The Ryan 2012 Express Gains Steam

This time, from Matthew Continetti of The Weekly Standard, who described Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) as “a congressman with a presidential agenda.”

Continetti is referring to Ryan’s Roadmap For America, quite possibly the only way out of the current fiscal mess we’re in and facing in the very near future.

For Americans under 55, the Roadmap would fundamentally restructure Medicare and Medicaid through means-tested vouchers, while introducing opt-in personal accounts to Social Security. It would replace the corporate income tax with a business consumption tax; repeal the Alternative Minimum, dividend, capital gains, and estate taxes; and reduce the six current tax brackets to two—one at 10 percent, the other at 25 percent. And that’s not all. Other parts of the plan include job training programs, budgetary reforms, and a free-market health care proposal modeled on Ryan’s Patients Choice Act. “This works,” Ryan told me last week. “It solves our fiscal crisis. It turns it around.” The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office agrees with him.

Unfortunately, as long as Bela Pelosi is Speaker of the House, Dingy Harry is Senate Majority Leader and Our Lord and Savior is in the White House, this has as much chance of becoming reality as the Washington Nationals do of winning the World Series any time soon.

We’d need not only a Republican President but sizeable GOP majorities in both houses of Congress.

Ryan’s political problem is that he’s a congressman with a presidential-level agenda. The Roadmap is a realistic way to clean up America’s fiscal mess, but there is no chance of it becoming law as long as Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid run Congress and Barack Obama is president. Moreover, Bush’s failed Social Security reform and Obama’s doomed health bill show that a president has to have large congressional majorities as well as public approval to pass major changes to entitlement law.

That does not mean we give up and acquiesce to inevitable doom. There are elections ahead of us this year and again in 2012, when we can make substantial changes to the makeup of Congress as well as who sits in the Oval Orifice.

Says Continetti about a possible Ryan candidacy in 2012:

He’s young, charismatic, wonky, and well spoken. He’s already held his own against President Obama. His national profile is on the rise. He recently endorsed conservative favorite Marco Rubio in the Florida Senate Republican primary. He’s scheduled to speak at two fundraisers in New Hampshire later this month.

Devin Nunes jokes that he’s the charter member of the “Draft Ryan” club. As the budget outlook grows darker, expect membership in the club to rise. Because sometimes you don’t pick the moment. Sometimes the moment picks you.

That moment may just be arriving.

Meteorologist Freaks Out

Baltimore meteorologist FAIL.

more about “Meteorologist Freaks Out“, posted with vodpod

The Green Jobs Bill Trainwreck

The Democrats in Wisconsin are planning on taking one last dump on the state’s economy before the voters sweep them from power in November.

America’s Worst Governor, Jim Milhous Doyleone, has proposed a so-called green jobs bill that among other things would require 25 percent of Wisconsin’s energy to be produced by renewable resources such as wind or solar.

From the state Commerce Department:

JANESVILLE/BELOIT – Governor Jim Doyle recently launched the Clean Energy Jobs Act, a landmark legislative package to accelerate the state’s green economy and create jobs. New industry-recognized research shows the package will directly create at least 15,000 green jobs in Wisconsin by 2025. Department of Commerce Secretary Richard J. Leinenkugel discussed the plan at press conferences held at Universal Recycling Technologies, Janesville and Kettle Foods, Beloit.

“Addressing climate change is not just an environmental issue, it’s about creating green jobs,” Governor Doyle said. “The Clean Energy Jobs Act offers new standards to help accelerate Wisconsin’s green economy. I am calling on the Legislature to update renewable portfolio standards to generate 25 percent of our fuel from renewable sources by 2025 and set a realistic goal of a 2 percent annual reduction in energy consumption by 2015.”

The Clean Energy Jobs Act, State Senate Bill 450 and State Assembly Bill 649, implements the recommendations of Governor Doyle’s Global Warming Task Force to address climate change and grow the state’s green economy through several key measures:

• Enhanced renewable portfolio standards – A new 20 percent standard would be set for 2020 and a 25 percent standard would be set for 2025. The current 10 percent standard would be accelerated from 2015 to 2013. By advancing our current renewable portfolio standards, and setting new standards, we will ensure more of our energy dollars stay in the state, creating thousands of jobs for Wisconsin families in fields like construction, manufacturing, and agriculture.
• Enhanced energy efficiency and conservation efforts – Graduated statewide electricity savings goals would be set, leading up to a 2 percent reduction by 2015 and annual reductions thereafter. The cheapest way to lower carbon emissions is through energy conservation. By setting achievable conservation goals, this bill will help reduce energy costs in businesses and homes across the state.

