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Krauthammer at his most ironic.

Voices around the world, from Europe to America to Libya, are calling for U.S. intervention to help bring down Moammar Gaddafi. Yet for bringing down Saddam Hussein, the United States has been denounced variously for aggression, deception, arrogance and imperialism.

A strange moral inversion, considering that Hussein’s evil was an order of magnitude beyond Gaddafi’s. Gaddafi is a capricious killer; Hussein was systematic. Gaddafi was too unstable and crazy to begin to match the Baathist apparatus: a comprehensive national system of terror, torture and mass murder, gassing entire villages to create what author Kanan Makiya called a “Republic of Fear.”

Moreover, that systemized brutality made Hussein immovable in a way that Gaddafi is not. Barely armed Libyans have already seized half the country on their own. Yet in Iraq, there was no chance of putting an end to the regime without the terrible swift sword (it took all of three weeks) of the United States.

No matter the hypocritical double standard. Now that revolutions are sweeping the Middle East and everyone is a convert to George W. Bush’s freedom agenda, it’s not just Iraq that has slid into the memory hole. Also forgotten is the once proudly proclaimed “realism” of Years One and Two of President Obama’s foreign policy – the “smart power” antidote to Bush’s alleged misty-eyed idealism. …

IBD editors remind us of the value of our stand in Iraq.

Italian Prime Minister Sergio Berlusconi, in a September 2003 interview, said Gadhafi told him: “I will do whatever the United States wants, because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid.”

Mark Helprin on our missing warships.

… We have the smallest navy in almost a century, declining in the past 50 years to 286 from 1,000 principal combatants. Apologists may cite typical postwar diminutions, but the ongoing 17% reduction from 1998 to the present applies to a navy that unlike its wartime predecessors was not previously built up. These are reductions upon reductions. Nor can there be comfort in the fact that modern ships are more capable, for so are the ships of potential opponents. And even if the capacity of a whole navy could be packed into a small number of super ships, they could be in only a limited number of places at a time, and the loss of just a few of them would be catastrophic.

The overall effect of recent erosions is illustrated by the fact that 60 ships were commonly underway in America’s seaward approaches in 1998, but today—despite opportunities for the infiltration of terrorists, the potential of weapons of mass destruction, and the ability of rogue nations to sea-launch intermediate and short-range ballistic missiles—there are only 20.

As China’s navy rises and ours declines, not that far in the future the trajectories will cross. …

Evelyn Gordon explains why Israelis might be apprehensive.

Max finds it incomprehensible that many Israelis are fearful, even unhappy, over the changes sweeping our region. So as an Israeli, let me explain.

Over the past two decades, Israelis have lived through numerous regional changes, each of which, we were confidently assured — by both our own leaders and the West — would benefit us greatly. And in every single case, the change only made things worse. …

David Goldman continues to be concerned about Egypt.

… In 2009 Egypt imported $56 billion of goods but exported only $29 billion. The difference was made up by tourism, other services, foreign aid and borrowing. Even if we presume that Egypt can increase its foreign aid from other powers anxious to avoid instability, the Saudis, for example, it is hard to see how the numbers will add up. With 40 million people living on less than $2 a day, an economic disruption implies not just misery, but life-threatening misery.

Stability seems the least likely outcome. And that means that risk perceptions should keep rising.

Thomas Sowell points out the problems maintaining a government of limited powers.

… Today, we take universal literacy for granted. But literacy has not been universal, across all segments of the American population during all of the 20th century. Illiteracy was the norm in Albania as recently as the 1920s and in India in the second half of the 20th century.

Bare literacy is just one of the things needed to make democracy viable. Without a sense of responsible citizenship, voters can elect leaders who are not merely incompetent or corrupt, but even leaders with contempt for the Constitutional limitations on government power that preserve the people’s freedom.

We already have such a leader in the White House– and a succession of such leaders may demonstrate that the viability of freedom and democracy can by no means be taken for granted here.

Michael Barone addresses the possible reasons people vote on principles not pocketbooks.

It’s a question that puzzles most liberals and bothers some conservatives. Why are so many modest-income white voters rejecting the Obama Democrats’ policies of economic redistribution and embracing the small-government policies of the Tea Party movement?

It’s not supposed to work out that way, say the political scientists and New Deal historians. Politics is supposed to be about who gets how much when, and people with modest incomes should be eager to take as much from the rich as they can get. …

From The Corner we learn Eric Holder’s slip was showing.

As a litigation attorney I learned that, no matter how well prepared a witness may be, he will often make revealing admissions if he becomes flustered or angry. That happened yesterday as Attorney General Eric Holder testified before a House Commerce subcommittee chaired by Rep. Frank Wolf.  …

John Stossel discusses his stutter.

Because “The King’s Speech,” a movie about King George’s effort to overcome stuttering, won the Oscar for best picture, reporters have been interviewing me about my stuttering.

Some ask why they don’t hear me stutter on TV. Others wonder why a stutterer is on TV in the first place. Here’s my explanation. Since I was a child, my stuttering has come and gone. Sometimes I was sure the problem had disappeared — then it would return with such a vengeance I’d fear saying anything. I’d stay silent in class. I avoided parties. When I was old enough to date, sometimes I’d telephone a girl and try to speak, but nothing would come out. I’d just hang up. Now, because of caller ID, stutterers can’t do that.

I never planned on a career in TV. …

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David Warren issues a revolutionary warning.

… Yet here we come up against a hard fact of life, beyond individuals; one which we must try to understand when looking forward -not only in Libya, but perhaps throughout the realm of Islam. Ruthlessness works. And in almost every revolution in history, the most ruthless faction eventually triumphed.

Chance, or what looks like chance, can also come into this. In their several ways, Robespierre of France, Hitler of Germany, and Pol Pot of Cambodia, overplayed their hands. Lenin, Stalin and Mao did not: each bequeathed a regime of monstrous tyranny to his successors.

While it is impossible to predict the course of history in narrative detail, that is not what “learning from history” is about. History seldom repeats itself, in any melodic sense, but repeats itself constantly in rhythm and themes. We should grasp, for instance, that the American Revolution was almost unique in history, for ending so well. We should also grasp why. It was, from beginning to end, under the leadership of highly civilized men, governed by a conception of liberty that was restrained and mature. George Washington commanded, in his monarchical person, the moral authority to stop the cycle of reprisals by which revolutions descend into “eating their own.” Nelson Mandela achieved something similar in South Africa. …

George Will goes after high speed rail.

… To progressives, the best thing about railroads is that people riding them are not in automobiles, which are subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends. Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they—unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted—are masters of their fates. The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make.

Time was, the progressive cry was “Workers of the world unite!” or “Power to the people!” Now it is less resonant: “All aboard!

Rich Lowry quotes Chris Christie on his chance to run.

‘ Yes. Believe me, I’ve been interested in politics my whole life. I see the opportunity. But I just don’t believe that’s why you run. Like I said at AEI, I have people calling me and saying to me, “Let me explain to you how you could win.” And I’m like, “You’re barking up the wrong tree. I already know I could win.” That’s not the issue. The issue is not me sitting here and saying, “Geez, it might be too hard. I don’t think I can win.” I see the opportunity both at the primary level and at the general election level. I see the opportunity. 

But I’ve got to believe I’m ready to be president, and I don’t. And I think that that’s the basis you have to make that decision. I think when you have people who make the decision just based upon seeing the opportunity you have a much greater likelihood that you’re going to have a president who is not ready. And then we all suffer from that. Even if you’re a conservative, if your conservative president is not ready, you’re not going to be good anyway because you’re going to get rolled all over the place in that town.

I just see how much better I get at this job every day, and I do, and I learn things. If not every day, at least every week. And my wife and I were actually talking about this last night. We had dinner together with the family after the [New Jersey budget] speech and she was saying how much better she thought I was yesterday than I had been before in my speech. She said, “You are getting better.” ‘ ..

Mark Steyn on the unions.

… Big Unions fund Big Government. The union slices off two per cent of the workers’ pay and sluices it to the Democratic Party, which uses it to grow government, which also grows unions, which thereby grows the number of two-per-cent contributions, which thereby grows the Democratic Party, which thereby grows government… Repeat until bankruptcy. Or bailout.

In his pithiest maxim, John Maynard Keynes, the most influential economist of the 20th century social-democratic state and the patron saint of “stimulus”, offered a characteristically offhand dismissal of any obligation to the future: “In the long run we are all dead.” The Greek and Wisconsin bullies are Keynesians to a man: The mob is demanding the right to carry on suspending reality until they’re all dead. After that, who cares?

If the new class war is between “public servants” and the rest of us, some countries no longer have enough of “the rest of us” even to put up a fight. That’s why you can’t wait to fight in the last ditch. The longer you wait to stand up against the “public service” unions, the less your chance of winning.

Jennifer Rubin writes on the administration’s attitude towards unions.

… Obama’s comments were not the only indication of the degree to which this administration is beholden to and biased in favor of Big Labor. Byron York of the Washington Examiner reports on the cheerleading by the secretary of labor, Hilda Solis:

‘ “The fight is on!” Solis told a cheering crowd at the Democratic National Committee’s winter meeting over the weekend in Washington. Giving her support to “our brothers and sisters in public employee unions,” Solis pledged aid to unionized workers who are “under assault” in Wisconsin and elsewhere. ‘

This is appalling. She is not the secretary of unions. She is the secretary of a department that is, theoretically, supposed to be a neutral umpire between labor and management and promote employment. No wonder her outburst made her subordinates nervous: …

Joel Kotkin mines census results for a peek into the future. 

With the release of results for over 20 states, the 2010 Census has provided some strong indicators as to the real evolution of the country’s demography. In short, they reveal that Americans are continuing to disperse, becoming more ethnically diverse and leaning toward to what might be called “opportunity” regions.

