Sometimes one headline just says it all: Dems see GOP budget reforms as ‘sneaky’ way to cut spending:

House Democrats on Thursday were resisting two Republican bills that would reform the budget process, and charged that the bills were a backdoor attempt by the GOP to reduce federal spending without having to pass more specific bills that cut the budget.

Republicans on Thursday afternoon called up the rule for H.R. 3578, the Baseline Reform Act, and H.R. 3582, the Pro-Growth Budgeting Act. The first bill would eliminate the assumption that spending on discretionary items will increase with the rate of inflation each year, an assumption that Republicans said fosters budget expansion.

The second bill would require the Congressional Budget Office to analyze the macroeconomic effect of budget bills as part of its regular duties.

Sneaky? Sneaky? Haven’t Republicans said they want to cut spending?  Haven’t Democrats been wringing their hands over the size of the deficit?  And didn’t their 2008 presidential nominee say that “throughout” his campaign, he been proposing “a net spending cut.”

Seems the Democrats’ reaction to this reform proposal reveals their real thinking on spending.

Why don’t the Democrats just up and admit it:  they want to keep spending at the heightened levels of the past three years.  Their candidate’s professed support in 2008 for a “net spending cut” was, to borrow an expression, “just words.”

Could this get more absurd?

QUEER OWS TO PROTEST HRC NYC GALA

QUEER OCCUPIERS DENOUNCE HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN FOR HONORING GOLDMAN SACHS & FAILING TO DEMAND FULL FEDERAL EQUALITY

New York, NY, February 1, 2012 – Queer/LGBTIQA2Z Occupy Wall Street, a caucus of the NYC based Occupy Wall Street movement, announced today that it will protest a Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Gala honoring Goldman Sachs on Saturday February 4, 2012 at the Waldorf Astoria.

In contrast to the $650 a plate Gala, the Queer/LGBTIQA2Z Caucus will host a “Guerrilla Potluck” on the sidewalk outside of the prestigious hotel at 50th Street & Park Avenue from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

The Queer Caucus: 1. Condemns HRC for honoring Goldman Sachs, 2. Calls upon HRC to adopt a strategy of Full Equality by 2014, and 3. Demands that HRC create a transparent process that includes the grassroots.

1. The Queer Caucus condemns HRC’s decision to honor Goldman Sachs in a time of financial collapse caused by their unethical business practices and greed, and deplores the use of our cause and suffering for corporate public relations. HRC honoring Goldman Sachs at this time reveals all one needs to know about the corporate LGBT lobby, and its disconnect from the 99% and the LGBT people it purports to represent.

2. The Queer Caucus calls upon HRC to embrace the grassroots demand for Full Federal Equality by 2014 the 50th Anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

After 60 years of struggle, there is still not a single federal non-discrimination law protecting LGBT Americans from discrimination. More incredibly, HRC, the corporate entity that controls our strategy, is not even seeking equal protection for our community.

To address this, the Queer Caucus calls on HRC to take The Pledge for Full LGBT Equality to seek and secure full non-discrimination protections based on sexual orientation and gender identify for all people.

The right to be protected from discrimination secures a core liberty interest. And it is the duty of government to protect LGBT Americans from the harm caused by discrimination as a matter of public welfare, law and conscience, as it has for decades for all other oppressed groups.

There’s more to this press release, but if I read it again….my IQ would drop.

First of all, there is NO “right to be protected from discrimination”.  Do left-wing Progressives even understand what a “right” is?  *eyeroll*

When John Aravosis and I agree on something….. you know it’s bad.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Heh heh heh.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

In his review of Wanted Women, “a new joint biography of two Muslim women [which] refuses to distinguish between an al-Qaida terrorist and a feminist intellectual“, historian Andrew Roberts provides one example of the author’s twisted sense of moral equivalence:

Writing of a speech that [Somali-born campaigner for Muslim women’s rights, Ayaan] Hirsi Ali was set to give, [author Deborah] Scroggins alleges that “some of the anti-gay Islamic attitudes she planned to criticize weren’t very different from those of some conservative Republicans.” Really? Show me a bill in which conservative Republicans have attempted to change the law so that homosexuals are hanged, as happened to three gay men in Iran this past September. Those innocents were only the most recent victims of that country’s blood lust against homosexuals.

