“You absolutely cannot trust the United States Senate to live within its means.”

Say what you want about Senator Corker, but the guy is among an ever-dwindling group of  ”grown-ups” still walking the halls of the United States Senate when it comes to getting the country’s financial house in order.  He may not always represent the model conservative this Tennessee constituent longs for; but on fiscal matters, he rarely finds himself on the wrong side of things.

I’ve only loosely followed this debate the last few days, but I’ll try to limp through the basics.  Senate Republicans attempted to block a Harry Reid-driven postal reform bill from coming to the floor with a point of order challenge to the proposed legislation because they said S. 1789, would add to the deficit in violation of last year’s Budget Control Act; and add $34 billion to the nation’s debt.

That’s a Murderer’s Row of Moderates if I’ve ever seen one…

The Senate voted on 16 amendments to the reform bill (8 passed/8 did not) and the Body was set to pick up the rest on Wednesday.  Here’s a list of the proposed amendments.

Here’s the debate in a nutshell…

“Any new burden” on taxpayers… Now I understand.  Haven’t we heard that before?

I’m off for a run and an afternoon away from the computer; but before I headed out, I figured I’d share a few links from the best and the brightest of the Daily Reads.  Hope everyone’s enjoying their Tuesday.  Be sure to set your DVR for Mitt Romney “A Better America Begins Tonight” victory speech in Blue State Country and the Jimmy Fallon – Questlove – President Obama – lovefest later on tonight.

Be sure to let me know how that goes.

RS McCain’s selling Mother’s Days Jewelry for Amazon… and college tuition for his kids.  Maybe he should hit up Michelle Obama.   He’s also got a post on Obama’s One Success.  (Here’s a hint.  It has something to do with Mexicans going the other way for a change.)

The Sun is shining in Adrienne’s world, so she’s got cats.  Yes, cats.  I don’t get it either; but I like her, so she gets a link.  She also has an incredibly heartfelt personal story that offers some perspective on the Zimmerman/Trayvon story… Zimmerman: “I didn’t know if he was armed”…

Chris at WyBlog’s got some good news for the 50% of college graduates that can’t find a job…

Lonely Conservative breaks the news that The War on Terror is Over?  Free beer for everyone.  There’s also a guest post by Mike Jones: The Life and Times of Sour Milk

Left Coast Rebel says “News of the Tea Party’s Death is Greatly Exaggerated.”  Thank God.  Where was I going to wear my “Don’t Tread on Me” T-Shirt?  Dean @LCR has “Obama Then and Now – Part 236”

Motor City Times has the “How To” video everyone’s been waiting for… Video: How to Weaponize Office Supplies

Ed Driscoll and Ace have a horribly under-reported story:  Third Racially-Motivated Attack in which ‘Justice for Trayvon’ Explicitly Cited

20 Blacks Beat White Interloper With Makeshift Bludgeons; Victim In Critical Condition; One Attacker Said, “Now That’s Justice For Trayvon”

The Gill Report has the video…

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AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is the voice of the common man.  He represents the little guy against the big ugly machine that is Big Business.  He is the face of the modern American labor union.  And he’s lining his pockets every step along the way…

Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t begrudge Trumpka for his earning a living.  I just laugh at the hypocrisy of people like him ranting and raving about CEO salaries and corporate profits.  I’m sure he “earns” every penny of his salary and bonuses.  He represents the union well.  I’m just not sure that union represents its members any longer.

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Linked at Lonely Conservative – thanks!

Yet “young” people as a group still disproportionally vote Democrat.  How’s Hope going with this group?

I suppose this is a reality that this class – and probably the next two that follow – will have to deal with for some time.  While employers are quick to “discriminate” against the chronically unemployed, they still prefer “experience” to fresh out of school.  With many having left the job market over the past few years; and some slow to return; I’d anticipate new college graduates to find it increasingly more difficult to find desirable work.  Maybe freshman orientation should be replaced with How to Take a Customer’s Order 101?

