Jason Tolbert: Bill Clinton has endorsed Blanche Lincoln over his former protege Bill Halter.

It's been clear for years. Law school is expensive and good jobs are few and far between.

The news out of Fayetteville this morning is that when the President of the UA System, Alan Sugg, retires next year, he may be replaced by the Chancellor of the Fayetteville campus, David Gearhart. Some people around Arkansas are not happy with that, because it would shift power in the system from Little Rock to Fayetteville. Years ago, the system administrative office was established in Little Rock after a struggle among some of the campuses with the so-called flagship campus, Fayetteville. This move would also require Gearhart to serve in dual roles, which poses a conflict of interest.

Washington Examiner: If you want to get rich, work for the fed.

In 2008 the average federal salary was $110,982 compared with $59,909 for the average private sector employee. And what do they produce?

Jason Tolbert: The Democrat Senate primary is a tossup. Uh-oh.

AP: FDA approves new prostate cancer drug.

Fred Thompason has a new book called Teaching the Pig to Dance.

Jason Tolbert thinks that the Lincoln/ Halter Senate primary will go into a runoff, but a strong turnout in the First District will boost Lincoln's chances because she was first elected in that district.

Roger Simon on liberals, tea parties, and racism: "The real reason liberals accuse Tea Partiers of racism is that contemporary American-style liberalism is in rigor mortis. Liberals have nothing else to say or do.  Accusations of racism are their last resort."

Jason Tolbert: The latest Senate polls show Boozman defeating both Lincoln and Halter.

Bret Baier's Special Report panel on Goldman Sachs:

KRAUTHAMMER: When the Incas had a crop failure they would take someone up on the hill and they would execute them. This process is the same expect it has a little less dignity. I'm sure the language was cleaner in the Inca process.
And the idea that somehow this is all Goldman Sachs, and what you had in the Goldman Sachs deal was sharks trying to outsmart other sharks. These were not securities sold on the street to individuals you and me. It was one institution holding a security that it thought was not good. Therefore it sold it.

Reason: The Obama administration knew about the true costs of Obamacare but kept it secret.

New Scientist: Charisma works because the brain shuts down its skepticism.

Washington Post: Members of Congress face the most anti-incumbent electorate since 1994.

Why women watch porn.

Jason Tolbert, who follows Arkansas politics as closely as anyone, says that Meet the Press invited Blanche Lincoln and Bill Halter to appear on Sunday, May 9. Bill quickly accepted, but Blanche has canceled in part because that day is Mother's Day. But also their most recent debate favored Halter, Tolbert believes.

Yesterday Mike Newell, head basketball coach at the University of Arkansas at Monticello, resigned. The reason of  his resignation was not stated in newspaper reports. See the ADG here.

Newell's bio on the UAM website is here. They may take it down soon.

Sony will end production of 3.5 inch floppy disks, which of course are really not floppy at all.

Arkansas Watch: John Brummett doesn't know Jack about the Arkansas Senate candidates.

Jason Tolbert: Arkansas Republicans have their own Senate debate.

Next year marks the Civil War Sesquicentennial. Frank Cagle is dreading it.

We are a long way from 1861 and even from 1961, when we celebrated the Centennial. I'm not looking forward to another celebration either.

Republicans threaten seats long held by Democrats.

Lincoln and Halter have had a second debate. Jason Tolbert's headline is "Halter scores major points in fiery debate with Sen. Lincoln."

Jason Tolbert reviews the Senate debate last night. He says everyone played their expected roles.

Talk Business has them boxing to a draw.

FoxNews' review is here.

D.C. Morrison provided the comic relief for the debate, saying he enjoyed Blanche and Bill's negative ads. 

John Brummett, via Jason Tolbert's blog, says that tonight's debate between Blanche and Bill will be tame. The reason, he believes, is that they are both cowards. They prefer other people to do their dirty work.

Watch KATV tonight at 7:00 p.m.

Blanche Lincoln appeared on Greta van Susteren's On the Record and talked about, among other topics, her race in Arkansas.

VAN SUSTEREN: Do you want President Obama to come down and campaign for you?
LINCOLN: We are always proud to have a president come to Arkansas.
VAN SUSTEREN: You know what I mean. Is that a yes you want him to campaign for you?
LINCOLN: I'd love it. If he wants to come, we are proud to have a president. I was proud George W. Bush, Bill Clinton. Michelle Obama is coming down early next month. So we are excited about that. 

LOL.

Amazon: Stuart Buck's Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation.

