me that I was able to show I could work with Democrats in the legislature."


The handling of the Christmas Day bombing suspect: the scandal grows

"The real scandal surrounding the failed Christmas Day airline bombing was not the fact that a terrorist got on a plane -- that can happen to any administration, as it surely did to the Bush administration -- but what happened afterward when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was captured and came under the full control of the U.S. government."


This Nobel Nominee Actually Saves Babies

"When President Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, that meant there were 205 nominees for the award who didn't. One of them was Jim Garrow of the Bethune Institute.
         
Let history decide who was most deserving. Obama was elected president on a platform of hope and change. Jim Garrow has spent $23 million over the past 10 years rescuing an estimated 31,000 Chinese baby girls from near-certain death under China's one-child-per-couple policy."


Tim Tebow Takes a Stand

"Isn’t it a little strange to see people who present themselves as 'pro-choice' get so upset when someone suggests their choice was to keep the baby? They can’t seem to make any mental allowance for people to promote making a pro-life choice in a permissive society."

Left – Open Mouth Insert Foot!

I forgot he is only half white and half black!

 

Chris Matthews on Obama State of the Union address: 'I forgot he was black'

 

Loose-lipped MSNBC talking head Chris Matthews has unleashed a flood of Internet chatter with the odd remark he "forgot he [Obama] was black."

 

Analyzing Obama's State of the Union address, he called the President "post-racial" before saying, "I forgot he was black tonight for an hour. He’s gone a long way to become a leader of this country and past so much history in just a year or two. I mean it’s something we don’t even think about.

 

"I was watching and I said, wait a minute, he’s an African-American guy in front of a bunch of other white people and there he is, President of the United States, and we’ve completely forgotten that tonight — completely forgotten it."

 

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2010/01/28/2010-01-28_chris_matthews_on_obama_state_of_the_union_address_i_forgot_he_was_black.html

 

America Rising An Open Letter to Democrat Politicians

"They Still Don't Get It"

Bob Herbert has a great column in the New York Times this weekend about our tone deaf politicians in Washington. Herbert writes that they are helpless in dealing with our current economic emergency and out of touch with struggling Americans.

A conservative by no means, Herbert takes a shot at Republicans, but reserves most of his frustration for Democrats in power.

“While the nation was suffering through the worst economy since the Depression, the Democrats wasted a year squabbling like unruly toddlers over health insurance legislation. No one in his or her right mind could have believed that a workable, efficient, cost-effective system could come out of the monstrously ugly plan that finally emerged from the Senate after long months of shady alliances, disgraceful back-room deals, outlandish payoffs and abject capitulation to the insurance companies and giant pharmaceutical outfits,” Herbert writes.

A reference is made to a new Brookings Institution study that concludes, “the largest and fastest-growing population of poor people in the U.S. is in the suburbs."

That’s a sad fact that is lost on the vast majority of elected officials in Franklin where I live who ignored the recession and turned their backs on hard-working families by jacking up their taxes again. That would include my alderman, Kristen Wilhelm who defended her vote in favor of the city’s tax-increase budget in a recent e-mail to constituents:

“Budget time was a challenge – it is much easier to balance a budget when the economy is in full swing. This has not been the case since I’ve been in office and we have had to face two very challenging budgets. I believe we did our best under the current situation, without cutting essential services. With the increase in crime, I stood strong on not cutting the police budget. Despite the fact that Franklin's population has increased significantly, no positions have been added to the police and fire departments in several years. We were able to maintain jobs and will add one additional police officer and firefighter while keeping the budget below a 3% tax levy. While a 0% levy increase is always ideal, placing people on the unemployment line, eliminating essential services such as salt, plow trucks, road repairs, garbage pickup, and other needed safety services, would have been even less of an ideal situation.”

Amazing spin, isn’t it? It would have been worse to freeze or cut government and give the people paying the bills a break than to increase taxes during a recession.

Back to Herbert’s column. He writes, “Democrats in search of clues as to why voters are unhappy may want to take a look at the (Brookings Institution) report. The Democrats still hold the presidency and large majorities in both houses of Congress. The idea that they are not spending every waking hour trying to fix the broken economic system and put suffering Americans back to work is beyond pathetic.”

Good stuff.