There are certain words anathema to the Right. “Sustainable” is one of them.

There’s nothing wrong with the word per se; indeed, we are fond of its antonym “unsustainable,” as in unsustainable spending. It’s just that “sustainable” belongs to the environmental Left. It’s one of those overused squishy adjectives used to rationalize one sketchy government idea or another.

But Paul Ryan’s 10-year, $4 trillion spending cut proposal demands that the Right reappropriate the word. Because what Ryan is proposing to do is create a sustainable federal government. The one we have now is not even close.

David Brooks frames Ryan’s boldness well in today’s New York Times. “Today, Paul Ryan, the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee, is scheduled to release the most comprehensive and most courageous budget reform proposal any of us have seen in our lifetimes,” Brooks writes. “…The Ryan budget will put all future arguments in the proper context: The current welfare state is simply unsustainable and anybody who is serious, on the left or right, has to have a new vision of the social contract.”

Brooks goes on to note that Ryan’s proposal is certain to reframe the 2012 Presidential debate. Thank God for that. The birther talk is excruciating.

In an ideal world, the Right and Left will learn to share “sustainable.” They will reach agreement on a long-term — sustainable — government vision that will allow us to live well and within our means.

Is that sustained laughing I hear?

There comes a time in a man’s life when he’s no longer sexually threatening to women.

I think I have reached that point.  I have become officially harmless to the fairer sex.

As bad as that sounds, there are benefits to it. Women are as nice to me today as they were when I was little. I notice it mostly with girls in their 20’s and 30’s – women conditioned to avoid eye contact with strangers. They now smile at me unreservedly.  It happens all the time — I swear — on bank lines, at restaurants, on sidewalks. They instinctively know I’m out of the game, and, as a result, treat me delightfully. Some have taken to holding doors for “sir.”

I can only ascribe this phenomenon to age.  There is no other explanation.  And I should have expected it to happen; there have been clues along the way.

On a train a couple of months ago, I made a remark to a pretty young woman seated across from me.  She was clutching a copy of a Jack Kerouack novel, which gave me an easy opening. I can’t remember what I said, but it was borderline clever.  “I know,” she said with a big smile — and with no irony whatsoever in her voice — “my Dad tells me that all the time.” (My wife is still laughing about that one.)

A year or two ago, a girl in my office – she was around 23 at the time – saw a photo taken of me when I was her age. I was hoping for: “How handsome you were back then!” What I got was: “OMG, how retro!'” That and a grand -daughterly kiss on the cheek.

I suppose every man hits this point; I just didn’t know it would start so soon.

I’m noticing a new thing, though.  The young grandmothers…they’re digging me.  I’m telling you. I can feel it.

Get this.

The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has just issued guidelines for what its employees should eat and what type of cologne or perfume they should wear in the office.  Mayor Bloomberg defends the action in an interview today with WINS News radio icon Stan Brooks, the station’s City Hall Bureau Chief.

The new rules reportedly ban French Fries in the workplace and require bagels to be cut into quarters. Shalimar is prohibited, but Channel Number 5 is permitted.  (Okay, I made that up.  Both are probably banned.)

Sounds to me like the Department of Health has a mental hygiene problem.  But you can’t say that in the building.  Negative thoughts are verboten.

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If there is a bigger egomaniac in American political history than Bill Clinton, I am unaware of him.

The former President simply won’t go away.  If it weren’t so annoying, it would be sad to watch.  He so desperately craves the spotlight.

Clinton has been out of the White House for more than a decade, yet he continues to inject himself into every policy matter.  Today, on Good Morning America, he effectively called for arming the Libyan rebels.  I’m sure President Obama — President Clinton’s wife’s boss — really appreciates that. Here we have the Secretary of State’s husband, a former President, second guessing a sitting President of his own party on national TV.  The issue of arming or not arming the rebels is not the issue.  Protocol is.