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I suppose it could always be worse…  

The This Week with George Stephanopoulos Panel featured many of the usual suspects – Donna Brazile, Matthew Dowd, Peggy Noonan, and (of course) George Will.  New this week was the addition of Keith Olbermann.  You might remember him as the once ESPN Sports Center anchor; or as the nutjob left-wing host of Countdown on MSNBC – and then Current TV or whatever that Al Gore project is called.

His inclusion on the panel was probably nothing more than a ratings ploy on part of ABC.  Because of that, I’m sure this won’t be his last appearance.  As to his “performance,” I’m really not the best guy to offer an objective opinion on such things.  I’d just assume change the channel than listen to him speak.  He’s not a pundit.  He’s no more qualified to speak to political matters than my next door neighbor or the guy that handed me my sausage biscuit this morning at Hardees; but I guess to some, he’s entertaining and maybe even provocative.  I just think he’s a babbling idiot.

Just in case I’ve never made this clear, there are not many things in politics that annoy me more than moderate dem-appeasing Republicans.  Among those rare and extraordinary things are moderate dem-appeasing Republicans with really annoying voices.  Exhibit A:  Susan Collins (R?- ME)

Can’t you just hearing her singing the opening to All in the Family?

Boy the way Glen Miller played
Songs that made the hit parade.
Guys like us we had it made,
Those were the days.

And you knew who you were then,
Girls were girls and men were men,
Mister we could use a man
Like Herbert Hoover again.

Didn’t need no welfare state,
Everybody pulled his weight.
Gee our old LaSalle ran great.
Those were the days.

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Oh, the interview; or “debate” as ABC called it…

Three questions.  Well, four actually.  1)Who is Representative Carolyn Maloney?  2) Is she related to Nancy Pelosi or do they just see the same plastic surgeon? 3) Do all Dems attend the same Debbie Wasserman-Schultz How to be Condescending, Confrontational, and Contradictory on Sunday Morning Political Programs workshop?

Congresswoman Maloney is sitting on a set with the most down-the-middle legislator in the Senate; and she still felt the need to play the hard party angles and compulsively spew Obama talking points?

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I was going to start the day with one of my “Right Wing Extremists” link-fests; but then I realized that takes forever and decided that in the interest of actually completing the undertaking, I would focus on the daily reads… and share a few recently released photos (courtesy of TMZ) of the Colombian prostitute that will probably do more for the Colombian tourism industry than anything not named Sofia Vergara.

LD at Political Realities talks Keystone – the pipeline; not the beer.  Keystone Pipeline Has New Nebraska Route

The Reaganite Republican offers some perspective… Sanford Blacks Beat White Man With Hammer – Not a Hate Crime

Adrienne calls’em like she sees’em… The Intellectually Challenged Left is Racist to the Core

Motor City Times Profiles Stupidity and lands on Harry Reid and his recent claim that “Senators love getting junk mail.”

Just a Conservative Girl has an anniversary today – 3 years of dutiful blogging.

The Whited Sepulchre surveys “Which candidate would never eat your dog?”  Here’s a hint.  He’s now polling around 6% nationally…

Big Fur Hat at i Own the World tells us… Why I Could Never Really Stop Loving Ann Coulter Altogether

Matt at Conservative Hideout 2.0 asks the question… Culture of Death: Is History Repeating Itself?

Proof Positive has a video that says everything that needs to be said about the energy debate… “Ten Years Ago, Dems Told Us “ANWR Won’t Produce for 7- 10 Years”

The Gay Patriot poses the question(s)… Can government make life fair for gay people? (Should it?)

From Protein Wisdom… When Nancy Pelosi Speaks… something idiotic is bound to come out of her cosmetically stretched and plumped pie hole.  Case in point: “Amend the First Amendment”

Lonely Conservative goes there as well… Pelosi Wants to Amend 1st Amendment to Get Money Out of Politics, Obama Failed to Disclose Millions in Donations in 2008

And the Wy Blog takes the cake for headline of the day.  Need I say more?  Ladies, you could win a dinner date with George Clooney!

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See more photos of the Colombian “escort” here…

It seems like at least once a calendar year a local news reporter manages to turn a career-making presidential interview into a viral news sensation by getting the president to go on record about an issue or a topic that the national media could never get him to even sniff at.  I say “president” generally, because President Obama’s not the first and most certainly will not be the last.  Local news interviews are a way for the president to speak to regional or “local” issues and obviously carry with them a relative risk-reward variable.  Most of the local news reporters conducting these interviews are so overjoyed with getting the opportunity to interview the President of the United States, they offer up nothing but softballs; but every once in a while, said president gets brushed back by a fastball high and tight.

Larry Conors of KMOV-TV, St. Louis…

“The economy is a big issue and concern for folks. I mean, the unemployment, trying to make ends meet, gas prices, food prices going up. Some of our viewers are complaining, they get frustrated, even angered, when they see the first family jetting around, different vacations and so forth, sometimes maybe they think under color of state business and that you’re out of touch, that you don’t really know what they’re experiencing right now.”

H/T Adrienne’s Corner:

In full disclosure here.  The vacation habits of the President and the First Family rank somewhere about 9,000,232,834,129 on my list of things I could really give a bleep about.  We’re not living in the 20′s.  The “presidency” goes wherever the president goes.  He could be in a brothel in Brussels and I’m certain he’d could still conference in Biden from the next room and give Bill Clinton and Vlad Putin an update on the view.  If an 8-year-old can Skype with his grandparents from the beach in Botswana, I think the President can figure out how to manage things from a satellite location.

Add that to the fact that every day this president spends not governing is a day I chalk up as one in the win column, and I’m more than cool with his frequent departures.

As to the First Family travelling on the “company dime”; I throw that in the expected costs of electing a president with a wife and children.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not defending President Obama or Michelle Obama’s tone deafness, I just don’t think it’s reasonable to assume that a woman and two young girls from an upper-income family are going to spend 24/7/365 in D.C.  The political blowback from their deciding to lavishly vaca while the rest of gas-ration our trips to the next town over is their cross to bear.  It’s “our” fault for electing their husband/father.

“If they were called someone else’s tax cuts, they’d be less likely to be raised…”

Speaking at the Bush Institute Conference on Taxes and Economic Growth in New York City (New York Historical Society for the George W. Bush Presidential Center’s Conference on “Tax Policies For 4% Growth”), President George W. Bush offered a rare appearance and an even rarer glimpse of his thoughts on the state of things in the country he once led dutifully.

While careful not to backbench the current president saying “I don’t think it’s good for our country to undermine our president and I don’t intend to do so“; Bush was willing to weigh in on fiscal matters which will be the cornerstone of the Bush Institute.  Speaking of the much-debated “Bush Tax Cuts”, the former president quipped, “I wish they weren’t called the Bush tax cuts.  If they were called someone else’s tax cuts, they’d be less likely to be raised.”

Fair point.  He’s probably right.

The former president also underscored the other side of the “Bush Tax Cut” debate.  While they were technically “temporary”; allowing them to eventually expire would in reality serve as a tax increase for many Americans.  I know it’s largely a semantic argument that both sides will exploit to their advantage, but if a tax rate in a given year is (x) and in the next fiscal years it’s even (x+1), it’s an increase in taxes any way you sell it.

Many Left, Right, and Center have been rather hard on President Bush over the years – myself included.  It’s funny, though, how perspectives on things change with time and circumstance.  While I wasn’t always the biggest fan of the Bushisms and jumbled phrases, I do long for the simplicity and common sense that very often served as their foundation.

Facebook has reportedly negotiated a deal to acquire photo sharing start-up Instagram for a reported $1 Billion…  Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg says they have no plans to mess with Instagram’s successful model.  Right.  I give it six months before the wonderboy finds a way to use Instagram to annoy the hell out of Facebook users and drive even more away from the social networking site.

Don’t know about you, but I can’t wait for every single flippin photo to look like a flashback to the 60′s and a time before digital optimization.  #grainyphotosarenotawesome

Read the full Facebook press release here…