Cruising the Web

Daniel Henninger explains why only those young people who plan on joining unions would benefit from another four years of Obamanian economics which leads to slow economic growth and high unemployment for college graduates. If their ambition goes beyond being a union lifer, they should rethink their support for young people.

Larry Sabato looks at suggested slogans for Mitt Romney. It seems that Romney's new slogan was also used in "The Godfather."

Of those 30 Democrats who won formerly GOP House seats in 2006, only seven remain in office. Many of those 2006 winners were moderate Democrats who were able to appeal to voters in these swing districts and then lost those voters after they supported Obamacare.

Never underestimate the Obama team's ability to overdo anything. It's an acute observation.

Jim Treacher observes: "Obama inherited everything from George Bush (except the intelligence network that tracked down Bin Laden)" An apt observation, isn't it?

Obama likes to talk about the need for civility. He just doesn't like to practice it.

Looking at Obama's unusual cabinet secretaries.

The common theme with these cabinet secretaries is loud, uninformed rhetoric; a lack of practical experience; a certain utopian zealotry — and an expectation that there are rules for government grandees and quite different ones for the rest of us.

Elizabeth Warren has the lamest excuse for why she listed herself as a Native American in the legal directory - she wanted to meet up with people who are like she is. I guess she was hoping to go to a luncheon with other people who were 1/32 Native Americans. But she just never got around to joining up with actual Native American groups to meet up with her supposed peers.

George Will has a beautiful tribute to his oldest son, Jon, who was born with Down syndrome.

Here's a fun "trailer" to the history of the U.S. that one AP US History class made.

Cruising the Web

The middle class has done worse under Obama than under Bush - exactly what Obama promised he'd stop if he became president. But then the statistics on GDP growth and the size of the debt are so much worse than they were under George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush. When the Bushes were presidents the media and Democrats were happy to portray such statistics as terrible depression-like and to talk endlessly of a "jobless recovery," but we don't see those media comments now when the reality is so much worse.

What Obama doesn't understand is that his policies drive American businesses to hold off on new investments.

But then let's not worry, Obamacare funds meant to discourage obesity are being used to spay dogs and cats in Nashville. Apparently, overweight people were afraid to walk outside because of stray cats and dogs. Wonderful, just wonderful.

And Obama is still lying about that bridge between Ohio and Kentucky.

And lots of stimulus money has gone to create jobs in Europe.

Ann Althouse exposes the essential hypocrisy of Harvard's rush to deny that Elizabeth Warren got her job there as a diversity hire for her 1/32 of Native American heritage.

But you see, in faculty hiring, the question isn't whether this particular candidate is good enough. The question is why does this person with excellent credentials get selected from the pool of applicants who all have excellent credentials? Why did Warren move up the ranks of the law schools the way she did?

Her identification as a member of a minority group in the Association of American Law Schools directory would help. Why are the schools reticent about saying that they consider minority status a plus factor in hiring? Why aren't they out-and-proud about diversity? Law schools have fought for the proposition that diversity is a compelling state interest, justifying racial discrimination.

For Professor Westbrook to scoff that it's "just silly" to "suggest that [Warren] needed some special advantage" is to clumsily insult all the people who have gotten hired (or admitted as students) because of the diversity efforts of law schools. Those other people needed some special advantage, but oh, no, not her.

Is this reticence about the decency of affirmative action happening here because they want to help Warren in her Senate race? Is it because if she didn't really have that factor going for her but the schools used it, then... well... who, really, is hurt? Who was the next person in that pool of applicants? No one knows. Look away.

Richard Benedetto looks at how the media have allowed Obama to disappear when there are bad news stories in foreign policy.

Obama continues to double-count payroll tax hikes on high earners for shoring up Medicare and also for paying for new expenses in Obamacare just so the Democrats can lie about how Obamacare is lowering future deficits. It's all lies.

The government now has on its books two large, expensive and permanent entitlement commitments—the health law's premium subsidies and the Medicare hospital insurance program—yet Congress has only identified enough resources to pay for one of them.