Former Presidents are supposed to have dignity.  They are supposed to, as Douglas MacArthur put it, fade away (or pen an op-ed every once in a while. ) Bill Clinton never got the memo, or, far likelier, he got it and ignored it.  Why would tradition and decorum apply to Clinton the Great?

U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin)

The conversation has begun.

U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), chairman of the House Budget Committee, just started it.

His proposal to trim more than $4 trillion in federal spending over the next decade is exactly what we need to be talking about. Agree with it; disagree with it; praise it; attack it, or parse it. But talk about it, because the future of the country depends on it. All the other banter in Washington is shadow boxing.

There has been a lot of buzz about 41-year-old Ryan. It’s not that he’s just a true fiscal conservative; it’s that he’s honest and unafraid. It’s what makes him stand out among others in the nation’s capitol. Ryan has guts, and this proposal proves it. It also proves that he trusts the American people.

Ryan is handing a loaded gun to the Democrats with four trillion extra rounds of ammunition.  He’s giving them everything they need to destroy the Republican Congress. Every sacred ox is gored; third rails are firmly in hand.  Millions of voters will see favorite programs diminished as a result of this plan.  In short, this Republican is placing his and his Party’s jugular on the chopping block and asking Americans to “check the math” before swinging.  Great stuff.

Ryan is betting everything that the American public will rise above selfish politics for the greater national good. He’s betting that they get it.

If he’s right, the prospects for America’s future will brighten immeasurably.  If he’s wrong, Americans will have lost their heads a moment before Ryan’s hits the floor.

Let the great debate begin.

A few years back I was asked by a friend to help a New York City school in danger of closing.  It was a small private school – still is fortunately – that had fallen on tough times.  Its enrollment was down and declining. My task was to teach its board how to publicize the school to attract new students.

I was kicking around the place one afternoon, going from classroom to classroom in search of interesting news stories. The dean of the school had assigned an administrator to walk me around, a former mid-level state political hack in his mid-sixties who had come to the school a couple of years before, presumably to put in a few more years before retiring. Nice enough guy, but nondescript.  If there was anything you might take away from him, it would be that he was overweight and unkempt.  The kind of guy you walk by every day without noticing.

At the end of the tour, I had a couple of stories worth pitching, but nothing that was going to win anyone a Pulitzer.  I thanked the man and said I would call him the following Monday to follow up.  I’ll remember the next five minutes for the rest of my life.  Here’s how it went:

He: “I won’t be here Monday.  I’ll be gone next week,”

Me: “Oh, where are you going?  Someplace fun I hope?”

He: “I’ll be in Russia for the week.  But I’ll be back the next Monday.  We can talk then.”

Me: “Very cool.  Always wanted to go to Russia.  Have you been there before?”

He: “Few times.”

Me: “Do you have family there?  Are you Russian?”

He: “No.  I’m Italian.  But I go to Russia every year for vacation.”

Me: “No kidding.  That’s interesting.  What do you do there?”

He: “Nothing really. I just help with something.

Me: “Oh?”

He: “Just something I do. But I’ll be back a week from Monday.”

Me: “What is it, if it’s okay to ask?”

He: “I help put fire alarms in schools.”

Me: “Really?  How did you get into that?”

He: “It’s just something I started doing a few years ago.”

Me: “On your own?”

He: “Yes.  Just me.”

Me: “How did you get into that?”

He: “I read a story in the paper about a school for the deaf in Russia.  The school burned down and all the children died because they couldn’t hear the fire bell.  So I put in alarms that have flashing lights.”

Me: [staggered] “On your own? This is just you? “

He: “Well, the Russian government lets me do it.”

Me: “Is someone deaf in your family?”

He: “No. The story just got to me.”

Me: “It must cost a fortune.  How do you do it?”

He: “I can’t do too many at once, because it’s expensive. So I do a couple of schools on each trip.”

Me: “That’s….incredible.  You have no other connection to Russia?  You just do this?”

He: “The story kind of got to me.  And I figured I never got married; I don’t have any kids, and my rent’s not too bad.  I’ve got a decent pension from the state and I won’t need a whole lot when I retire.  So this is just something I do.”

