Remember about five years ago when John Kerry suggested that the men and women in our armed forces were drawn from the dregs of society, you know, those individuals who didn’t work hard in school:

You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.

Turns out the Massachusetts politician was wrong about this — as he has been wrong about so much else:

It’s getting much more difficult to join, or stay in, the U.S. Army. Not only is a high school diploma required, but you need good grades. High schools known for low standards, and graduating students just for appearances sake, not because the grad was qualified, are avoided. A graduate from one of those schools can still get in if they do very well on the AFQT (Armed Forces Qualification Test, a general aptitude exam tweaked to emphasize mental skills most useful in the military) will be considered, but will have to do well in an interview. . . .

The ancient cliché that “only losers join” is long dead now. The military is now a club that many want to join, but only few are good enough to get in.

Read the whole thing. Recruiting standards have soared, leading to a higher caliber of service member. (Via Instapundit.)

Earlier this week, Michael Barone was one of a number of right-of-center political pundits to comment on “Jeffrey Toobin’s lengthy article on Supreme Court jurisprudence”, focusing on Justice Clarence Thomas and the judicial challenge to Obamacare.

It is possible, Barone writes

. . . to read Toobin’s article as a partisan hit job, echoing the demands of 74 Democratic House members that Justice Thomas recuse himself from sitting on a case challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare because of his wife’s involvement in the Tea Party movement.

Never mind that this is a standard neither Toobin nor the Democrats apply to other public officials with spouses active in public affairs — and that they’re not asking Justice Elena Kagan to recuse herself because of her work in the Justice Department on the issue.

Nor did they ask for their colleague Barney Frank to recuse himself from the House Financial Services Committee (under its current or previous names) despite the fact that the Massachusetts Democrat helped his spouse secure a job at  Fannie Mae, a Government Sponsored Enterprise this committee oversees.

Barone also points out that “despite his obvious distaste for Thomas’ views, [Toobin] takes [the justice] seriously as a judicial thinker and pathfinder”:

In addition, as Toobin accurately reports, Thomas is the strongest originalist on the court, the justice who most consistently seeks to apply the provisions of the Constitution as they were originally understood. . . .

Toobin’s article represents the end of the fashionable left’s attempt to portray Thomas as an intellectual lightweight.

Read the whole thing.  One wonders if some on the left failed to discern the intellectual caliber of the jurist’s mind because of the color of his skin.

Yesterday, the editors of the Wall Street Journal cited

. . . a remarkable Gallup poll this week that asked the public about its views of government and various businesses. The federal government dropped to its lowest approval levels ever. Only 17% were positive, 63% negative, for a net approval rating of minus-46%. Government never ranks well, but for the first time since Gallup began asking in 2003 it fell to last place—below even the oil and gas industry, which netted minus-44% approval.

This wasn’t the only survey showing a decline of public confidence in the federal government. Such surveys, they contend, reflect “the historical pattern of modern American politics: Every time Democrats attempt to govern the country from the ideological left, they damage government’s reputation and status.”

Interesting that confidence in the federal government peaked in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

“The lesson,” the editors conclude, “is that public trust in government is highest when Washington is retreating from the broad spending, tax and regulatory agenda that prevailed in the late 1960s, 1970s, early 1990s and now today.”

Jim Hoft linked yesterday a comment from the president’s Communications Director which gets at the real nature both at the nature of the Obama White House and provides yet another example of the Democrat’s reelection strategy.  This ostensibly post-partisan figure is in reality a most partisan politician:

President Obama is struggling in the polls against would-be Republican challengers because voters don’t know the GOP contenders well enough yet, a top White House official said Thursday.

Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer expressed confidence that Obama would perform better against former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney or Texas Gov. Rick Perry once Americans familiarize themselves with those GOP presidential candidates.

“My guess is that a significant portion of the people polled, the American people, don’t know what Mitt Romney’s economic plan is yet,” Pfeiffer said on MSNBC. “I’m confident they will know that he supports Cut, Cap and Balance, which would essentially end Medicare, end Social Security.”

. . . .

The numbers, Pfeiffer argued, show what they do because Obama is being measured against voters’ highest expectations rather than against a specific opponent.

“What I think is always true before you get into an actual contest of ideas in an election is the incumbent is judged not against his or her opponent, they’re judged against the ideal,” he said.

This White House sees everything through a political lens.  Think about this for a second.  This statement comes not from a campaign spokesman, but from the White House Communications Director.  And said spokesman says more people will support the president only after they compare him to a Republican. (more…)

Jon Huntsman has taken a lot of grief from conservatives as being a RINO while winning acclaim from the left-of-center media establishment as a “grown-up” type of Republican.  On Sunday talk shows, he has taken potshots at his more conservative Republican challengers for the party’s presidential nomination and signed on to the theory of anthropogenic global warming.

Sometimes it even sounds like he’s planning to endorse the man who tapped him as the nation’s ambassador to China should he (as polls indicate he will) fail in his bid for the Republican nomination.  I had been skeptical of his bid for said nomination until I read the Wall Street Journal’s praise yesterday of his economic plan.

