They Just Don’t Get It
by Ben Shapiro

On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate rejected a ban on earmarks, the addenda to bills that allow congressmen and senators to steer federal cash toward pet projects in their states and districts. The vote wasn’t even close. The ban was defeated 56-39.

“We have put in place the most dramatic reform of this appropriations process since I’ve served in Congress,” whined Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Majority Whip and Appropriations Committee member. “There is full disclosure in my office of every single request for an appropriation.”

Sorry to burst your bubble, Dick, but we’re not merely interested in finding out who is stealing from the public till — we’re interested in stopping them from stealing. Transparency doesn’t equate to responsibility. The O.J. Simpson trial was transparent. It was still a miscarriage of justice and a debacle of the highest order.

We want a fiscally responsible government. That, in fact, was the point of the last election: we’re mad as hell that our elected officials treat our tax dollars like toilet paper. They ask us if they can “borrow” our money/toilet paper; we know they’re full of crap, and that once they’ve used it, they have no intention of returning it. When they run out of money/toilet paper, they simply print new rolls of it, making money and toilet paper roughly equivalent. By the time our government is done, we might as well substitute one for the other.

We know that it isn’t tough to cut spending. This week alone, for example, the federally-funded Smithsonian Institution spent cash stocking its National Portrait Gallery with pictures of Ellen DeGeneres clutching her naked bosom, penises, and nude brothers making out — all of this in order to show America how gays and lesbians “struggle for justice … [attempting to] claim their full inheritance in America’s promise of equality, inclusion and social dignity.”

Note to the federal government: the unemployment rate is 9.6 percent. Perhaps that money might be better spent actually helping those who “struggle for justice” by giving it back to the people who create jobs for those in need.

Also this week, the Senate approved $1.25 billion in funding for black farmers who were supposedly discriminated against by the Department of Agriculture. Only one problem: The vast majority of claimants to that cash are fraudulent. There are 18,000 black farmers in the United States. Over 94,000 supposed black farmers have filed claims against the Department of Agriculture. Those farmers who were discriminated against were already recipients of a $1 billion settlement distributed in years past. Why the sudden need to spend an additional $1.25 billion for non-farming farmers? Just another racial payoff by liberals to a key constituency.

We’re sick of it. In fact, we’re so sick of it that Americans want to cut spending rather than raising taxes by a 2 to 1 margin, according to a recent AP-CNBC poll. Fifty-six percent of Americans think that our current level of debt is unsustainable. And nearly 80 percent of Americans want to cut government services to bring that debt under control.

This puts the Democratic Party and its squishy Republican allies in mortal danger. For decades, they’ve gotten elected based on simple bribery: they pay off supporters, while their supporters return the favor with their votes and campaign bucks. That system, however, is breaking down. While our European counterparts hold mass marches to protest cuts to social services, Americans protest costly, unsustainable and counterproductive increases in them like Obamacare. While our European friends grouse that they’ll have to retire a few years later and work a few hours more, we complain that too much of our money is being taken away from us in the first place.

President Obama doesn’t get it. That’s because he doesn’t understand the American people as a whole. Yes, during good times, we like our social services — we make foolish decisions and elect liberals who promise to use our wealth in “fair” fashion. Then, when liberals inevitably screw things up, we wise up to our mistakes and recognize that wealth creation requires the dynamism of freedom rather than the stability of redistributionism.

Americans know that the debt crisis won’t be solved overnight. We know that it will take sustained cuts, and that those cuts will hurt at the beginning. We’re fat and bloated, and it will take a regimen of diet and exercise to get us back into fighting shape. But we’re done being fattened for the slaughter by politicians who care only about their personal power.

Cue “Eye of the Tiger.” America is ready to fight once again. And if our politicians stand in our way, we’ll give them the same treatment their unemployed colleagues received on Nov. 2.

How Republicans Will Win the Senate
by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

It gets tiresome hearing the conventional wisdom say that the Democrats will likely keep control of the Senate. Far from it.

To gain control, Republicans must win 10 new seats. An analysis of the latest polling data suggests that Republicans currently hold the lead in eight pick-up states: Pennsylvania, Colorado, Wisconsin, Washington state, Arkansas, Delaware, North Dakota and Indiana. In a ninth, Illinois, the candidates are tied, and in the 10th — Nevada — Harry Reid is ahead by only one point. And, for insurance, Barbara Boxer in California and Kirsten Gillibrand in New York are both below 50 percent of the vote. In Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal is only at 50 percent. That’s a potential pickup of 13 seats and a likely gain of at least 10 (enough for a majority).

