Tuesday targets: Nine races to watch

Politico "Whether Halter topples Lincoln or not — he had a slight edge in the most recent poll — the lesson many moderates will take from Arkansas is clear: Don’t mess with the left."

Primary day: California  "It looks as though the GOP has its work cut out for itself in both races, no matter who gets the nominations. California is still more liberal than conservative, and the power bases of Los Angeles and San Francisco carry a disproportionate weight in state-wide elections."

Helen Thomas writings quoted

Helen Thomas columns  "This raises the question: Will Israel recognize the rights of Palestinians to their homes and olive groves that were confiscated over the years? Will Israel agree to go back to its pre-1967 war borders? Not if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has his way.
The Israeli leader wants the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a "Jewish state." That’s what the Palestinians call their homeland. The Israeli prime minister also said any adjacent Palestinian state created under the two-state solution would not be allowed to control its own borders or airspace.
"The truth is that in the area of our homeland, in the heart of our Jewish homeland now lives a large population of Palestinians," Netanyahu said in a recent address. Well, yes, Palestinians have lived in Palestine for centuries. "

US Asked to Look into American Backers of Gaza Flotilla

Eye-on-the-World  "Former Weather Underground leaders William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, as well as Code Pink founder Jodie Evans, helped organize the Free Gaza Movement, which launched the six-ship flotilla from Turkey to Israel that ended in a violent clash with Israeli Defense Forces,  BigGovernment.com reported. [...]" 

Why Obama’s Stimulus Failed

Heritage "And then there is the rest of the Obama agenda that has created, and is creating, significant economic uncertainty: Obamacare, EPA carbon regulations, financial regulations and impending tax hikes. Renouncing these policies, and canceling the rest of the stimulus, would do more to spur private sector job creation than anything this White House has done so far."

Good Night, Good Luck, Goodbye and Good Riddance

Big Journalism "So, we are finally seeing some consequences to Thomas’ actions. But what we aren’t seeing from the Old Media is the same amount of immediate condemnation of Thomas that Don Imus was confronted with. The Thomas affair, however, has never attained the sort of widespread vitriol, the wall-to-wall coverage that Imus saw."

Cartoon: Glenn Foden, Townhall

Mike Ramirez cartoon

World Magazine.

Killing The Drilling

Investors.com " "The last thing we need is to enact public policies that will certainly destroy thousands of existing jobs while preventing the creation of thousands more," Jindal wrote. The moratorium, he said, will shut down 33 deepwater rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, including 22 near Louisiana, costing as many as 6,000 jobs in the next three weeks and 20,000 by the end of next year."

You Don’t Want Him in a Foxhole with You

Jennifer Rubin  "Obama was comfortable when running for office, when he could get by on rhetoric and as a legislator — where no one is really responsible for anything. What he’s ill-equipped to do is govern and lead. Plenty of people are hired for jobs beyond their abilities and outside their areas of competence. Unfortunately, the damage done by placing someone of that ilk in the White House is grievous and in some cases irreversible."  Emphasis added.

How Obama’s Policy Ensures More Flotillas

Commentary   "The Obama administration plans to use Israel’s botched raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla to force Jerusalem to end or at least drastically ease its blockade on Gaza, because “we need to remove the impulse for the flotillas,” a senior administration official told the New York Times. That single statement encapsulates everything that is wrong with Obama’s Mideast policy — and indeed, that of the entire West: willful blindness to facts that inevitably produces counterproductive policies." Evelyn Gordon

Iran Threatens War in the Mediterranean "...the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps said its naval forces “are fully prepared to escort the peace and freedom convoys to Gaza with all their powers and capabilities.” Never mind the cynical use of the words “freedom” and “peace” from a repressive regime that steals votes and cracks heads. Breaking a blockade by force is a declaration of war and could, in this case, easily and instantly spark a region-wide conflagration."  They know Obama isn't George Bush.

Britain's National Health Service 'preparing to cut millions of operations'

UK Daily Mail   "Millions of patients face losing NHS care as bosses prepare to axe treatments to make £20billion of savings by 2014, a top doctor has warned. Among procedures being targeted by health trusts are hernias, joint replacements, ear and nose procedures, varicose veins and cataract surgery. Dr Mark Porter, chairman of the British Medical Association's consultants committee, warned NHS bosses wanted 'wholesale reductions in budgets'." Coming soon to a nation near you.

The most terrifying thing you will read today

Bloomberg "President Barack Obama is poised to increase the U.S. debt to a level that exceeds the value of the nation’s annual economic output, a step toward what Bill Gross called a “debt super cycle.” "

The Obama agenda and the Europeanization of America.

WSJ    "Why are citizens rioting and striking in Greece? Despite the worst economic crisis in decades, labor unions and state functionaries demand that others pay for the early retirements, lifetime benefits and state pensions to which they feel entitled. In America, however, the tea partiers demonstrate not to get more from others, but rather against government growth, public debt, bailouts and a budget-busting government overhaul of the health-care industry. In other words, the tea partiers are protesting against exactly what the Greeks are demanding. It is an example of American exceptionalism if there ever was one."    Arthur C. Brooks is president of the American Enterprise Institute.  Emphasis added