A comprehensive economic assessment of the Clean Energy Jobs Act found that the package would directly create at least 15,000 green jobs in Wisconsin by 2025. More than 1,800 jobs would be created in the first year alone. The assessment also found that between 800 and 1,800 construction jobs would be created each year from 2011-2025, and more than 2,000 manufacturing jobs would be created once the laws are fully implemented.

Anyone want to do some math? I realize on a snow day all across southeastern Wisconsin, the last thing products of gummint-run skoolz want to do — presuming they even can do — is math.

But let’s look at something being touted in that bill, shall we? The proponents say this legislation will create 15,000 new jobs by 2025. That’s a 15-year span. That’s a piddling 1,000 jobs year. Never mind that for each so-called green job created, 2.2 real jobs are lost. That means we’d lose 33,000 real jobs in that span. And that’s on top of all the real family-supporting jobs that Doyle and the Democrats have driven out of the state since 2003.

The headline to this story is far more accurate than the lede. Unless you’re Jeff Neubauer or S.C. Johnson Wax (meaning you’ve been bought off with pork and earmarks in the bill), you’re opposed to the green jobs bill:

[T]he state’s largest business lobbying group, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, said the new mandates will increase energy costs and hurt businesses, especially large electricity users.

“With 9 percent unemployment, we should be focusing on ideas to create jobs like cutting taxes, controlling spending, controlling red-tape, and clamping down on frivolous lawsuits,” said Scott Manley, director of environmental policy for WMC.
Twenty-three of the state’s largest business groups, representing contractors, home builders and fuel retailers, sent Doyle and lawmakers a letter last month citing a study that said the proposal will result in a loss of more than 43,000 jobs and cost billions of dollars.

The rest of it is utter nonsense. First, I am not opposed to use of renewable resources such as wind, solar and geothermal, but anyone who thinks these can power the American economic maching are looney tunes at the level of Ed Begley Jr.

Take a look at what happened to wind turbines in Minnesota during the recent cold snap (via Fred at RDW). The turbines, made in Mexifornia, froze.

Like a lot of California transplants, 11 newcomers to Minnesota are having a hard time adjusting to our winters.

They are wind turbines, erected last fall by 11 metro and outstate cities. The green-energy machines were expected to be spinning before Christmas, but so far their blades have been largely motionless, apparently paralyzed by frigid weather.

The turbines sit idly in Anoka, North St. Paul, Chaska, Shakopee, Buffalo and six other cities, all members of the Minnesota Municipal Power Agency (MMPA). The refurbished, 115-foot towers had operated on a California wind farm, where they didn’t have to worry about cold hydraulic fluid turning to gel and oil lubricants getting too sluggish.

The same thing will happen in hot, humid days in the summer with little or no wind.

The facts are clear and indisputable except in the minds of certain alternative energy moonbats: We are a country driven by the use of coal, oil and natural gas. Our vehicles are powered by gasoline and diesel. Our business and homes are powered by all three. Our economy is powered by all three, not by stuff fancied by a bunch of pinhead granola-eaters in labs working in theory.

Alternative energy pipe dreams, meet reality. Solar energy FAIL. Wind energy FAIL. Geothermal energy FAIL.

Alternative energy epic FAIL. That is, unless you’re intent on destroying the state and national economy.

Newt Picks Walker In Wisconsin

Appearing on CSPAN’s Washington Journal, former House Speaker New Gingrich predicted that Scott Walker would become Wisconsin’s next governor:

Mister Newt made these statements two weeks prior to the red tidal wave in New Jersey and Virginia last November and the Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts three weeks ago.

We’ve had years of solid Democrat leadership here under America’s Worst Governor, Jim Milhous Doyleone. It’s become the Perfect Storm of incompetence, malaise and corruption. Factor in a Democrat candidate running on Doyle’s record and Diamond Jim’s approval numbers in the 30s and it doesn’t bode well for the Democrats in November.