Any incumbent who is running at less than 50 percent of the vote is in serious trouble. It means that a majority of the voters have decided not to vote for him or her. (Asked if you are likely to be married to the same person next year, a vote of “undecided” does not bode well for your marriage.)

So here are the numbers:

Aug. 27 polls

Nevada: Reid (D) 45, Sharon Angle (R) 44 (Mason Dixon)

With Reid this far under 50 percent, Angle is likely to win

Aug. 26 polls

Florida (currently Republican): Marco Rubio (R) 40, Charlie Crist (I) 30, Kendrick Meek (D) 21 (Rasmussen)

So much for Crist!

Pennsylvania: Pat Toomey 40 (R), Joe Sestak (D) 31 (Franklin-Marshall)

Aug. 25 polls

Colorado: Ken Buck (R) 49, Michael Bennet (D): 40 (Reuters)

California: Boxer (D) 49, Carly Fiorina (R) 44 (Rasmussen) Boxer has gained a bit, but still in trouble

Louisiana (currently Republican): David Vitter (R) 51m Charlie Melancon (D) 41 (PPP)

Wisconsin: Ron Johnson (R) 47, Russ Feingold (D) 46 (Rasmussen)

Illinois: Alexi Giannoulias (D) 45, Mark Kirk (R) 45 (Rasmussen)

Aug. 24 polls

Missouri (currently Republican): Roy Blunt 54, Robin Carnahan 41 (Rasmussen)

Aug. 21 polls

Washington state: Dino Rossi (R) 52, Patty Murray (D) 45 (SurveyUSA)

Aug. 20 polls

Arkansas: John Boozeman (R) 65, Blanche Lincoln (D) 27 (Rasmussen) This is not a typo!

The most likely results are that Republicans win the eight seats in which they now lead and also take Illinois and Nevada for a gain of 10 seats and control. They also have a good shot in California and possible upsets in New York and Connecticut.

The Taranto Principle Vindicated Again
by Emmett Tyrrell

The exposure of Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal as a hoaxster boasting of a nonexistent record of service in the Vietnam War is a splendid example of what is known as the Taranto Principle. Someday the Taranto Principle will be taught in all the journalism schools, assuming one or two survive the present detumescence of journalism. Formulated by the inimitable Wall Street Journal editorialist James Taranto, the principle posits that when the liberal mainstream press indulges a liberal politician’s deceits or fails to hold the politician accountable for his misbehavior, it encourages the politician to ascend to a higher level of misbehavior.

Thus, for years Sen. Jean-Francois Kerry was wont to boast of his exploits in the Vietnam War. His sympathizers in the press never bothered to remind him or to remind the citizenry that Kerry had embellished his military record and that — worse! — upon returning from Vietnam, he cast his lot with the rising anti-war movement. As an opponent of the war, he even was emboldened to appear before Congress and mendaciously testify that his comrades had “personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, (and) razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan.”

This garbagespiel was televised nationally, and he should have known that tapes of it were readily available in 2004, when he ran for president. Nonetheless, rather than stress less controversial aspects of his years of public life, he, thanks to the liberal press’s indulgence of his exaggerated claims to heroism, made the risky choice of running as a veteran of the Vietnam War. That angered those who had served with him, and their revelations about his service sank his candidacy. The Taranto Principle is vindicated.

It has been vindicated again with the revelations about Blumenthal. For years, he has been fawned over by the liberal press. Pari passu, with the passage of time, he has gone from being a young man who sought five military deferments during the Vietnam War to claiming repeatedly and falsely that he actually served in the war. On the way to making those false claims, he did indeed enlist in the Marine Reserve, but he never served in the war.

In a speech in 2008, The New York Times reports, he said, “We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam.” At another point in 2008, the Times reports, he informed an audience that he “served during the Vietnam era,” concluding that he remembered “the taunts, the insults, sometimes even physical abuse.” As recently as a few weeks ago, he publicly recalled being spit upon when he “returned from Vietnam.”

Now his campaign for the United States Senate is in grave jeopardy. Perhaps it all could have been avoided if years back the press had taken a look at his claims, reported them and chastened him from making the increasingly bold assertions of nonsense.

As an addendum to the Taranto Principle, let me add an observation. Increasing numbers of candidates for public office, particularly at the national level, seem given to fantasy. They are encouraged to tell dramatic stories about themselves. The press loves it. The politicians are goaded by the Taranto Principle, and it is not long before those stories become total fantasies. Blumenthal is obviously one of those fantasists. Had he not been tripped up this week, he might have soon been telling the electorate about his Medal of Honor. Possibly, if he somehow manages to win the Democratic primary, he still will, and then, when the stakes are so high and the possibility exists that a Republican might beat him, will the Times raise doubts about his Medal of Honor? Taranto will be watching.