Below is a summary of the most significant findings to date, followed by an assessment of what this all might mean for the coming decade.

Point One: America is becoming more suburban.

Point Two: America is becoming more diverse, and the diversity is spreading.

Point Three: The Shift to “Opportunity Regions”

Pajamas Media catches the latest BS from Krugman.

Paul Krugman’s latest column is yet another waste of NYT editorial real estate. He take to the the Paper of Reactionary Zeal to blame the Lone Star State’s drop-out rate on its budgetary frugality.

“And in low-tax, low-spending Texas, the kids are not all right. The high school graduation rate, at just 61.3 percent, puts Texas 43rd out of 50 in state rankings.”

Slight problem here, namely, the cause and effect relationship that Krugman implies. If low state spending leads to high state dropout rates, as Krugman suggests, then riddle me this: Why does California spend more per pupil, yet have a higher dropout rate? And why does New York spend even more per pupil than California and Texas, and also have a higher drop-out rate? And why does the District of Columbia spend almost twice as much money per pupil as Texas, and yet have a much higher dropout rate than Texas? …

Speaking of NY Times junk, John Podhoretz spots the same old rant inside the new-look cover.

… I haven’t read the magazine piece, by the often brilliant novelist Jennifer Egan, so it may be brutally honest about all this. But no matter what the text says, the cover image is consciously designed to make Berenson look like the Madonna with child — the child to whom she gave birth in prison in 2008. His father is also a convicted member of the Tupac Amaru group.

The Times has a repugnant history of this sort of thing; many people remember its glowing story about Bill Ayers, the Weather Underground domestic terrorist, which appeared, to the paper’s eternal shame, on September 11, 2001. It’s almost 10 years later. Evidently, the statute of limitations on journalistic embarrassments ran out, and it was time for the Times to snag another one.

And John Steele Gordon finds the fraud in a NY Times poll.

NBC News in Tulsa is worried about the New Madrid Fault and a repeat of the monster quakes of the winter of 1811-12.

… According to the U.S. Geological Survey , “The area of strong shaking associated with these shocks is two to three times as large as that of the 1964 Alaska earthquake and 10 times as large as that of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.”

The New Madrid quakes were reportedly felt by people in an area ranging from the Gulf of Mexico all the way to Canada. They toppled chimneys in Maine, rang church bells in Boston, cracked sidewalks in Washington, D.C.

They caused parts of the mighty Mississippi River to run backwards, and created sand blows so massive they can still be seen from the air to this day.

The amount of damage that a series of quakes that size would cause in the modern southeastern United States can only be imagined….

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David Horovitz of The Jerusalem Post interviews Bernard Lewis.

Bernard Lewis, the renowned Islamic scholar, believes that at the root of the protests sweeping across our region is the Arab peoples’ widespread sense of injustice. “The sort of authoritarian, even dictatorial regimes, that rule most of the countries in the modern Islamic Middle East, are a modern creation,” he notes. “The pre-modern regimes were much more open, much more tolerant.”

But Lewis regards a dash toward Western-style elections, far from representing a solution to the region’s difficulties, as constituting “a dangerous aggravation” of the problem, and fears that radical Islamic movements would be best placed to exploit so misguided a move. A much better course, he says, would be to encourage the gradual development of local, self-governing institutions, in accordance with the Islamic tradition of “consultation.”

Lewis also believes that it was no coincidence that the current unrest erupted first in Tunisia, the one Arab country, he notes, where women play a significant part in public life. The role of women in determining the future of the Arab world, he says, will be crucial.

Once described as the most influential post-war historian of Islam and the Middle East, Lewis, 94, set out his thinking on the current Middle East ferment in a conversation with me before an invited audience at the home of the US Ambassador to Israel, James Cunningham, a few days ago. Excerpts:
Does the current wave of protest in the region indicate that, in fact, the Arab masses do want democracy? And is that what we’re going to see unfolding now?

The Arab masses certainly want change. And they want improvement. But when you say do they want democracy, that’s a more difficult question to answer. What does “democracy” mean? It’s a word that’s used with very different meanings, even in different parts of the Western world. And it’s a political concept that has no history, no record whatever in the Arab, Islamic world. …

… And so to the Israel question. Israel, like everybody else, was taken completely by surprise. How should Israel be responding to these protests?

Watch carefully, keep silent, make the necessary preparations.

And reach out. Reach out. This is a real possibility nowadays. There are increasing numbers of people in the Arab world who look with, I would even say, with wonderment at what they see in Israel, at the functioning of a free and open society. I read an article quite recently by a Palestinian Arab whom I will not endanger by naming, in which he said that “as things stand in the world at the present time, the best hope that an Arab has for his future is as a second class citizen of a Jewish state.” A rather extraordinary statement coming from an Arab spokesman. But if you think about it, he’s not far wrong. The alternative, being in an Arab state, is very much worse. They certainly do better as second class citizens of the Jewish state. There’s a growing realization of that. People would speak much more openly about that if it were safe to do so, which it obviously isn’t.

There are two things which I think are helpful towards a better understanding between the Arabs and Israel. One of them is the well-known one, of the perception of a greater danger, which I mentioned before. Sadat turned to Israel because he saw that Egypt was becoming a Russian colony. The same thing has happened again on a number of occasions. Now they see Israel as a barrier against the Iranian threat.

The other one, which is less easy to define but in the long run is probably more important, is [regarding Israel] as a model of democratic government. A model of a free and open society with rights for women – an increasingly important point, especially in the perception of women.

In both of these respects I think that there are some hopeful signs for the future.

John Steele Gordon spots some foolishness in the Daily Beast.

Ezra Klein, whistling bravely past the graveyard, has a piece in the Daily Beast today in which he argues that the fight over public unions in Wisconsin is

“the best thing to happen to the union movement in recent memory. Give the man some credit: In seven days, Walker did what unions have been trying and failing to do for decades. He united the famously fractious movement, reknit its emotional connection with allies ranging from students to national Democratic leaders, and brought the decline of organized labor to the forefront of the national agenda. The question is: Will it matter?”

The answer, I’m confident, is no. As Klein points out, union membership as a percentage of the workforce has been declining steadily for decades (it peaked about 1953). As manufacturing jobs continue to decline, thanks to globalization, automation, and other forces more profound than the union movement ever was, it will continue to decline until it is essentially one with the Greenback Party and the Wobblies. And for the same reason: they were an answer to yesterday’s problems, not today’s.

Klein’s arguments are remarkably out-of-date, but then, of course, so is liberalism. …

Writing in Forbes, Henry I. Miller says there should be warning labels on NY Times articles.

The New York Times was once known as the “newspaper of record.” Now, its reputation is for bias and inaccuracy. And not only about politics. Its commentary and even “news” articles about the genetic engineering of plants are so distorted and perverse that one wonders whether there is an antagonistic corporate policy on the subject.

The paper’s environmental correspondent Keith Schneider, science/business reporter Andrew Pollack, Sunday magazine writer Michael Pollan, food writer Marian Burros and columnist Denise Caruso are all serial offenders. The latest Times’ blast at one of the most stunning technological successes of the last quarter century came on Feb. 15 from Mark Bittman, who does regular commentaries “on food and all things related.” His ignorance is breathtaking.

Bittman manages to regurgitate all the shopworn myths that surround the genetic engineering of crops: That it’s unneeded, unwanted, unregulated, unproven and unsafe. As Bill Kahrl, the legendary former opinion editor of the Sacramento Bee, said to me about the piece, “Is there any sin – of misinformation, illogic, deception, bully-ragging, incitement or hysterical paranoia – that Bittman does not commit here? It’s like a case study in everything wrong.” …

John Podhoretz clears up the history of part of the conservative canon.

The clearest example of the bizarrely naive quality of hermetic liberal provincialism was attributed to the New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael almost 40 years ago, and has been discussed in right-wing circles ever since. It went something like this: “I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him.” Several years ago, I went on an admittedly desultory search for the original quote and was unable to locate it. …

Hot Air has some interesting Ted Kennedy gossip.

No doubt Judicial Watch’s release of old FBI files on Ted Kennedy will get a lot of attention on his partying ways, but that might miss the larger point.   It took Judicial Watch three tries to get the FBI to release its unredacted files on Kennedy from a 1961 trip to Chile, Colombia, and other Latin America nations, which the FBI fought on grounds of national security.  When the redactions were finally removed, however, it seems clear that the FBI acted to protect Kennedy’s reputation rather than American security: …

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Writing in The Daily, the new offering for the iPad, Shikha Dalmia points out many of the strengths of our culture.

Americans, hit first by outsourcing and then a recession, are becoming deeply pessimistic about their country’s ability to maintain its economic leadership. America’s Aristophanes, Jon Stewart, commented during a recent interview with the author of “India Calling,” Anand Giridhardas: “The American dream is still alive — it’s just alive in India.” Likewise, 20 percent of Americans in a December National Journal poll believed the U.S. economy was no longer the strongest. Nearly half picked China instead.

But there are at least five reasons why neither India nor China will knock America off its economic perch anytime soon, at least not by the only measure that matters: Offering the best life to the most people. …

… 5. America doesn’t have a culture of hype. An important reason U.S. gloom-and-doom is unjustified is that there is so much gloom-and-doom. Indians and Chinese, by contrast, have drunk their own Kool-Aid. Their moribund economies have barely kicked into action and they are entertaining dreams of being the next economic superpowers. That bespeaks a profound megalomania. There is not a culture of hope in these countries, as Giridhardas told Stewart, but a culture of hype.

