PRIORITIES: Rep. Kucinich sues over olive pit in sandwich. “Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio is suing a congressional cafeteria for dental damage he says he suffered after biting into an olive pit in a sandwich wrap he bought there.”
And reader David Schlosser emails: “There’s a tort reform joke in here somewhere.”
HMM: Border authorities arrest controversial Muslim cleric east of San Diego. “U.S. border authorities have arrested a controversial Muslim cleric who was deported from Canada to Tunisia three years ago and was caught earlier this month trying to sneak into California inside the trunk of a BMW, according to court documents. . . . Jaziri backed Sharia law for Canadian Muslims and led protests over the publication of the prophet Muhammad cartoons in a Danish newspaper in 2006.”
CAROLINE GLICK on blood libels.
NICK GILLESPIE: Obama’s State Of The Union was a “failure.”
UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch emails: “So is his Presidency.”
A DETAILED LOOK AT Rand Paul’s plan to cut $500 billion.
AT AMAZON, markdowns on jewelry. Valentine’s Day isn’t far off.
IT’S PROBABLY NOTHING.
THE NEW YORK TIMES GOES TO (SPY) WAR. “So CIA has a big policy disagreement with him! From which an old-timer like me would draw the conclusion that CIA is behind the Times’ campaign. To the Times’ great shame.” As always, it’s never in doubt that they’re tools. The only question is whose.
WHY THEY’D RATHER TALK ABOUT SARAH PALIN (CONT’D): CBO: Social Security to begin running permanent deficits this year, not 2016. “This isn’t the only horrible news in the report by a longshot, either. CBO’s projected deficit for this year is a cool $1.5 trillion or 9.8 percent of GDP, which is just two-tenths of one percent less than last year’s all-time budget-buster. And there’s not much revenue relief coming from new jobs: CBO expects that unemployment will remain above eight percent through 2012 and won’t get back to a historic norm of 5-6 percent or so until 2016. This ship has already started to sink, in other words, and yet Captain Hope chose to use his annual megaphone last night to talk about stuff like high-speed rail.”
BLIZZARD IN DC: A good night for Al Gore to get a massage.
YOU CAN’T FOOL THOMAS FRIEDMAN: It’s Sputniks All The Way Down.
Sadly, not the Webb Wilder kind.
UPDATE: David Kirkham emails:
Obama is right. This is our Sputnik moment and we better take heed of history. The Soviet Union fell because they ran out of money. I know. For 2 years I watched the slow death spiral of The People’s Aircraft Company–Poland’s crown jewel in their socialist state. PZL Mielec produced 3 MiG’s a day at the height of the Cold War. By everyone’s account they were “too big to fail.” I was there the day the MiG factory crashed. I saw the smoking wreckage of 20,000 men’s and women’s lives, abandoned by men with lofty credentials who thought they knew more than those they turned out into the cold.
Well, the men with credentials mostly did okay.
PRESIDENT BARACK GRANHOLM. “‘We need a moon shot,’ said Granholm in the Huffington Post. ‘This is our Sputnik moment,’ echoed the president on Tuesday. . . . Granholm envisioned a transformation of Michigan from Rust Belt to ‘Green Belt’ with massive, European-like, public investments in infrastructure and alternative energy. ‘In five years, you’ll be blown away,’ she predicted in what would become her signature line. Ironically, thousands of state jobs were blown away as Granholm’s vision diverted pols’ attention from much-needed reforms to the state’s budget and business climate. Since her speech in 2006, the state’s unemployment rate has exploded from 7.4 percent to 11.4.” America as Greater Michigan? Well, Michigan’s been okay for the pols and their cronies — though lately, even that’s not so true anymore.
UPDATE: Winning The Future!
MORE: “WTF Was Spot-On… There Were a Lot of WTF Moments In That Speech.”
TRACY QUAN: Don’t Cry For The Tiger Mom.
WASHINGTON POST: Rep. Paul Ryan 1, ObamaCare 0. “The most important thing said [by Foster] today: in so many words, moving toward defined contribution health care has more potential than price controls to bring about real efficiency gains and higher productivity in the health sector, and slow the pace of rising costs. That’s a very big deal.”
ARE WE APPROACHING a supersonic jet comeback? Hmm. If I really thought this were likely in the near-to-mid future, I guess the thing to do would be to buy property in Australia and New Zealand. Or maybe Fiji?
HOLLYWOOD’S first Gulag movie.
YOU WANT A “SPUTNIK MOMENT?” HERE’S YOUR FREAKIN’ SPUTNIK MOMENT: US Budget Deficit to Pass $1.5 Trillion This Year.
See, the thing about Sputnik was that it was really scary, because it meant the country was in danger — if the Russians could put a satellite overhead, they could put an H-bomb on New York in 20 minutes. That’s why we responded with a big change in how we did business.
This is really scary too. Where’s the serious response? And no, more of the same doesn’t count. A 5% across the board spending cut — real year-over-year cutting, not a cut against projected growth — would only barely begin to count as serious. Freezes and other flimflams don’t count at all.
I WILL NOT BE AN EARLY ADOPTER: Apps that turn your smartphone into a wallet.