Yet another bipartisan Social Security commission

Well, here’s my snap review of the State of the Union address: it was essentially a foreign policy speech with some small potato domestic proposals thrown in. But on the enormous issue of entitlement spending, everything President Bush said was 100% accurate:

We must also confront the larger challenge of mandatory spending, or entitlements. This year, the first of about 78 million Baby Boomers turn 60, including two of my Dad's favorite people - me, and President Bill Clinton. This milestone is more than a personal crisis - it is a national challenge. The retirement of the Baby Boom generation will put unprecedented strains on the Federal government. By 2030, spending for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid alone will be almost 60 percent of the entire Federal budget. And that will present future Congresses with impossible choices - staggering tax increases, immense deficits, or deep cuts in every category of spending.

This dire conclusion has been reported by public and private institutions alike and the Democrats are well aware of the looming crisis. Nevertheless, they actually celebrated* their obstruction to reform while offering no solutions of their own.

Congress did not act last year on my proposal to save Social Security [*Democrats cheer], yet the rising cost of entitlements is a problem that is not going away - and with every year we fail to act, the situation gets worse. So tonight, I ask you to join me in creating a commission to examine the full impact of Baby Boom retirements on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. This commission should include Members of Congress of both parties, and offer bipartisan answers. We need to put aside partisan politics, work together, and get this problem solved.

Half a loaf, I suppose. This is the umpteeth commission on entitlements and I’m skeptical it will succeed because of the continuing bad faith of the Democrats who are incapable of looking at policy without keeping a stray eye on political gain.

Extra – From Michael Graham on the Corner: “When Democrats began celebrating wildly the fact that they have done nothing to rescue Social Security, they handed Bush an opportunity to step away from the text and point out the partisan cynicism of celebrating failure. My comment would have been "Remember that applause 13 years from now when Social Security goes broke."” Exactly right.

Congratulations, Judge Justice Alito


Alito Sworn In as Nation's 110th Supreme Court Justice

Cindy Sheehan will be at the SOTU tonight – “A spokesman for Sheehan says she decided to accept the invitation two hours prior to the speech. The spokesman also said that Sheehan will be respectful and listen to the address because she is a guest of a member of congress.”

I don’t believe that for a nanosecond. If Sheehan actually does show up, and is allowed into the visitor’s gallery, it’s a sure bet she’ll make some kind of spectacle.

Extra – Lorie Byrd is torn: “But isn’t Cindy Sheehan a great representative of the modern day Democratic Party? Don’t we want to see her on television as often as possible? I have not yet made up my mind on this one.”

Follow-up – There she goes. There she goes again.

Kerry, you magnificent bastard

Deborah Orin looks back on the Alito “flop-buster” and wryly notes:

The joke in Republican circles now is that if John Kerry didn't exist, Karl Rove would have to invent him.

Republicans loved 2004 loser Kerry's flop of a filibuster against Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito because it had Democrats tearing each other's eyes out — over a fight they couldn't win.

Meanwhile, Ed Whelan lists the “Achievements of the filibuster.” I think this reason is the most potent:

By using the filibuster weapon against a nominee whom the public rightly recognizes to be superbly qualified, Kerry and Kennedy have undermined Democrats’ future use of that weapon.

True enough. What are the Democrats going to say when – for example – a spot opens up for Souter’s or Steven’s seat? They’ll unload all that tired overheated rhetoric again and, like the boy who cried “bigot!” nobody will believe them. Super-chillin'-time.

Rest in peace – Coretta Scott King passed away today at 78.

It’s all because of that evil, spawn-of-the-devil Fox News

You know the Left is getting desperate for scapegoats when they eat their own in the MSM. From Tom Bevan’s “The Left’s latest conspiracy”:

This should concern Democrats who are serious about winning elections. The mainstream media has been, and for the most part continues to be very sympathetic to Democratic causes and candidates. Latching on to some harebrained, up-is-down theory of GOP media manipulation to help explain Democrats’ recent failure at the polls is more than a sign of frustration, it’s a signal that some in the party are in deep denial and aren’t willing to face up to certain realities and deal with them accordingly.

Also, check out John Leo’s column “The Left Now Joins the Right In Attacking Mainstream Media” and John Hawkins’ thoughts on the chimerical right-wing media: “liberals believe a lot of dumb, obviously false things, so why should this be any different?” Heh.

Exxon rakes it in. Alaskan permafrost remains frosty.

Wait…wasn’t the argument against drilling in ANWR that it would be a “windfall” for the oil companies? From Fox News: “Exxon profit soars on high prices”

Exxon/Mobil posted record profits for any U.S. company on Monday — $10.71 billion for the fourth quarter and $36.13 billion for the year — as the world's biggest publicly traded oil company benefited from high oil and gas prices and demand for refined products.

What else besides “demand” drives up oil prices? Caribou.

Cletus alert - Do you think Britney Spears wakes up every single day and thinks: “What did I do?” and "Where's my ATM card?"

Let the good times roll!

Do you know how I’ve been warning everybody for years to save their money because Social Security is going to go belly-up and the government is heading towards bankruptcy paying for entitlements?

Yeah, well, I don’t get a lot of traffic here: “Savings rate at lowest level since 1933”: “Americans' personal savings rate dipped into negative territory in 2005, something that hasn't happened since the Great Depression. Consumers depleted their savings to finance the purchases of cars and other big-ticket items.” We love our credit cards! Gimme, gimme, gimme!