Obama is running against hypotheticals because he can't defend his realities.

Voter fraud is real and continues.

The Washington Post editors point out that the environmentalists' argument against the Keystone XL pipeline has gotten even weaker.

Here's a pointed question: should we take Obama at his word?

The Social Security Trust funds are running out faster than expected.

May 1 is now Loyalty Day.

Forward to ridicule

Obama's new slogan, "Forward" is already ripe for ridicule. Michael Walsh notes how "Forward" was the name of the newsletter published by socialists in Germany from 1891 to 1933. And others have pointed out that "Spring Forward" was a slogan that Lenin used while Mao Zedong had the "Great Leap Forward" that killed millions. And of course, there is MSNBC's "Lean Forward" campaign. Are these echoes of communists, socialists, and MSNBC slogan a coincidence?

And the twitterverse is already having loads of fun satirizing the slogan.

Obama's spiked football

Michael Mukasey, who served as Bush's attorney general after the unlamented departure of Alberto Gonzales, rightly smacks down Obama's self-praise for ordering the raid on bin Laden's compound and the entire approach the Obama administration has taken towards intelligence.

Moreover, the president does not seem to have addressed at all the possibility of seizing material with intelligence value—which may explain his disclosure immediately following the event not only that bin Laden was killed, but also that a valuable trove of intelligence had been seized, including even the location of al Qaeda safe-houses. That disclosure infuriated the intelligence community because it squandered the opportunity to exploit the intelligence that was the subject of the boast.

The only reliable weapon that any administration has against the current threat to this country is intelligence. Every operation like the one against bin Laden (or the one that ended the career of Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S. citizen and al Qaeda propagandist killed in a drone attack last September) dips into the reservoir of available intelligence. Refilling that reservoir apparently is of no importance to an administration that, after an order signed by the president on his second day in office, has no classified interrogation program—and whose priorities are apparent from its swift decision to reopen investigations of CIA operators for alleged abuses in connection with the classified interrogation program that once did exist.

Mukasey rightly compares Obama's self-congratulation and focus on himself in how he emphasized his own role in the killing of bin Laden rather than focusing his praise to those who gathered the intelligence, planned the attack, and carried it out.

While contemplating how the killing of bin Laden reflects on the president, consider the way he emphasized his own role in the hazardous mission accomplished by SEAL Team 6:

"I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority . . . even as I continued our broader effort. . . . Then, after years of painstaking work by my intelligence community I was briefed . . . I met repeatedly with my national security team . . . And finally last week I determined that I had enough intelligence to take action. . . . Today, at my direction . . ."

Mukasey draws the contrast with other great leaders at similar moments of triumph in their presidencies. Just think of how Abraham Lincoln in his Second Inaugural, given at a time when the collapse of the Confederacy was imminent, spent his speech contemplating how slavery was "somehow the cause of the war," and how the "scourge of war" would last "until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword." And then he went on to ask for "malice toward none, with charity for all" as we fought on until the end of the war. Every time I teach Lincoln's Second Inaugural, I marvel at the modesty of that speech and how Lincoln took a moment when any other president might rightly have taken the opportunity to praise himself and the course he took to stick out the fighting even at the lowest moments when so many in the North advised some sort of negotiated conclusion and instead spent the address to contemplate the country's sin of slavery and how this war was God's righteous reaction to that offense. And he concluded by attempting to bring the nation together just as the war was going to force the country back together.

No such grace for Obama. Mukasey reminds us of how George W. Bush announced the capture of Saddam Hussein. Note the contrast to Obama's announcement.

The man from whom President Obama has sought incessantly to distance himself, George W. Bush, also had occasion during his presidency to announce to the nation a triumph of intelligence: the capture of Saddam Hussein. He called that success "a tribute to our men and women now serving in Iraq." He attributed it to "the superb work of intelligence analysts who found the dictator's footprints in a vast country. The operation was carried out with skill and precision by a brave fighting force. Our servicemen and women and our coalition allies have faced many dangers. . . . Their work continues, and so do the risks."