Commentators from Bill Cosby to Barack Obama have observed the phenomenon of black schoolchildren accusing studious classmates of “acting white.” How did this contentious phrase, with roots in Jim Crow-era racial discord, become a part of the schoolyard lexicon, and what does it say about the state of racial identity in the American system of education?

The answer, writes Stuart Buck in this frank and thoroughly researched book, lies in the complex history of desegregation. Although it arose from noble impulses and was to the overall benefit of the nation, racial desegregation was often implemented in a way that was devastating to black communities. It frequently destroyed black schools, reduced the numbers of black principals who could serve as role models, and made school a strange and uncomfortable environment for black children, a place many viewed as quintessentially “white.”

Yesterday I went to North Little Rock to see the Union Pacific steam locomotive No. 844. It was huge and impressive. A large crowd turn out to see it. Click on the image to enlarge it.

The photograph below shows the height of the drive wheels.

James Taranto defends his recent article on Democrats and racism.

NYT: A South Park episode is censored after Muslim complaints.

Union Pacific's No. 844 steam locomotive is on a historic tour, with stops in North Little Rock, AR, on Thursday. See also here. And this Wikipedia article.

James Taranto on why Democrats need racism: "To keep blacks voting Democratic, it is necessary for the party and its supporters to keep alive the idea that racism is prevalent in America and to portray the Republican Party (as well as independent challengers to the Democrats, such as the tea-party movement) as racist. The election of Barack Obama made nonsense of the idea that America remains a racist country and thereby necessitated an intensifying of attacks on the opposition as racist."

Boston Globe has some awesome pictures of Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano.

AP: Toyota  has agreed to a $16.4 million fine in the accelerator pedal defect.

Yesterday I purchased this Weber gas grill. Fortunately I had some good help with assembly, but it still took 2 hours. The Amazon site is good for their reviews, even if you don't buy from Amazon. The reviewers cautioned that the Home Depot version of this grill had cast-iron grates, but the Wal-Mart version had cheaper grates. This turned out to be exactly correct.

John Brummett: The Lincoln/ Halter race is just a farce. "These clowns average about four lies or absurdities a day, fairly evenly divided. "

Douglas Schoen and Patrick Caddell: "To turn a corner, Democrats need to start embracing an agenda that speaks to the broad concerns of the American electorate. It should be somewhat familiar: It is the agenda that is driving the Tea Party movement and one that has the capacity to motivate a broadly based segment of the electorate. "

James Pethokoukis: Why Tea Partiers are right on taxes.

The Contract from America for 2010.

AP: Cheap health care coverage will not apply to all with Obamacare. Imagine that.

Autoblog: The Lexus GX SUV has a serious over-steer problem, which makes it likely to roll over, and Consumer Report has given the vehicle a "Do Not Buy" rating. It's another blow for Toyota.

The NYT takes a poll to determine who the tea partiers are: Republican, white, male, older than 45, and madder than hell. I could have told them that.

In the Arkansas U.S. Senate race, John Boozman has a commanding lead in the Republican primary, according to a recent Talk Business poll. Gilbert Baker is in second place.

AP: ObamaCare is even more unpopular now than when it became law.

An aerial view of the Boston Tea Party crowd today. See here.

The NYT and the WSJ have declared war. I can't wait.

Sean Trende has a terrific analysis of what the 2010 election might be like for Democrats.

President Obama's policy choices to date are wreaking havoc on the brand that Democrats cultivated carefully over the past twenty years. Bill Clinton worked long and hard to make it so that voters could say "fiscal conservative" and "Democrat" in the same sentence, but voters are finding it difficult to say that again.
If brand damage is truly seeping over into Congressional races - and the polling suggests it is - then the Democrats are in very, very deep trouble this election. There is a very real risk that they could be left with nothing more than Obama's base among young, liberal, and minority voters, which is packed into relatively few Congressional districts. It would be the Dukakis map transformed onto the Congressional level, minus the support in Appalachia. That would surely result in the Democratic caucus suffering huge losses, and in turn produce historic gains for the GOP this November.

Reports says that Elin will divorce Tiger soon. The last straw was that creepy commercial broadcast during the Masters. More here. Elin expected him to take more time off before returning to golf. They are apparently living apart entirely.

McDonald's is planning to re-invent itself.

The Huckabees, Mike and Janet, have made Florida their home. Well, I like Florida: No state income tax.

Jim Nantz, the voice of the Masters, did not approve of Tiger Woods' cussing on camera. I believe it should absolutely be stopped.

Byron York: What could go wrong with ObamaCare? Look at the Post Office.

The ADG today reports that the University of Arkansas system is raising tuition. State aid has dropped off, so students must pay more. Or, excuse me, their parents.

