ANDREW MALCOLM: Obama’s Afghan trip: 14,000 miles for brief remarks lacking one crucial word.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Another Domino Falls in Dem War on Blue.

The battle against the blue model is heating up in deep-blue Rhode Island. Via Meadia has already covered the struggle at the state level, but the fight is increasingly trickling down to the municipal level as well. The New York Times is reporting that Providence Mayor Angel Taveras, a Democrat, is planning to embark on one of the largest rounds of cuts the city has ever seen.

Insisting that it’s the only way to avoid bankruptcy, Taveras is planning to cut cost-of-living benefits for thousands of city pensioners—a move which will save the city an estimated $16 million in the coming year and will reduce its pension liability by $236 million. This is only the most notable of a group of pension cuts that could save the city a further $26 million next year.

Crucially, these cuts are unlikely to come with tax increases. Despite the ardent wishes of state unions, Taveras is shying away from this favorite blue solution to financial problems.

Reality sometimes sets in.

TRANSPARENCY: After Chu misspeaks, Y-12 goes mum; what’s the reality about Lake Reality?

You wouldn’t think you’d have to go to the state of Tennessee to get factual information about operations at the federal Y-12 nuclear weapons plant, but that’s the situation — especially as regards the environmental activities.

Info is always tough to come by at Y-12, in part because of high security and classification issues, but that’s multiplied in an election year. Or so it seems.

Earlier this year I asked the Y-12 public affairs folks about the operation of Lake Reality, which was constructied in the 1980s to help stem pollutant releases into East Fork Poplar Creek, and I got stony silence in return. There was apparently a complete lockdown on information because Energy Secretary Steven Chu misspoke during a Senate hearing. Nobody would say a word.

Well, it is an election year.

MIT OFFERS AN ONLINE ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING CLASS, 120,000 students sign up.

UPDATE: Bill Quick thinks that this could change everything. Yes. I talk more about this stuff in my forthcoming book on the Higher Education Bubble from Encounter Broadsides. Should be out next month.

AT AMAZON, warehouse deals in Pet Products & Supplies.

Plus, today only, a certified refurbished Kindle Fire for $139.

THE SERIOUS PROBLEM OF “HIPSTER RACISM.” Only bad people are racist. Hipsters are inherently good. Therefore, hipster racism is inconceivable. Plus, comparing charges of racism to McCarthyism.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

If you use this, please don’t use my name.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s noticed this phenomenon. Here in Nashville, we have a neighborhood called “East Nashville” that is filled with hipster racism. White twenty- and thirty-somethings move in to the neighborhood where $400,000 houses sit across the street from cinder-block four-plexes, and down the street from some of the most violent projects in Nashville. The white kids love, love to talk about how morally superior they are to those of us who moved to the suburbs to escape Nashville’s failing schools because they live in a “diverse” neighborhood. And they say this while sitting next to their Prius that has bumper stickers that say “Over the river and through the hood” or “We’ll steal your heart…and your lawnmower.”

None of them know the names of their black neighbors, and those neighbors are never invited to any of the parties these kids have. I have always gotten a sense that they have the attitude that because they live “in the hood” they can say whatever they want. They have paid for their indulgences by living in the proper zip code.

The thing to remember about race-talk in contemporary America is that it’s mostly a status/power thing among various groups of white people. Any actual benefit to any actual minority groups is coincidental.

UPDATE: Boy they’re really down on the hipsters in East Nashville. Another reader writes:

Anonymous here too if you use it.

Ooohhh the smug moral superiority coming from the East Nashville hipsters is nauseating. Their Priuses and their bumper stickers and their houses that cost more than I will ever be able to afford which gives them a ten minute commute makes them much better people than the rest of us. Just ask them, they’ll tell you.

Ouch. Clearly East Nashville needs much higher property taxes. As a matter of fairness.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Another reader writes: “Thirty year resident of East Nashville here. Regarding those ‘37206 – Over the river and through the hood’ bumper stickers, I want one that says ‘37206 – I liked it better before you moved here.’ And yes, our mayor is asking for a property tax increase.” If you could tax smugness, the fiscal crisis would be solved.

WASHINGTON POST: Obama’s Whopper About An Ohio River Bridge. “Calling out the Republicans at the Brent Spence bridge was bad enough, given the bipartisan support for its reconstruction. But pointing to the Sherman Milton Bridge, which already has been repaired without funding from the president’s jobs bill, is ridiculous.” Well, let’s pile on the ridicule, then.

