The Foundation

“Here comes the orator! With his flood of words, and his drop of reason.” –Benjamin Franklin

Editorial Exegesis

“With his speech Wednesday, President Obama will try to claim leadership in the fight against the debt tsunami. But he’s already had his chance to lead – many of them, in fact – and he blew it. According to White House aide David Plouffe, Obama’s speech will ‘lay out his approach … in terms of the scale of debt reduction he thinks the country needs so we can grow economically and win the future.’ That’s a bit odd, since just two months ago Obama claimed that his 2012 budget plan ‘lays out a path for how we can pay down these debts and free the American economy from their burden.’ Is he now admitting what everyone else quickly figured out – that his last budget was a complete sham? It isn’t just that the president hasn’t been leading the fight for fiscal responsibility. It’s that he’s been consistently misleading the country about what he’s doing. For more than two years, he has constantly talked about cutting spending and deficits while doing nothing to achieve those goals. … The topper came this February, when Obama produced a budget that he claimed (and the media mindlessly repeated) significantly cut federal spending. It didn’t. In fact, Obama proposed spending $252 billion more in 2012 than the feds spent in 2010 – at the height of the stimulus spending spree. … Obama might think that, with a nice new speech, he can wipe this sorry slate clean and redraw himself as a responsible and reasonable fiscal hawk. Republicans, and the public at large, would all do well not to take him at his word.” –Investor’s Business Daily

Upright

“Now that Obama is acknowledging the need for budget cuts and the role of entitlements in the deficit/debt crisis, he’s stuck. The White House has to offer a plan that actually cuts entitlement spending enough to close the deficit gap, or they have to raise revenues. The question isn’t whether a machete gets used, it’s a question of where they plan to use the machete – on entitlement spending, or on taxpayers? Now that Obama has engaged on the issue, those are the only two choices he has.” –blogger Ed Morrissey

“From the moment they passed their first budget, Republican insiders decided to run the contest as a numbers game, and this may have been a classic miscalculation. Republicans promised $100 billion in cuts even before Rep. John Boehner was handed the speaker’s gavel, but it has never been clear where this $100 billion number originated. Nevertheless, it became the standard for judging success. Unless Republicans change their spending narrative away from numbers, they will lose the larger budget debate: only a focus on themes and values will win the hearts and minds of Americans. Unless the GOP can touch independent Americans who are fearful we are moving towards national bankruptcy, they will lose the most important political cause of our generation.” –Pajamas Media editor Richard Pollock

“President Obama has dedicated his time in office to soaking up applause and shifting blame. Last year, when Democrats owned the White House, the House and the Senate, Congress didn’t even bother passing a budget. Obama didn’t seem to mind. But when Republicans put together a stopgap measure to fund the military and prevent a government shutdown, Obama promised to veto it. Obama called the measure ‘a distraction from the real work that would bring us closer to a reasonable compromise for funding the remainder of fiscal year 2011.’ There must have been a lot of distractions last year.” –columnist Debra Saunders

“America, 2011: A man gets driven in a motorcade to sneer at a man who has to drive himself to work. A guy who has never generated a dime of wealth, never had to make payroll, never worked at any job other than his own tireless self-promotion literally cannot comprehend that out there, beyond the far fringes of the motorcade outriders, are people who drive a long distance to jobs whose economic viability is greatly diminished when getting there costs twice as much as the buck-eighty-per-gallon it cost back at the dawn of the Hopeychangey Era. So what? Your fault. Should have gone to Columbia and Harvard and become a community organizer.” –columnist Mark Steyn

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Insight

“There are in fact four very significant stumbling blocks in the way of grasping the truth, which hinder every man however learned, and scarcely allow anyone to win a clear title to wisdom, namely, the example of weak and unworthy authority, longstanding custom, the feeling of the ignorant crowd, and the hiding of our own ignorance while making a display of our apparent knowledge.” –English philosopher Roger Bacon (1220-1292)

“Nothing is going to be stopped anywhere that there is any money in.” –American humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935)

The Demo-gogues

Such leadership: “Both sides had to make tough decisions and give ground on issues that were important to them. But beginning to live within our means is the only way to protect those investments that will help America compete for new jobs. … Some of the cuts we agreed to will be painful. I would not have made these cuts in better circumstances.” –Barack Obama, taking credit for the spending cuts but also acknowledging that he didn’t really want them

“What we have here is a flea, wagging a tail, wagging a dog. The flea are [sic] the minority of House Republicans who are hard right, the tail is the House Republican caucus, and the dog is the government. My experience is they lose politically, but much more importantly, they do what is wrong for the country substantively.” –Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) (At least he got one thing right – government is the dog!)

Elections do matter: “To my Republican friends: take back your party. So that it doesn’t matter so much who wins the election, because we have shared values about the education of our children, the growth of our economy, how we defend our country, our security and civil liberties, how we respect our seniors. … [E]lections shouldn’t matter as much as they do.” –House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who owes her current position to the last election

Class warfare: “We don’t hear anybody saying – and the president has not been saying what he should have been saying – which is the country is not broke. We’re simply not taxing the big corporations enough. … We’re not taxing the millionaires and billionaires enough.” –Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)

Nothing to fear but fear itself. And Republicans: “The Republicans are trying to … destroy the whole, wide world.” –Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA)

Fundamental change can be hard: “I just miss – I miss being anonymous. I miss Saturday morning, rolling out of bed, not shaving, getting into my car with my girls, driving to the supermarket, squeezing the fruit, getting my car washed, taking walks. I can’t take a walk.” –Barack Obama (We would love to give him the opportunity to take a walk, if you know what we mean.)

