The revolution does continue:

The Indiana House on Wednesday passed what would be the nation’s broadest use of school vouchers, allowing even middle-class families to use taxpayer money to send their children to private schools. The bill passed the house 56-42.

In an effort to lure House Democrats back from a five-week, self-imposed exile in Illinois, Republicans agreed to reduce the number of vouchers, with a limit of 7,500 the first year and 15,000 the second, 6News’ Norman Cox reported…

The compromise with the union-controlled cretins of the Democratic party is lamentable, but the logic is sound – give the people a taste of education freedom and ever more people will demand it. This is why the liberals oppose any and all voucher programs – they know it is a death knell for the corrupt education monopoly. One step at a time – and this is a grand first step.

When you’ve lost all credibility and have been exposed as nothing more than a bunch of crooks looting the treasury, I guess all you’ve got left is the ability to intimidate – from the Journal Sentinel:

Members of Wisconsin State Employees Union, AFSCME Council 24, have begun circulating letters to businesses in southeast Wisconsin, asking them to support workers’ rights by putting up a sign in their windows.

If businesses fail to comply, the letter says, “Failure to do so will leave us no choice but (to) do a public boycott of your business. And sorry, neutral means ‘no’ to those who work for the largest employer in the area and are union members.”…

Translation: if you don’t show public support for us, we’ll attack you. Doesn’t matter if you just want to stay out of it it – that is not allowed. The Party Line is that this is about worker’s rights and if you don’t back us, then you’re against worker’s rights. This is the sort of thing to bring a smile to the face of a Soviet Commissar or a Nazi Gauleiter. They couldn’t have done it better, themselves.

I have to say, I’m ashamed to think that someone who shares the title of “American” with me could do such an un-American and dastardly thing. Intimidation should be alien to the American experience…but here it is, right out in front of us.

Ok, so the unions want a fight to the finish. We’ll give it to them…we’ll keep this up until we’ve de-certified every public sector union in the United States and entirely cut off government funds from left wing groups. America will no longer be a place where powerful and corrupt interests are able to screw the people – we’ll make sure of that.

From Allahpundit – seems that it is part of a strategery to get TEA Partiers happy with a looming budget deal which only cuts a piddling $33 billion from this year’s budget:

…Before you throw up your hands and decide that it’s third-party time, though, here’s a bit of breaking news from The Hill: “Senate Republicans will finally unveil their balanced budget amendment tomorrow, this time with leadership (I.e., McConnell) on board.” That’s the way they’re going to sell this to Republican voters, I guess — by accepting a deal on this year’s budget and then going nuclear on the next, replete with entitlement reform and a BBA…

I’d prefer we stand firm and allow the government to shut down – Obama is becoming ever more irrelevant in the political debates and it would be great to pick a fight in public with the likes of Reid and Schumer…the more those two are on camera, the better things get for us. But, it looks like the GOP leadership doesn’t want that fight…foolish fears of a repeat of 1995 die hard, I guess. But, it is good that someone thought to link a balanced budget amendment with a bit of a climb down on immediate spending cuts. That is a great issue to carry in to 2012…one which does nothing but win for us each time it is brought up.

From The News Tribune:

A drought that loomed over some of California’s most fertile farmland officially ended Wednesday after a winter of relentless mountain storms that piled snow up to three stories high and could keep some ski resorts open until the Fourth of July.

More than 61 feet of snow has fallen in the Sierra Nevada high country so far this season, second only to 1950-51, when 65 feet fell, according to records kept by the California Department of Transportation. And more snow is possible in April, raising the prospect of an all-time record…

This is really good as I’m hoping to spend at least some time this summer around Lake Tahoe…so it should be nicely filled to the brim. Not so good for Al Gore, however…

The bloom went off the rose about a year ago…I guess by now we’d have to say the rose has gone and died. From Entertainment Weekly:

President Obama’s speech viewership keeps on slipping.

Monday night’s policy address on Libya delivered 25.6 million viewers, continuing the president’s trend of declining ratings for his issue-oriented telecasts.

