Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is a threat...to the Democrat Party especially, but also somewhat to the Republican Party.

Ryan is drawing fire for being knowledgeable in matters of budget and health care and Social Security.  He is also knowledgeable in many other areas, but these are the current hot topics.  Ryan's 'Road Map for America - 2' contains some very well-thought ideas for reforming health care, for solving the Medicare funding crisis and for generally reforming the way our government works.  He is a bright, personable, good looking family man.  He is a policy 'wonk' and he is not one whom another politician wishes to be forced to duel in public. 

He is viewed as anathema by the Democrats because of his skill set, and he is worrisome to the Republicans because he is obviously among the brightest members of that party in Washington today.

As the attacks against Ryan ensue, as they almost certainly will, remember to look very carefully at the remarks made by the attackers.  For example, his reformation approach for Social Security is being slammed now as placing old people in soup lines (my paraphrasing) and that couldn't be further from the truth.

We could use a 'Ryan-clone" so that we could have him both here in Wisconsin and in Washington at the same time.

I believe he is the "real deal".  He won't challenge Feingold since both are from Janesville.  Rumors have him thinking about the seat someday to be vacated by Kohl.  I'd love someday to see him as our governor, and I won't be surprised to see him as a candidate for President if I am fortunate to live long enough.

The likelihood of a Senator Tommy Thompson seems remote given the morning Journal Sentinel report that he has just landed another in a long line of appointments to an equity fund advisory board.

Seems that he would be divesting himself of such political millstones rather than adding to the list if he were really serious about taking on Feingold, doesn't it?

Tommy loves to be in the news and this seems to have been just such an exercise. 

Now maybe the others who are thinking of a Feingold challenge, such as Ted Kanavas, can get on with their political lives.

A recently released report from a survey of hundreds of executives and managers of infrastructure organizations (power grids, water treatment facilities, etc.) provides information that many of these information technology networks have been attacked, and that some have been adversely affected as the result.

This is potentially critical to our country's safety since we could be "shut down" with successful such attacks being focused, for example, on the electrical power grid across our country.  Water systems could be compromised.  Sewage treatment facilities could be made to dump untreated sewage...maybe that is what keeps happening in Milwaukee ... thus affecting the health and welfare of the people.

Many of these attacks that have already occurred are believed to have been launched by foreign countries.

Such attacks can include the implanting of malicious software that can be triggered at will by the person or organization that planted it.  Some are the classic "denials-of service" attacks where a system is simply overwhelmed by huge amounts of Internet traffic aimed at the servers.

These issues need our country's immediate and serious focus to preclude us being taken out without a shot being fired.  One wonders if this could be the "nuclear weapon" of this generation.

We, as a country, have not paid the kind of attention we should have been paying to the education of technology minds.  We may find ourselves in the class of "have not" countries in this regard if we do not do something about this imbalance and very quickly.  Our education system needs reforming and it needs that reform very, very soon.  Even with that, we will have slipped several generations behind this dangerous new curve.

Among the most memorable events in last evening's State of the Union speech by President Obama was his galling upbraiding of the Supreme Court for its decision protecting freedom of speech.

His abrasive mention of that decision while he looked right at the members of that court seated in the front row spoke volumes about this man and his disdain for anyone who dares disagree with him on any topic.

His pomposity has rankled me since I first witnessed it, and he has since honed that 'attribute' to a fine edge.

There are three "equal" branches of government for a reason.  The reason is called "checks and balances" and it is especially important today when there is, until Scott Brown is seated, absolute control of two of the three branches by the Democrats.  Imagine how Obama will change the Supreme Court's make-up if and when he has the opportunity.  Imagine how the President, without a Republican majority in the Senate, will alter the face of that court.

If we are reeling from the first year of President Obama and the Democrat Congress, we 'ain't' seen nothin' yet!

Just when we thought that we might get through a month or two without more conversations about "climate change" following the debacle that was Copenhagen, I learn that was truly naive.

"Cap and Trade" was supposedly dead following the revelations that the "science" behind global warming had been anything but scientific.

It's back, however.  Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CN), Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) met yesterday to try to find "common ground" so that something can get passed.

No matter what they're thinking of doing, why can't we sit this out while the bogus nature of the data is being exposed?

This is much akin to the Sen. Reid (D-NV) rush to get health care reform done because a thousand people were dying everyday without the bill being passed.  It appears this science is so suspect, that we would be very wise to let this "global warming" thing cool just a bit before plunging headlong into something that may well be unnecessary and, at the very least, would be very expensive.

Will another few months without a global warming bill in the Senate be all that disastrous?  I think not.

Air America has finally closed its operation.  It filed for bankruptcy some time ago and was going to re-organize, but it never made it through that process.  Last Friday was the last day of broadcast.

Air America was to be the liberal answer to the Rush Limbaughs of the broadcast world who pull large audience segments day-in and day-out.  It didn't work.  People apparently do not enjoy listening to liberals as they enjoy listening to conservatives.  NPR seems to be the only place that liberal talk can make it because NPR is publically-funded.

This newsworthy item didn't make it too far up on the mainstream news media list.  I don't recall seeing or hearing of this news anywhere but in conservative forums and on conservative talk radio.

