Dan Calabrese

Groan: GOP video goes all in with blame game Obama is sure to win

You look at the economic condition of the country, and recognize that Obama insists on clinging to policies that have only made it worse and will only make it worse still, and you wonder: How can the GOP be constantly losing political battles to a guy like this? Then you see this, and it all becomes clear:

Civilization ends: Those meatballs at Ikea have horse meat in them

I must admit: I have never had the pleasure. I've never set foot in an Ikea. I'm not sure if my wife has either. She's certainly not a devotee, but if she's paid a visit, she did not drag me along. This is the sort of thing that has us going on 16 years of wedded bliss.

Oh noes! Teachers’ jobs! (Or: Why it’s so hard to cut federal spending)

The Obama Administration knows exactly how to lead us in a national freakout over a federal budget cut so tiny, if it was cocaine it would melt before you get the paper open. (I miss you, Richard Pryor.) Its latest salvo is to send around dire warnings to each state about what they might lose if 2.3 percent of the projected larger budget is cut in the sequester.

AP: Come on, Republicans, if you ignore entitlements government is already shrinking

The Associated Press has become quite the piece of work lately. The worse the nation's fiscal situation gets, the harder the AP tries to persuade everyone that the call to cut spending is coming from a bunch of ignorant rubes who really don't know what's what. Last week they told us that conservatives in Congress are doing the bidding of gubmint-hating hayseeds back home. Now they helpfully explain that, hey, government is already shrinking! Provided, of course, you ignore Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security (not to mention the looming monstrosity of ObamaCare):

Obama’s absurd song and dance on the horrors of spending cuts

Perspective is good, so consider: The federal government spends $3.6 trillion a year. A cut of $85 billion, as called for in the looming sequester, represents 2.3 percent of that total, from a government that is having to borrow more than 25 percent of everything it spends. It doesn't touch entitlement spending at all, so we're talking about 7 percent of the Pentagon budget and 5 percent of discretionary domestic spending.

Media finally discovers problem with Obama: They can’t follow him while he plays golf

Barack Obama can get away with almost anything as far as the press is concerned. Four years without a budget. Trillion-dollar deficits. Stonewalling on Benghazi. Claiming to have reduced the deficit by $2.5 trillion when he hasn't reduced anything. This is all fine.

AP: These confused conservative voters won’t let Republicans compromise

That's actually the story right there. Normal people out in the country, and the representatives they elect, are determined to bring fiscal sanity to the capital. The capital is baffled:

Wolf Blitzer: That water sip just might end Marco Rubio’s career

I debated whether CainTV should mention this idiotic meme at all. But I think part of what we need to do here is not only point out the idiocy of the media, but also the make clear how much damage it really does to the nation. Consider: Wolf Blitzer is a guy that CNN considers a brilliant political mind. He is their lead political show host and analyst. He's the guy they go to for explanations about things that happen in the political world. The 29 people who watch CNN are presented with Wolf's insight as top-of-the-line.

Explaining to the left (as if they’ll listen) why raising the minimum wage does not pay for itself

On the one hand, this is so elementary, it's hard to believe anyone argues with it. But when you're dealing with ideological true believers, you know they will argue with anything you say if it doesn't line up with the faith. So don't assume you've won the argument just because you point this out: Raising the minimum wage will worsen unemployment because, plain and simple, it raises the cost of labor.

‘As long as countries like China go all in on clean energy, so must we’

There was so much nonsense in Obama's State of the Union address last night, it could take days to deal with everything. Hey, we've got days. But I want to start with this, because it's a classic example of how Democrats justify big-government forays that are hard to defend on their own merits:

Obama’s minimum wage increase - why stop at $9.00? Let’s make it $20.00!

From minimum wage fast food workers to multi-millionaire Presidents like Barack Obama, everyone loves money. When you've got it, life's a lot easier. When you don't, it's easy to fall into the trap of jealousy and entitlement. If you need evidence of that, look no further than the 2012 election, where Democrats exploited a class warfare campaign to resounding success. During last night's State of the Union address, Obama continued that narrative by proposing an increase in the minimum wage. If he gets his way, he'd like it to be $9.00 an hour.

Liberal WaPo editorial writer: Obama’s electric car gambit is quite the disaster, isn’t it?

If you want to read a liberal editorial page that is shamelessly partisan and will shill for Democrats no matter how dishonest it has to be to do it, that would be the New York Times. But if you want to read liberals who have enough intellectual honesty to admit when their side has has clearly bungled its way into a major fail, I highly recommend the Washington Post. You will never confuse them with right-wingers, but unlike the Times, the Post isn't afraid to say so when an article of liberal faith is proven to be wrong.

So now Obama ‘pivots to jobs’ or whatever

Not that you would want to think this way yourself, but if you want to be familiar with the mind of the quintessential Washingtonian, you can't do much better than the National Journal's Ron Fournier. With many years under his belt with the Associated Press, the Inside the Beltway mindset is hardwired into Fournier's brain. So why would you want to read a guy like this? Because sometimes this crowd forgets that they have family secrets, and if you read their words carefully enough you catch them giving away inside knowledge about why our so-called leaders really do the things they do.

Sally Jewell: Obama’s Interior choice knows how to kill jobs, and that’s the whole idea

Kim Strassel of the Wall Street Journal is not fooled by the media's canonization of Sally Jewell, President Obama's choice for Secretary of the Interior in his second term. She is exactly what you would expect Obama to want - an environmentalist radical who is prepared to use the power of the federal government to lock up federal land to prevent development, and to lead witch hunts against certain industries. Although her resume says she has been a CEO, her real interest appears to be the radical green agenda, and of particular concern is her support of an organization with the innocuous sounding name The Conservation Alliance:

Obama’s latest rhetorical nonsense: ‘We can’t just cut our way to prosperity’

If you had to pick out one Barack Obama habit to peg as his most annoying . . . well, I know, you'd have a lot to choose from. But I think the winner for me would be his tendency to not only set up strawmen as the manufactured enemies of his policies, but to come up with rhetorically nonsensicial slogans to use in flogging said strawmen.

DOJ memo: U.S. drones can attack U.S. citizens abroad pretty much whenever

Remember when Democrats were concerned about violations of civil liberties? You know, when George W. Bush was in the White House and it was politically useful for them to carp about it. Now? Ha ha ha ha ha! You thought they were serious?

Liberal columnist E.J. Dionne wants robust growth, baby!

Hey, maybe we're winning this battle! When it comes to economic growth, suddenly voices on the left are starting to sound like Robert Bartley and Jack Kemp. Or I should say, they're doing what they think is a passable imitation of the past generation's great advocates of growth policies. The problem, of course, is that those on the left have an, er, interesting idea about what kinds of policies generate growth.

White House comes up with new shell game to pretend it isn’t forcing contraception coverage

Let's begin with the end in mind, as Stephen Covey would have said. When the government dictates the terms of contracts between private parties, nothing good will result. And no attempt by the government to make the harm its doing appear to be something else will change the fact that it is harm.

In Indiana: Save a deer’s life, face charges

Looks like no good deed goes unpunished in Indiana, where a couple that worked long and hard to nurse an ailing deer back to health are now facing charges for - get this - illegal possession of a deer:

David Gregory to Paul Ryan: You know, no one supports you

I'm past the point where I find it stunning that the media only imposes accountability on the administration's critics. That's been maddeningly true for long enough now that we just roll our eyes and shrug our shoulders at it. But on Meet the Press yesterday, David Gregory launched one of the weirdest challenges I've ever heard to the basic conservative position on the nation's fiscal situation: