Those who would like to see the (once-)Golden State glitter once more should hope that we have a Scott Walker waiting in the wings.  We need someone to bring real change to the state which once defined innovation and opportunity. Since that Republican’s much-maligned reforms passed the Wisconsin Legislature, the Badger State has been able to close its budget gap, see new jobs created watch school districts across the state renegotiate teacher contracts, saving taxpayers’ hundreds of thousands of dollars.

All this achieved because Walker stood up to the public employee unions who had, before the current legislative session, wielded considerable power in the state capital, preventing real cost-saving reform.  They tried to wield that muscle in the recent recall elections, pumping millions into Democratic coffers and even walking precincts on behalf of Democratic candidates.  All to little avail.

The unions, however, have been far more successful in California than they were this year in Wisconsin.  Here, every Democrat has a built-in advantage over his Republican and not just because of the state’s demographics.  Our public employee unions funded directly by the taxpayer, with employees’ dues siphoned off from their paychecks, provide the Get Out The Vote (GOTV) infrastructure for Democratic nominees as they support their favored political party with television ads and campaign contributions.

In return, the unions exercise considerable influence over elected Democrats, preventing them from enacting real reforms.  As Joel Kotkin put it in his (must-read) piece on the decline of Los Angeles:

It’s a familiar story: because Democrats are almost assured of victory in L.A.’s general elections, candidates must win only the low-turnout, union-dominated party primaries. John Pérez, a longtime union political operative and now speaker of the California State Assembly, won the Democratic nomination in 2008 with fewer than 5,000 votes and then easily crushed the GOP candidate. Pérez’s predecessor as speaker was Fabian Núñez-another L.A. labor official. No wonder the Sacramento Bee’s Dan Walters calls the labor movement “the closest thing to an omnipotent political machine anywhere in the state.” (more…)

I’ve been listening to Ron Chernow’s biography of George Washington in the car.  A number of things struck me about this great man who faced much adversity in the early days of the French & Indian War.  Chernow points out how although the young officer in the British army made some, well, bone-headed military decisions, like establishing Fort Necessity, a frontier outpost near French lines “poorly situated to withstand and incursion,” he, by and large, learned from those mistakes.

The current occupant of the office he would be the first to hold seems to lack that ability.  As the fetching Stephen Green observes:

Obama can’t recognize mistakes — even though the evidence is as plain as last month’s hideous jobs report. He will continue to demand that reality conform to his theories, no matter what damage he does to this country. He doesn’t doge, he doesn’t weave — he keeps pursuing failure in the face of failure.

(Via Instapundit.)  Even after the failure of his “stimulus”, with the depletion of our coffers and the diminution of our nation’s once good credit, the Democrat still calls out for more spending* and fails to recognize that the regulations his administration has increased have reduced those he identified as those “produce most of the new jobs in this country“ to hire new employees.

The president’s policies haven’t worked.  A real leader would understand that his goal was not to demonstrate the rightness of his approach, but to shift course and find an approach that did.

George Washington did that.  And because of that capacity, he won an unwinnable war and fathered a nation that offered opportunity for tens of millions, inspired others yearning to be free in distant corners of the globe and provided a level of prosperity that few had even imagined.

Our nation achieved all this in large part because George Washington learned form his mistakes.  Would it that Barack Obama could follow his predecessor’s example.

* (more…)

Sunday night at a mixer, I engaged in a somewhat disturbing conversation with a gay former Republican.  As we talked about the debt crisis and he heard my recommendations for drastic cuts, he feared what those cuts would mean for the economy and job creation.  I explained that reduction in regulations and federal fees would stimulate growth.

I pointed to the shuttered storefronts in and around West Hollywood, saying that regulation and taxation (at the federal, state and municipal level) had made it more difficult for those entrepreneurs to stay in business during the economic downturn, even suggesting that those very regulations has caused the downturn.

In order to stimulate growth, I said, we needed to cut back on regulations, making it easier for new entrepreneurs to set up shop and for existing ones to expand.  He countered that small businesses wouldn’t make a dent in the overall employment numbers.  I reminded him what the president said, that ”Small businesses produce most of the new jobs in this country.”

He groused that my plan was “negative” as I thought the government should do less.  What I found troubling was how this man had evolved from a Republican to a statist, believing that in times of economic distress, the government must do something to fix the crisis.  And that he dismissed anything short of increased state intervention as “negative” response to the problem.

But, as Timothy P. Carney pointed out earlier this week, the best thing government do to create jobs is to get out of the way and remove the burdens to bringing on new employees.  ”According to the Small Business Administration,” Iain Murray writes

. . . federal rules and regulations — from the Fair Labor Standards Act to the Polygraph Protection Act — cost small businesses $10,000 annually per employee in compliance costs. (more…)

Just noted that Patty Murray, the most junior of the three Senate Democrats Harry Reid picked for the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, was first elected to the Senate in 1992.  The most senior Republican, Jon Kyl, was first elected in 1994.

Democrats Max Baucus and John Kerry were first elected in 1978 and 1984 respectively.  Republicans Pat Toomey and Rob Portman both elected last year.

Toomey and Portman are solid, sensible conservatives from swing states.

Seems Harry Reid prefers Washington veterans while Republican leader Mitch McConnell turned to newcomers.  Smart move, Mitch. Seems the Kentuckian has been reading the tea leaves.

The Republican picks will be more attuned to what Americans are thinking while the Democrats will be champions of the political class.

UPDATE:  Just realized Pat Toomey once helmed the Club for Growth.  Makes me like the pick even more.

Every now and again, you watch an old movie (or less frequently) a new one where you see a performance which just, well, knocks your socks off.  And you marvel at the ability of an actor to play such a range of human emotion such that you believe he — or she — has lived the feelings he (or she) portrays.  She’s not playacting the role; she’s inhabiting the character.

Last night, I saw just such a film.  Now, to be sure, The Trip to Bountiful, starts mighty slowly, but when Geraldine Page‘s Carrie Watts begins to realize she will get to complete the movie’s eponymous journey, you feel like you’re taking your own (beloved) grandmother to her childhood home.  You want to be with her every step along the way.

Here’s a clip from that sequence:

You can see the continuation that episode here.

It is almost as if this role were written as an acting lesson to showcase the full range of feminine emotion, including remorse over a lost love, sadness, determination, anger, frustration, nostalgia, mischief even, gratitude, delight and affection (and then some).  Not only does Page stay in character as she expresses each emotion, but you believe she has lived the stories she tells and feeling the words she speaks.  No wonder she won an Oscar for this performance.

No wonder she was considered “one of the greatest American actresses of all time“.

Interesting to note that this great actress was born on a day I already celebrate, November 22, the anniversary of the birth of the greatest female novelist of all time, George Eliot, and my great (literally and figuratively) Aunt Ruth.  Seems to be a day for great women to be born.

Page made her film debut opposite John Wayne in Hondo, was married for twenty-four years to Rip Torn. Ronald and Nancy Reagan sent flowers from the White House to her memorial service.

Well, the Democrats may have picked up two state Senate senates in the Wisconsin recall vote yesterday, but, they, as Allahpundit reports, “outspent Republicans two to one”, thus they “lost two to one on tonight’s seats — with two of their own still to defend next week.”

Do wonder how much of that money will no longer be forthcoming as it came directly from the Badger State’s coffers, skimmed off from the salaries of public employees and sen straight to their unions, active supporters of the state Democratic Party.  They may just not have the money to spend they once did.  Thanks to Governor Walker’s reforms, the state won’t be sending that money directly to those allies of his partisan rivals; they’ll have to collect it on their own.

Allahpundit offers what he calls a “nice data point from Nate Silver which he claims “can be read as more of a rebuke to the left as [well as] to the right”:

In total, GOP leads 52-48 among all votes counted so far tonight in Wisconsin. Walker won those districts 56-43, Obama won them 53-46.

Not a great night for the Republicans nor for the Democrats.  But, Republicans still control the Senate in Wisconsin and the labor unions spent a tens of millions to pick up two Senates, one just barely.

Quoting a “Twitter friend” who quipped “Democrats in #Wisconsin spent about $263 per vote to not get a majority in the state senate”, Michelle Malkin suggests that “rank-and-file union members” consider recalling their “own profligate Big Labor bosses.”

The public employee unions are the real losers in Wisconsin.  Let’s hope they suffer similar fates in other states, including (and especially) the (once-)Golden one.

UPDATE:   Not sure I’ll have time to get back to this today.  I had penned this post just before heading to bed last night and as I take a break and scan the blogs, seems it’s a much bigger defeat for the unions than I had originally thought.  Jennifer Rubin has a good post with some helpful links, including an observation that the GOP was caught “flat-footed,” thus was clearly out-organized by the unions. (more…)

Yesterday, after a hectic weekend with family and friends, I, a blogger without a paid staff (indeed without any staff) put forward a proposal to address Standard and Poor’s downgrade of the federal government’s financial condition.  Within several hours, our readers had offered their own suggestions and critiques of some items on my lost.  Now, Jennifer Rubin is also soliciting views from her readers.

A few hours before I offered my proposal, President Obama addressed the downgrade, roughly 50 minutes after he was slated to speech on the crisis.  Instead of putting forward a plan or even an outline of a plan, he announced that he intended to present his “own recommendations over the coming weeks on how we should proceed.”

Over the coming weeks?  A number of savvy pundits and financial analysts had been predicting the downgrade for weeks.  Shouldn’t the President of the United States have been prepared for this?

He had a whole weekend and a stable full of advisors. Couldn’t he have come up with an outline on his own and farmed it out to them, had them refine a few of his points, discuss the political and policy pitfalls of each before drafting his statement?

As Bryan Preston put it, in response to the downgrade, he showed “even less ability to lead” than he had during the debt debate.  He made “no substantive moves at all to calm the markets. He was silent for days while his political team engaged in one of the most obviously dishonest responses in living memory, and then he was late to his own speech today.”  (Via Jim Geragthy’s Morning Jolt, available by subscription.)

Glenn Reynolds has a nice roundup of pundits offering views similar to those Preston put forward.

Now, if a blogger who follows politics can come up with a plan to address the downgrade, why can’t the President of the United States, with a whole staff paid to help him lead the nation, do the same?

Announcing Ann Coulter was joining the organization’s Advisory Council as Honorary Chair with the official title of “Gay Icon”, Christopher Barron, Chairman of GOProud’s Board, called the diva best-selling author “a brilliant and fearless leader of the conservative movement”:

. . . we are honored to have her as part of GOProud’s leadership. . . . Ann helped put our organization on the map. Politics is full of the meek, the compromising and the apologists – Ann, like GOProud, is the exact opposite of all of those things.

Indeed she is.  Quite the opposite.  Here’s Ann on C-SPAN.

The lady doesn’t mince words.

RELATED: Reconsidering Ann Coulter

Do the editors of Yahoo! think it helps President Obama to show him more than two-and-one-half years into his term whining about the mess he “inherited”:

He sounds not like a leader who has successfully pushed his policies through the legislature, but a man who has just taken charge of a failing company:

President Barack Obama said on Monday he inherited many of the country’s problems with high debt and deficits when he entered the White House, sounding a theme likely to dominate his 2012 re-election campaign.

Speaking at a Democratic fundraiser, where families paid $15,000 to get a picture with him, Obama defended his economic record and noted that problems in Europe were affecting the United States.

“We do have a serious problem in terms of debt and deficit, and much of it I inherited,” Obama said.

At some point, he needs to take responsibility for the failure of his policies to achieved their desired effect and that he knew he’d be inheriting when he applied for the job?

And now instead of rolling up his sleeves to fix the problems, he’s looking forward to campaigning against Republicans, “What we’re going to have is 16 months in which we debate this vision for America, and it’s going to be as fundamental a debate as 2008″.

Sixteen months of debate?

What bout twelve months of hard work?  Putting forward plans and policies to show he knows what he’s doing and merits another four years in the White House.

I mean, he doesn’t have a Democratic primary opponent and the actual campaign won’t ramp up until next summer’s conventions.  Seems he’d rather campaign for the presidency than do his job.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  ILoveCapitalism offers, “The President’s job is to fix inherited messes; otherwise, why have him?” Indeed.

UPDATE:  Turns out Obama’s current whining it at odds with his own rhetoric.  Jim Geraghty alerts us to an RNC ad which reminds us what the president said just six months after taking office:

The RNC can be cruel sometimes, reminding us all that back in July 2009, Obama declared, “My administration has a job to do as well. That job is to get this economy back on its feet. That’s my job, and it’s a job I gladly accept. (more…)

That’s what this headline today on AOL’s homepage suggests:

Seems Mr. Gore’s none too happy with the state of public opinion:

Four years ago, when he won the Nobel, 71 percent said they believed that carbon emissions were causing global warming. Four years later, after a crushing recession, Climategate, and an epic failure at Copenhagen, only 44 percent say they believe it. Meanwhile, 69 percent say it’s likely that global-warming scientists have falsified climate research.

