Clipping blog

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• Clearing the Browser Tabs – The President Votes Present Thursday Edition
• My Partial Mea Culpa on the Budget Deal
• The Delivery Presents – Jim Pethokoukis on the Budget and A Delivery Fundraiser

Clearing the Browser Tabs – The President Votes Present Thursday Edition Posted: 14 Apr 2011 03:10 AM PDT   Today, the President unveiled what we can charitably call his budget plan. Actually, it wasn’t so much as plan as it was a wicked partisan attack on Paul Ryan’s budget plan that is long on taxes, short on spending cuts, entirely without any mention of entitlements, and packed full of talking points that would have been right at home in a Jimmy Carter speech in 1974. Ryan got his shots in on the President later in the day with a statement that treated his speech with exactly the right mixture of boredom and disdain. Moe Lane was less polite and I suspect that the more the voters see how badly the President whiffed on easily the most important issue he’ll face all year, the more they’ll realize what a horrible mistake they made in November of 2008. I’ll probably get to a more detailed analysis tomorrow. Keith Hennessey’s post, wherein he combed through the speech and plucked out the few substantial nuggets is a pretty good starting point. And now, links! The left is re-writing the rules as they go along. At some point, ordinary citizens will put an end to it. The President got his budgetary marching orders from the campaign contributors and organized communities. Expect him to obey fully. He knows who butters his bread. This is an interesting interview with Joel Surnow, producer of the oddly-controversial miniseries on the Kennedy family. When the President has lost one of the Politico’s chief hacks, can a larger loss be far behind? Michelle Malkin still needs your help. If you live in or around the Seattle area, remain vigilant. If you know someone who lives there, pass the word along. Here is an amazing video of last month’s Northern Lights. I think you’ll enjoy it. Begun the Schadenfreude Wars have! Transformers dancing to “Thriller”? How can that be anything but awesome?

My Partial Mea Culpa on the Budget Deal Posted: 13 Apr 2011 04:08 PM PDT Those of you who follow me on Twitter know that I’ve defended John Boehner’s budget deal. It looks, today, like Boehner played a lot of silly games to get cuts that, while still cuts, won’t perform as advertised. As such, I’m going to have to eat a little bit of crow. I’m not the only one, either. Philip Klein sat down to a plate-full already today. When I gave my initial positive assessment of the deal, I saw the argument as being about whether Democrats would agree to defunding Planned Parenthood and ObamaCare and defanging the EPA, while achieving $61 billion in spending cuts. I didn’t see Republicans as being able to force all of those changes when they only controlled one chamber of Congress. I thought other conservatives were being unrealistic about the possibility that the GOP would win the public relations battle over a shutdown and get President Obama and Democrats to cave. And I thought it was more important to move the discussion to Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget, which actually addresses the long-term drivers of debt, our entitlements. I still believe all of those things, but as it turns out, I should have been a lot more skeptical about the numbers being thrown around at a point when details were scarce. Unfortunately, it now appears that the new Republican majority has done what it attacked Democrats for doing when they controlled the House. They negotiated a back room deal, didn’t release the details until 2 a.m., and the more we have of the details, the more we find out that the actual deal is filled with accounting gimmicks. Not a good way to earn back the trust of conservatives who grew disillusioned with the GOP the last time they controlled the House. Okay, so maybe it’ll be more than a little crow. That said, I still can’t say the people who vociferously opposed the deal early Saturday morning were right. Their reasons are as wrong today as they were then. There was (and there still is, by the way) no way in the world that the House Republicans were going to crowbar better than a halfway deal from President Obama or Harry Reid. That magic $100 billion was never going to happen, the backup $61 billion was a long shot, and defunding Planned Parenthood would never be part of a deal with this President. Further, the GOP could not have won the public opinion war had the government shut down for more than a couple days. Those in the “shut it down and let God sort it out” camp still can’t give me a plan that would have gotten us from a government shutdown to anything resembling sufficient forward momentum to get the far more important Ryan budget plan through both Congress and the President. Until they do, I can’t take them very seriously. However, that does mean that John Boehner is going to have to work much harder to get any atta-boys from me next time. Not only am I going to need him to show all his work next time, but I’m going to need him to drive a far harder bargain than I’m sure he wants to drive. It’s only fair, though. He snookered me and I’m not in a particularly forgiving mood. Oh, and I’m going to need a couple aspirin for the headache I got from that double facepalm. Thanks a pantload, John Boehner.

The Delivery Presents – Jim Pethokoukis on the Budget and A Delivery Fundraiser Posted: 13 Apr 2011 07:45 AM PDT Can I brag a bit here? I had James Pethokoukis on Episode 88 last night and I’m just a little bit proud that I could get someone that engaging, accomplished, and flat-out smart on the show for a whole half-hour. I told the folks in the chatoom (available only during the live show, so you need to be part of that) that it’s not always easy for me to land guests on the show because we record relatively late on a weeknight. Many of the politically-oriented people I’d like to get are on the East Coast and usually start their days ridiculously early and they simply can’t spend 30 minutes or more with me at 9:30 on a Friday night. So I’m grateful when folks like Jim and many, many of the other fantastic guests I’ve had on The Delivery not only come to the show, but bring their very best effort when they do. Jim and I spent our time boiling the coming budget debate down to the essential issues. Yes, I know economics and budgeting can be tedious, but our conversation was anything but and I think you’ll know more about what’s going on when you’re done with the show. I devoted part of the second half to yesterday’s important space-flight anniversaries and why a manned space program is critical to our national health and our imaginations. The mini-rant occurred to me not long ago when it occurred to me that it’s been a very long time since I heard a child say they wanted to be an astronaut when they grow up. That needs to change. Before, that, though, an experiment. From today, to the end of the month, I”m running the First Annual Experimental Birthday Fundraising Drive Experiment. The goal is pretty simple. I’d like to make a couple technical upgrades to my blogging and podcasting operation and I’m asking for your help to do that. I figure if I can get 100 people to donate $10 apiece between today and the end of the month, I’ll pretty much have what I need to get the tech goodies I want. Since my birthday is April 28th and the 7th anniversary of The Sundries Shack is April 26th, I figured this month would be as good a time as any to do it. You can either donate here or at The Sundries Shack. If you’d rather not use PayPal, drop me a DM on Twitter or an e-mail and we’ll figure something out. If you want to donate more than $10, I certainly won’t stop you, by the way, but I figure it shouldn’t inconvenience folks much to drop a sawbuck in the tip jar. This ends on April 31, so if you have it to give, I’d like it! The Delivery - Episode 88 UPDATE: Oh, I completely forgot to mention this. There will be a Friday show on April 15! It’ll kick off at 8 PM. Awesomeness will abound, so make room in your schedule. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

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