The Trump Moment; Give me anything but another celebrity apprentice.

National Review Online "Trump wants to be the anti-Obama. Obama is too soft; Trump is tough. Obama knows nothing about business; Trump is God’s gift to American capitalism. Obama is painfully thoughtful in his affect; Trump is brash. They share much more important qualities in common, though. Like the Obama of 2008, Trump is an arrogant celebrity with a talent for branding who knows much less than he thinks and vastly overestimates his ability to fix the country’s problems.
"We’ve been here before." Rich Lowry

Obama gives jihadists the olive branch and Ryan the hickory stick.

Andrew C. McCarthy "Ryan was reeled in by the suggestion that the invitation was an olive branch, a White House concession that he had grappled responsibly with a monstrous problem and that a gracious, cooperative presidential response was in order. But it was a setup. The Chicago mob strategically seated Ryan a few paces from the lectern, whence the don went Al Capone on him. The congressman was made into a prop, Exhibit A in a presidential tirade that mocked his plan and his party as scourges of the elderly, the destitute, and the chronically ill."
....
"As the Obama administration’s rough treatment of Representative Ryan shows, it’s not a comfortable time to be a member of Congress who starts asking a lot of questions this president doesn’t want to hear. Fortunately for the economy, it appears that Ryan is not backing down. For the sake of our security, though, somebody up on the Hill better step up. It is past time to ask: What on earth is this administration’s infatuation with the Muslim Brotherhood?"

WSJ: Was he serious?

Hot Air 10:12 am on April 14  "The Wall Street Journal editorial board couldn’t believe what it heard yesterday in Barack Obama’s deficit speech .  Well, believe is probably the wrong word, since Obama offered little of substance other than rhetorical bombs aimed at Paul Ryan, accusing him of trying to kill an entire generation of retirees while offering nothing specific to oppose it.  The WSJ dismantles Obama’s speech in their lead editorial as fundamentally demagogic and as unserious as a President can get:"....
"If this is what passes for a major policy speech, this administration has completely run out of gas."

http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/chipbok

Mona Charen: Obama’s Demagoguery  "Last week, Rep. Paul Ryan was asked whether he and the Republicans were making themselves vulnerable to demagogic attacks by taking on entitlement spending directly. “We are,” he replied. “They are going to demagogue us, and — and it’s that demagoguery that has always prevented political leaders in the past from actually trying to fix the problem.”
"You might have expected President Obama to be shamed out of his worst instincts by that prediction. He wasn’t."

Obama Cedes the High Ground   "Paul Ryan was actually hurt by the president’s remarks. He expected better. He somehow believed he and the GOP leadership were now players in the budget game and not tackling dummies. What he and Speaker Boehner don’t seem to realize yet is what a gift the Republicans in Congress have been given. With his speech at GWU which was long on invective and short on inspiration, the president essentially ceded all the high ground on fiscal matters to the opposition. He announced he does not want a solution to America’s deficit and debt crisis."

Thomas Sowell on Taxes and Politics

Townhall  "For more than 80 years, the political left has opposed what they call "tax cuts for the rich." But big cuts in very high tax rates ended up bringing in more revenue to the government in the Coolidge, Kennedy, Reagan and Bush 43 administrations. This included more-- repeat, more-- tax revenue from people in the highest income brackets than before.
"That was because high-income people took their money out of tax shelters like municipal bonds and invested where they could get a higher rate of return..."

Ideals Trump Interests in Obama's Libya Policy

Raymond Ibrahim  "How about "doing what's right" in Darfur, where countless non-Muslims have been butchered by the Islamist regime in Khartoum for these many years? How about "doing what's right" regarding the persecuted, indigenous Christians of the Islamic world? (Whereas one of Obama's reasons for intervening in Libya was that mosques were unintentionally being destroyed — he has been silent in word and deed regarding the numerous churches intentionally being destroyed in the Muslim world.)"