This Just In ...

Recommended Reading (09/04/11)

Posted by Kevin Fischer on Sept. 4, 2011

Recommended reading

Here are, in my view, interesting, noteworthy columns and articles from the past week that I highly recommend (You will note that on occasion, I do not endorse the opinions of the author and may point that out. Despite my disagreements, I still feel the piece is worth a read).


Have Wisconsin unions jumped the shark?

“There’s an old TV saying given to the moment when viewers realize a series has peaked – it’s called ‘jumping the shark.’ It’s in reference to the fifth season of Happy Days, when the Fonz, is waterskiing – complete with leather jacket – and proceeds to jump over a shark. The scene was so outlandish and ridiculous, that viewers realized the show as creatively bankrupt. The popularity of the series declined from there.

We may have just witnessed the Wisconsin public employee unions’ shark jumping moment.”


Where does David Prosser go to get his reputation back?

“There are some people who need to apologize to Mr. Justice David Prosser now that he has been cleared and soon. They took a shallowly researched and preposterous allegation -- that Prosser held fellow justice Ann Walsh Bradley in a chokehold -- and ran to the guillotine with it.

Here is a list of people who should apologize for their rush to judgment. These named should be ashamed of their lynch mob mentality. Their judgment, blinded as it was by partisan fury, should forever be suspect. Their names must be synonyms for ignominy, the triumph of willful ignorance over patient fact-finding. They are practitioners of the dark arts of ‘by any means necessary.’

They put our democracy in a chokehold.”


Health care law: More insured, but...

"In a key finding, the report said the newly passed law will slice the number of uninsured (WI) residents by 340,000, or 65 percent, primarily because of government subsidies and the existence of an individual mandate that all residents must buy health insurance.

(That latter requirement has been ruled unconstitutional by a federal court of appeals, it should be noted, and is now headed to the Supreme Court for disposition.)

But that's about all the good news the study contained."


Obama WAS trying to use speech one-upmanship as political ploy

“The American left and its handmaidens in the Old Media spent 24 hours desperately trying to spin Obama’s attempt to schedule a joint session of Congress on the same day as the GOP debate as an example of how the GOP is refusing to work with him. These leftists categorically deny that Obama was simply engaging in political brinkmanship, using his selection of Sept. 7 as a political ploy. But the very night that Obama was shot down by Speaker Boehner on the date he chose for his jobs address…”


Six ways Obama might win young voters in 2012

"What potent potion, pray tell, will he  concoct to get the 18- to 35-year-olds to actually get off their unemployed butts, leave their mommies’ basements, drive their chitty Chevy Volts to the polls, and wait for hours in a snaking line only to punch a ballot for four more years of this economic hell?

One tactic that might garner the youth’s vote for Obama would be for him to turn to Hollywood again. Do some celebrity stuff! Young people love them some Hollywood. Woo Hoo!  

For instance, howzabout the following considerations for 2012’s election, Mr. President?

1.    Show up to all the debates in an egg like Lady Gaga did for the 2011 Grammys. You could have four of your men—Biden, Geithner, Holder and Napolitano—carry you into each contest like an avian Cleopatra. The kiddos would love it."


What liberals fear more than Obama losing

"He cannot claim a single success.  His resume is a bibliography of failure.  His signature achievement, the dubious namesake ObamaCare, was designed by someone else.  Its central feature, the individual insurance mandate,  is destined to be overturned by the Supreme Court.

We will have our fill of post mortems, ad nauseam, about how The One broke their hearts; his considerable skills, now considered overrated,  were just no match for the enormity of the clean- up needed after Bush's mess; a victim of his opponents' entrenched racism."

Bloomberg: No clergy, no FDNY

“We read that New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg is not inviting First Responders to observe the tenth anniversary of this day of death and sacrifice, at Ground Zero.

And we read, also that Mayor Bloomberg’s guest list is empty of any clergy, as well.

There will be no prayers at his little shindig. Heaven, forbid.

Apparently, there’s just not enough room for all the First Responders who want to be there, because there are so many important people who must be there! They cannot be denied their photo-op, and their speechifying, and their postures and poses, even though most of them were not even in office on that dreadful day.”


The case against summer

“The logical argument contra summertime should be four words long: middle-age men in shorts. Q.E.D.

Alas, shorts are being worn year-round by us graying porkers with legs as ugly as stump fences—if stump fences had hairy varicose veins. But there are plenty of other things wrong with summer, starting with the fact that it comes at the wrong time of year.”