Dezinformatsia

Using class warfare to warn about class warfare: “I just don’t see why with top earners doing better than ever, why they can’t be a part of this equation [in addressing the budget crisis]. … [I]f you looked at the New York Times [Sunday], and you saw the top 30 earners, and how much money they are making all over again, including some of the people who drove us into the ditch – all white men, by the way, just one woman – and I didn’t see any African-Americans – I think we have a problem that we need to address as a society. … [W]e need to balance things out [or] you’re going to have class warfare on its worst level.” –MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski

“The rich get off like scoundrels. … [Paul Ryan is] not doing anything in terms of raising taxes.” –Fox News’ Juan Williams

Speaking truth to power: “Mr. Obama not only helped avoid the first government shutdown in 15 years, but also pressured Republicans to remove provisions intended to restrict financing for Planned Parenthood and to limit environmental regulations. In doing so, he assumed the role of a level-headed referee, rising above the squabbling to take ownership of a solution rather than a problem. ‘He’s the undisputed grownup in the group,’ said Jim Jordan, a Democratic strategist who has managed Senate and presidential campaigns across the country.” –New York Times’ Jeff Zeleny

Non Compos Mentis: “Will the Congress ever adopt a combination of some modification or cost-cutting, which we know has to come into place, somehow squeeze the costs of Medicare – medical costs, and a tax increase for people who can afford it, as a – as a more democratic, a more fair way to deal with this problem? Will they get that through and signed by the president, or is that just a posture? … So, the plan is the president says, look, let them offer a big slash in Medicare, which is going to kill half the people who watch this show.” –MSNBC’s Chris Matthews (Out of five or six people, half really isn’t all that many.)

Newspulper Headlines:

We Doubt Those Low-Flow Models Would Be Up to the Task: “Rand Paul Uses Toilets to Argue Energy Department ‘Could Be Gotten Rid Of’” –TheHill.com

How Are They Going to Find Someone Else With the Same Name?: “Glenn Beck Is Leaving Fox’s ‘Glenn Beck’” –CNN.com

We Blame Global Warming: “Mix of Weather to Continue in Region” –Reno (NV) Gazette-Journal

Questions Nobody Is Asking: “Why Do Sea Turtles Need Solar Panels?” –San Francisco Chronicle website

News You Can Use: “Don’t Let Your iPhone See You Naked” –Forbes.com

Bottom Story of the Day: “Dems Banking on Obama Re-Election” –Boston Herald

(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto)

Village Idiots

Talking points: “The only real solution is to cut spending and raise taxes. Until Republicans recognize that, they really aren’t being serious, they’re just being politically provocative.” –former DNC Chief Howard Dean

Over the top: “I hope the president decides he has to take a stand, and the sooner the better. Last December he caved in to Republican demands that the Bush tax cuts be extended to wealthier Americans for two more years, at a cost of more than $60 billion. That was only the beginning. … [Friday] night he gave away more than half the sandwich – $39 billion less than was budgeted for 2010, $79 billion less than he originally requested. Non-defense discretionary spending – basically, everything from roads and bridges to schools and innumerable programs for the poor – has been slashed. The right-wing bullies are emboldened. They will hold the nation hostage again and again.” –former Clintonista Robert Reich

Bad advice: “The country could, actually, absorb some more debt in order to get the economy going.” –billionaire leftist financier George Soros

It’s the spending, stupid: “[W]hen you come into office and you want to put your mark on things … you want to be able to spend. And what’s crippled Obama’s administration, as far as I’m concerned, is the financial crisis and it’s prevented him from doing any new spending.” –actor Alec Baldwin

Short Cuts

“While it’s true that Muammar Gaddafi is a brutal tyrant, that’s par for the course in Arab and Muslim nations. In fact, the only thing I’ve noticed that sets him apart from the norm is that he appears to be a transvestite. So, why the heck are we looking to depose him? For offending the international dress code?” –columnist Burt Prelutsky

“Republicans want to ‘end Medicare as we know it.’ Cue cat shriek! This ‘end Medicare as we know it’ line – and many like it (‘end Medicaid as we know it,’ ‘end carbon-based life as we know it,’ etc.) – is the lead-off talking point for the entire Democratic Party in response to Rep. Paul Ryan’s just-released budget proposal, ‘The Path to Prosperity.’ Here’s the thing: Of course he wants to end Medicare as we know it. You know why? Because the way we know it right now, the program is barreling toward insolvency. Personally, if I were on a plane that had one engine out and was belching smoke, I would certainly hope somebody with some judgment and competence might calmly remove his oxygen mask long enough to suggest ‘ending this flight as we know it.’” –columnist Jonah Goldberg

“President Obama said Thursday that green energy will be worth the expense. People can’t believe their utility bills lately. With the price of water and power it’s more cost-effective to go to Wal-Mart and buy a replacement shirt for a dollar than it is to do laundry.” –comedian Argus Hamilton

“A lot of people wonder what a government shutdown would be like. I think a lot more people wonder what a government running properly would be like.” –comedian Jay Leno