CONSERVATIVES FOR CORPORATE WELFARE
Cutting spending in Congress is so difficult because every area of the budget is defended by an army of special interests and perverse alliances that often defy reason and common sense. Nowhere is this more evident than with the federal government's ludicrous $6 billion subsidy of ethanol, which I and Sen. Ben Cardin, D-MD, have proposed to eliminate. This week on March 09, we introduced in the Senate a Bill To Repeal the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit. Within hours on that very day, the senior political columnist for a conservative newspaper, The Washington Examiner, condemned our bill as "Tom Coburn's Tax Hike." This illustrates why the ethanol subsidy endures despite widespread opposition from the Left and the Right. On one hand, the Examiner columnist declares, "government support for ethanol is among the most destructive and wasteful giveaways to special interests today." Yet, on the other hand, he says doing away with the subsidy is a "tax-hike" that would leave money in appropriators' pockets, at which point many Republicans run for the hills. This analysis is inaccurate and destructive on several levels.
BREAKING NEWS: NPR AND HAMAS MERGE!
Gaza Strip -- Newly installed in her Gaza City office, National Public Radio’s Vice News Chief (Oppression and Victimization Department) Consuela “Muffy” Leer-Geist looks right at home. Generously granting her first on-site interview to FSM, Ms. Leer-Geist wore a tasteful chador, set off with a stunning Sweetbriar-logo headscarf (black is always correct). Her half-veil, designed by bad-boy fashionista John Galliano, completed an outfit that can only be described as a cutting-edge fashion statement that also displays cultural empathy.
Picking at her chickpea salad (and careful to use only her right hand), NPR’s reigning regional news-doyenne put down the script over which she’d been chuckling and opened our conversation:
TENDER LOVING CAIR
Islamist Bigots Lose One - And They're Outraged The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is furious. For the first time since the birth of Mohammed, it isn’t getting its way in Washington. In the past, whenever our government raised the possibility of doing the least little thing of which CAIR might not wholeheartedly approve, the soft-core jihadis shrieked, “Bigotry!” And presidents, cabinet secretaries, senators, representatives and bureaucrats—even intelligence analysts and military officers--ran for cover (while, no doubt, suggesting that their spouses don head-scarves for a probationary period).
In the face of Islamist terrorism, we’ve been foolish. In the face of Islamist bullying of our government, we’ve been cowards.
Now, just this once, CAIR isn’t being allowed to dictate its sharia-flavored will to our nation’s capital.
A WORTHWHILE AND AN IMPORTANT PRIORITY
The U.S. budget deficit for February was $221 billion, 14 percent larger than the deficit in February a year ago. The primary reason for the deficit was a 17 percent increase in government spending.
This was the largest monthly deficit in history. It was substantially larger than the deficit for the entire 2007 fiscal year ($161 billion).
The current law funding the federal government runs out March 18. And very soon the government will bump up against the debt ceiling -- $14.29 trillion, equivalent to the value of all the goods and services produced in the United States last year. So Ron Schiller picked a very bad time to embarrass his employer.
GORILLAS, SAVAGES, AND REDEMPTION
Hotel Mille des Collines, Kigali, Rwanda. Ever see the movie Hotel Rwanda? It's about the manager of a hotel in Africa who did his best to provide a refuge from one of the greatest atrocities in history - the slaughter of over 800,000 innocent people in 100 days. I'm writing this from that hotel. This is a story of grotesque horror and magnificent inspiration. Let's start with a question: Which one is the murderous savage? 
Hint: gorillas are vegetarians. I took the bull silverback gorilla's picture two days ago on the slopes of the Gahinga volcano in the Virunga mountains of Rwanda. He paid almost no attention to me at all. The picture of the guy with the "panga" knife was taken in 1994 by a journalist who was lucky he wasn't hacked to death - like hundreds of thousands of others butchered by this guy and his buddies. Sure enough, he's the savage. Yet the savages of Rwanda are not all natives, for this is a story of Belgian and French savages as well, with one of the latter being the president of his country at the time.
TEACHER UNIONS INSTITUTIONALIZE FAILURE
The key thing about student achievement in the United States is there isn’t much of it.
The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) publishes comparative education statistics for the OECD’s 34 members and selected other countries. The latest was in 2009.
In reading, U.S. students ranked 17th of 70 countries, at about the OECD average.
In mathematics, U.S. students ranked 30th, at a level significantly below the OECD average.
In science, U.S. students ranked 23rd, at about the OECD average.