John Hinderaker is happy to help.

AFTER THE FIZZLE OF YESTERDAY’S MAY DAY DEMONSTRATIONS, this passage from Jonah Goldberg’s new book is fitting:

Ronald Reagan . . . was confronted by a bunch of screaming hippies back in his days as governor of California. They swarmed his car yelling at him for cutting education funding or some such. One fellow — who I like to imagine looked like Shaggy from Scooby Doo — held up a sign to Reagan’s car window saying “We are the future!”

Reagan quickly grabbed a pen from his suit pocket and wrote something down on piece of paper and thrust it to his side of the window so the kid could read it. It said: “I’m selling my bonds!”

Heh.

BYRON YORK: The Curious Resignation of Richard Grenell.

Related thoughts from Daniel Blatt at Gay Patriot.

SECRET SERVICE SCANDAL UPDATE: “The chairman and the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee have dared the Secret Service to answer 15 questions.”

Related: Secret Service Employees Paid 10 of the 12 Women Involved In Colombia Sex Scandal. And I’ll bet they really wish they’d paid the other two. . . .

UPDATE: Secret Service Problems Much Bigger Than Prostitutes. Yes, I’ve been blogging about those other problems for ten years. But somehow they haven’t gotten as much attention as the hookers.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN . . . OH, HELL, YOU KNOW THE REST: Joe Scarborough on Obama Afghanistan visit: ‘The neocons have won tonight.’ My favorite part was when he posed with a plastic turkey.

The Hill: Obama risks his own ‘mission accomplished’ moment in Afghan war.

Oh, well, at least he closed Guantanamo — hey, wait . . . .

LEAVING A SINKING SHIP: Warren Campaign Shedding Support? “Frustrated by Elizabeth Warren’s demeanor on the campaign trail and impressed by Sen. Scott Brown’s record of bipartisanship in the Senate, a number of centrist Democrats are endorsing the Republican senator in his bid against the one-time Harvard professor.”

WHY HIDING MONEY FROM YOUR SPOUSE has gotten a lot harder.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Occupy’s Descent Into Mobbery Threatens Democracy. “After a day of mayhem, Occupy protesters have shown themselves to be little more than a dangerous mob. Democrats coddle them even as their outrages escalate. Criminal behavior has no place in a democracy. . . . Coddled by authorities, and openly supported by members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, whose members claim to advance its aims in the House and Senate, Occupy is an outrage. That any democratically elected political leader could support this fundamentally anti-democratic show of power is sickening.”

MICKEY KAUS: “Why would GM cut R & D, the source of its future growth, in order to show profits in the short run? Is something happening in, say, November, for which the 26%-government-owned entity might want its balance sheet to look artificially rosy? …. P.S.: Latest sales figures show GM’s market share has declined again.”

LITTLE GIRL, REVISITED: Seven Years Later.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, THIS KIND OF THING WOULD HAPPEN. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Barack Obama Hereby Declares May 1 “Loyalty Day.”

UPDATE: “A communist-era relic!”

BRIAN DOHERTY: Today’s Worst Partisan Political Columnist Blindness, Today! “I wish some editor had asked Pierce: what exactly are you talking about? What have these Republicans actually done, that the Democrats would have done differently?”

AT AMAZON, new releases in Blu-Ray.

SO I GOT AN EMAIL SUGGESTING THAT I’M JEALOUS BECAUSE I’M NOT COOL LIKE OBAMA. But actually, I am cool like Obama. Exactly like Obama. Here’s photographic proof.

UPDATE: A reader says that this picture is cool. Well, maybe. But not “cool like Obama.”

QUEBEC’S UNIVERSITY STUDENTS are in for a shock.

MORE “JUSTICE FOR TRAYVON.” So can we blame the race-baiting media and politicians for this outbreak of racial violence? Yes, I think we can.

POLIWOOD KICKS OFF A NEW SEASON: Does The Hunger Games Advance a Conservative Agenda?

ARMY OF DAVIDS: Is Herman Cain stealing my deal? Various readers want to know what I think. Well titles aren’t copyrightable, and although the phrase “An Army of Davids” was, as far as I know, original to me, it’s not all that original, so I don’t feel too put-upon. Though a shout-out would be nice. . . .

JON LOVITZ: Voice of a generation?