By contrast, when America’s government responds ineffectually to the recession, Americans go into panic mode. Grassroots movements like the Tea Party emerge to rein in the government. Pay Pal founder Peter Theil has even given $850,000 to the Seasteading Institute to establish new countries on the sea to experiment with government. This might be wacky, but it puts an outside limit on how out-of-whack Americans will let their institutions get before they start fixing them.

This, ultimately, is the biggest reason to believe that the American dream is and will stay alive — in America.

Christopher Hitchens savages the administration over its slow response to Mid-East events.

… For weeks, the administration dithered over Egypt and calibrated its actions to the lowest and slowest common denominators, on the grounds that it was difficult to deal with a rancid old friend and ally who had outlived his usefulness. But then it became the turn of Muammar Qaddafi—an all-round stinking nuisance and moreover a long-term enemy—and the dithering began all over again. Until Wednesday Feb. 23, when the president made a few anodyne remarks that condemned “violence” in general but failed to cite Qaddafi in particular—every important statesman and stateswoman in the world had been heard from, with the exception of Obama. And his silence was hardly worth breaking. Echoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who had managed a few words of her own, he stressed only that the need was for a unanimous international opinion, as if in the absence of complete unity nothing could be done, or even attempted. This would hand an automatic veto to any of Qaddafi’s remaining allies. It also underscored the impression that the opinion of the United States was no more worth hearing than that of, say, Switzerland. Secretary Clinton was then dispatched to no other destination than Geneva, where she will meet with the U.N. Human Rights Council—an absurd body that is already hopelessly tainted with Qaddafi’s membership. … 

“Mega dittos,” from Peter Wehner.

… On a more fundamental level, what the Obama administration did was create quite a dangerous precedent. It has now signaled to the most malevolent regimes in the world that the way to delay (or perhaps even avoid) American condemnation, let alone American action, is to threaten the lives of American citizens. The message sent to, and surely the message received by, despots around the world is this: If you want to neuter America, threaten to harm its citizens. Mr. Obama will bend like red-hot steel pulled from a furnace.

There were, of course, other options available to the president, including informing Mr. Qaddafi through the appropriate channels that a terrible fate would await him and his pack of jackals if a single American was harmed (see here). The president did very nearly the opposite. He showed weakness, irresolution, fear. I wonder if people have focused on just how troubling this action, and the mindset it manifests, really is. …

Wehner has more to say about the president’s manifest shortcomings.

President Obama today said, “I don’t think it does anybody any good when public employees are denigrated or vilified or their rights are infringed upon.”

I wonder if the president, who loves to portray himself as the high-minded arbiter of what is and what is not appropriate in American political discourse, might say something — anything — about the denigration and vilification of the governor of Wisconsin, who has been compared to Mubarak, Mussolini, bin Laden, and Hitler. There is nothing comparable being said about public employees. …

Robert Samuelson asks if organized labor is obsolete.

… It’s hard for us to recall now how dominant unions were immediately after World War II. By the mid-1950s, unions represented 36 percent of private-sector workers. Most major industries were organized: railroads, coal, steel, autos, telephones, tires, airlines, trucking. Strikes in crucial industries constantly threatened to hobble the entire economy, though in practice, companies stockpiled steel and coal in advance of contract expirations, and Congress cut short railroad strikes.

Even this understates unions’ influence. Most small businesses weren’t worth organizing, and large, nonunion firms were so fearful of being organized that many paralleled union demands in their own pay and personnel policies. Wages rose annually, reflecting inflation plus a bit more; fringe benefits (pensions, health insurance, vacations) expanded; seniority prevailed in wages to minimize arbitrary favoritism.

Labor’s fall has been stunning. In 2010, unions represented 6.9 percent of private-sector workers. That’s lower than the 12 percent in 1929, before passage of the 1935 Wagner Act – the National Labor Relations Act – which gave workers the right to organize and required employers to recognize unions that won a secret ballot.

Many theories explain this collapse: greater management pushback and intimidation; business expansion in anti-union regions, the South and West; more white-collar office workers and fewer blue-collar factory workers. All these theories contain some truth, but unions’ downfall mainly reflected their inability to adapt to change. …

Ed Morrissey explains one of the ways the Wisconsin teacher’s union was raping the taxpayers - union (WEA) supplied medical insurance.

… When (Gov)Walker says that the PEU reforms will allow counties, cities, and school districts more latitude in budget cuts, this is what he means.  The protesters in Madison have avoided this particular point, perhaps because it exposes one of the real stakes in the fight.  The WEA, perhaps the most powerful union in the state, makes a fortune off of selling its insurance at inflated prices to districts around the state.  Milton, for instance, saved $382 per month per employee when it got an arbitrator to agree to end the WEA Trust concession.  Spread that around to the thousands of teachers in Wisconsin, and taxpayers can get a pretty good idea what PEU reform might mean in reducing stressed budgets at every level of government in Wisconsin.

The Wall Street Journal noticed this yesterday as well:

“Under the current collective- bargaining agreements, the school district pays the entire premium for medical and vision benefits, and over half the cost of dental coverage. These plans are extremely expensive.

This is partly because of Wisconsin’s unique arrangement under which the teachers union is the sponsor of the group health-insurance plans. Not surprisingly, benefits are generous. The district’s contributions for health insurance of active employees total 38.8% of wages. For private-sector workers nationwide, the average is 10.7%.”

No doubt the WEA gets a good deal for its members, but it’s getting a better deal for itself. …

Mark McKinnon in The Daily Beast says events in WI will not go well for the unions.

The manufactured Madison, Wis., mob is not the movement the White House was hoping for. Both may find themselves at the wrong end of the populist pitchfork. While I generally defend collective bargaining and private-sector unions (lots of airline pilots in my family), it is the abuse by public unions and their bosses that pushes centrists like me to the GOP. It is the right and duty of citizens to petition their government. The Tea Party and Republicans seek to limit government growth to protect their pocketbooks. Public-union bosses want to increase the cost of government to protect their racket. …

Christopher Caldwell adds more fuel to the fire.

During the holiday break this winter, a woman in my neighbourhood was at the supermarket with her son when they ran into the son’s teacher. “See you Monday,” the mother said. The teacher gaily informed her she would not be back until mid-month, as she had planned a vacation in Central America. Teachers used to content themselves with the months off they enjoy in summers and at holidays, but they have got used to more. One can understand why American public employees ardently defend their unions, and the benefits they win. But one can also understand why, in a time of straitened budgets, union-negotiated contracts might be among the first places to make savings.

A fierce budget battle has been running for more than a week in Madison, Wisconsin. It goes far beyond salaries and benefits, to touch on the deeper question of whether collective bargaining has any place in government employment. Governor Scott Walker, a Republican elected last autumn with support from the Tea Party movement, believes it does not. His “budget repair” bill not only requires state employees to contribute to their pension and health plans. It would also end collective bargaining for benefits. Democratic senators, lacking the votes to defeat the bill, fled the state, denying the quorum necessary to bring it to a vote.

Mr Walker is not making a mountain out of a molehill. Wisconsin has a $137m budget gap to fill this year and a $3.6bn deficit over the next two. The big year-on-year leap reflects, in part, the expiration of federal stimulus spending, much of which was used to avoid laying off government workers. Citizens of other advanced countries sometimes make the mistake of assuming that the US has a skeletal bureaucracy. That is wrong. Once you include state, county and city employees, it is a formidable workforce and an expensive one. State employees account for up to $6,000bn in coming pension costs. Wisconsin’s difficulties are milder than those elsewhere, which means that similar clashes are arising in other states, especially where Republicans rule. …

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Caroline Glick tells us how well our MidEast policy is working.

… The shift in the regional power balance following Mubarak’s fall has caused Fatah leaders to view their ties to the US as a strategic liability. If they wish to survive, they must cut a deal with Hamas. And to convince Hamas to cut a deal, they need to abandon the US.

And so they have. Fatah’s first significant move to part company with Washington came with its relentless bid to force a vote on a resolution condemning Israeli construction in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria at the UN Security Council. In an attempt to avert a vote on the resolution that the US public expected him to veto, Obama spent fifty minutes on the phone with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas begging him to set the resolution aside. Obama promised to take unprecedented steps against Israel in return for Abbas’s agreement to stand down. But Abbas rejected his appeal.

Not only did Abbas defy the wishes of the most pro-Palestinian president ever to occupy the White House, Abbas told the whole world about how he defied Obama.

Abbas’s humiliation of Obama was only the first volley in the Fatah leader’s campaign against the US. Abbas, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and their PA ministers have sent paid demonstrators into the street to protest against America. They announced a boycott of American diplomats and journalists. They have called for a boycott of American products. They have scheduled a “Day of Rage,” against America for Friday after mosque prayers. …

Jennifer Rubin reacts to Chris Christie’s appearance on Face the Nation.

… Far from overbearing, he seems like the tough football coach — he’s not going to take any guff, but he’s devoted to his guys (in this case, the ordinary citizen).

And those who think he doesn’t show restraint should think again. Is Sarah Palin ready for president? “She’s got to make that judgment herself.” Should Michelle Obama be dinged for her anti-obesity campaign? “Well, I think it’s unnecessary. I think it’s a really good goal to encourage kids to eat better. You know, I’ve — I’ve struggled with my weight for 30 years and it’s a struggle. And if a kid can avoid that in his adult years or her adult years, more power to them.” The man knows when not to throw a punch.

He, of course, insists he isn’t running for president. But here’s the deal (a Christie-ism): if he racks up another big win in the budget fights, the GOP field continues to shrink and disappoint and the economy is still in the doldrums, don’t you think Christie might just decide to take the ball and run with it? And with his reputation and name identification, he could make that decision in November. By then, the Republican electorate should be desperate for a candidate who can not only beat Obama but take Washington by storm.

