2-26-09

Victor Davis Hanson: For the last two decades, we borrowed and spent as if there were no tomorrow. Now we are living in that tomorrow of cutting back and making do. In relative terms, it is no longer 2005, but that does not mean it is 1932 either.

Jonathan Weisman: President Barack Obama delivered Congress a $3.6 trillion budget blueprint Thursday that hopes to “break from a troubled past” with a sharp shift toward expanded government activism, tax increases on affluent families and businesses, and spending cuts targeted at those he says profited from “an era of profound irresponsibility.”

Jonathan Allen: Obama’s name jumps out on a list of many earmark cosponsors because he and his staff have been so emphatic about his no-earmark stance.

Don Surber: Obama’s 52.4 million viewers last night was slightly above average, when adjusted for population, perhaps a sign that people no longer are as in awe of him — and that the nation does not feel it is as in peril as the media and the Democratic Party want people to think it is.

Barbara Hollingsworth: So here we are, in the middle of a full-blown economic crisis, and Congress is still planning to fund a planetarium in Peoria, potato cloning in Maine, and a “World Trade Center” in Montana. There’s even a $5.8 million earmark for the “Ted Kennedy Institute for the Senate,” which will presumably teach generations of future senators how to stick it to productive Americans, if there’s any of them left by then.

Spook86: Memo to the management of the Associated Press: Please pull the plug on your “Impact” series before you get embarrassed–again.

Jules Crittenden: The Bush policies are dead. Long live the Bush policies!…Panetta just dismissed a key Dem design concept out said window. Via Politico: “There’s no question this is a war.”

Richard Fernandez: The logistical consequences of the shift to the “good war” now have to be faced. Amateurs it is said, think of war in terms of tactics, but professionals see it in terms of logistics. Nowhere may this be truer than in the question of supplying Afghanistan…It is an absurd situation in conventional military terms. US supplies must pass through the enemy heartland in order to do a 180 degree to turn to fight that same foe.

Filed under: Chip by Chip