The speech was down 12% from Obama’s address on Iraq last August (29.2 million), which fell 9% from his speech on the Gulf Coast oil spill in June (32.1 million), which in turn dropped 21% from his Afghanistan speech back in December of 2009 (40.8 million). Last night’s address could have been dinged by starting slightly before primetime, at 7:30 p.m. (which also kept Obama from making ABC choose between the commander-in-chief and airing Dancing With the Stars at its usual time)…

It is, however, mighty disturbing that the considered decision here was that a completely mindless and worthless show is more important than a Presidential speech about war. I mean, come on, I don’t like Obama as President but he still rates higher in the importance sweepstakes than some bit of television trash.

Aside from that, this tends to confirm my view that the people are tuning him out. Each time he says “let me be clear” the American people hear “let me try to snow you”, and so they are just not paying attention. I have to admit, also, that I only managed to hear the speech by accident – it happened to come on just as I was driving home from work and preempted my normal drive-time radio show (and I missed the first few minutes because I was finishing up my normal drive-time Rosary, done each commute home before flipping on the radio). So, I guess I’m guilty, too. But it is hard to listen to him these days – in fact, it is a bit excruciating when you listen to his words and then bounce them off the reality of the situation and swiftly conclude that the man either doesn’t know or doesn’t care about what is going on.

Forget all the polling and punditry about 2012 – its all wrong. While we still have to rate Obama as the likely winner, we only do that now because it is always so hard to beat an incumbent President. But Obama is very much yesterday’s news for the American people. He has nothing more to say to us that we’re interested in hearing…all the GOP need do is find a credible alternative to him, and he’s beaten next year.

How Democrats use their own failure as justification for giving them more money.

What to do when the police go bad.

OPEC will make a trillion dollars this year. We could cut in to that with a bit of “drill, baby, drill”, but Obama says “no, baby, no”.

Pelosi opens mouth, lie comes out.

Atheist Hitchens is being treated by an Evangelical Christian doctor who was mentioned in a work by Pope Benedict XVI about Jesus Christ. We pray that Hitchens will start to draw some conclusions…

Michael Barone notes some headwinds being experienced by budget-cutting GOP governors. This is to be expected – when you actually get to work doing the right thing, people will get angry and fearful. The key is to hold course and get the job done. Democrats are pep-talking themselves in to thinking that a new, liberal dawn has emerged because they managed to generate some bogus polls and union-stooge crowds…don’t buy it; the people are still with us. But, also, keep fighting…don’t let up for a minute.

I guess we could avoid oil and thus the Middle East by driving around in electric cars and building windmills… though it’s hard to tell if that’s a lifestyle for giving up oil or for giving up testicles.

From NRO’s The Corner:

For those who would like to see D.C. voucher program opened to new students again, expect an uphill battle. Today the White House Office of Budget and Management released a statement opposing House speaker John Boehner’s legislation:

While the Administration appreciates that H.R. 471 would provide Federal support for improving public schools in the District of Columbia (D.C.), including expanding and improving high-quality D.C. public charter schools, the Administration opposes the creation or expansion of private school voucher programs that are authorized by this bill. The Federal Government should focus its attention and available resources on improving the quality of public schools for all students. Private school vouchers are not an effective way to improve student achievement. The Administration strongly opposes expanding the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program and opening it to new students…

Which misses the point, entirely. The reason DC public schools suck is because they are run by an entrenched, unionized bureaucracy which has a captive market – namely, the poor kids of DC. Take away that captive market and the public schools will be forced to improve no matter how much the unions would prefer the schools remain garbage (garbage schools require less work but actually tend to have higher rates of pay…its a win/win for the unions). President Obama and his Administration simply do not care about the poor kids of DC – in their mind, the political calculus of obtaining fat donations for 2012 completely outweighs what will happen to the children in DC. Those kids, ill-educated, won’t become a problem for years – but next year is an election, for crying out loud. Gotta keep our liberal, Democrat priorities in order, ya know?