The Democrats’ Massachusetts Meltdown
by Michelle Malkin

By early afternoon on Tuesday, several hours before the polls closed on the special Senate election in Massachusetts, the Democrats had already thrown in the towel and started throwing punches. At each other. There was more finger-pointing among Bay State and Beltway Democrats than in a “Three Stooges” marathon. More backstabbing than all of the “Real Housewives” combined.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs confessed that President Obama was “frustrated” and “not pleased” by the closeness of the race after his salvation mission to Boston over the weekend. Operatives lashed out at Democratic candidate Martha Coakley’s listless, gaffetastic campaign. Capitol Hill buzzed with rumors that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was blaming the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and liberal pollster Celinda Lake for ignoring electoral alarm bells.

In response, Coakley’s team leaked a memo blasting national Democratic brethren for failing to aid them “until too late.” Another Democratic Party official counter-jabbed to Politico that Coakley had “been involved in the worst case of political malpractice in memory.”

On the sidelines, Democratic Rep. Barney Frank took to the airwaves to call for sabotaging Senate rules and ending the filibuster in anticipation of losing the magic 60th vote for the government health care takeover plan. Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer trotted out the old blame-the-GOP card — incoherently arguing that GOP candidate Scott Brown’s surge among conservatives, independents and once-reliable rank-and-file Democratic voters in the deep-blue state of Massachusetts was a backlash against Republican obstructionism.

“I think what the public is angry about is they see, first of all, an opposition for opposition’s sake,” Hoyer told reporters in D.C. If Democrats continue to cling to that outer-space nonsense, the shock they will suffer in the November 2010 elections will make January 19 look like a spa day.

As I write, the polls are still open. But win, lose or draw, Brown’s surge is an unmistakable victory for Tea Party activism. Online fundraising over the past few weeks buoyed the campaign and put Brown in the national spotlight. Buzz over a possible “Massachusetts Miracle” persuaded national Republican organizations to belatedly transfer funds for phone and mail get-out-the-vote operations targeted at independent voters.

There was nothing particularly “clever” about Brown’s election strategy, as White House senior adviser David Axelrod put it, or “radical,” as hysterical Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry put it. Brown ran a simple mainstream Republican campaign aided by nationwide grassroots support. The Tea Party movement once derided as “tiny” and “fringe” reportedly filled Brown’s coffers with small donations totaling $1 million a day for the last week, according to TheDailyCaller.com. He didn’t have to solicit their support. He earned it by reflecting the mood of Massachusetts voters who have turned against the Demcare scheme and its backroom deals.

An Army National Guardsman, Brown also drew sharp contrasts between his support for a robust, proactive national security stance and Coakley’s law enforcement approach endorsing civilian trials on American soil for jihadi suspects. Her cluelessness about the presence of the Taliban in Afghanistan didn’t help her soft-on-terrorism image.

In short, Brown ran on core issues of fiscal responsibility, limited government and a strong national defense, while appealing to a broader swath of voters by emphasizing integrity, independence and a willingness to stand up to machine politics. After a year’s worth of Democratic stimulus giveaways to cronies, reneging on transparency pledges, and Cash for (fill-in-the-blank) bailouts, voters have had enough of the enablers and water-carriers.

Brown channeled the energies of taxpayers of all stripes who are disgusted and angry — yes, ANGRY! — with the culture of corruption in Washington. That is how Brown has struck common ground with his insurgent center-right-indie coalition: by stepping up to oppose the Dems’ plans to rig the game and undermine representative government, instead of sneering at “Teabaggers.”

While a self-satisfied and entitled Coakley vacationed or partied with D.C. lobbyists, Brown drove around in his GM truck, shaking hands in the cold outside Fenway Park — earning the scorn of Coakley and Obama, who mocked Brown’s truck six times at the Boston rally this weekend to the delight of blue-nosed Democrats.

Rep. Frank griped at the Coakley-Obama rally that Coakley “let it become a personality contest and that was a mistake.” The supreme irony in hearing Beltway Democrats snipe at Coakley over her effete, out-of-touch attitude is that their commander-in-chief at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. suffers the same fatal flaws. Exactly one year after Obama was inaugurated, the Massachusetts meltdown mirrors the White House meltdown. For the sake of their political survival, Democrats need to stop promising change and start promising self-correction.

Dems’ Lock on Senate Is Mixed Blessing for Obama
by Michael Barone

Year One of the Obama administration ends Wednesday. Another era may come to an end the day before, when Massachusetts voters — or at least those of them motivated enough to vote — choose a senator to fill the three years remaining in the term of Edward Kennedy, who held the seat for 47 years.