NY Times Sunday Magazine has a “fair and balanced” portrait of Chris Christie. Maybe Robert Murdoch bought the Times.

Like a stand-up comedian working out-of-the-way clubs, Chris Christie travels the townships and boroughs of New Jersey­, places like Hackettstown and Raritan and Scotch Plains, sharpening his riffs about the state’s public employees, whom he largely blames for plunging New Jersey into a fiscal death spiral. In one well-worn routine, for instance, the governor reminds his audiences that, until he passed a recent law that changed the system, most teachers in the state didn’t pay a dime for their health care coverage, the cost of which was borne by taxpayers.

And so, Christie goes on, forced to cut more than $1 billion in local aid in order to balance the budget, he asked the teachers not only to accept a pay freeze for a year but also to begin contributing 1.5 percent of their salaries toward health care. The dominant teachers’ union in the state responded by spending millions of dollars in television and radio ads to attack him.

“The argument you heard most vociferously from the teachers’ union,” Christie says, “was that this was the greatest assault on public education in the history of New Jersey.” Here the fleshy governor lumbers a few steps toward the audience and lowers his voice for effect. “Now, do you really think that your child is now stressed out and unable to learn because they know that their poor teacher has to pay 1½ percent of their salary for their health care benefits? Have any of your children come home — any of them — and said, ‘Mom.’ ” Pause. “ ‘Dad.’ ” Another pause. “ ‘Please. Stop the madness.’ ”

By this point the audience is starting to titter, but Christie remains steadfastly somber in his role as the beseeching student. “ ‘Just pay for my teacher’s health benefits,’ ” he pleads, “ ‘and I’ll get A’s, I swear. But I just cannot take the stress that’s being presented by a 1½ percent contribution to health benefits.’ ” As the crowd breaks into appreciative guffaws, Christie waits a theatrical moment, then slams his point home. “Now, you’re all laughing, right?” he says. “But this is the crap I have to hear.”

Acid monologues like this have made Christie, only a little more than a year into his governorship, one of the most intriguing political figures in America. Hundreds of thousands of YouTube viewers linger on scenes from Christie’s town-hall meetings, like the one in which he takes apart a teacher for her histrionics. (“If what you want to do is put on a show and giggle every time I talk, then I have no interest in answering your question.”) Newly elected governors — not just Republicans, Christie says, but also Democrats — call to seek his counsel on how to confront their own staggering budget deficits and intractable unions. At a recent gathering of Republican governors, Christie attracted a throng of supporters and journalists as he strode through the halls of the Hilton San Diego Bayfront Hotel like Bono at Davos.

While Christie has flatly ruled out a presidential run in 2012, there is enough conjecture about the possibility that I felt moved to ask him a few weeks ago if he found it exhausting to have to constantly answer the same question. “Listen, if you’re going to say you’re exhausted by that, you’re really taking yourself too seriously,” Christie told me, then broke into his imitation of a politician who is taking himself too seriously. “ ‘Oh, Matt, please, stop asking me about whether I should be president of the United States! The leader of the free world! Please stop! I’m exhausted by the question!’ I mean, come on. If I get to that point, just slap me around, because that’s really presumptuous. What it is to me is astonishing, not exhausting.”

There is, in fact, something astonishing about the ascent of Chris Christie, who is about as slick as sandpaper and who now admits that even he didn’t think he would beat Jon Corzine, the Democrat he unseated in 2009. Some critics have posited that Christie’s success in office represents merely the triumph of self-certainty over complexity, the yearning among voters for leaders who talk bluntly and with conviction. Yet it’s hard to see Christie getting so much traction if he were out there castigating, say, immigrants or Wall Street bankers. What makes Christie compelling to so many people isn’t simply plain talk or swagger, but also the fact that he has found the ideal adversary for this moment of economic vertigo. Ronald Reagan had his “welfare queens,” Rudy Giuliani had his criminals and “squeegee men,” and now Chris Christie has his sprawling and powerful public-sector unions — teachers, cops and firefighters who Christie says are driving up local taxes beyond what the citizenry can afford, while also demanding the kind of lifetime security that most private-sector workers have already lost.

It may just be that Christie has stumbled onto the public-policy issue of our time, which is how to bring the exploding costs of the public workforce in line with reality. (According to a report issued last year by the Pew Center on the States, as of 2008 there was a $1 trillion gap, conservatively speaking, between what the states have promised in pensions and benefits for their retirees and what they have on hand to pay for them.) Then again, he may simply be the latest in a long line of politicians to give an uneasy public the scapegoat it demands. Depending on your vantage point, Chris Christie is a truth-teller or a demagogue, or maybe even a little of both. …

… The crux of Christie’s argument is that public-sector contracts have to reflect what has happened in the private sector, where guaranteed pensions and free health care are becoming relics. It’s not surprising that this stand has ingratiated Christie to conservatives in Washington; advocacy groups and activists on the right have carried out a long campaign to discredit the ever-shrinking labor movement in the private sector, and what Christie has done, essentially, is to blast his way into the final frontier, taking on the public-sector unions that have come to wield enormous political power. More surprising is how the governor’s proposals are finding sympathy from less-partisan budget experts, if only because they don’t see obvious alternatives. “I’ve tried to look at this objectively, and I just don’t know of any other option,” says Richard Keevey, who served as budget director for a Democratic governor, Jim Florio, and a Republican governor, Tom Kean. “You couldn’t tax your way out of this.”

Union leaders, on the other hand, are howling. The heads of the police and firefighters’ unions say that Christie’s cuts to local aid have already cost the state several hundred firemen and police officers, and they warn that his 2 percent cap on property taxes will have dire effects on public safety, as more towns and cities try to shave their payrolls to conform with the cap. “I don’t think they’re going to get it until the body bags pile up,” Anthony Wieners, president of the police union, warns darkly.

Leaders of the teachers’ union, meanwhile, are apoplectic about Christie’s proposed changes to their pension plan, which they say will penalize educators for the irresponsibility of politicians. After all, they point out, it wasn’t the unions who chose not to fund the pension year in and year out, and yet it’s their members who will have to recalibrate their retirements if the benefits are cut.

When I made this same point to Christie, he simply shook his head. What’s done is done, he told me, and it’s time for someone to tell these workers the truth, which is that the state is simply never going to have the money to make good on its commitments. “Listen, if they want to travel in the Michael J. Fox time machine and change time, I guess we could try that,” he said. “We could get the DeLorean out and try to go back there. But I think realistically that that was just a movie and make-believe. So we’ve got to live with what we’ve got.” …

… Christie, it turns out, has a preternatural gift for making the complex seem deceptively simple. Last month I saw him hold forth at a town-hall meeting in Chesilhurst, a South Jersey borough of about 1,600. Chesilhurst is about half African-American, and I sensed more curiosity than enthusiasm among the racially mixed crowd as it flowed into the little community-center gymnasium. An unusually large number of folding chairs were empty. About 20 minutes after the program was supposed to start, there came over the loudspeakers the kind of melodramatic instrumental that might introduce a local newscast, or maybe an Atlantic City magic show, and in came Christie, taking his position in the center of the crowd. The theme of the week was pension-and-benefits reform, and in his introductory remarks, Christie explained the inefficiency in the state’s health care costs not by wielding a stack of damning statistics, as some politicians might, but by relating a story.

When he was a federal prosecutor, Christie told the audience, he got to choose from about 100 health-insurance plans, ranging from cheap to quite expensive. But as soon as he became governor, the “benefits lady” told him he had only three state plans from which to choose, Goldilocks-style; one was great, one was modestly generous and one was rather miserly. And any of the three would cost him exactly 1.5 percent of his salary.

“ ‘You’re telling me,’ ” Christie said he told the woman, feigning befuddlement, “ ‘that no matter which one I pick, the good one or the O.K. one or the bad one, I’m going to pay 1½ percent of my salary?’ And she said, ‘Yes.’

“And I said, ‘Then everyone picks the really good one, right?’ And she said, ‘Ninety-six percent of state employees pick the really good one.’

“Which led me to have two reactions,” Christie told the crowd. “First, bring those other 4 percent to me! Because when I have to start laying people off, they’re the first ones!” His audience burst into near hysterics. “And the second reaction was, of course I would choose the best plan,” Christie said, “and so would you.

“Now listen, I don’t think this is groundbreaking stuff,” Christie added. “I don’t think this means that instead of being governor, you know, I should be at NASA, working on the space shuttle. I’m no genius. Just seems to me that if you give people an option to get something for nothing, they’ll take it.” Scanning the nodding faces around me, it seemed there wasn’t a person in the gymnasium, at that point, who wouldn’t have voted to make state workers and teachers pay more for the better plan. …

… There’s one more piece of political narrative that Christie seems to grasp, which is that every story has both a protagonist and an antagonist, someone who stands for change and someone who plays the foil. Christie never had to look far to cast his ideal antagonists. They sit just across the street and one block down from the State House, in the building occupied by New Jersey’s major teachers’ union.

WITH 200,000 MEMBERS and more than $100 million in dues, the New Jersey Education Association is easily the most powerful union in New Jersey and one of the more powerful local unions in the country. In Trenton, the union’s organizing might — and its willingness to use that might to intimidate candidates and lawmakers — has sunk a small shipyard of promising careers. So it’s not hard to see why the twilight struggle between Chris Christie and “the bully of State Street,” as he likes to refer to the teachers’ union, has transfixed New Jersey’s political observers for the last year. It’s as mesmerizing as an episode of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey,” only harder to watch, mostly because Christie can be so unrelentingly brutal. …

… What the union’s leadership seems not to have considered is that public sentiment around budgets and public employees has shifted in a fundamental way. For decades, as Keshishian and Giordano were rising up through the union, it probably made sense to adopt a strategy of “no surrender,” to dig in and outlast the occasional politician who might dare to threaten the union’s hard-earned gains. But over the last 10 years or so, most American workers have come to expect less by way of benefits and security from their employers. And with political consensus building toward some kind of public-school reform, teachers’ unions in particular have lost credibility with the public. Forty-­six percent of voters in a poll conducted by Stanford and the Associated Press last September said teachers’ unions deserved either “a great deal” or “a lot” of blame for the problems of public schools.