He did mention himself at the end: "Today, on behalf of the nation, I thank the members of our Armed Forces and I congratulate them."

While the orders for the raid on bin Laden's compound included an escape clause that put the responsibility on Admiral McRaven for the "operational decision making and control" and the presentation of the "risk profile" given to the President, contrast that with Eisenhower's behavior on the eve of ordering the D-Day landings.

Dwight Eisenhower is famous for having penned a statement to be issued in anticipation of the failure of the Normandy invasion that reads in relevant part: "My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame attaches to the attempt it is mine alone."

A week later, when the success of the invasion was apparent, Eisenhower saluted the Allied Expeditionary Forces: "One week ago this morning there was established through your coordinated efforts our first foothold in northwestern Europe. High as was my preinvasion confidence in your courage, skill and effectiveness . . . your accomplishments . . . have exceeded my brightest hopes.

Eisenhower did mention himself at the end: "I truly congratulate you upon a brilliantly successful beginning. . . . Liberty loving people everywhere would today like to join me in saying to you, 'I am proud of you.'"

Such examples are worth remembering every time President Obama claims bin Laden bragging rights.

Is Obama spiking the football in Romney's face because that is the only thing he has left to run on?

The increasingly unavoidable conclusion is that this is the only thing this President thinks he can campaign on. ObamaCare and the stimulus, his two main legislative achievements, are unpopular. Even liberals say Dodd-Frank didn't solve the too-big-to-fail bank problem. Two-thirds of the country thinks the economy is still in recession.

Ergo, wave the bloody shalwar kameez of bin Laden in a way that would have got Karl Rove hooted out of Washington had he tried anything remotely like it.

Voters aren't likely to believe that any Presidential candidate would fail to pursue the man who killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11. But there is a danger in all of this for the incumbent in the White House.

One of Barack Obama's remaining campaign advantages is that most people still like and respect him personally. Lose that advantage, and we wouldn't want to be the campaign strategist who has to break his fall.

And now he has repeated his criticism of Romney from the White House during a joint press conference with the prime minister of Japan.

"I'd just recommend that everybody take a look at people's previous statements in terms of whether they thought it was appropriate to go into Pakistan and to take out bin Laden," Obama said, obviously taking a shot at Romney. "I assume that people meant what they said when they said it. And that's been at least my practice. I said that I would go after bin Laden if we had a clear shot at him--and I did. If there are others who have said one thing and now suggest they would do something else, then I'd go ahead and let them explain it."

The president was visibly smirking as he made today's statement. It also mirrors a campaign ad the president released Friday, which likewise suggests that Romney wouldn't have killed bin Laden if he, as commander in chief, would have been in the same position.

How crass to issue such a crack during a joint White House press conference. The man has no class or sense of what is appropriate in a true leader. Even present and former Navy SEALs are saying enough is enough.

Obama's need to not only take credit for the attack on bin Laden but then to try and argue that somehow he knows that Mitt Romney wouldn't have ordered the attack in a similar situation has distracted from the praise that Obama is due for the death of bin Laden. His spiked football, that he told us Americans didn't need to do, has muddied Obama's message. But then grace and modesty are not characteristics that have ever been associated with Barack Obama.

Cruising the Web

This is fun - Andrew Klavan and Bill Whittle give Obama's campaign video the Mystery Science Theater treatment.

Some advice for Mitt Romney on countering Obama's "cool factor." And even Jon Stewart thinks that the presidency should be above slow-jamming the news.

So does it get much lower than pretending to be a Native American in order to grab a job at Harvard Law? Now that her fakery has been exposed, Elizabeth Warren is reduced to claiming that she's relying on family lore even though there is no evidence that her family had a Native American background.

In contrast to Warren's sputtering over being revealed as a liar about her heritage, Scott Brown makes a half-court basket for charity.

John Hawkins lists seven of "the most disturbing quotes from members of the Obama administration."

Obama is blind to how the United States has the most creative and efficient oil industry in the world. But he just doesn't seem to care.

Actually, Rob Portman isn't that boring.