Via Instapundit.  Sometimes it seems that some on the left harbor more animus against conservative Republicans than they do against radical Islamicists.

You gotta credit Donald Trump with one thing — the man sure knows how to get media attention.  Last night, we read that he was set to endorse Newt Gingrich.  Today, we learn he’s going to “endorse Mitt Romney for president“.

Jennifer Rubin fears this may hurt her candidate:

Trump is certain at some point to say outrageous and embarrasing things, which then become messes for the Romney team to clean up. He is all risk and no gain. After all there can’t be many actual voters who think: “Gosh I was going to vote for Newt Gingrich but now that Trump is going with Romney I’ll switch.”

Jim Geraghty calls this a “bad break” for Romney.  Ed Morrissey is a bit more sanguine, “The value for Romney isn’t so much that he’d get a boost from voters, but that he keeps Gingrich from getting one.”

This endorsement does plan into the narrative our friends in the legacy media are trying to create — of the battle for the Republican nomination as a kind of a circus, with the various candidates engaging in stunts rather than offering serious proposals to address our nation’s pressing problems.

I doubt this will help Romney in the short term, but may provide a long-term benefit for the former Massachusetts governor should he secure the GOP nomination as Morrissey puts it:

Assuming this is accurate and Trump endorses Romney, it would seem to signal (as some have said in the comments) that Trump won’t go for an independent bid in the fall.  That isn’t good news for Democrats, who would have to then hope that Ron Paul would give it a try, even though Paul would have almost none of the resources that Trump could use to make an impact.

And Ron Paul, as I will explain later, won’t be running on an independent — or Libertarian — ticket should he fail in his bid for the GOP nomination.

* (more…)

Wonder if this report will change the president’s mind about withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan:

A NATO report leaked to British news outlets found that Taliban leaders are confident they will regain power in Afghanistan after the U.S. withdraws, and said the insurgency has not been seriously eroded by the military efforts of America and its allies.

That report illustrates the hazards of negotiating with the Taliban while preparing to pull out of the country, according to military analysts and Afghan officials.

This is the type of story which should attract more news coverage than the verbal gaffe of a Republican politician.  Or a reality star’s impending endorsement.

Whenever Republican governors and legislators push right-to-work laws in their various jurisdictions, unions and their Democratic allies become almost apoplectic.  Despite doing their darnedest, Democrats in the Hoosier State couldn’t prevent the elected legislature from making Indiana

. . . the 23rd state to pass anti-union [sic] “right-to-work” legislation on Wednesday and the first in the nation’s manufacturing heartland, dealing a blow to organized labor by allowing workers to opt out of paying union dues.

Indiana’s Republican governor Mitch Daniels signed the legislation into law immediately after it was given final approval in the state Senate, making Indiana the first state to adopt such a measure since Oklahoma did so a decade ago.

Opponents of the legislation may call it “union-busting,” but all the legislation does is give employees to opt out of union representation:

Republican state Senator Carlin Yoder, the bill’s main sponsor, said it would not prevent anyone from joining a union.

“It is simply allowing those individuals to decide for themselves if they want to pay union dues or not,” Yoder said during the floor debate on Wednesday.

What’s wrong with giving workers the choice?  Maybe the Democrats are concerned about filling their campaign coffers.

Via Powerline

. . . where union bosses are the bad guys?

Just saw Super 8. Now, to be sure, I enjoyed the flick, was a fun, very well-made popcorn movie, but once again, the villains come from the armed forces. It’s not just the military; it seems that all too often businessmen, particularly oil tycoons, are villains in a great variety of films.

Wonder why that is?