And so, when the union draws a hard line against changes to its pay and benefit structure, you can see why it might strike some sizable segment of voters as being a little anachronistic, like mimeographing homework assignments or sharpening a pencil by hand. In a Pew Research Center poll this month, 47 percent of respondents said their states should cut pension plans for government employees, which made it the most popular option on the table. …

News Biscuit tells us about a new airline offering.

In a bold move to reduce the amount of time that passengers spend waiting for flights that never take off, Easyjet are to introduce the pre-cancelled flight. Hours of frustrating and pointless waiting will be eliminated and delays could be made a thing of the past.

‘Flights will be booked as normal with the added choice of pre-cancellation for a small fee,’ said an Easyjet spokesperson for a small fee. ‘Customers will no longer need to wait around in the airport living off overpriced takeaway food and choking on their own sense of injustice. …

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Charles Krauthammer likes the developments in Wisconsin.

The magnificent turmoil now gripping statehouses in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and soon others marks an epic political moment. The nation faces a fiscal crisis of historic proportions and, remarkably, our muddled, gridlocked, allegedly broken politics have yielded singular clarity.

At the federal level, President Obama’s budget makes clear that Democrats are determined to do nothing about the debt crisis, while House Republicans have announced that beyond their proposed cuts in discretionary spending, their April budget will actually propose real entitlement reform. Simultaneously, in Wisconsin and other states, Republican governors are taking on unsustainable, fiscally ruinous pension and health-care obligations, while Democrats are full-throated in support of the public-employee unions crying, “Hell, no.”

A choice, not an echo: Democrats desperately defending the status quo; Republicans charging the barricades. …

David Harsanyi comments on an over the top analogy from the far-left.

According to Nobel laureate and raconteur Paul Krugman, Gov. Scott Walker and “his backers” are attempting to “make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a Third World-style oligarchy.”

Now, it’s common knowledge that throwing around loaded words like “socialism” is both uncivil and obtuse, so it’s comforting to know we can still refer to people as “Third World-style oligarchs.” And boy, that kind of Banana Republic doesn’t seem very appealing.

Democracy, naturally, can only be saved by public sector unions, which attain their political power and taxpayer-funded benefits by “negotiating” with politicians elected with the help of unions who use, well, taxpayer dollars. And you know, that doesn’t sound like an oligarchy at all.

While Walker, who won office using obnoxious Third World oligarchic tactics like “getting more votes than the other candidate,” is a cancer in the heart of democracy, union- funded Democrats evading their constitutional obligation to cast votes are only protecting the integrity of representative government by completely avoiding democracy.

John Fund profiles Scott Walker, Wisconsin’s newest progressive.

… It is deeply symbolic that this epic battle over the direction of government is taking place in the Badger State. Wisconsin was the birthplace of the modern progressive state in the early 20th century under Gov. Robert “Fighting Bob” LaFollette, who championed progressive taxation and the nation’s first worker’s-compensation system. In 1959, Gov. Gaylord Nelson made Wisconsin the first state to grant public employees collective-bargaining rights.

But in more recent years Wisconsin has also been an incubator of the conservative counterargument to the welfare state. In the 1990s, Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson helped push through welfare reform and school-choice programs that have been emulated across the country. By modernizing the relationship between state employees and the government, Mr. Walker, like Mr. Thompson before him, hopes to contain the excesses of the past—to enable the modern welfare state to live within its means.

Mr. Walker says that the employee rights that people care about are protected by civil-service rules, not collective bargaining. “We have the strongest protections in the country on grievance procedures, merit hiring, and just cause for disciplining and terminating employees,” he says. “None of that changes under my plan.” Mr. Walker notes that the single largest group affected by his proposal are the 30,000 workers at the University of Wisconsin who were only granted collective-bargaining rights in 2009. “If they only got them two years ago, how can you say they’re set in stone?” …

Victor Davis Hanson liked Krauthammer’s comparison of the president and France’s Louis XV.

President Obama established a bipartisan debt-reduction commission — and then ignored its findings, which called for unpopular reductions in entitlements and across-the-board spending cuts. His first two budgets led to the largest deficits in U.S. history. The ensuing $3 trillion in red ink gave rise to the Tea Party movement and led to the largest midterm defeat of the Democratic party in the House of Representatives since 1938.

No matter. The president has proposed a new budget with an even larger $1.6 trillion deficit. That record federal borrowing prompted columnist Charles Krauthammer to describe it as a Louis XV indulgence, an allusion to the wild royal spending that brought about the French Revolution. Even Newsweek editor-at-large Evan Thomas, who once gushed that Obama stood “above the world” as some “sort of God,” called the president’s new budget a “profile in cowardice.” …

Deroy Murdock wonders when we can start drilling for oil again.

… Petroleum futures Thursday reached $103.41 per barrel before falling back below $100, their highest price since September 2008. Unleaded gasoline averages $3.24 per gallon – up 55 cents, year-on-year. Summer road trips may push prices higher.

Amid all of this, the Obama administration treats America’s domestic petroleum supply like the Smithsonian’s Hope Diamond: Something to be observed and admired, but not touched.

Like it or not, America relies heavily on oil today, for jobs, commerce, and our very existence. Alas, oil comes mainly from an area that is as stable as a prison riot. “Precarious” barely describes America’s predicament. And yet, a huge part of the solution – domestic oil and gas – lies just beneath our feet, if only President Barack Obama would let us open the basement door and light this dormant furnace.

May we drill now, please?

John Stossel tells us how to bet on the Oscars.  

Sunday night is Oscar night! Think you know who’s going to win? Want to make a bet?

The Hollywood Stock Exchange allows people to bet on which movies, actors, directors, etc. will take home Academy Awards. You can also bet on how much money a movie might make. It’s called a prediction market … except unlike other prediction markets, bettors can’t use real money.

What fun is that? It’s not only less fun, it’s also makes the prediction market less accurate. People are more careful when they have real money on the line, and the chance of losing money weeds out the frivolous guessers. Prediction markets are valuable for predicting all kinds of things because the prospect of making money attracts people with knowledge, judgment and a good sense of the future. More information is better than less. The people most confident in their information bet the most. That’s why speculation is a sound market institution.

The promoters of the Hollywood Stock Exchange would have preferred the use of real money but — surprise! — government forbids it. The Frank-Dodd financial regulation law killed the real market at the behest of some in the movie industry. …

WSJ editors tell us the foolishness of ethanol subsidies are so obvious Bill Clinton sees the light. 

America’s political addiction to ethanol has consequences, from raising the price of food to lining the pockets of companies like Archer Daniels Midland. So we’re delighted to see another prominent booster—Bill Clinton—see the fright.

“We have to become energy independent” but “we don’t want to do it at the expense of food riots,” the former President told an agriculture conference Thursday. He urged farmers to consider the needs of developing countries—the implication being that the diversion of corn to ethanol production limits food supplies and artificially raises prices. …

Scientists in North Carolina have demonstrated turtles navigate by differences in the earth’s magnetic field.

For centuries, determining longitude was an extremely difficult task for sailors, so difficult that it’s been thought improbable — if not impossible — for animals to do it.

But migratory sea turtles have now proved capable of sensing longitude, using almost imperceptible gradients in Earth’s magnetic field.

“We have known for about six years now that the magnetic map of turtles, at a minimum, allows turtles to … detect latitude magnetically,” said biologist Ken Lohmann of the University of North Carolina, who describes the turtle’s power Feb. 24 in Current Biology. “Up until now, that was where the story ended.”

Lohmann specializes in animal navigation, and work from his laboratory and others have exhaustively demonstrated how sea turtles — along with many birds, fish and crustaceans — use gradients in Earth’s magnetic field to steer. …

Politico catches Nancy Pelosi with more delusions of grandeur.

The Democratic National Committee wanted to honor Nancy Pelosi Thursday — but its praise wasn’t good enough for the House minority leader.

When the DNC’s Resolutions Committee brought up a resolution commemorating Pelosi’s years as speaker of the House, Pelosi’s daughter sought to alter the proposal at her mother’s behest, adding some of the accomplishments that the elder Pelosi felt the committee had overlooked.

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Karl Rove tells us why the president is involved in Wisconsin.

… Why is the president trying to bully the Wisconsin governor? After all, Arizona, Utah, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and West Virginia are among the states to explicitly prohibit collective bargaining for public employees, which is far beyond what Mr. Walker is seeking. The answer is found in four digits: 2012.

Unlike those states, Wisconsin is a 2012 battleground. Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, told a reporter from this newspaper last week that a union defeat in Wisconsin “can put [Mr. Obama] in some danger” of losing the next election. Labor spent $400 million to elect Mr. Obama in 2008: Mr. McEntee was sending a not-so-subtle message that unions would be unable to spend so generously on his behalf in 2012 if they continue hemorrhaging members and dues money. ..

Roger Simon says liberals have become reactionaries.

Jonah Goldberg has famously linked liberals with fascism, but in these times I think they are more like reactionaries, desperately clinging to past views when they are no longer functional or even relevant, if they ever were.

