The Final Five: May 31, 2012

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Tonight's Crazy Story:
Diners Caught Bailing on Bill After Locking Keys in Getaway Car
If you plan to "dine-and-dash", make sure you don't lock your keys in the car when you go into the restaurant.

Topic One: Obama's Credit Card
Obama running from his spending record: "The White House has a deeply conflicted relationship to its own record. It is saddled with a bad case of spender’s denial, a rare psychological disorder afflicting committed Keynesians facing re-election at a time of record debt. On the one hand, spending is the lifeblood of “Forward.” It saved us from another Great Depression. It is forging a glorious new future of green energy. It is the only thing standing between the American public and the untold devastation of the Paul Ryan budget. How do we know? Because President Obama says so. On the other hand, the deficits and the debt that come with all this spending are alarming and unpopular. So Obama calls himself the most fiscally conservative president in over half a century."

But it all created jobs right? At $4.1 million per job: "At the very least, I think the CBO report should raise more questions about whether $831 billion of temporary tax cuts and government spending was the best use of that money back in 2009. It should also make Washington cautious about further such stimulus measures if the U.S. economy should slip back into recession. Better we try what Sweden did."

Time for a Laugh:
"It's a big night for hockey fans. It's game one of the Stanley Cup Finals. The Kings are in the finals for only the second time in their history. What was on ESPN today? — the national spelling bee."
-Craig Ferguson

Topic Two: Wisconsin
After Tom Barrett admitted that he didn't know of any school districts hurt by the collective bargaining law, now a union official is also admitting that Wisconsin's Act 10 has not hurt the school: "Union president Jeff Bersch said the administration's outreach to the staff has eased concerns. "We have been promised no impact next year," Bersch said. "The district works really well with us and has kept us up to date - and we have the wizard of numbers (Koczela). Overall morale is not bad because of Act 10. We didn't lose any jobs and class sizes are the same."

Why are the unions so upset about the collective bargaining law? "It's one of the greatest scams in the history left-wing scams, and it goes a little something like this: Taxpayers of all political stripes pay the salaries of public employees, public employees are forced to join public unions, public unions garnish dues from members and then use those dues to fund Democrat candidates to the tunes of hundreds of millions of dollars. What a racket. In other words, against our will, you and I are helping to fund Democrat campaigns. But so are those public employees forced into unions."

Debt Watch:
$15,716,625,300,450.69
( As of Wednesday, May 30, 2012 )

Change: +$2,969,697,498
Your share as a citizen: $50,262.94
Share per household: $137,580.32
Debt since Obama inauguration: $5,089,748,251,538

Topic Three: Doubling Costs
Can we afford the Affordable Care Act if it produces results like this? "Clearwater Christian College, a non-denominational school, on Tampa Bay, placed the blame squarely on ObamaCare. “Due to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA – commonly known as health care reform), the cost of student health insurance has doubled,” read the letter from the college’s human resources department. “In addition, most insurance carriers are hesitant to provide contracts for this insurance due to the unpredictability of the cost of the claims."

"Clearwater requires all students to have insurance – either through the college’s plan or a private plan. It’s unclear how many of the school’s 500 students will be impacted by the price hike."

"But the price will certainly hurt students like Johnson – who only paid $465 a year for health insurance when he was a freshman."

Tweet of the Day:
Ben Howe (@BenHowe): I've decided that Mayor Bloomberg isn't healthy enough. We need to pass some laws to fix that.

Topic Four: The First Amendment Gutted
Brett Kimberlin, the notorious Speedway bomber, has set out to silence conservative bloggers. Kimberlin claimed that Aaron Walker's posts about him constituted harassment. "This was the second peace order that Kimberlin has filed against Walker, demanding that Walker cease any contact with Kimberlin. In it, Kimberlin claims that Walker has “continually harassed” him with “alarming posts, tweets, alerts that arrive in my email box, which I consider threats to me personally and to my business.” Kimberlin came to court with pages upon pages of threatening emails and tweets that he claimed had resulted from Walker’s blog posts about him. None of them, though, were sent by Walker."

The end result: a "peace order" was issued against Walker, meaning that he cannot mention Kimberlin in his blog for six months. "I or anyone else can write a blog post about “Person A” and urge others to write about it. But I have no control over whether other people do that. And I certainly have no control over whether someone sends a threatening email or tweet to Person A after reading my blog post. Surely, the people who send threatening emails and such should face consequences. But as long as I do not write something along the lines of “send Person A a nasty email,” I’m not in anyway at fault. And looking over Aaron Walker’s blog, it’s clear he never told anyone to do such a thing to Kimberlin. But, according to Vaughey’s reasoning, I would be at fault. If that’s indeed the case, well, you can probably figure out that the First Amendment has just been gutted."

Food for Thought - A Quote from our Founders
"Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?"
-Patrick Henry

Topic Five: Private Equity vs. Public Equity
This campaign will be about Romney's private equity experience and Obama's public equity failures: "According to Schweizer, the appearance of impropriety was so bad that “the Department of Energy’s inspector general, Gregory Friedman, chastised the alternative-energy loan and grant programs for their absence of ‘sufficient transparency and accountability.’”

"We are just passed Memorial Day weekend and the presidential campaign appears top have been framed. With Obama attacking Romney for his private equity experience at Bain Capital, and Romney attacking Obama for his public equity adventures as president is the campaign going to be Romney’s private equity vs. Obama’s public equity?"

Tomorrow in History
June 1, 1974 - The journal Emergency Medicine publishes an article on the Heimlich Maneuver.

Grab Bag - Interesting and Important Stories to Conclude Your Evening:
Koran-burning pastor announces White House bid

Defense of Marriage Act ruled unconstitutional

Obama's "recovery" lacking 6.5 million jobs

What are your children learning in public school?

Why June presidential polls are worthless

EPA celebrates crushing 1 million working refrigerators

Phantom accounting is destroying the Post Office

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