School choice is the silver bullet to fix education. Not because every kid who goes to a private school will go on to Harvard (which, in fact, is pretty much a useless achievement these days unless you’re just an idiot burnishing your credentials to impress other idiots…which is a quite lucrative practice, by the way…but not worthy of a lady or gentleman) but because it is only when organizations are forced to change that they will change. Allow an organization to enjoy continually higher funding no matter how bad the result and all you’ll get is an increasingly high price paid for an increasingly bad product. That is what is wrong with education – that is why we’ve gone from first to worst in so many categories. School choice will break up the monopoly and allow people who actually care about education to rise to the top.

But as long as Obama and his Democrats are in charge, we’ll make little headway on this matter. Because they don’t care about it. Because their only goal is personal power and wealth – and if it take screwing the kids in order to secure big union donations, then that is what they will do, and have done. Our job, once again, is to get them out of power as soon as possible…and, conservatives, the real fun about this is that beating Obama is now something we can do “for the children”.

Noted over at PJ Tatler:

…That takes us back to the Abu Ghraib scandal, the detainee abuse nightmare the Bush Administration endured at the height of the Iraq War. The press had a proverbial field day covering it, and it formed a media template that lasted for months, if not years.

The New York Times featured the scandal on its front page 50-plus times.

Earlier this month, a few news outlets broke a similar story regarding U.S. troops abusing dead Afghanistan civilians. Drudge has been there all along, linking to the various stories breaking on the subject. It’s awful stuff, no doubt. But where is the wall to wall media coverage? The damning editorials? The round the clock reports that tie the material inextricably to the war effort at large and, naturally, to the president?

Hmm. Could it be that the person in the Oval Office affects how the media covers news like this?

Of course that is the case. If McCain had won in 2008 then this story of the “kill team” in Afghanistan would have been a gigantic media story…and liberals out there would have been holding press conferences, demanding Congressional investigations and, naturally, the liberal base would be out in force demonstrating against the President and the war.

Remember this – all the stuff you hear in MSM and liberal circles about any GOP President is only for one thing: to discredit that President with a mind towards replacing him with a Democrat at the earliest opportunity. Ever since Nixon crushed the liberal/MSM favorite in 1972, that has been the goal. All through the terms of Reagan as well as the elder and younger Bushes, the only thing the MSM did was work to advantage the Democrats…to help them get back in to power because to the MSM – as to all people on the left – having a Republican President is un-natural and wrong…something to be corrected by any means necessary as soon as possible.

And, of course, once a Democrat is back in then the goal of the MSM is to keep him there or, failing that, to at least ensure he’s replaced by another Democrat. Ever since January 20th, 2009, all the MSM has done is spin, spin and spin some more to make it better for Obama. Have you noticed that bad economic news is always “unexpected”? Of course its unexpected…can’t have bad news be expected. If its expected then it tends to indicate that those running the show are running it wrong. And, so, “unexpected”…just an odd thing which in no way affects the really positive signs we’re seeing so just keep supporting Obama and for you investors out there, BTFD.

From the AP:

Members of an ultraconservative Muslim sect clashed with villagers south of Cairo over demands that a liquor store and coffee shops be closed, officials said Tuesday, a sign of the increasing assertiveness of the fundamentalist Salafi movement.

One villager was killed and eight others were injured in the armed clashes, which erupted late Monday in the village of Kasr el-Bassil in Fayoum province, a security official said…

Unless there is a quite violent reaction to this by the Egyptian government, this will work. You see, when confronted with people who are willing to use insane violence to get their way, most people just put their heads down and endure it…only a stronger counter-violence will stop it. Literally, it will take killing to make this effort come to naught…only death or the very real threat of it will convince the purveyors of such violence to change their ways.

I fear that a dark night is about to descend on Egypt…

Goodness:

That is liberalism, my friends. Rich liberals don’t feel the effects of the recession but beam because of the reduction in carbon emissions because we don’t make anything anymore. This is what they want for America.

And, now, if we can’t beat McCaskill in 2012 then we might as well close up shop and go home. Seriously – we should crush her 70/30 just on the basis of this idiotic statement.