Me: “How may schools have you done?”

He: “This will be my 12^th and 13^th.”

Me: “I hate to ask you this, but this really is an amazing story.  I’ve gotta say I’ve never heard anything like it. Would you mind if I spoke with a reporter about what you do? This is really something people should know about.

He looked down, thought for a moment and said: “No thanks.  I’d rather not.  This is just something I do.”

Stephen Moore at The Wall Street Journal wrote this terrific editorial today about the correlating growth of  government jobs and the decrease in manufacturing positions in the U.S. over the past several decades.  Moore, the former President of Club for Growth, is a brilliant writer and an affable voice for fiscal responsibility in America.

Here is an excerpt from his piece today:

“If you want to understand better why so many states—from New York to Wisconsin to California—are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, consider this depressing statistic: Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government.

It gets worse. More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined. We have moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers. Nearly half of the $2.2 trillion cost of state and local governments is the $1 trillion-a-year tab for pay and benefits of state and local employees. Is it any wonder that so many states and cities cannot pay their bills?”

The fix to this trend, of course, is not easy.  And there is considerable disagreement over the best way to attract or retain manufacturing jobs in the U.S. over the long term.  But here is a big-picture issue very much worth discussing in, say,  the upcoming presidential race.

Mr. Moore lays it out plainly for any serious candidate to pounce upon.

Fast Tube by Casper

In what may be the greatest touché in history, my Democratic sister just sent me this video in response to the one I posted earlier of Lyndon LaRouche.  It is of an, um, passionate Republican candidate for local treasurer in Stark County, OH speaking at a forum (needless to say he was less than victorious.)  I am rendered speechless. Please tell me it was an April Fools joke.

Fast Tube by Casper

I just had to include this as a quick follow up to the previous post.  I suppose the Democrats have had their problems too over the years with quixotic candidacies.  Here is a classic.

Some mornings I wake up feeling like Bubba in “Forest Gump.” “And that’s all I have to say about shrimp” is about the best I can utter.

Then I crack the papers, and there’s not enough time in the day to let rip: Lemon shrimp, mango shrimp, gumbo shrimp, orange shrimp…

It’s the GOP side of the presidential race today. It’s killing me. The serious candidates aren’t yet engaged, so we are being forced to watch amateur hour. I won’t name names, because I have friends working on some of these races, but the level of discourse so far has been preposterous: Who’s really black?; birth certificates, an Islamic coup in America?  Are you kidding?

It’s the kind of discourse that reminds a majority of Americans why they ditched the Republican Party in the first place.

Every long distance running race has a pacer group — a cluster of runners with no chance and no intention of victory. They run to set the pace for the contenders — they set the race’s tone.  The Republican pacers in the 2012 presidential primary could not be setting a more destructive and unattractive one.

There are serious issues to discuss.  If you can’t come up with an engaging way to address them, stop running. You don’t belong in the race. Resorting to cheap headline tactics as a pacer candidate is a disservice to the Republican Party and to the country. Get out.

Another unattractive quality I’m seeing is a tendency among some candidates to change their opinions on Libya virtually on a daily basis, simply to attack President Obama. There is plenty to criticize. Libya is looking like a classic cluster you know what, in Army parlance. But you can’t criticize President Obama for trying-to-pin-Jello-to-the-wall in his foreign policy when you’re working with  pudding.

Hint: John McCain is someone to emulate on matters of foreign policy. He lays out his vision and the sticks with it. Situations change, but the over arching goals do not. He’d be president if held the same strong feelings about domestic policies.

The early days of primaries can be entertaining. But so, I’m sure, is “Dancing with the Stars.” Candidates looking to get famous quickly, while the real runners are lacing up their shoes, would be better off sticking with reality TV.

President Obama and his agenda are beatable. And the stakes could not be higher.  Please don’t blow potholes in the track for those who have to follow you.

Pepper shrimp, fried shrimp, coconut shrimp…