Public employee unions are running wild to the detriment of the states' fiscal viability. Government worker pension costs are bankrupting the states.

Jonah Goldberg looks at cliches that liberals love.

How Obama is buying off seniors until after the election

Timothy Carney explains how Obama is using a slush fund of money from Obamacare to make sure that the cuts to Medicare Advantage don't take place until after the election. And the GAO is calling him on it.

In 2010, Democrats were crowing that Obamacare would reduce the deficit. Under official budget scoring, the bill's $940 billion in new spending over a decade was more than paid for by a trillion dollars in new taxes and spending cuts.

Obamacare got some of its alleged savings by cutting Medicare spending by $500 billion. Republicans -- hypocritically, given their constant attacks on "government-run health care" -- made political hay over the Medicare cuts. Republicans know that seniors vote, and they like their Medicare.

Specifically, 12 million seniors use a program called Medicare Advantage, under which the government pays private insurers to cover seniors.

Medicare Advantage customers typically have more options, and at times more coverage, than standard Medicare customers. But the Obama administration said Medicare was overpaying the private insurers, and so the architects of Obamacare slashed $136 billion from Medicare Advantage to offset the cost of Obamacare.

The Medicare Advantage cuts were to begin in 2013, which would cause many insurers to pull out of the program, thus driving seniors into regular Medicare. So much for "if you like your plan, you can keep it."

The New York Post's Benjamin Sasse and Charlie Hurt explained the awkward details of timing: "Open enrollment [for 2013 Medicare Advantage] begins Oct. 15, less than three weeks before voters go to the polls." So Obamacare would kick seniors out of their Medicare program three weeks before Obama's re-election.

That, of course, would be politically damaging. So Obama simply took $8.35 billion from a Obamacare fund for "demonstration projects" and used it to delay the brunt of the Medicare Advantage cuts until after the election.

The GAO last week pointed out the extraordinary nature of this "demonstration." The program "dwarfs all other Medicare demonstrations -- both mandatory and discretionary -- conducted since 1995," the GAO stated.

And the GAO made it pretty clear that this slush fund trick looks little like a "demonstration" of anything. "The design of the demonstration precludes a credible evaluation of its effectiveness," the GAO report stated, concluding it is "unlikely that the demonstration will produce meaningful results."

But the Obama administration is looking for a different sort of "meaningful results" -- more votes on Election Day. So the Department of Health and Human Services stood firm when the GAO recommended scrapping this spurious demonstration.

The administration's sleight of hand on Medicare Advantage fits a pattern of Obamacare provisions that were abandoned when they were shown to be unworkable. What makes the Medicare gambit more distressing is that Obama is using taxpayer money for political purposes.

So basically, the President is using $8.35 billion to help his election campaign.

After all, a president isn’t generally thought to possess the power to reallocate Americans’ resources to shore up his political vulnerabilities. In defense of its actions, the administration is relying on a 1967 law that says the HHS secretary can spend money without specific congressional approval on “experiments” aimed at improving the execution of current law. Obama’s $8.35 billion allocation, however, isn’t aimed at improving the execution of current law. It’s aimed at delaying the execution of current law and thereby masking the effects of that law until after Obama’s reelection bid. The only “experiment” the administration is conducting is whether it can pull the wool over seniors’ eyes until the election is over.....

As Ben Sasse, HHS’s assistant secretary for planning and evaluation until early 2009 and now the president of Midland University, says, “If a presidential administration can simply make up the authority to make law and give itself the power of the purse to implement its new law—which not only isn’t designed to make existing law work but is actually against the purpose of existing law—why do we need a Congress?” Sasse adds, “In scope and intention, this is something completely new, and if it’s allowed to establish precedent, the only limit on what future administrations could spend money on, or how much they could unilaterally spend, would be their own electoral calculations about what they could get away with.”

And where is the surprise in all this? The Obama administration/campaign is hoping that this is all too complicated for seniors to grasp until it's too late. That's Obama's main strategy in the election - hope that voters are too uninformed to understand his flim-flammery. That's the real "hope" of the Obama campaign.