Hewitt: Arnie gets to stand and deliver

by Smitty
Arnie gets to stand and deliver on the 19th:

If the tax hikes are rejected by large margins next week, the country’s political elite ought to study that result closely. Despite huge spending margins and despite a thin veneer of bipartisanship, the tax hike gang is getting thumped because the electorate is saying –no, shouting– “Enough!”
Everyone has a story of a state or county employee friend who is retiring at 55 with a guaranteed life pension of $75,000 or more plus gold-plated medical benefits. Almost everyone knows that massive amounts of money have flowed into Los Angeles public schools and still half of the kids drop out. Majorities realize that businesses don’t have to operate here, and that places like Texas may lack the Rose Parade but let you grow a business and keep most of the profits.

The good news about that last sentence is that the ecosystem in the southwest really can’t handle the population load. Crashing the California economy may bring some left-handed benefit to the rest of the Colorado River basin.

In the near term, the vote promises to be good fodder for the 04 July and 12 September Tea Parties. Plus, the Federalism Amendment. Truthfully, if a state like California or Massachusetts wants to tax itself into oblivion, that should be allowed. It’s the borg effect of bringing that mentality to DC that we must oppose.

Pope walks out after Muslim cleric goes on anti-Jew rant during ‘interfaith dialogue’

Via Instapundit and Gateway Pundit, the Jerusalem Post:

Chief Islamic Judge of the Palestinian Authority, Sheikh Tayseer Rajab Tamimi, launched a poisonous verbal attack at Israel at a Monday night gathering attended by Pope Benedict XVI. . . .
Taking the podium after the pope without being on the original list of speakers scheduled for the evening, Tamimi, speaking at length in Arabic, accused Israel of murdering women and children in Gaza and making Palestinians refugees, and declared Jerusalem the eternal Palestinian capital.
Following the diatribe and before the meeting was officially over, the pope exited the premises. Army Radio reported that the pope shook Tamimi’s hand before walking out.
The Pope was immediately denounced as a “Eurofascist” and a “notorious Pamela Geller sympathizer” by the Little Green Footballs blog.

I might have added that last part.

How to save $2 trillion in health care

• 1. Organize a conference call with reporters.
• 2. Tell them you’re going to save $2 trillion.
• 3. Details to be announced later.

Any resemblance between HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the Underpants Gnomes is purely coincidental.

Corner: "45 cents of every dollar Washington spends this year will be borrowed."

by Smitty (h/t The Corner)

The president also talks of cutting the deficit in half from this bloated level. But even after the recession ends and the troops return home, he’d still run $1 trillion deficits — compared to President Bush’s $162 billion pre-recession deficit. In other words, the structural budget deficit (which excludes the impacts of booms/recessions) would more than quintuple.

“Kidney failure?” said the Yorkshireman, as he spread the Dijon mustard on his bison sandwich, glancing past Frumdreher. Out the window of Air Force One lay Tent City IV. “Oh, how my cousins dreamed of such a noble passage, as they worried out their last days under yoke of that fascist, W. Our Hope and Change era combines all the best features of Huxley and Orwell, don’t you think?

SCANDAL! A HETEROSEXUAL PRIEST!

Some of my Catholic friends may be shocked to discover that somehow a heterosexual made it through seminary and, indeed, there is scandalous photographic proof of his interest in women:

Father Alberto Cutie, known as “Padre Oprah,” the nationally known Spanish language television host, advice columnist and bestselling author of the book “Real Life, Real Love,” is creating quite a stir as he appears to be getting a dose of real love himself.
A Mexican magazine ran pictures of Father Cutie cuddling with a woman on a Florida beach and kissing her at a bar.
In an interview with the Spanish language network Univision, Father Cutie said that despite the scandal the photos have created, he doesn’t want to give up either his collar or the woman he loves.

Yes, you read that right: Father Cutie, which is actually pronounced “Koo-tee-ay.” When I saw the “Father Cutie” headline at Pundit & Pundette, I thought it must be a joke. But (a) he is kind of a cutie, and (b) the real joke is that this guy, who couldn’t be faithful to his own vows, was on the archdiocese’s radio show giving “relationship advice” to others.

Father Cutie is now reportedly considering leaving the priesthood. As I said at Taki’s:

Of course, conservative Catholics can expect a spree of columns pondering “what this means” for the celibate priesthood, whereas liberal Catholics will wax nostalgic for the “good old days” when priests molested altar boys.

Being a proud Protestant means there is no ecclesiastical hierarchy to blame when these scandals happen. Jimmy Swaggart? Jim Bakker? Ted Haggard? They were never my leaders, and their scandals were their own embarrassment.

The Left won’t let it go, will they?

When William Jacobson started blogging about “DijonGate,” my reaction was one of amusement — which, in case you haven’t noticed, is my reaction to pretty much everything, including the Barack Obama dildo.

But, as I pointed out, DijonGate drove more than 100K visits Thursday and Friday for Professor Jacobson — nearly an average month’s worth of traffic in just two days — mainly because the Left has gone wacko over this story. And they won’t let it go.

Today, Pandagon’s Jesse Taylor is back at it, arguing whether a $7 hamburger is a typical American lunch. Look, Jesse: I can get a junior cheeseburger, fries and a soft drink at Sheetz for about $4, total. But it’s not about the burger price. It’s not about the burger or the condiments or anything else.