It is continually interesting to me that liberals are so well-equipped to be able to ignore their lack of support.  So long as they can find a Mr. or Ms. Big Bucks to fund their efforts, they seem to believe they are making progress.

This does not bode well for the FCC to forget about air wave control plans they supposedly had dropped earlier.  This usually bears some innocent or misleading name but it is always meant to provide the liberals with a guaranteed media outlet...even though they could never generate sufficient interest to sell sustaining advertising spots.

Just when everyone thought that bipartisanship was dead, it rears its not-too-pretty head.

The Democrats, only too happy to try to ram health care reform through Congress without Republican participation, now seem to have gotten 'religion'.

They want a bipartisan commission created that would consist of 10 Democrats and 8 Republicans.  This commission would be charged with finding ways to reduce the deficit.  Once this 'bipartisan' commission had made its recommendations known, Congress would be required to vote it up or down.

If they've learned nothing else, the Democrats seem to know that they'll fare better if they drag the silly Republicans into the deficit mess with them.  How better to clean up their own mess than to implicate the Republicans by incorporation.

Let us hope that the Republican leadership doesn't fall for this ploy.  Let the Democrats work out their own solutions to the over-spending in which they've engaged for the past year.  Then-President Bush gave them a place to hide by acting as he thought Obama wanted him to act in the interest of the country when he approved spending measures as among the last things he did on his watch.

Fool the people once, shame on you; fool the people twice, shame on us! 

Did President Obama hear the outcry yesterday?  If so, does he care?

Senator-elect Scott Brown won a resounding victory in Massachusetts by gathering the votes of most Republican voters who turned out, many Independent voters who turned out and some Democrat voters who turned out.  He captured 52% to 47% at the end of last night with some 93% of all votes, except absentee ballots, accounted for.

The Senate Democrats appear to have heard that outcry, and it appears that they care...at least for the moment.

We don't yet know if the House Democrats heard, nor whether they care; Nancy Pelosi continues to make loud sounds about passing health care reform no matter that the majority of people do not want it.

There is a certain "Kamikaze" quality about Pelosi, but she doesn't have to pilot one of those airplanes.  Instead, she stands on the flight deck and watches as her wards take off into the wild blue yonder never to return after the elections this fall.  She has as safe a seat as there is for a liberal Democrat coming from the San Francisco area as she does.

But then again, people thought the "Kennedy Seat" was safe, too...until yesterday.

Of course, the leaders on the Democrat side may take awhile to come to grips with the aftermath from yesterday.  That would be understandable, so long as they get the right message after the pondering.

Now, all that having been said, will the Republicans take the cue they should take from yesterday?  That cue is not to be cocky and avoid listening to the real message.  This was not a Republican victory so much as it was a independent/conservative victory.  Whether or not Senator-elect Brown proves to be a conservative, he sure looked like one compared to his opponent.

If liberal Massachusetts can love a "conservative", why would the Republican party not be able to do the same?

How much manipulation by our politicians behind the scenes is too much?

We have to be very, very close to the point where this whole charade is going to explode in the faces of the ruling party that controls our world today.

As every day passes, we are left to ponder just how much the preceding day, with the added deals that we suspect are being made behind those closed doors, has already cost us.  And, we have to be wondering just how bad the resulting health care reform bill is going to be as the result.

Example:  The favored deals being cut with big labor and state and federal employees to permit them and their members to avoid the "Cadillac" tax will cost the rest of us, without those grander plans, more money.

Example:  How many more states are going to get favored treatment for the Medicaid funding impact at the cost of states like ours, that are getting nothing?

How many other deals are being, or have already been, cooked up to get this package to the point that it can be passed by both houses of Congress so that President Obama has something about which to brag in his next major speech?

How much of this garbage will prove to have been too much?  Will we vote a bunch of these folks out of office to help them, and the rest, understand that we are fed up?  Or, will it continue to be "business as usual" for them...and for us (who pay all the bills)?

Rural health care has relied upon the small force of doctors that practice in such areas and on the hospitals that provide the necessary services in those areas.  Rural health care has been in a precarious position for years; it is under-compensated by Medicare and suffers from an increasing number of low income people needing health care.

Depending upon what is and isn't included in whatever results from the current process of health care reform, we could literally see rural health care go away, at least as it exists today.  The "bigs" are the systems that get the grease to quiet their "squeaky wheel" approach to Congress.  The "littles" get the scraps that fall from the table.  So it has been for a long time now, and, likely, so it will remain.

The small rural hospitals have little ability to recover the underpayments from Medicare patients and from the 'free' care they deliver under federal law.  They have a very limited ability to "cost shift" since they also have a small population of covered people onto whom they can shift these unreimbursed costs.  There are some 5,000 such hospitals across the country.

It will be most interesting to see what Washington has decided to do with rural health care once we are permitted to "look behind the curtain".  If I still lived in a town with an independent small hospital, I'd really be concerned...even more concerned than I am already...and I'm plenty concerned over this 'reform' that is being crafted behind the closed doors of the White House and the Congress.

I sure hope they get it right!