This plan, as summarized by the Journal, is pretty close to the type of plan I would promote were I running for national office.  The former Utah governor would create “three personal income tax rates—8%, 14% and 23%” and eliminating “all deductions and credits”:

The double tax on capital gains and dividends would be expunged as would the Alternative Minimum Tax. The corporate tax rate falls to 25% from 35%, and American businesses would be taxed on a territorial system to encourage firms to return capital parked in overseas operations.

Mr. Huntsman would repeal two of President Obama’s most economically debilitating creations, ObamaCare and the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law. Mr. Huntsman has it right when he says, “Dodd-Frank perpetuates ‘too big to fail’ by codifying a regime that incentivizes firms to become too big to fail.” He’d also repeal a Bush-era regulatory mistake, the Sarbanes-Oxley accounting rules, which have added millions of dollars of costs to businesses with little positive effect.

Mr. Huntsman says he’d also bring to heel the hyper-regulators at the Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drug Administration and the National Labor Relations Board, all of which are suppressing job-creation.

Nice to see he understands the need to repeal these three “economically debilitating” laws, including the one passed by a Republican House in 2002 and subsequently signed by a Republican president.

It is a good sign if the candidate perceived as the most liberal in the Republican field has just signed on to some very sensible conservative reforms.

UPDATE:  No fan of Huntsman, RedState’s Erick Erickson says, “The other Republican candidates should look to this plan as a good benchmark for recovery moving forward.”  Indeed.

Asked about running for president, George Clooney explained why he’s satisfied with the incumbent:

“As for me running for President – look, there’s a guy in office who is smarter than anybody you know, and nicer, and he’s having an almost impossible time governing.

You’d think a guy “smarter than anybody you know” would be able to govern the United States of America, considering how good a job a certain “amiable dunce” once did.
(Via Gateway Pundit)

Yesterday, Eric blogged about the “coincidence” of the president attempting to schedule his jobs speech at the same time the Republicans vying for his job would be debating at the Reagan Library. OnFacebook, our reader Leah linked this letter from House Speaker John Boehner to President Obama regarding that latter’s request to speak next Wednesday.

Love the way the Ohio Republican begins his response:

Thank you for your letter requesting time to address a Joint Session of Congress next week. I agree that creating a better environment for job creation must be our most urgent priority. For months, the House has been implementing an agenda designed to reduce economic uncertainty, remove unnecessary government barriers to private-sector job creation, and help small businesses, and we welcome the opportunity to hear your latest proposals.

Emphasis added.  This is exactly how Republicans should respond to Democrats’ attempts to demagogue the jobs issue — reminding them of Republican efforts to reduce the regulatory burden on job creators.

Now, House Republicans just have to pass more legislation cutting federal red-tape and increasing opportunity for individuals and entrepreneurs — and then challenge Senate Democrats to consider these bills.

RELATED:  House GOP announces jobs plan focused on cutting regs and taxes. (Via Instapundit.)

If I were not traveling, I would likely write a lengthier piece on this topic, but did a kind of double-take when I read the first paragraph in this Wall Street Journal editorial:

Among the core assumptions of modern liberalism is that future regulations have no more effect on the economy than future taxes, as if expectations don’t matter and businesses don’t prepare now for their costs tomorrow. President Obama’s letter to John Boehner yesterday is a classic of the genre.

Emphasis added.  When talking about the economy with liberal friends and acquaintances, I have often noticed how oblivious these interlocutors are to the cost regulations impose on businesses, particularly small ones.

Since the regulations serve a genuine societal interest (as defined by them), entrepreneurs would be eager to comply.  And any burdens created by government rules would be all but inconsequential.  Some liberals seem incapable of comprehending the costs of compliance.

UPDATE:  Sonicfrog looks into one recent example of federal regulation run amok:

. . . lets look at something very close to my heart….. Guitars! The recent raid by the Feds on Gibson Guitars is kind of mind boggling! It’s not due to smuggling cocaine in guitar bodies or anything like that… It’s about WOOD!!!!

Read the whole thing.  According to WSJ.com’s Political Diary (available by subscription), Gibson Guitars tend to conservative causes while rival Martin “leans Democratic.”  Latter uses “same sources of wood”, but wasn’t raided.  Wonder if we’ll see any coverage of these facts in the MSM.

From the New York Times:

A Silicon Valley maker of solar power arrays that was started with high hopes and $527 million in loans from the federal government said on Wednesday that it would cease operations. The failure of the company — and the loss to taxpayers — is likely to renew the debate in Washington about the wisdom of clean energy subsidies and loan guarantees.

The president visited the company in May 2010, praising it “for its advanced technology”.

In order to avoid wasting taxpayers’ money (and that of their descendants born and unborn), perhaps the government shouldn’t offer loans to private companies.

George Washington and Benjamin Franklin (to name but a few) might not like the idea of the government showing favoritism to particular industries.

UPDATE: Here’s another piece on Solyndra’s bankruptcy.

UP-UPDATE:  Haven’t the president and vice president spoken at other companies, touting their successful records and social contributions, only to see those enterprises go under?  Seems I recall reading about that . . . .