I admit I have been using the term “reactionary” for a while when referring to contemporary liberals. This has been quite intentional, something of a deliberate hoisting by their own petard. In my old days on the left, we would brand everyone we didn’t like as a reactionary, mired in the then supposedly-evil capitalist system. And I would like to use the events in Wisconsin to explain why I do it to them now. (Yes, it is partly to get their goat, but it is also to make a point.)

Let’s review what happened: In November, Wisconsin voters delivered a serious and obvious message. Their state (and our country) was going broke. It could no longer afford the massive entitlement programs that had been enacted and in place for some time. Demographics had made them untenable. Something had to be done to avoid bankruptcy and a calamitous economic situation, both for the state and the country. And it had to be done soon. (This was indeed a worldwide phenomenon, as most of us know.) ….

Noemie Emery says there is a war between chief executives of the states and the country.

Picture a hand on the wheel of the great ship of state, pushing it hard in a certain direction, say, to the left. It belongs to the president. Picture 29 smaller ones on the other side of the wheel, trying as hard as they can to wrench it back in the other direction. They belong to Govs. Chris Christie, R-N.J., Mitch Daniels, R-Ind., Scott Walker, R-Wis., and 26 other Republican governors, 12 of them elected in the 2009 and 2010 cycles.

Two years and four months ago, President Obama was elected to enact his agenda; and four months ago, the Republicans were put in to dismantle it.

In the interim, the public had a big change of mind, which created the impasse. Each side has a mandate, and is hell-bent upon it, creating a situation unique in our history.

For the first time since the Civil War ended, the federal government and a large number of the states and their governors are at open and few-holds-barred war. …

Josh Kraushaar in The National Journal says the president is playing a prevent defense.

President Obama has chosen to play the political equivalent of the prevent defense as his reelection campaign approaches by deferring tough decisions on entitlements. 

His budget made no attempt to change the Medicare and Social Security programs, and barely made a dent in spending cuts.

His agreement to extend the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts in last year’s lame-duck session has been followed by an embrace of the protesters in Wisconsin, both of which are off key in an economic situation that demands sacrifice from all.

Obama said in his State of the Union address that he wants to “win the future,” but his policies remain stuck in a 20th-century mindset defending a strained government entitlement system and public-sector unions.

His own message was clear: Wait for Republicans to take the initiative, at their own political peril. And that they did. The contrast between the White House and GOP messages couldn’t have been more at odds with each other last week—one that is poised to set the tone for the 2012 presidential election.  

A trio of Republican governors has set the stage.

John Podhoretz thinks the 2012 GOP candidate will come from the action in the states. 

For months now, Republicans have turned to each other and said, “Who’s the candidate?”

President Obama is vulnerable in 2012, clearly, but you can’t beat something with nothing, and right now, the GOP field looks pretty much like . . . nothing.

Who’ll have the stature to compete? Thanks to those Democratic lawmakers fleeing Wisconsin and Indiana to frustrate the democratic process they swore an oath to uphold, we may have an answer.

They, and the demonstrators screaming about the governors seeking cuts in the absurdly generous benefits granted to public-sector workers, have created a national stage on which a new and dynamic candidate can emerge.

The governors (and perhaps the House members) who are taking on these battles are fighting the fight of the GOP future, and one of them now seems certain to take the mantle of 2012. …

Steve Malanga exposes many of the lobbying efforts of government unions. 

Government workers have taken to the streets in Madison, Wis., to battle a series of reforms proposed by Gov. Scott Walker that include allowing workers to opt out of paying dues to unions. Everywhere that this “opt out” idea has been proposed, unions have battled it vigorously because the money they collect from dues is at the heart of their power.

Unions use that money not only to run their daily operations but to wage political campaigns in state capitals and city halls. Indeed, public-sector unions especially have become the nation’s most aggressive advocates for higher taxes and spending. They sponsor tax-raising ballot initiatives and pay for advertising and lobbying campaigns to pressure politicians into voting for them. And they mount multimillion dollar campaigns to defeat efforts by governors and taxpayer groups to roll back taxes. …

Richard Cohen thinks enough is enough with government pensions.

In New York City, the No. 2 guy in the fire department retired on a pension worth $242,000 a year. In New York State, a single official holding two jobs and one pension took in $641,000. A lieutenant with the Port Authority police retired with an annual pension of $196,767, and 738 of the city’s teachers, principals and such have pensions worth more than $100,000 a year. Their former employer, it goes almost without saying, is steamed. Their former employer is me.

These examples of pension obesity were culled from the local newspapers, which never fail to shock with revelations of how good life is for those who once worked for the city, the state or any one of several public agencies. In some cases, retirement came a mere 20 or so years after first reporting to HR and, if you were lucky enough to fake a disability – oh, my aching back! – the sky is virtually the limit. Fully one-third of all New York City cops who retired during a recent 17-month period did so on disability. They have dangerous jobs, we all know – but not nearly as dangerous as Long Island Rail Road workers. Almost all of them retired on disability. All aboard!

I pause now to assert my bona fides. I got my first union card while still in college and remained a member of the Newspaper Guild throughout my career, paying dues even when I no longer had to. I can whistle union ditties, and I swell with pride at the ancient picture of my grandfather, posed with his good friend, the union organizer. I know, too, what happens when unions are weak or nonexistent. Capitalism is cruel. Do not look for charity.

But, really, enough is enough. …

Streetwise Professor says Krugman’s defense of public sector unions proves their danger.

… Krugman sets out a Galbraithian vision in which the influence of countervailing powers, organized labor and organized capital, are offsetting, and an activist government wisely directs the polity and the economy.  As if.  In practice, what occurs instead is corporatism of a sort described by Mancur Olson, in which concentrated and organized interests exploit the power of the state to extract rents from diffuse consumers, investors, entrepreneurs and taxpayers.

Thus, Krugman’s unwitting endorsement of the public choice perspective torpedoes his own defense of public sector unions.  Because they are just organized groups that exploit the power of the state for their own benefit and impose costs on those lacking such privileged influence.  Once it is admitted that that’s the way the game is played–and Krugman jumps into that puddle with both feet–the immediate conclusion is that it is imperative to constrain the power of such bodies, and the power of the state that they exploit for their gain and to our detriment.

Nile Gardiner agrees, saying that liberals are stuck in a twilight zone. 

Remember those episodes of the brilliant but now dated 1960s sci-fi series The Twilight Zone where the lead character invariably gets stuck in a parallel universe, but is blissfully unaware until the final denouement? Well 2011 America looks much the same as far as the country’s liberal elites are concerned, trapped in a make-believe world where the towering national debt doesn’t really matter, where militant trade unions holding an entire state hostage is somehow normal and “democratic”, and where the real problem is not the spectre of Big Government but those cost-cutting conservatives committed to bringing it down to size.

Two op-eds published in the bastions of the liberal establishment this President’s Day weekend encapsulate the Twilight Zone mentality which dominates America’s left in the second decade of the 21st Century. The first is by Paul Krugman, who holds forth in The New York Times with what can only be described as a ludicrous rant against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who, heaven forbid, is actually trying to reduce spending by cutting the entitlements of the bloated public sector. According to Krugman, Walker is hell-bent on turning America into a “third world oligarchy” under the pretense of fiscal retrenchment: …

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes on the Muslim Brotherhood.

‘Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” So goes the motto of the Muslim Brotherhood.

What’s extraordinary about this maxim is the succinct way that it captures the political dimension of Islam. Even more extraordinary is the capacity of these five pillars of faith to attract true believers. But the most remarkable thing of all is the way the Brotherhood’s motto seduces Western liberals. …

Jeff Jacoby says the assault on Lara Logan was not a one-off.

PERHAPS THE most shocking thing about the despicable sexual attack on CBS correspondent Lara Logan in Cairo’s Tahrir Square is that to those who know Egypt, it wasn’t shocking at all.

“Why is sexual harassment in Egypt so rampant?’’ asked the headline of a story written by CNN’s Mary Rogers in November. A veteran producer and camerawoman who has lived in the country since 1994, Rogers reported that the experience of being publicly molested unites women across Egypt’s social spectrum.

“Young, old, foreign, Egyptian, poor, middle class, or wealthy, it doesn’t matter,’’ she wrote. “Dressed in hijab, niqab, or Western wear, it doesn’t matter. If you are a woman living in Cairo, chances are you have been sexually harassed. It happens on the streets, on crowded buses, in the workplace, in schools, and even in a doctor’s office.’’ Rogers discovered the ugly reality soon after her arrival in the country, when, as she was walking home from work, a stranger “reached out, and casually grabbed my breast.’’ After repeatedly enduring such obnoxious harassment, Rogers stopped walking to and from her office.

In a swath of the globe notorious for mistreating women, Egypt is particularly infamous. According to a survey conducted in 2008 by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights, 83 percent of native Egyptian women and 98 percent of women visiting from abroad have experienced some form of public sexual harassment. More than half the Egyptian women reported being molested every day. And contrary to popular belief, most of the victims were wearing modest Islamic dress. …

Robert Samuelson wants to know when the AARP will stop running the government.

The great question haunting Washington’s budget debate is whether our elected politicians will take back government from AARP, the 40 million-member organization that represents retirees and near-retirees. For all the partisan bluster surrounding last week’s release of President Obama’s proposed 2012 budget, it reflects a long-standing bipartisan consensus not to threaten seniors. Programs for the elderly, mainly Social Security and Medicare, are left untouched. With an aging population, putting so much spending off-limits inevitably means raising taxes, shrinking defense and squeezing other domestic spending – everything from the FBI to college aid.

