Lickety-Split Links (052011, Morning)

A spine has been located within the Republican U.S. Senate delegation (“Obama's appeals court pick blocked”):

Democrats fell short of the 60 votes they need to end a filibuster and give Goodwin Liu an up-or-down vote on his nomination to the San Francisco-based US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Liu is a 40-year-old legal scholar at the University of California's Berkeley law school.

Hope it's not a fleeting appearance. It will need to hang around for a long time.

If you can stand it, the rest of the relatively brief Associated Press report appearing at the Boston Globe perfectly exemplifies its institutional bias.

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Kyle-Anne Shiver, at Pajamas Media –

America Drowns, But Obama Throws the Mideast Our Life Preserver
It's the kind of stupid you can only afford with other people's money.

… Which brings us back to President Obama and his innate arrogance. Only a truly arrogant fool, using other people's money, could possibly ask the struggling American taxpayer to dole out more money to save the world — at a point when we cannot even save ourselves from economic crash-and-burn reality.

What's even worse about this fool's-errand speech is that the money he's promising on our behalf is for the Islamic regimes which daily threaten to destroy our way of life and grow stronger as we grow weaker. Any American with a mere grain of common sense will see this presidential folly as not merely stupid but also traitorous.

Arrogant, and misguided.

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At Zero Hedge (truncated title): “Philly Fed Plummets” — The Philadelphia branch of the Federal Reserve issues a monthly report on manufacturing activity in its region. It came in pretty weak.

Specifically, Reuters: “The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank said its business activity index slumped to 3.9 from 18.5 in April. Economists had expected a reading of 20, based on the results of a Reuters poll, which ranged from 10.0 to 28.0. Any reading above zero indicates expansion in the region's manufacturing.”

This is another indicator that anyone expecting 4% annualized economic growth for the rest of the year is dreaming.

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Laws? Who cares about those? —

Kent Conrad, (Democratic) Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, ignored the law that requires his committee to produce a budget by April 15.

John at Powerline believes it's all about avoiding dealing with Medicare, pretending it's okay, and using its not far-off implosion to ensure that health care is nationalized. That looks about right.

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Robert Spencer, at FrontPageMag.com: “Obama Throws Israel to the Dogs” —

It was widely reported Thursday evening that Obama was calling for a return to the 1967 borders, but this is not the case. He actually called for the creation of a “sovereign and contiguous state” for the Palestinian Arabs, and said that “the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines.” Thus he wasn't calling for a return to the 1967 lines, but new borders “based on the 1967 lines.”

There were, however, no 1967 lines in which Palestinian Arab territory was contiguous. For the territory of Palestine to be contiguous, that of Israel will have to be substantially reduced. Israel's 1967 borders were indefensible, and Obama is calling for Israel to be reduced even further so that a contiguous Palestinian state can be established.

Thus, from all indications, Israel would end up smaller than it was in 1967.

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At Investors Business Daily (“Patching Potholes”):

Ever wondered where that 18.4 cents-a-gallon gasoline tax goes while dodging disaster on an overcrowded and crumbling highway? Too much of that revenue is spent on nontransportation items.

… But it isn't. Only about 60% is used for federal highways and bridges. The rest is spent on whatever Washington decides it wants to use it for. Mary Peters, transportation secretary under President George W. Bush, once noted on PBS that it's spent on “special programs.”

… Hoping for a better arrangement? So are a couple of state lawmakers in Michigan. In separate bills, Paul Opsommer and Tom McMillin have introduced resolutions asking Washington to let the states keep the revenues from the federal gasoline tax rather than round-tripping the money around the Beltway, where it's watered down by politics and the usual bureaucratic handling fee before it's returned with strings attached.

This is a wonderful idea. Of course the money would need to be sequestered, and politicians everywhere have a hard time leaving their hands off specifically targeted money. But in Ohio's case, instead of having stupid discussions about whether we should take $400 million in “free” money for a choo-choo train route the private sector abandoned almost 40 years ago and which would run annual deficits forever and ever, the Buckeye State could target its money to areas where it's really needed — like the sections of I-71 between Columbus and Cleveland which are still only two lanes each way.