At a time when workers’ pay and benefits have stagnated, federal employees’ average compensation has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn, a USA TODAY analysis finds…

Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data are the latest available.

The federal compensation advantage has grown from $30,415 in 2000 to $61,998 last year.

Twice the average compensation. Shocking, isn’t it?  And what makes matters worse is that the public sector… which has been hurting like never before… is subsidizing the extravagance of public sector employees.  It is one thing if someone EARNS more in the private sector because he or she creates greater value or sells a product someone else wants to buy… thereby gaining wealth by the voluntary exchange of goods and services.   It is quite another thing when an employee of the state — who produces nothing more of value than their private sector counterparts — earn far more simply by virtue of their connections to political power and influence.

Perhaps it is best said another way:  Government profits far more of the backs of the private sector than the private sector profits by means of the free market.  The very liberals who lament “greedy” and “evil” corporations don’t even bat an eye when the political class profits by a 2-to-1 factor off the working class.  If your worldview revolves around the idea that government is intrinsically good… than I suppose one wouldn’t find this to be some great injustice… but for the rest of us… those of us who see the waste, the inefficiencies, and the incompetence systematic of government activity… than this is truly an outrage.

via Federal workers earning double their private counterparts – USATODAY.com.

Does it not say something when the hometown paper of our nation’s capital cannot seem to find a reporter who can control his contempt for beliefs held by millions of ordinary Americans?

Oh, it says a LOT Mr. McGurn.  It tells us just how out of touch mainstream journalism is with the American people.  Or did you mean that question rhetorically?

via William McGurn: Are Americans Bigots? – WSJ.com.

Now, what does this tell us about Obama?  Well, it tells us that his impressions of concerned Israeli citizens are of a bunch of people who’s entire impression of him extends no farther than some loose association his middle name has with Israel’s enemies.  To put it slightly differently, Obama supposes Israeli’s negative impressions of him are born out of some underlying Israeli racism or prejudice towards Muslim Middle-Easterners.  This rather simplistic conclusion shouldn’t at all be surprising to those of us who have been following Obama regularly;  in fact, this it is quite reminicent of when Obama posited that Americans might not support him because he “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”  In other words, Obama’s practice of projecting prejudice on those who oppose him is ingrained in Obama’s logic… its how he views those who disagree with him.

Never does it occur to Obama that Israelis might feel anxious because of his own policies toward israel and his failures to support their sovereignty and security.   Maybe it was Obama’s strong criticism of their settlement policy that caused Israeli concern. Maybe it was candidate Obama’s delusional insistence to negotiate with Iran without any preconditions that made Israelis anxious… Or his weak efforts to prevent Iran from developing Nuclear weapons after insisting during his campaign that a nuclear iran would be “unacceptable”.  Maybe it was the way he humiliated Israeli President Netanyahu at their most recent meeting in the White House.  Any of these reasons would be sufficient for a typical Israeli citizen to feel some anxiety towards Obama… but somehow Obama remains oblivious.

Maybe Obama should try looking beyond his own prejudices in order to understand those who oppose him instead of fabricating the prejudices of his opponents.

“As a Democrat and as a woman, I am disappointed in him [Obama],” said poll respondent Melissa Riner, a 42-year-old law clerk from Mesa, Ariz

Referring to the oil spill, Ms. Riner added, “I don’t think he’s handling it. He doesn’t seem to be doing anything. He just talks.”

via Confidence Waning in Obama, U.S. Outlook – WSJ.com.

Vodkapundit » Posted Without Comment.

It turns out that Harry Reid using the ‘N’ word in reference to Obama’s dialect (or lack thereof) is actually a statement “[I]n the context of saying positive things about Senator Obama” — according to Tim Kaine, DNC Chair.

Um… O.K.