We cannot maintain our standard of living if our students lag behind our international competitors for a prolonged period. And our kids have been mediocre, at best, for quite some while. In the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (1995), high school seniors in the U.S. ranked 19th out of 21 in math, 16th in science.
This isn’t because of a lack of resources. In 2006, per pupil expenditures in the U.S. were 41 percent higher than the OECD average. Measured in dollars per student, only Switzerland spent more.)
The Swiss may be getting their money’s worth. Their students outperform ours in reading, math and science.
But we’re not.
IRAN IS THE PRIME BENEFICIARY OF THE NEW MIDDLE EAST
A new Middle East is upon us and its primary beneficiary couldn't be happier. For generations, the stability of global oil supplies has been guaranteed by Saudi Arabia's reserve capacity that could be relied on to make up for any shocks to those supplies due to political unrest or other factors. When Libya's teetering dictator Muammar Ghaddafi decided to shut down Libya's oil exports last month, the oil markets reacted with a sharp increase in prices. The very next day the Saudis announced they would make up the shortfall from Libya's withdrawal from the export market. In the old Middle East, the Saudi statement would never have been questioned. Oil suppliers and purchasers alike accepted the arrangement whereby Saudi Arabian reserves - defended by the US military -- served as the guarantor of the oil economy. But in the New Middle East, Iran feels comfortable questioning the Saudi role. With each passing day, the Iranian regime is actively destabilizing Saudi Arabia's neighbors and increasing its influence over Saudi Arabia's Shiite minority in the kingdom's Eastern Province where most of its oil is located. The Obama administration has failed completely to understand what is happening.
HALF-FULL REPORT 03/04/11
There is, I suppose, no more appropriate way to begin this week’s Half Full Report than with a report that is half full.
The good news, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is that the unemployment rate has fallen to 8.9 percent.
The not so good news is that the number of persons unemployed (13.7 million) is essentially unchanged from January, and the civilian labor force participation rate (64.2 percent) is the lowest its been in 27 years.
John Podhoretz is puzzled.
Protesters have left the state Capitol building in Madison. It'll cost Wisconsin taxpayers about $7.5 million to clean up after them.
My hero of the week is Judge Roger Vinson, the U.S. District Court judge in Florida who ruled that Obamacare is unconstitutional. The Justice Department asked him to tell the 26 states that brought the suit that they must begin implementation of it anyway (Alaska and Florida have said they will not). I bet Holder is sorry now that Justice did.
The putz of the week is Kenneth Vogel of the Politico.
THE PLATINUM VEGAS RENDEZVOUS
It was a tough job, but somebody had to do it - somebody from TTP had to spend a week in Vegas figuring out among the myriad of choices the best hotel deal for the May Rendezvous. And only SuperMiko could resist being plied with all sort of exotic libations and amenities to come up with what's truly #1 for TTPers. So he did it. The Vegas Rendezvous, Friday May 6 to Sunday May 8, will be at The Platinum at the Strip. Just a block away from the Strip itself right behind Bally's & Paris, and a half-block from the monorail that takes you along the entire Strip, The Platinum is a no-smoking, all-suite, casino-less boutique hotel that has gone all out to welcome TTP. The room rate for TTPers is $119 a night. This is for a suite with a king size bed and pillow top mattress, living room and sofa, full gourmet kitchen, 42-inch plasma tv, double-size whirlpool tub and walkout balcony. Of course, The Platinum has a great bar where TTPers can gather, and we have our own dining and meeting rooms. The food is great too - Miko can attest to that. All of you who attended a Rendezvous before well know what an extraordinary experience they are. If you've never been - now's your chance. TTPers are a community of rational pro-Americans and we love each other's company. You simply have to be there!
BLANK SLATE OR EMPTY SUIT
In the prologue to the second of his autobiographies, “The Audacity of Hope,” Barack Obama said: “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
Being a “blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views” is a good way to be elected president…especially when the incumbent is saddled with an unpopular war and the stock market melts down two months before the election. But after two years in office, that blank screen can look more like an empty suit. “For a man who won office talking about change we can believe in, Barack Obama can be a strangely passive president,” wrote Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus, who is normally a supporter. “There are a startling number of occasions in which the president has been missing in action – unwilling, reluctant or late to weigh in on the issue of the moment,” Ms. Marcus said. “He is, too often, more reactive than inspirational, more cautious than forceful. The dots connect to form an unsettling portrait of a ‘Where’s Waldo?’ presidency.”