AOL is at it again.  Perhaps because of the First Lady’s well-puiblicized affection for fancy five-hundred forty dollar footwear, they’re now trying to present the president’s wife as a woman of the people, turning to her for tips on how to look good for less:

Everyone loves a good deal — even Michelle Obama. We know she’s a fan of J.Crew and regularly wearspieces by Talbots, but what other affordable, mass-produced brands does she like? Well… Target, Gap andH&M, to name a few!

Check out some of FLOTUS’ most affordable looks below and tell us which outfits look, well, cheap and which are chic.

So, I’m wondering (and not for the first time) if these folks ever gushed about Laura Bush’s attire.

If Rick Santorum had not thrown his hat into the ring, Michele Bachmann would be my least favorite of the current crop of GOP presidential aspirants. Now, to be sure, I appreciate her charisma and her ability to make a compelling case for conservative principles, but remain concerned about her paucity of legislative accomplishment and lack of executive experience. Not to mention her attitude toward gays.

That said, it’s one thing to criticize her on her deficiencies and policies. It’s quite another to recast her as something she is not. And the MSM have gone so far overboard in attacking this woman such that whenever I, who would rather she had not entered the presidential contest, blog about her, I find myself defending her against mean-spirited attacks from our friends in the mainstream media.

Their latest broadside is the Newsweek cover (mentioned in my post earlier today) where its editors dub her “The Queen of Rage.”  Michelle Malkin does a great job of showing how our supposedly non-partisan purveyors of news distort images to demonize conservative women while, over at Powerline, John Hinderaker shows that, well, they just got the storyline wrong:

If you are acquainted with Michele, you know that “rage” is about the last word that should be associated with her. She is a happy, energetic, positive person. She lights up a room when she enters it, which you don’t accomplish by being enraged. And if she is the queen of rage, why is she pretty much always smiling?

. . . .

Barack Obama was at least as critical of the George W. Bush administration as Bachmann has been of the Obama administration. Did Newsweek (or anyone else) ever label Obama the king of rage? (more…)

Commenting on a Newsweek cover designed to make Michele Bachmann look demonic, Michelle Malkin posts (with numerous examples on  ”The liberal media fetish of demonizing conservative women and their looks goes back years.”

It is a fascinating phenomenon.  Wouldn’t feminists want conservative women to succeed to show females earning the accolades of the Republican rank and file and demonstrating a capacity to lead?

Only in the nation’s capital does president enjoy an approval rating above 60%. In Maryland, the state with a high percentage of residents who work in Washington, D.C., 59% approve of the president’s job.

Seems that while Americans who pay to keep the government running are becoming increasingly disenchanted with President Obama while the governing class is quite satisfied with his performance in office.

Don’t think this was the kind of change Americans voted for in 2008.

UPDATE: Within minutes of this post going up, our readers were offering suggestions on how to improve this plan. I already realized some things I had left out, including repealing Obamacare and Dodd-Frank, not to mention Sarbanes-Oxley. So, please feel free to chime in and I’ll offer an updated post later this week with a more comprehensive plan.

And I’ll daresay we unpaid bloggers will put forward a GayPatriot plan before the president puts forward his.

Glenn has a good roundup of conservative and libertarian critiques of the president’s remarks earlier today on the downgrade, including this devastating analysis from Jennifer Rubin:

All he can do is promise to raise taxes.

Now that’s not exactly right. He did trot our proposals for a one-year extension of the payroll tax cut and extension of unemployment benefits. And he promised to make his own proposal to the debt committee. That’s it. It is what he has been saying for what seems like forever. He has nothing new.

While the president dithers, let me offer a 5-point plan to address the problem:

1. Using the FY 2007 budget as a baseline, with adjustments for inflation and population increase, redraft the FY 2012 budget.  Task House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan to set up a committee to find more cuts.
2. Set up a commission composed of businessman and scholars from the Cato Institute to identify those federal regulations which stifle innovation, exploration and growth.  As soon as their report is complete, task the various agency heads to rescind those regulations.  Reduce the staffs of the agencies responsible for enforcing said regulations.
3. Immediate across the board salary cuts for all federal employees (save active duty military).
4. Repeal Congressional Budget Act of 1974.
5. Simplify the tax code along the lines of the 1986 Tax Reform Act.

Of course, this basic framework may require some tweaking.  There are, for example, some good things in the 1974 Budget Act.  And we may be able to identify a smart CEO to helm the regulatory relief committee.  (And we may want scholars from think tanks other than Cato.)  But, this is a start.  And it represents not just a break from the last two-and-one-half years, but from the last ten years as the immediate past president was not much of a fan of deregulation.

Lady Thatcher unpacks it for us:

The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.

Too bad the president didn’t acknowledge that in his remarks today. (Stay tuned for my 5-point plan to address the downgrade.)

A Facebook friend who was one of the first to champion the then-junior Senator from Illinois had this to say about the man he so enthusiastically backed for the 2008 Democratic nomination:

S&P downgrade of US credit rating from AAA to AA+ is a stark reminder why Obama will go down as the worst President in modern history. Congress – both houses, both parties – rank pretty high on the pusillanimity index too. They should all be ashamed of themselves.

Emphasis added.

The president’s chief political advisor keeps giving us a foretaste of the 2012 campaign, attack Republicans.  This time, David Axelrod is going after presumptive Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney:

“Having ducked and dodged and dithered throughout the debt-ceiling debate, and then dropping in on the final day and opposing the compromise, it’s pathetic that Mitt Romney was the first out of the gate with a press release blaming the president after S&P issued its report,” Mr. Axelrod, who is advising Mr. Obama’s campaign, said in an interview.

Ducked and dodged during the debt-ceiling debate?   Hmmm. . . . sounds like the behavior of another man running for the White House in 2012.  Only that guy is the only announced Democratic candidate.  The good news is that Axelrod doesn’t think that kind of politics will play:

“I don’t think the American people are going to reward that kind of politics,” he said. “People are looking for constructive ideas about how we build a better future. The president is offering those.”

He is, Mr. Axelrod?  Then, please do tell us what’s his plan for the FY 2012 budget and proposal to reform entitlements.

Oh, whoops, I read that wrong.  You said “constructive ideas” not plans.  Guess that’s how Obama governs.

(H/t Politico)

Barely had Barack Obama settled into his job as a United States Senator in 2005 than he began setting his sights on the White House.  He spent the second half of his Senate tenure running for the presidency.

He didn’t seem all that engaged in his legislative duties.  And now he doesn’t seem all that engaged in his executive ones.  He yielded to his fellow partisans in Congress to draft the key legislation of his term and preferred giving speeches to offering solutions.  Where his predecessor titled his memoir Decision Points, he could call his Decision Punts.

Responding to Drew Westen New York Times essay where that psychology professor acknowledged Obama’s absence of accomplishment prior to his election to the White House, John Hinderaker contends that

. . . there is only one context in which Obama has ever displayed passion–that is, when he was running for political office. When Democrats say, Where is the Obama we voted for and thought we knew? they are referring to Obama the candidate. It is not hard to see why Obama is passionate about his political campaigns, when he is seemingly so indifferent to almost everything else: they are about him.

Note that when he traveled to Europe in the midst of his bid for the White House in the summer of 2008, he did what no previous major party had done, headlined a “campaign rally” on foreign soil.

Seems Barack Obama would rather run for president than be president.

Seems the Democratic talking point of the weekend is “Tea Party Downgrade,” with John Kerry, David Axelrod and Howard Dean all using the expression to blame the downgrade in the nation’s credit rating.  Yahoo! even included Democrats’ talking point in its news headline yesterday:

John McCain, Ed Morrissey notes, begged to differ:

We could have reached an agreement a lot earlier, but the members of the House of Representatives had a mandate last November, and it was jobs and the economy and it was spending. And for them to then agree to tax increases and spending increases was obviously a repudiation of the mandate they felt they had from last November

Emphasis added.  ”McCain,” Morrissey added “gets this one right”:

Voters sent a clear message in last year’s midterms, and it wasn’t “spend more and increase taxes.”  Democrats refused to listen in 2009 when voters revolted over the addition of another massive entitlement program; voters spent all of 2010 revolting over Obamanomics; and they punished Democrats in November for not listening to them.  Democrats still aren’t listening, and the way they are reacting now, 2012 may make 2010 look like a good year for the Democratic Party.

Well, that all depends on the success of the Democrats’ slash and burn strategy.  At least, this talking points helps Republicans prepare for 2012 as the Democrats have given us yet another foretaste of Obama’s 2012 campaign theme:  attack Republicans!  Blame the Tea Party!