Fact is, Tom “The Taxer” Barrett doesn’t want to run for governor. He never wanted to get into the race in the first place. Barrett really wants to run for U.S. Senate in 2012, when it’s expected Sen. Herb Kohl will vacate the seat he’s held since 1988. But Our Lord and Savior Barack Hussein Obama came to the state and reportedly told Barrett that if he didn’t get into the race for governor, he could forget about any help from Washington in 2012 in his planned race for Senate.

So you have a reluctant candidate with an anemic record as mayor of Wisconsin’s largest city on one hand and an ebullient, energetic candidate with a proven track record as Milwaukee COunty Executive on the other.

Scott Rasmussen took his first poll of likely voters in Wisconsin and found Barrett trailing both GOP candidates. Head to head, Walker beats Barrett 48 percent to 38 percent, and former Rep. Mark Neumann beats Barrett 42 percent to 38 percent. If I recall correctly, that 38 percent was Jim Doyle’s approval ratings/re-elect numbers, so the unpopularity of Doyle has transferred directly to Barrett. And, remember: Mark Neumann has been out of the public eye pretty much since his narrow loss to Sen. Russ Feingold in 1998 and even he’s outpolling Barrett.

I agree with Newt: the governor’s mansion in Wisconsin is a likely Republican pickup.

We need to give the new Republican governor a Republican legislature as well, though, in order to get this state moving in the right direction.

Moneybomb For Duffy

Sean Duffy is the Ashland County District Attorney who’s aiming at sending big tax-and-spend Corruptocrat David Obey into the private sector in Wisconsin’s Seventh Congressional District in November. Obey’s been in Washington since 1969 and is the poster child for out of touch Washingtonians.

Obey is also the author of the porkulus trainwreck, about to celebrate its one year anniversary of pork spending and zero real jobs saved or created.

To commemorate that anniversary, the Duffy campaign has created a new website, called Obey Stimulus. On it, you can learn about what a disaster porkulus has been as well as about Duffy himself as well as participate in a moneybomb scheduled for February 17 to help Sean get the money needed to take down Obey.

From where I see it, Sean Duffy has the potential to be Wisconsin’s version of Scott Brown. Time magazine seems to agree, listing Duffy among the 10 candidates it considers to be the next Scott Brown.

Obey isn’t concerned by the $1.3 trillion in debt that porkulus loaded on the back of American taxpayers. In fact, he’s on record as saying he’d have spent even more.

What’s more, it doesn’t appear Obey is taking any challenge seriously:

Obey does not seem ruffled by Duffy’s harping on his role in the stimulus or statements that Obey is helping to create a “greater crisis” in terms of deficit spending. In fact, the Congressman’s campaign website isn’t even up and running yet.

Please, Mr. Congresscritter, go ahead. Make our day.

Wisconsin Pro-Life Groups Illegally Tracked

Following Field Marshal Janet Napolitano’s, the Department of Homeland Security has been tracking pro-life groups in Wisconsin as potential domestic terrorists.

From LifeNews via Melissa Clouthier at Right Wing News:

Madison, WI (LifeNews.com) — The Department of Homeland Security admitted today that it improperly conducted a threat assessment on pro-life and pro-abortion groups in Wisconsin. The assessment came before an expected rally last year in response to the University of Wisconsin Hospital board decided to allow abortions.

In February 2009, pro-life advocates planned to protest the hospital’s decision to open up a new Madison Surgery Center doing abortions.

The Associated Press reported today that the department said in a memo that it “destroyed all of the copies of the assessment after an internal review found it violated intelligence gathering guidelines about ‘protest groups which posed no threat to homeland security.’”

AP indicated the assessment was reportedly only shared with the director of Wisconsin’s intelligence-sharing center and local police in Middleton, Wisconsin, the site of the rally.

This is what should be even more frightening than the actual threat assessment: DHS, the Wisconsin Department of Justice and the Middleton Police Department all refused to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests from the Alliance Defense Fund and Pro-Life Wisconsin to review the findings. Turns out the reports from DHS were destroyed, and the Middleton PD refused to release its copy.