25 Senators say: “Elections don’t matter”

Or maybe they’re saying: “We’re trying to raise money”
Or “I’m running for President and pandering to the base”
Or “Show me where in the Constitution it says the President gets to pick judges”
Then “I meant a Republican President”

Whatever. By noon tomorrow, it’ll be over. This might be a good time to take stock at the Coalition of the Chillin’. My entry on the “extraordinary circumstances” threshold meshes perfectly with this whiner on Daily Kos:

CNN is reporting the "Gang of 14" will meet today, presumably to declare the possibility of a filibuster of the Alito nomination dead. That the Gang is getting together to say so is, we must assume, a declaration that the now-infamous "extraordinary circumstances" bar has not been cleared.

Righty-o, boyo. (HT: Decision08)

Houston, we need a jury

It’s going to be a chore picking a jury for the trial of Enron executives Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. From Slate’s Today’s Papers:

The NYT takes the most reader-friendly approach and describes how difficult it will be to find Houston jurors who don't have an opinion—especially a bad one—about Enron. A jury consultant for the defense pointed out that of "among 280 questionnaires, 'greed' appeared 272 times and 'crook' appeared 55 times." Only 18 respondents didn't have anything negative to say about Enron.

Whew - (pulling on tie) - rough crowd!

Black ops putting the DNC in the red – Memo to Karl Rove: agent double-O-zero is dangerously close to blowing his cover.

In which I disagree with the National Review

This post by Wendy Long sends the wrong message: “Senators who vote for cloture today but will vote against Judge Alito tomorrow are silly to think the cloture vote will be a fig leaf for them to hide from their constituents.”

Perhaps Democratic Senators will face the wrath of the KosKids, but at least a “yes on cloture”/”no on confirmation” vote has a whiff of principle. That is, a Senator who votes against Judge Alito can maintain that he/she also believed the nominee deserved an up-or-down vote and that the majority should rule, at least on judicial nominees. It’s the Schumer types who believe that the Supreme Court should be a political appointment that are perverting the long-standing tradition of judicial nominations.

Hooray for Hamas

So says the Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby who writes that when the Palestinians voted for the terrorist group, they erased all pretensions about their views on the Mideast conflict. From “Hamas victory is good news”:

Like Hamas, Fatah -- the PLO faction Abbas and Arafat co-founded 45 years ago -- advocates Israel's destruction in its basic charter. Like Hamas, Fatah has an ''armed wing" -- the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades -- that is guilty of horrific terror attacks. Fatah's emblem shows crossed rifles against a map of ''Palestine" that depicts all of Israel; on the Hamas emblem, the map is the same, but the crossed weapons are swords. The only important difference between the ousted Fatah party and the incoming Hamas leadership is that for PR purposes the former sometimes pretended to accept Israel's right to exist, while the latter is openly and unabashedly committed to Israel's elimination.

Yet that is why the Hamas landslide is good news. It will now be much harder to wish away the unpleasant fact that after a dozen years of PLO misrule, Palestinian society is deeply dysfunctional, steeped in hatred and violence. All but the willfully blind can now see that the Palestinian Authority is no ''partner in peace." Until it is decisively defeated and thoroughly detoxified, the Palestinian people will never enjoy the blessings of liberty and decent governance. Ironically, the ascendancy of Hamas may have brought that day a little closer.

I guess the issue is whether it’s preferable to tolerate a low simmer or brace for a large explosion. The times they are a’changin.

Quote of the day – It’s from Joan Vennochi in “Tilting at Alito”: “Kerry's enthusiasm for a filibuster is harder to fathom, except as more of the same from a perpetually tone-deaf politician.”

When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail

New Jersey’s governor Jon Corzine is considering his options to close a huge budget shortfall. I know you’ll be shocked at the Democrat’s proposed solutions. From the Philadelphia Inquirer: “Corzine advisers calling for taxes”:

Expand the sales tax to include clothes and online purchases. Tax 401(k) retirement accounts. Raise the gas tax. Consider a temporary increase in the state income tax.

With New Jersey's finances "perilously close to ruin," Gov. Corzine's budget advisers have recommended these unpopular solutions and more to fill what they estimate to be a $6 billion hole in the state's budget.

For years, I’ve been warning that the only way the federal government can close the massive shortfall caused by entitlement spending would be to tap into the pool of money stored in millions of private 401(k) accounts. But I never imagined that a state governor would have the temerity to propose such a confiscatory cash grab.

I hope he tries it. As Alexander McClure correctly predicts, such an unpopular move would pave the way to restore Republican leadership in Trenton.

Toren, back me up here!

Temper, temper – Have you ever been at work and seen somebody with a paycheck problem? It’s not pretty. From Oxblog comes this factoid of the day: “In the next week, the PA must cough up salaries to over 150,000 employees, but its treasury is empty. The fault is partially Fateh's: in the leadup to the election, it added thousands to the PA payroll in an attempt to win votes.” That can't be good.

Howard Dean does it again

DNC chairman Howard Dean was on Fox News Sunday this morning and said that Democrats who may have provided service for Jack Abramoff or his clients would be “in trouble.” Whoops:

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said Sunday that Democrats who took money from Indian tribes represented by Jack Abramoff and who did something on behalf of those tribes have "a big problem."

Dean made the statement apparently unaware that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has reportedly done exactly that.

Oh, I know, it wasn’t directly from Abramoff and the $66,000 sent to Reid’s political group was all in quarters or something.

Extra – The lowdown on direct and indirect money from Q&O.

Sunday morning talkshow lineup – President Bush is going to be on Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer. Joe Biden is back from his trip to Palestine; he’ll be on Late Edition, undoubtedly blaming Bush for Hamas. Finally, for pure comedy, Howard Dean will be on Fox News Sunday.

Alcohol was the culprit - Funny/crazy wedding stories on Fark. Most of them fall into the “wedding from hell” category. Voting is enabled.