Power is the ability to get what you want. It suggests that you control events. By these standards, AARP runs government budgetary policy, not presidents or congressional leaders. Obama says we must “win the future,” but his budget (and, so far, the Republicans’, too) would win the past and lose the future. The massive federal debt would continue to grow because, without restraining retiree spending, there’s no path to a balanced budget. The aging infrastructure (roads, airports) wouldn’t get needed repairs. The already-stressed social safety net for the poor would be further strained. We would cut defense while China’s military expands. All this is insane. It’s not the agenda of a country interested in its future. …

Thomas Sowell beats up high speed rail.

Nothing more clearly illustrates the utter irresponsibility of Barack Obama than his advocacy of “high-speed rail.” The man is not stupid. He knows how to use words that will sound wonderful to people who do not bother to stop and think.

High-speed rail may be feasible in parts of Europe or Japan, where the population density is much higher than in the United States. But, without enough people packed into a given space, there will never be enough riders to repay the high cost of building and maintaining a high-speed rail system. …

Michael Barone likes Daniels and Christie.

… Christie was less elegant and even more blunt than his Hoosier colleague. Drawing on his struggles with New Jersey’s public employee unions over pensions and benefits, he turned to national issues.

“My children’s future and your children’s future are more important than political strategy,” he began.” You’re going to have to raise the retirement age for Social Security. Whoa, I just said it, and I’m still standing here. I did not vaporize.

“We have to reform Medicare because it costs too much and it is going to bankrupt us. Once again lightning did not come through the windows and strike me dead. And we have to fix Medicaid because it’s not only bankrupting the federal government, it’s bankrupting every state government.”

Obama, he said, was offering “the candy of American politics” — high-speed rail, plug-in cars — and congressional Republicans so far haven’t offered much more. If those he campaigned for don’t, he said, “the next time they’ll see me in their district is with my arm around their primary opponent.” …

George Will says Wisconsin’s Scott Walker gives a lesson in leadership to the kid president.

Hitherto, when this university town and seat of state government applauded itself as “the Athens of the Midwest,” the sobriquet suggested kinship with the cultural glories of ancient Greece. Now, however, Madison resembles contemporary Athens.

This capital has been convulsed by government employees sowing disorder in order to repeal an election. A minority of the minority of Wisconsin residents who work for government (300,000 of them) are resisting changes to benefits that most of Wisconsin’s 5.6 million residents resent financing.

Serene at the center of this storm sits Republican Scott Walker, 43, in the governor’s mansion library, beneath a portrait of Ronald Reagan. Walker has seen this movie before. …

Tony Blankley thinks polls will show the Dems are on the wrong side of history with their Wisconsin posturing.

… While we do not have reliable polling on the Wisconsin controversy, it was a telltale sign over the weekend when the head of the teachers union urged the teachers to go back to work. Public unions are in a justifiably low standing with the public.

And after three years of private-sector firings, plus 9 percent unemployment, salary cuts, home-mortgage crises and 401(k) shrinkage – the 91 percent of the American work force employed in that private sector (53 percent in small businesses with even lower benefits) is entitled to feel little sympathy for Wisconsin schoolteachers receiving an average of $89,000 in salary and benefits and contributing zero to their pension plan and only 5 percent to their medical insurance while the average private-sector employee contributes 29 percent.

The president’s strong support for the public-worker union lines up – at least for the time being – both a state and federal policy debate that may well yield needed deficit-education legislation and dangerous political waters for the Democratic Party. The Democrats seem to be prepared to defend the idea of not dealing with the deficit crisis. Have the party strategists, including those in the White House, really thought through the electoral implications of that decision?

Of course, huge, good news for America on an unrelated topic may break out somewhere – although probably not in the Middle East, Mexico, Europe or Asia – and I hope it does. But if deficits and debt continue to be the defining issues of American politics for the next 18 months – and if the Democrats from the White House to the statehouses stay in their current head-in-the-sand posture – they may be approaching a nasty electoral meltdown of their party in November 2012.

Jennifer Rubin wonders why the left misbehaves.

Charles Lane observed over the weekend that in Madison, Wis., “anger and vilification are once again the order of the day — and the incivility emanates from the progressive end of the spectrum, including, no doubt, many of the same people who blamed right-wing vitriol for creating a climate of violence in Arizona.” The tactics of those on the left — threatening officials in their homes, forcing a shutdown of the state legislature and providing phony doctor’s notes to defraud the state (allowing protesting teachers to collect sick pay) — confirm the inherent anti-democratic nature of the protest, and indeed, of public-employee unions. …

Liberal Wisconsin cartoonist sides with the governor. Of course we have samples of his work. Disrupt the Narrative.com has the story.

Cartoonist Phil Hands of the Wisconsin State Journal newspaper has this to say…

“This debate over Gov. Scott Walker’s budget bill has been difficult for me. I have progressive values. I believe in gay marriage, I believe in mass transit, I believe in global climate change, I believe in abortion rights, I believe in urban planning and I believe in a single payer health care system. But on the issue of public employee compensation and the role that their unions play in our government, I find myself siding with conservatives.” …

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You are not going to believe what an ABC reporter said about Obama and Wisconsin. The president has really hurt himself.

… In a powerhouse roundtable with George F. Will, Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, ABC Senior Political Correspondent Jon Karl and freshman Rep. Steve Southerland, R-Fla., “This Week” anchor Christiane Amanpour asked about the implications of the president injecting himself into a state dispute.

“The president was quicker and more forceful of his denouncement of Gov. Scott Walker than he was of denouncing Hosni Mubarak,” Karl said. “Madison, Wisconsin — the state of Wisconsin — this is arguably ground zero for the 2012 presidential campaign. Look, this is a state if President Obama loses, he’s almost certainly going to not win re-election.”

Karl pointed out that the state had swung significantly Republican in 2010.

“Democrats see the momentum and see real danger signs for next year,” he said. …

Clive Crook of Financial Times takes the prez to task.

… Nothing obliged Obama to take this position. He could have recused himself, as he has on, say, budget policy. And it is one thing to offer comment in support of the unions, quite another to get his staff working in “close co-ordination” with the protesters. A shame he cannot be as forthright about long-term fiscal discipline as he is about the rights of public-sector unions.

Toby Harnden says the president doesn’t get it.

Something momentous is happening in the United States right now and Barack Obama doesn’t get it. In Madison, Wisconsin last week, up to 40,000 public employees, organised by their unions, the Democratic party and the grassroots Organizing for America group that elected the president in 2008, gathered at the state capitol. Teachers left their classrooms, forcing schools to close.

Their objective? To rail against an attempt to balance the budget and curtail union power by newly-elected Governor Scott Walker, a Republican. The Democratic party’s response? Its state senators have fled Wisconsin to Illinois, dodging state troopers as they went, in order to prevent the budget being voted on. Obama branded Walker’s actions as an “assault on unions”.

It was Obama who crowed just after he entered the White House that “elections have consequences”. In Wisconsin last November, the consequences included the governorship, a Senate seat and the state senate and assembly all being lost by the Democrats. …

Jonathan Tobin catches the Times with its normal bias.

In 2009 and 2010 the New York Times covered protests against the Obama administration’s stimulus spending bill and health care plan as the barely legal revolt of an unwashed and uncivil band of reactionaries determined not only to halt what the paper considered progress but also to thwart democracy. But anyone looking at the Times’ front page article on Saturday describing protests against the effort by Wisconsin’s newly elected governor and legislature to balance the state’s books got a very different view of a protest movement.

According to the Times, the activities of the Wisconsin public sector unions — whose expensive benefits have put their state on the brink of bankruptcy — are nothing less than the moral equivalent of the demonstrations in Tunisia that brought down an authoritarian dictatorship. As the headline “Wisconsin Leads the Way as Workers Fight Cuts” indicates, the whole focus of the piece is an effort to portray the unions and their Democratic allies as revolutionaries who are on the cutting edge of a movement that will, in effect, reverse the verdict of last year’s election.

There are two points to be made about this coverage. …

Michael Barone has kudos for Gov. Scott of Florida for cancelling a high speed rail project.

Good news from Tallahassee: Florida Governor Rick Scott has rejected the proposed high-speed rail line from Orlando to Tampa and the $2.4 billion that goes with it. “The truth is that this project would be far too costly to taxpayers and I believe the risks far outweigh the benefits,” Scott said. As Scott seems to understand, projections of cost and riderships on high-speed rail lines have turned out to be grossly optimistic. If Florida opted to go ahead, it faced two dangers: that it would decide to cancel, and have to repay the federal government for funds paid out, or that it would choose to operate the rail line at a loss, subsidizing the rail line year after year. Scott decided to call a halt, even if it means losing the federal funds currently committed—the same decision Govs. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and John Kasich of Ohio made. …

Columbia law prof Phillip Hamburger has more to say about the problems with health-care waivers.

Although health-care waivers are unconstitutional, can they nonetheless be justified? The Department of Health and Human Services has granted almost a thousand waivers from part of the health-care law, and (as explained last week in these pages) the waivers are an unconstitutional exercise of the dispensing power. But what if the waivers are used for good purposes? What if Congress delegated the power to issue the waivers? And what if the waiver process were transparent? Might not these considerations lend legitimacy to the waivers?

Undoubtedly, waivers or dispensations can be used for good purposes — primarily, for relief from bad laws. Yet the need for relief from a burdensome law does not mean that all forms of relief are desirable. The question therefore is not merely whether a waived law is regrettable, but whether waivers are an appropriate remedy. For hundreds of years, it has been clear that waivers or dispensations were dangerous, and this has not changed.

An initial concern is favoritism. One may assume that when the executive waives compliance with a law, it will grant waivers only to the most deserving applicants. Inevitably, however, it will find deserving applicants among those who have close contact with the administration, including many who are politically aligned with it. …

AOL News asks what is government good for.

Pop quiz. What’s the biggest single job the federal government undertakes?

National defense? Nope.

Homeland security? Wrong.

Transportation? Not even close.