For the 2010-11 academic year, for example, UA-Monticello tuition will increase to $4,990. At our so-called flagship campus in Fayetteville, tuition will be $6,767.

TaxProf has the traffic rankings of blogs written by law professors.

Tea parties are scheduled around Arkansas on Thursday, April 15.

Social Security's cash inflow is pointing down, down, down.

Don Davis, a prisoner on death row in the Arkansas Department of Corrections, has been granted a stay of execution. He was the prisoner who was involved in the Betsey Wright case.

The Hill rates Mike Ross (D-AR).

Have you seen your census taker yet? Try this approach.

Rasmussen: 58 percent of voters support repeal of Obamacare.

Burton Folsom Jr. and Anita Folsom: Did FDR's New Deal end the Depression? No, they say, and they are absolutely correct. The New Deal's recovery programs like the WPA were a total failure. World War II stimulated employment but it was temporary. New Dealers worried as the war wound down that the Depression would come back with a vengeance when the servicemen and women returned home looking for jobs.

I heard about a Little Rock woman with high blood pressure who called her doctor's office for an appointment. She was told she was not one of their patients any longer. They did not take Medicare patients. Shocking. We will see this happening more and more.

Washington Examiner: ObamaCare did not produce a "bump" in the polls.

The Washington Post lists the most influential Republicans today. No. 1 is Haley Barbour.

I was talking with someone about who the two political parties represent. The Democrats have become the party of minorities who want welfare state assistance. They are dependent on government. The exceptions are the media, academia, and Hollywood. I do know some old Dems who won't change parties because their daddies were Dems. They are stuck in the past, and some of them may be fighting the Civil War.

Republicans consist of white middle America, people who see themselves as having to pay for welfare programs and they don't want to do it. They are struggling to pay their bills and pay taxes.


Political differences are not based on race in and of itself, but on ideology. This is a point missed by some who see racism in the tea party movement.


That's the biggest difference today. The old view of Republicans as fat cats, and Democrats as the misused masses is out of date if it were ever true.

The NY Times' take on the divisive Arkansas Senate race.

Rasmussen: Tea Party 48 percent; Obama 44 percent.

AP: The Dow is up to almost 11,000 but the number of traders is down. Can you have a bull market without volume?

Labor unions are attacking Blanche Lincoln.

Politico: Bart Stupak (D-Mich) will not seek re-election. Retire now, or lose later.

UPDATE: John Fund: Stupak is a victim of ObamaCare.

Gas is predicted to hit $4 a gallon.

George Will comments on the GM bailout. He adds this:

When Washington bailed out Chrysler in the late 1970s, Alan Greenspan, then a Wall Street consultant, said the danger was not that the rescue would fail but that it would work, thereby whetting Washington's appetite for interventions. The bailout "worked" in that the government made money from it and Chrysler survived to be rescued 30 years later by an administration that, as a wit has said, can imagine the world without the internal combustion engine but not without Chrysler.

Arkansas Watch fills us in on John Boozman's voting record.

Popular Mechanics has a new website.

Rasmussen: Media bias is a bigger problem than money in politics.

Newsmax: Harry Reid is starting on a campaign tour in Nevada and it is going as expected. LOL.

Jason Tolbert cites a Marion Berry quote about Bill Halter: “I can’t wait to be on a program with him,” Berry, who endorsed Lincoln at the event, said of Halter. “I never did like him from the very beginning. I can find a thousand people and not one of them likes him.”

In a deal with prosecutors, Betsey Wright has pleaded no contest to two misdemeanors for smuggling contraband into an Arkansas prison. The deal avoids prison time for her but she faces a $2,000 fine plus court costs.

Wright's statement after sentencing is here. 

Yahoo Finance: Nearly half of U.S. households pay no federal income tax. That's 47 percent who will pay NO federal income tax for 2009.

I believe EVERYBODY should pay federal income tax, so they will know what's it's like.

Roger Simon: "The continued nostalgia for racism on the part of the Democratic Party never ceases to amaze me."

Why do Democrats cling to racism?

Putting it bluntly, the Democratic Party clings to racism because they are s–t out of ideas. They have nothing else to say. At this point, almost everyone acknowledges liberal policies don’t work economically and the Dems have little they can do but call names. This is even more true of socialism, a system which has consistently shown itself to be the initial ramp on an inexorable glide path to totalitarianism. Progressivism, liberalism, call it what you will, has completely lost its appeal to the majority of Americans on an ideological level. So what’s a poor Dem to do? Wave the bloody shirt. Cry racism!

McClatchy: "Health care overhaul spawns mass confusion for public."

I want my free health care and I want in now!!!!