If Republican Scott Brown wins that election — and at this writing he seems to have an excellent chance to do so — that election will mean the end, after just seven months, of the Democrats’ 60-seat supermajority in the Senate.

That era began in July when Al Franken was seated after protracted litigation over the result in an election in which both he and incumbent Republican Norm Coleman got an underwhelming 42 percent of the votes. And Franken was the 60th Democrat only because in the preceding April Arlen Specter, in his 29th year in the Senate and facing defeat in the Republican primary, switched parties for the second time in his political career.

And if you want to go back a little further, Democrats owed their 60 seats to the victories in 2006 of Jon Tester by 3,562 votes in Montana and Jim Webb by 9,329 votes in Virginia. In the 435 House races each year, close races tend to be split evenly between the parties. But in the 30-some Senate races in each cycle, a very small number of votes can make a huge difference in the balance of power in that chamber.

So the Democrats’ 60-vote supermajority was the result of a series of happy (or unhappy, depending on your point of view) accidents. The same was true of the 55-45 majority Republicans held just three years ago.

The very real possibility that the Democrats may lose their 60th seat — and in Massachusetts, the only state George McGovern carried in 1972 — suggests that it was perhaps not such a happy accident for them in the end.

Barack Obama got 62 percent of the vote in Massachusetts in 2008, his eighth best in any state. His percentage was lower in 42 other states. With the Massachusetts seat in jeopardy, no Senate seat in those 42 states can be considered utterly safe for Democrats in today’s climate of opinion.

That climate might have been different if Democrats had never gotten that 60th seat. In that case, they would have had to bargain with Republicans to pass a health care bill and might even have proceeded on the genuine bipartisan approach that Obama promised in his campaign.

We might have been spared the spectacle of the Louisiana purchase ($300 million for Mary Landrieu’s vote) and the Cornhusker hustle (Ben Nelson got Nebraska exempted from Medicaid increases). Or at least the onus of such spectacles would fall on Republicans as well as Democrats.

But with 60 seats, the Democratic leadership took the partisan path and the Obama White House supinely went along. They ignored the abundant evidence that their government-directed health care bills were increasingly opposed by most voters.

The 60th seat was a temptation, and like Oscar Wilde, the Democrats were able to resist anything except temptation.

Barack Obama has acknowledged that the Democrats’ health care legislation is unpopular. He says the public will come to like it when it goes into effect (although some taxes kick in before the supposed benefits). Other Democrats say that once they pass it they can then persuade voters it’s a good idea, as if they haven’t been trying to do that for most of a year and conspicuously failing.

But their health care bill is not going to be passed if Brown is elected. Some Democrats are talking about delaying his swearing in and passing a bill in the meantime. Doing that in open defiance of the clearly expressed views of (Massachusetts!) voters would touch off a political firestorm unlike any we’ve seen since Richard Nixon fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Democrats up for re-election like Evan Bayh and Blanche Lincoln should understand that and not go along.

Obama was supposed to be a great persuader. It turns out that’s only half true. He did persuade most of us that he should be president. But in Year One, he has failed to persuade most of us to support his major proposals. He’s even moved us in the other direction. That’s clear, whatever happens in Massachusetts.

Calling Off the Boston Tea Party
by Burt Prelutsky

I’m sure that most of us have heard the inspiring story of the Boston Tea Party. At least when I was in school, they were still relating the tale of a handful of American patriots, including Samuel Adams and Paul Revere, who, weary of taxation without representation, dumped large amounts of English tea into Boston Harbor. Well, if I could include time travel among my many talents, I just might go back to 1773 and try to persuade them to reconsider. “Boys,” I’d say to them, “I understand your frustration. But you have no idea what this is going to lead to down the road. I know that King George is as crazy as a loon, but a couple of hundred years from now, your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren are going to have to answer to Ted Kennedy and John Kerry. Compared to them, King George looks as wise as King Solomon and as congenial as Ben Franklin.”

I mean, when you start adding up what it costs the typical taxpayer to keep councilmen, aldermen, mayors, assemblymen, state senators, governors, congressmen, U.S. senators and the president — not to mention their legions of secretaries, assistants, consultants, pollsters and assorted mistresses — clothed, housed, fed and pensioned, the colonists were getting off dirt cheap. I’d gladly pay a few extra cents for a cup of tea if it meant that these thousands of freeloaders would be forced to leave their cushy fiefdoms and go find honest work.

The bottom line is that taxation without representation is bad, but taxation with representation is worse.