It’s about the fact that NBC News was afraid to let its viewers hear Barack Obama say “Dijon mustard,” like he’d asked for a side order of Beluga caviar or something. As with their “reporting” on the economy, it’s about elite journalism’s obsession with safeguarding Obama’s image.

So now there’s a whole new Memeorandum thread, and Vox Day weighs in:

If you think that little of your potential audience’s intelligence, you shouldn’t be surprised that no one watches you; they clearly aren’t capable of finding the on-switch.

Exactly. The producers who edited out “Dijon mustard” think Americans are stupid. Here’s Ed Driscoll:

Obama and Biden’s trip to Ray’s Hell-Burger in Arlington is remarkably reminiscent of Kerry and Edwards’ campaign photo-op at an New York State Wendy’s. Mark Steyn’s August 2004 Telegraph article is the definitive take on that classic faux-populist debacle. Much like the dangers of being photographed while wearing silly hats on the campaign trail, perhaps elitist politicians might want to think twice before slumming it at the local fast-food joint.

And here’s Jehuda at the Rhetorican:

In this media environment it’s easier than ever to point at the man behind the curtain, especially when the curtain isn’t even hanging anymore.

What we are seeing on the Left is a fanatical devotion to the Politics of Perception. It doesn’t matter that millions of Americans — including lots of us who didn’t vote for Obama — share his preference for a burger topping that is neither exotic nor particularly expensive.

Dijon mustard can be purchased at any Safeway or Food Lion at a cost only modestly higher than the plain yellow variety. And, as Jesse Taylor accurately points out, lots of Ordinary Americans eat at Applebee’s — or TGI Friday’s or similar chain restaurances — where the appetizers are $7 and the entrees are $15 or more.

However, as regards DijonGate, none of this does matters. We’ve gone from DijonGate to Dijongeddon because what matters, at least in the minds of TV news producers and left-wing bloggers, is the careful maintenance of Obama’s positive image.

The same is true of their reporting on the economy, where the question for elite journalists is not how many Americans are losing their jobs, but rather if Obama will be blamed for the job losses. We await the headline in the entertainment section of the New York Times:

‘Star Trek’ Breaks Box Office Record;
Film Helps Obama With Sci-Fi Voters

Is everything political now? Is news only relevant insofar as it causes people to vote Republican or Democrat? Will we soon see the TV weatherman telling us how the latest high-pressure system in the Midwest affects Obama’s popularity? Will ESPN discuss the political impact of the Cardinals-Mets game?

Allow me the self-serving observation that when Professor Jacobson gets more traffic for a mustard story than I get for “Carrie Prejean nude,” the politicization of news has gone too far. If Rush Limbaugh can’t be allowed a laugh at the president’s expense — and if Bush-Cheney jokes are the only laughs allowed at the White House Correspondents Dinner — Professor Jacobson’s remarks about an Obama “cult of personality” may foretell a humorless future for American political culture.

UPDATE: At least the folks who make Grey Poupon haven’t lost their sense of humor:

The Honorable Barack H. Obama
President of the United States
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20006
Dear Mr. President:
We applaud you, Mr. President, for exercising your freedom of taste when recently ordering a burger with Dijon mustard. We’re always happy to see people use Dijon mustard to add flair and flavor to their favorite foods. The right to choose condiments freely is quintessentially American and embodies the spirit of our democracy.
So we urge you to respond to “Dijon-gate” by issuing a “pardon” to any American who has ever been criticized for putting a liberal spread of Dijon mustard on a burger or a conservative dollop on a ham & cheese sandwich. These “Pardon Me for Loving Dijon” proclamations will empower the millions of Dijon mustard-loving Americans to ask for their favorite condiment with pride.
Respectfully yours,
The GREY POUPON Team

See? Greedy capitalists have a sense of humor. Hat-tip to Legal Insurrection via Instapundit, who also links the latest on yellow — or is that spicy brown? — journalism.

President Obama Remains Popular; Women, Minorities Hit Hardest

Over at The American Spectator blog, I noted that elite journalists now view everything through an Obama prism:

The Jobless Rate, Slow to Improve, Tests Obama
On the economy, President Obama has a timing problem. Congressional Democrats may have a bigger one.
Nearly four months into his presidency, Mr. Obama has begun to describe a pivot from economic crisis to economic recovery. From stabilized consumer spending to higher construction spending, he said last week, “the gears of our economic engine” are “slowly turning once again.”
The problem is that those gears are unlikely to churn out many new jobs anytime soon. . . .

“The problem,” as the New York Times sees it, is purely about politics, and politics is now about a single person. Never mind the nearly 2 million Americans who’ve lost their jobs since Jan. 20. There is only one person in the world who really matters, and his name is Obama.

The White House Correspondent Dinner Routine We Should Have Gotten

Never heard of C. Brooks Kurtz before, but this is more like it:

. . .Meghan McCain appears to be writing down her phone number on a cocktail napkin — no wait, she’s grabbing scraps of food off other people’s plates, putting them in cloth napkins and stuffing them into her oversized purse. She’s showing some decent cleavage . . . The crowd is howling — I want to ask the President if he still has any of his coke connections because this is going to be a very long night. . . .

There’s lots more.