Politico lists Blanche Lincoln as the Senate incumbent most likely to lose in a primary this year.

Ihatethemedia: "Bye bye, Blanche. Don’t let the door hit you in the rotunda on the way out."

Jason Tolbert: Lincoln and Halter are scheduled for a debate on April 23 at 7:30 pm. It will be televised on KATV.

A March 2 letter to the editor in the ADG provoked a storm of local, perhaps statewide, discussion. Nichole Cox wrote, "I think that people over the age of 60 should not be able to drive."

Imagine that. We have the aging boomer generation and in a few years a quarter or more of drivers will be over 65. I think people under 20 should not be able to drive, lol.

When people lose their independence they are just in a world of trouble.

See this follow up article. Log in required.

Byron York: Supreme Count Justice John Paul Stevens is 90 years old and has announced his retirement soon. Democrats want him to retire now rather than wait after the elections when they may not be in control.

Dr. Helen: Women march topless in Portland and are enraged when men notice them. Well? Don't forget to read the comments.

LA Times: Nevadans don't like incumbents and they don't like health care reform. Harry Reid, call your office.

IRS Commissioner: Buy health insurance or lose your tax refund. Change you can believe in.

Jason Tolbert analyzes the Arkansas Republican races for the U.S. Senate. Geography is the key, he thinks.

James Taranto: The mainstream media is suddenly giving the tea party movement new respect.

The Washington Post reviews the Lincoln/ Halter race here in Arkansas.

Tea partiers are bi-partisan and bi-racial. This is not what the mainstream media is telling us. Oh well.

Mark Hemingway: More on Obama's 17-minute response to the complaint about being over taxed. Maybe the problem is that for a Democrat, we can't be over taxed too much.

The ADG reported today that That Bookstore at Mountebanq has closed in Conway, a central Arkansas city of about 55,000 people and three colleges. The owner, Maryalice Hurst, struggled for almost 10 years and had a strong following of authors and customers, but the bookstore failed. The article offered several suggestions for why independent bookstores fail. People read less now. People expect bookstores to carry everything like big-box stores. And the internet, which is the obvious culprit, is just a few clicks away.

I am retired and reading more than ever, but I can't afford to buy all the books I read. So I am a heavy user of the Central Arkansas Library System. Once I buy a book and read it, I don't have room to store it. I do buy some books from Amazon, but not many. They cost less. Occasionally I buy books at Barnes & Noble here in Little Rock, but not many.

So I would put most of the blame on public libraries. But I'm a strong supporter of libraries of all kinds. My main problem with pubic libraries is when I, gasp, lose a book and have to pay a fine.

You might be interested in knowing about Mary Gay Shipley's bookstore in Blytheville. John Grisham has been associated with this store.

Ann Althouse will say anything. Check out this headline: "At the Masters, Tiger Woods will have 90 bodyguards to protect him from the women he screwed."

John Brummett on the Lincoln/ Halter race.

The Moundville archaeological site near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, will open a new museum soon.

Juan Williams: "There is danger for Democrats in recent attempts to dismiss the tea party movement as violent racists deserving of contempt. Demonizing these folks may energize the Democrats' left-wing base. But it is a big turnoff to voters who have problems with the Democratic agenda that have nothing to do with racism."

Dr. Helen Smith, the Instawife and a psychologist, has stirred up some controversy about porn. "I think there are many reasons that marriages are not working out, but porn seems to be the least of the problems. And I wonder — does porn distort men’s attitudes as much as romance novels and Lifetime TV distort women’s? Maybe we should discuss the many social institutions that are giving women unrealistic expectations of men and a sense that they have the right to control men, and men’s sexuality, in their own interest."

Be sure to read the comments.

Woman: "We're over taxed as is." And Obama goes off on her in a 17-minute rant on health care. See Jennifer Rubin's comments: Obama is a bore.

Roger L. Simon:  "And I am now convinced of what I have long suspected — the United States has a president with a serious personality disorder."

CNN: Some Democrats are supporting the tea party movement. "I think we've gone too far on the side of government doing too much," [Ann] Ducket said. "The Democratic Party is wanting to take care of everyone, instead of helping everybody stand on their own two feet."

Exactly.

Rasmussen: 53 percent trust Republicans more than Democrats on health care.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry: Texas can't afford Obamacare. Well, if Texas can't afford it....

Dick Morris: When you donate money to the RNC, you are wasting your money.

Blanche Lincoln and Bill Halter are arguing about which one of them is really running as a Democrat.

CBS Poll via Hot Air: Support for Obamacare is still eroding.

Emmylou Harris celebrates her birthday today. I'm a big fan of hers.

I'll be out of action for a few days.