Law enforcement? No way.

Education? Getting colder.

Foreign aid? Are you kidding?

Nope, the biggest single thing the federal government does these days is … cut checks. …

Clive Crook notes who is trying to deal with the fiscal crisis of our governments.

… Republican governors such as Chris Christie in New Jersey, Mitch Daniels in Indiana and Scott Walker in Wisconsin face the same immediate fiscal challenge as Democratic governors such as Jerry Brown in California and Andrew Cuomo in New York – and their responses are perforce much the same. They are squeezing services severely and confronting the public sector unions that have forced pay, benefits and other terms of service out of line with private sector equivalents.

These efforts are meeting resistance, to put it mildly. Public sector workers in Wisconsin began huge protests at the end of last week, drawing national attention. What is interesting, though, is that the governors have come to a cross-party consensus about the measures that are necessary, and up to a point see each other as allies. That helps them do their job. Also, the ones who have been most forthright in explaining the fiscal facts of life to their constituents – especially the splendidly in-your-face Mr Christie – are winning respect for it beyond their states.

A troubling thought for Mr Obama, maybe, but for the moment the farce in Washington serves his purposes. Let the House GOP get on with it, the president’s advisers are telling him: keep the spotlight on them, and watch swing voters flock back. If we are really lucky, thinks the White House, the new continuing resolution will fail (remember it must pass House and Senate, still controlled by Democrats, in the same form). The government will have to shut down, as it did in 1995, financial markets will go crazy and it will be the Republicans’ fault.

Avoiding a fiscal meltdown would be good for 2012 purposes. Having one that could be blamed on Republicans would be perfect. What a way to run a country.

Daily Beast does a puff piece on Jim Webb, one of the two Obama stooges in the senate from Virginia. Says here he warned the president the healthcare bill was too much. So where was his acclaimed independent streak when he voted for the bill? The Virginia voters have been denied the chance to throw the bum out. We will save that for Mark Warner in 2014.

The end of Jim Webb’s senatorial career, with his announcement that he would not seek re-election in 2012, was far less surprising than the fact that Webb even had a senatorial career to end. He’d arrived in the Senate seeming ready to leave, having declared, in a 2006 debate with his Republican foe, George Allen, “When I go to my grave, whether I was a United States Senator or not is not gonna be high on my agenda.”

And that was when he was trying to convince Virginia voters to put him into the Senate. That 2006 Webb campaign had the feel of a forced march, a mood that very much reflected the candidate himself. His public appearances had all the spontaneous joy of a line inspection at Camp Lejeune. Webb spoke with a flat, matter-of-fact voice, always in earnest tones. He possessed none of the innate muscle memory of a natural pol—the ready banter, the easy saunter, the reflexive hand-to-shoulder intimacy. His campaign smile usually seemed the product of considerable exertion. …

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Craig Pirrong in Streetwise Professor sees the bright side of Wisconsin.

… I am actually quite encouraged by the protests in Wisconsin.  The protesters are so clueless.  They fail to understand how their antics are just going to turn even more people against them, and intensify the opposition of those who are already unfavorably disposed.  The more they whine about the benefits they are losing, and the “rights” that they are giving up, the more the hoi polloi who are footing the bill will recognize how generous those benefits and rights are.  The suckers who pay will say: “I don’t get that good a deal.  I am looking at a more straitened future.  Why should these people get a better deal than I do?  Especially since the performance doesn’t match the pay?  I was a sucker before, but no more.”

In short, temper tantrums and hissy fits by the privileged only stoke anger against them.  So go for it, boys and girls!

Obama, of course, couldn’t resist butting in.  His operatives and union allies are coordinating and funding protests.  He has come out and criticized Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker for attacking unions.

This is all understandable, I guess.  Buffeted by one failure after another, Obama sees an opportunity to rabble rouse–sorry, I meant to write “community organize”–and says: “Hey, THIS is something I can do!”

But again, this is good news.  For being associated with the Insane Clown Posse will only damage Obama further. …

David Harsanyi thinks Wisconsin events are important.

… Certainly, how Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker fares in this battle will be an important signal to the rest of the nation. Places like Colorado only recently allowed state workers to organize. Other states are facing pension nightmares. Who knows? States might begin privatizing and allowing competitive outsourcing of jobs. States must, because nationally, we’re headed in the other direction.

“Some of what I’ve heard coming out of Wisconsin, where they’re just making it harder for public employees to collectively bargain generally, seems like more of an assault on unions,” explained President Barack Obama, who, unlike governors, can (and does) borrow trillions. The numbers, though, tell us that public-sector unions are the ones assaulting taxpayers and brittle state economies. And the more we grow the state monopoly, the worse it will get.

David Warren explains the value of what he calls “formalized adversarial order.”

… It is just possible, in the U.S. and elsewhere in the West, to confront problems that would overwhelm a country, because organized oppositions exist.

Republicans are waiting when Democrats fail, and vice versa. It is because of the long history, not so much of “democracy” per se, but of a formalized adversarial order, that such a chance exists.

There are at most two countries in the Middle East of which this could be said: Israel, and maybe Turkey. In societies ruled by autocrats since time out of mind, no organized opposition waits to pick up the pieces. In each case, the autocrat who falls can only be replaced by another autocrat -unless by something like the Taliban.

Nasty as things will get in states like Wisconsin, the majority can rule. And if that majority can be persuaded to see sense, solutions are possible.

A similar thought and a note of optimism from Yuval Levin in The Corner at National Review.

… Too often, there is not much of a difference between the parties, and people inclined to care about policy are driven to call a pox on both their houses. But as this remarkable week has shown, this is not one of those times. The Democrats are shaming themselves on the premise that American voters can’t handle the truth and that there is political advantage in appealing to the country’s worst instincts. Republicans, whether by choice or by default, are taking up the challenge of telling voters the truth about our problems and persuading them that effective, responsible, and gradual solutions are possible — without taking benefits from current seniors and without abandoning our obligation to fellow citizens in need. There have not been many opportunities for conservatives to be proud of being Republicans in recent years, but this week has certainly been one.

Republicans and Democrats are both at fault for the mess we are in, and for ignoring and denying it for far too long. But so far only one party seems interested in changing that. Voters will notice. And then we will find out who is right about American voters: the party that thinks they are selfish children or the party that thinks they are responsible adults. I have a feeling Republicans will not regret their judgment that the time has come to get serious.

The foolish president’s budget is still here. Charles Krauthammer compares and contrasts Louis XV and Obama. 

… Yet for all its gimmicks, this budget leaves the country at decade’s end saddled with publicly held debt triple what Obama inherited.

A more cynical budget is hard to imagine. This one ignores the looming debt crisis, shifts all responsibility for serious budget-cutting to the Republicans – for which Democrats are ready with a two-year, full-artillery demagogic assault – and sets Obama up perfectly for reelection in 2012.

Obama fancies his happy talk, debt-denial optimism to be Reaganesque. It’s more Louis XV. Reagan begat a quarter-century of prosperity; Louis, the deluge.

Moreover, unlike Obama, Louis had the decency to admit he was forfeiting the future. He never pretended to be winning it.

Want to know how well the juxtaposition of Dem waste and GOP frugality is looking? Here’s Eleanor Clift, a liberal’s liberal, writing on our hero Chris Christie in The Daily Beast.

… Christie sees a new zeitgeist of frugality. Soon after taking office in January 2010, he was told the state could not meet its payroll if he didn’t act immediately to close a deficit. He impounded money without the permission of the legislature. And when the Democratic legislature threatened a government shutdown, he vowed he would not do as his predecessor, Jon Corzine, had done, and sleep on a cot in his office until the crisis was resolved. “Look at me,” he exclaimed, drawing attention to his considerable girth, “I’m not sleeping on a cot.” He told the lawmakers that if they engaged in such mischief, he’d get a beer, order a pizza, and watch the Mets.

He likes to tell stories about himself taking on the teachers’ unions and the firefighters and the police officers. When he talked to a firefighters’ meeting in Wildwood one weekend, they booed him “lustily,” he said, and when he got to the podium, he said, “C’mon, you can do better than that—and they did.”

Christie’s tough-guy approach is working, making him a national figure after just 13 months in office. “He commands the bully pulpit more effectively than any other governor we have seen in modern history,” says Dworkin, who predicts Christie will deliver the keynote address at the GOP convention in 2012.

The action is in the state capitols says Peggy Noonan.

There were two big speeches this week, and I mean big as in “Modern political history will remember this.” Together they signal something significant and promising. Oh, that’s a stuffy way to put it. I mean: The governors are rising and are starting to lead. What a relief. It’s like seeing the posse come over the hill.

The first speech was from Mitch Daniels, the Indiana governor who is the answer to the question, “What if Calvin Coolidge talked?” President Coolidge, a spare and serious man, was so famously silent, the story goes, that when a woman at a dinner told him she’d made a bet she could get him to string three words together, he smiled and said, “You lose.” But he was principled, effective and, in time, broadly popular.

The other speech was from a governor newer to the scene but more celebrated, in small part because he comes from a particular media market and in large part because he has spent the past year, his first in office, taking on his state’s most entrenched political establishments, and winning. His style—big, rumpled, garrulous, Jersey-blunt—has captured the imagination of the political class, and also normal people. They look at him and think, “I know that guy. I like that guy.”

Both Mr. Daniels, who spoke Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, and Chris Christie of New Jersey, who spoke Wednesday at the American Enterprise Institute, were critical of both parties and put forward the same message: Wake up. We are in crisis. We must save our country, and we can. But if we don’t move now, we will lose it. This isn’t rhetoric, it’s real.

Here’s why response at both venues was near-rapturous: Everyone knew they meant it. Everyone knew they’d been living it. …