Speaking of politicians, in a letter to the editor, a reader of the New York Times grumbled: “It’s amazing that Andrew Cuomo, who owes his whole career to his dad, may not get the Senate seat of Hillary Rodham Clinton (who owes her whole career to her husband) because David Paterson (who owes his whole career to his dad) may give it to Caroline Kennedy (who owes her whole career to her dad). You would think a state as large as New York could find someone who deserves something on his or her own.”

This merely points out how far America has come in recreating a monarchy of our own. But instead of our kings and queens relying on the European rule of progenitor to inherit their crowns, they have chosen to adopt the Hollywood version, better known as nepotism.

As I sit here, nobody is certain who is going to be the senator from Minnesota. That hasn’t prevented Al Franken from claiming victory with a margin of 225 votes, in spite of the fact that in at least 25 precincts, there were more ballots than voters!

I am of course hoping that Norm Coleman manages to convince the court that it would be embarrassing, to say the least, to have an election decided by ballots miraculously turning up in car trunks and cellars cast by voters whose last known address was the cemetery. At the very least, Chicago would likely sue over copyright infringement.

On the other hand, there’s that devilish little rascal lurking inside me that would like to imagine those other Democratic senators having to put up with the surly, ignorant, arrogant, ill-tempered, unfunny Sen. Franken for the next six years.

Gateway Pundit found this great interview showcasing the sharp verbal acuity of the future US Senator of the state of New York, Caroline Kennedy.

NYers can sleep soundly – I am sure they will be represented quite well, you know?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W85XJADEHxU

Caroline Kennedy for senator?
by William Rusher

President-elect Obama’s designation of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., as his intended secretary of state creates a vacancy in her Senate seat, which New York Gov. David A. Paterson must now fill by an appointment that will last through 2010. Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy, has indicated that she aspires to the job.

In a way, her aspiration is natural enough. Her father held a Senate seat, and so (later) did her uncle, the late Robert Kennedy (in New York). New Yorkers are certainly accustomed to having a Kennedy in a high-level position. But that hardly answers the question whether Ms. Kennedy is qualified for it.

She has never held an elected political position in her life, and therefore has no record by which her positions on critical issues, or her innate political skills, can be judged. She is a serious candidate for the position solely by virtue of her membership in the Kennedy family, which has been providing the country with political leaders for a long time. And that raises the question whether such membership is, in and of itself, a sufficient qualification.

America has a long history of drawing leaders from prominent political families. From the Adamses through the Roosevelts, and on down to the Kennedys and the Bushes, being a member of such a family has always been a useful stepping-stone to political office.

It isn’t hard to see why. For one thing, we tend — usually rightly — to assume that being a member of a family whose politics are already well known gives us some insight into how the member in question will behave politically, if elected.

For another — and probably more important — a political candidate doesn’t exist in a vacuum. He is almost always the product of a group of people (call it a “cabal,” if you wish) who have been backing various allies of the candidate, most definitely including members of his family, over the years, and who are therefore inclined in his favor from the start. If you have long been a friend and ally of a particular senator, you are going to be understandably predisposed in favor of his wife, or son, or some other relative or crony, if a time comes when he must be replaced.

But does it follow that such a predisposition is justified if the proposed successor has no personal record by which his or her qualifications can be judged? On all the evidence, Caroline Kennedy is a charming lady, but what do we know about how she is likely to behave as a U.S. senator? That is why a record as a member of the House of Representatives, or at least as a holder of some other public office, is such a useful datum in judging the qualifications of a person to serve in the Senate.

Saxby Chambliss wins Georgia runoff
By JOSH KRAUSHAAR

Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss won a resounding victory over Democrat Jim Martin in the Georgia Senate runoff Tuesday, capturing a second term and ending Democratic hopes of gaining a 60-seat filibuster-proof Senate majority.

Chambliss defeated Martin by 16 percentage points, 58 to 42 percent, with 93 percent of precincts reporting. Turnout was moderate across the state– estimated to be around 30-35 percent – a development that unexpectedly played to Chambliss’ advantage.

In the battle to get out the vote, Republicans won decisively. GOP turnout in the party’s metropolitan Atlanta suburban strongholds surged for Chambliss, while African-American turnout dropped off significantly from the levels attained in the November election.

The runoff was necessitated after Chambliss came up about 9,000 votes short of the 50 percent threshold necessary to win the seat outright on Election Night.

In his victory speech, Chambliss said his re-election was a triumph of conservative principles.

“This race has been nationalized and people all around the world had their eyes on Georgia. And you delivered tonight a strong message to the world that conservative Georgia values matter,” he said.