So as long as we are using the N word in a *positive* context… and you are a Democrat… you are cool.  Everybody forgives you.  The Media accepts your apology and moves on.  Grace is extended to you and explanations of how you “really meant to say it in a positive context” are proffered from Liberal leadership.  If, on the other hand, you are Trent Lott, and you tell an old congressman that you are proud of him for his accomplishments… you are unquestionably a racist…  no apologies or excuses could possibly suffice.

Harry Reid should resign… Immediately.

I couldn’t have said it better myself:

Notice that Washington is pictured as the heart of nation, where tired, oxygen-depleted blood is replenished and returned to the hinterland. Its a perfect illustration of the worldview of the Left.

via The Beating Heart of America – Mark Krikorian – The Corner on National Review Online.

By foolishly trying to reduce all objections to healthcare reform to the malevolence of obstructionist Republicans, Democrats have managed to destroy the national coalition that elected Obama and that is unlikely to be repaired. If Obama fails to win reelection, let the blame be first laid at the door of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who at a pivotal point threw gasoline on the flames by comparing angry American citizens to Nazis.

Why did it take so long for Democrats to realize that this year’s tea party and town hall uprisings were a genuine barometer of widespread public discontent and not simply a staged scenario by kooks and conspirators? First of all, too many political analysts still think that network and cable TV chat shows are the central forums of national debate. But the truly transformative political energy is coming from talk radio and the Web — both of which Democrat-sponsored proposals have threatened to stifle, in defiance of freedom of speech guarantees in the Bill of Rights. I rarely watch TV anymore except for cooking shows, history and science documentaries, old movies and football. Hence I was blissfully free from the retching overkill that followed the deaths of Michael Jackson and Ted Kennedy — I never saw a single minute of any of it. It was on talk radio, which I have resumed monitoring around the clock because of the healthcare fiasco, that I heard the passionate voices of callers coming directly from the town hall meetings. Hence I was alerted to the depth and intensity of national sentiment long before others who were simply watching staged, manipulated TV shows.

Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills).  Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy…

How has “liberty” become the inspirational code word of conservatives rather than liberals? (A prominent example is radio host Mark Levin’s book “Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto,” which was No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly three months without receiving major reviews, including in the Times.)…

But affluent middle-class Democrats now seem to be complacently servile toward authority and automatically believe everything party leaders tell them. Why? Is it because the new professional class is a glossy product of generically institutionalized learning? Independent thought and logical analysis of argument are no longer taught. Elite education in the U.S. has become a frenetic assembly line of competitive college application to schools where ideological brainwashing is so pandemic that it’s invisible. The top schools, from the Ivy League on down, promote “critical thinking,” which sounds good but is in fact just a style of rote regurgitation of hackneyed approved terms (“racism, sexism, homophobia”) when confronted with any social issue. The Democratic brain has been marinating so long in those clichés that it’s positively pickled.

WOW.  Read the whole thing @ Salon .

For those who missed it (and Andy’s post doesn’t quite convey the whole story of the farrago), Rep Mike Pence started the debate yesterday morning by pointing out that the House leadership had dropped a 300-page amendment to the already 1200-ish page Waxman-Markey energy tax bill at 3:09 in the morning.  Clearly, debate started before anyone had had a chance to read it properly, but the House leadership just didn’t care.  Then, mid-afternoon, Reps Louie Goehmert (who did a splendid job all round) and Energy & Commerce Ranking Member Joe Barton (who clearly couldn’t believe what was going on) raised a series of Parliamentary Inquiries as to whether there was a copy of the amended bill anywhere in the House for members to read.  Chairman Markey was dismissive, saying there was a copy on the wesbite, which, Rep Barton pointed out, was not much help to members on the floor of the House actually, you know, debating the bill.  Eventually the Chair, who was very fair throughout the afternoon, admitted that the Clerk was in the process of integrating the amendment into the hard copy in the House.  So for most of the day the House was debating a bill that didn’t actually physically exist, never mind having had a chance to read, digest and consider it.

If Congressmen were kept to the same standards of lawyers, they would be guilty of malpractice.

via Just Read The Bill, Already – The Corner