In January 2010 the Alliance Defense Fund, on behalf of Wisconsin pro-life advocates, asked the Middleton Police Department for a copy of the report pursuant to Wisconsin’s open records laws.

The Middleton Police Department refused to disclose the report and further said that the DOJ similarly refused to authorize disclosure of the report, despite the fact that DHS had already determined that the report was an improper investigation of freedom of speech activities.

Peggy Hammill, state director of Pro-Life Wisconsin, is justifiably outraged:

This move by DHS illustrates the Obama administration’s goal of silencing pro-lifers. It is disturbing that a local police department has apparently tapped into the security apparatus of the federal government to potentially obstruct free speech.

Last year, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano unjustly included pro-lifers in a report on domestic terrorism, and here we see her words in action.

To answer Dr. Clouthier’s question: Yes, it does look like an enemies list is being compiled by the administration. That list will eventuall consist of most of the American people, who the White House views as its enemy.

Miss Him Yet?

An unknown person has paid for and put up the following billboard in Minnesota along I-35:

Twelve months of The. Worst. President. Ever. will tend to make you nostalgic really quick.

If you drive along I-35 in Wyoming, Minnesota, you might see a billboard with a picture of George W. Bush and the words, “Miss Me Yet?”

Bob Collins of Minnesota Public Radio says that the billboard is real, not Photoshopped, and he has been trying to chase down who is behind it.

Much of the downturn against President Bush came from the steady drumbeat of negative press reports and negative commentary in general from Democrats. There’s no question blatant media bias played a major role, but the Bush administrations unwillingness to defend easily defensible actions hurt. Missteps like the refusal to exercise the veto pen on pork barrel spending, the huge Medicare prescription drug entitlement, Harriet Miers, and the failure to anticipate what the Democrats and the hostile media would do to him over Hurricane Katrina made Bush’s second term highly forgettable.

Still, though, he kept us safe and a third Bush term would be much preferable to what we have now.

Update via Power Line: the folks behind the billboard are business owners who prefer to remain anonymous.

I don’t blame them for their choice to remain anonymous. Given the way the moonbat Left has reacted to previous anti-Obama billboards here and here, their businesses would be targeted for destruction by the Kool-Aid drinking Obamabots via protest and boycotts as well as by the administration itself, no stranger to demonizing individuals and businesses for opposing their goals.

Uh, About Those TARP Funds …

Seems that a little thing like the law means bupkis to Our Lord and Savior when it comes to blowing taxpayer dollars in an effort to keep Democrats in control of Congress this November and get Himself four more years in 2012.

From Liz Blaine at Newsreal:

During questioning last week on Capital Hill, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Peter Orszag admitted the Obama administration intends to break the law and use TARP funds for whatever they desire.

Passed by Congress in 2008 using scare tactics, the $700 billion TARP bailout specifically designated that all monies recouped must be used to pay down the national debt. But President Obama has included the expenditure of TARP funds in his 2011 budget despite its illegality.

Listen to Orzag in his own words admit that The Messiah plans on using the funds from TARP for whatever He wants:

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) calls Orzag on the administration’s scheme.

Newsreal had this graphic which summarizes the administration’s economic philosophy:

That Scaaaaaaary! Tim Tebow Ad

Here’s the pro-life Super Bowl ad that made the radical Left and pro-abortion crowd react like Dracula to a silver cross:

Why is it that the radical Left harps about choice then reacts with horror when the woman actually chooses life?

Here, There And Everywhere

Unlike Waldo, we know where Barack Hussein Obama is. Our Lord and Savior is omnipresent. For those of you who graduated from Racine Unified, that means He’s everywhere.

He’ll be on America’s TV screens — again — when the Perky Katie Couric interviews him during the Super Bowl pregame show on See BS.

From The Politico via Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit:

With ABC landing the past three Obama interviews among the broadcast networks, CBS is now striking back.

Katie Couric, who’s been in the news already today, will interview President Obama live during Sunday’s Super Bowl pre-game show, according to the network.

Gee, will we see this sickening expression?

Stealing a page from RDW, feel free to caption this photo.

Or maybe this one?

Again, feel free to caption it.

Perhaps we’ll even see this one:

Odds are … this guy will make an appearance: