Mr. Russert: “Everyone knows Social Security, as it’s constructed, is not going to be in the same place it’s going to be for the next generation, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives.”
Mr. Matthews: “It’s a bad Ponzi scheme, at this point.”
In the past several months as the debate over Social Security reform has taken center stage in the theater of the absurd that is modern American politics, the idea has been floated that the entire pay—as—you—go structure of this system closely resembles a Ponzi scheme, albeit one that is about to collapse.
Not far enough back for you? In 2004, the Daily Howler blamed the phrase on earlier generations: (quoting Ed Crane)
And so it goes in the offices of the Social Security Administration, home of the world's largest Ponzi scheme. Sold originally to the American public as a program to care for the indigent elderly, then as a "national pension plan" into which we pay "insurance premiums," Social Security has always been a fraud, a pay-as-you-go slush fund for politicians to dip into...
One of my favorite things to do is to examine what was said, in a prediction, in history.
For instance, let's say that you were wondering about the FY 2008 budget. Who passed it, and what was said about it?
The U.S. Congress on Thursday approved a $2.9 trillion fiscal 2008 budget that funds President George W. Bush's huge defense buildup while also adding money for Democrats' domestic priorities.
The budget, written by Democrats who control both chambers of Congress, received no backing from House Republicans, while only two moderate Republicans in the Senate supported it.
Okay... so from this, we know that the Democrats wrote the 2008 budget.
Furthermore, we can state that exactly 2 Republicans in congress, total, supported it.
Its worth reading the article if you have the time.
Let's keep going... shall we?
This was a non-binding budget. Meaning that Democrats knew that there was a possibility that their spending priorities would get cut off at the legs. Or as one other article stated it:
The move appears to set up a clash this September with Bush, who has yet to veto a single appropriations bill, but who seems eager to get started.
The budget was a result of a lot of back and forth, with Republicans saying that Democrats were being overly optimistic on what they thought their tax plans would bring in.
Furthermore, the Democrats were counting on 'reserve funds':
The House and Senate versions of the budget depend on "reserve funds" to pay for additional spending for such programs as children's healthcare and farm aid. With the reserve funds, Congress can avoid the hard choices that drawing up any budget, whether it's for a household or the federal government, usually entails.
There's only one catch: The reserve funds are empty. If Congress wants to fill them, it will have to do what it has tried to avoid: cut from defense or domestic programs, raise taxes or borrow the money and drive up the deficit.
I'm going to continue researching this. But I wanted to share.
Now is the time to act boldly and wisely -- to not only revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity. Now is the time to jumpstart job creation, re-start lending, and invest in areas like energy, health care, and education that will grow our economy, even as we make hard choices to bring our deficit down. That is what my economic agenda is designed to do, and that is what I'd like to talk to you about tonight.
Now, as we stabilized the financial system, we also took steps to get our economy growing again, save as many jobs as possible, and help Americans who had become unemployed.
Wait... maybe we can get him saying that he won't rest until he gets us a job?
I've mentioned before that sometimes I just use my blog to keep tract of links.
In this case, its because someone I know is trying to argue that Obamanomics is a term that Fox News uses.
Let me make this clear; they aren't arguing that Fox News is one of many places that uses Obamanomics. They are arguing that its mostly Fox that created the term, and uses it to bash the economic policies of Obama.
So let's go over who used the term in 2008. -And while we're at it, let's see what people predicted would happen under Obamanomics.
Of course, there was the uber-conservative Firedoglake:
Obama’s tax plan will put more of the burden on the rich, he will raise the minimum wage, make unionization easier and generally help workers. The effect won’t be large, but for the poorest workers and for unions, it will be noticeable.
In this disjointed article, the author suggests that the biggest problem with Obamanomics is that Obama wants to give money back to the people... which is... bad. The author argues that the people don't know how to spend their money right. Ooookay.
August 2008, Counterpunch uses the term. They talk about how Obama has spent time speaking about deficit (cough cough!) reduction:
Obama also embraces some elements of deficit reduction in his thinking. That’s not wrong in principle. Lower deficits can strengthen the value of the dollar, making imports less expensive. Lower federal budget deficits can make it harder to justify fiscal austerity that shrinks needed social welfare, training or public investments of various kinds. Government borrowing can crowd out private sector borrowing, making investments more costly.
Thank goodness that Barack isn't raising the deficit?
Then there was The Economist, who had to say this about the president's economics:
As the battle for the Democratic nomination reaches a climax in Texas and Ohio, the front-runner's speeches have begun to paint a world in which laid-off parents compete with their children for minimum-wage jobs while corporate fat-cats mis-sell dodgy mortgages and ship jobs off to Mexico.
To be fair, he hasn't changed that economic narrative.
Mark Green, from Air America, on the Huffington Post, referring to Krugman on Obamanomics:
Also, studies have shown that the GDP under Democratic presidents has been more than 300% higher than under Republican presidents. So whenever McCain falsely aserts that Obama will raise everyone's taxes or that he'll balance the budget by 2013 despite cutting revenues by several hundred billion annually, the affirmative answer is -- Democrats grow the economy far more than Republicans. 300% more. For the most recent example, contrast Clinton and Bush.
Whew. Then the economy is getting far better. Right. errr... right?
That's the problem with Democratic predictions. Its never their fault that things didn't turn out that way.
Obama would certainly shift government priorities to improving job prospects and raising living standards for American workers. He proposes raising the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour, offering refundable $4,000 tax credits for college, expanding the childcare tax credit, reforming bankruptcy laws, rebuilding infrastructure, establishing a new employee savings plan and investing in alternative energy to create “millions of new green jobs.”
Reminder; his economic policies were supposed to keep the unemployment rate under 8% too. But that's just window dressing.
Here is a completely laughable article by the economic writer for the New York Times, on what Obama is planning:
All of this raises the question of what will happen to the deficit. Obama’s aides optimistically insist he will reduce it, thanks to his tax increases on the affluent and his plan to wind down the Iraq war. Relative to McCain, whose promised spending cuts are extremely vague, Obama does indeed look like a fiscal conservative.
A fiscal conservative. Who raised the debt by $3.4 Trillion in 2 years. Here was the hint... in the same article:
“I still would have probably made a slightly different choice than Clinton did,” Obama said. “I probably wouldn’t have been as obsessed with deficit reduction.”
Uh, yeah.
Well, aren't we all glad that worked out so well?
In August of 2009, Barack was interviewed by Chuck Todd on the economy. When it came to the issue of raising taxes on the wealthy, Barack was asked by Scott Ferguson to: Explain how raising taxes on anyone during a deep recession is going to help with the economy. Barack answered that it would be a mistake to raise taxes at that time. He said that it would cost jobs:
Well, first of all, he is right. Normally, you don't raise taxes in a recession, which is why we haven't and why we have instead cut taxes. So I guess what I would say to Scott is his economics are right, you don't raise taxes in a recession. We haven't raised taxes in a recession. ... ...So he is absolutely right, the last thing you want to do is to raise taxes in the middle of a recession because that would just suck up — take more demand out of the economy and put businesses in a further hole.
You heard, of course, about how the government is trying to get rid of standard incandescent light bulbs. You may have also heard that the Republicans in congress are trying to squash this part of the 2007 Energy Act. Bloomberg has an incredibly slanted view of this bill, and gives the Obama administration POV almost verbatim:
The legislation, which was debated on the House floor yesterday and is scheduled for a vote later today, would cost Americans $6 billion in energy savings in 2015, the White House said in a statement yesterday.
So let's start here, with what H.R. 2417 is. H.R. 2417 would, according to the bill, repeal:
Sections 321 and 322 of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007
to conduct research and development efforts related to lighting technologies, perform market assessments related to energy-efficient lighting products, and educate consumers about such products.
Sounds like a good way for us to save some money. Particularly at a time when we are trying to cut down on government spending.
Hilarious. The entire left just swallowed their collective tongues.
Remember how all during Bush's term, the left argued that Bush tried to connect 9/11 and Iraq through hidden speech? Or something like that? Well, Panetta straight out said it:
The reason you guys are here is because of 9/11. The US got attacked and 3,000 human beings got killed because of Al-Qaeda
Now if he were a Republican, every single liberal in the US would be talking about how he was trying to distort 'the truth'. But since he's working for a guy in the WH with a D next to his name...
I just wanted to keep a list of this, handy. Spending, of the US government, in trillions, per year: 2000----1.7 2001----1.8 2002----2.0 2003----2.1 2004----2.2 2005----2.4 2006----2.6 2007----2.7 2008----2.9 2009----3.5 2010----3.4 SOURCE
Santelli was the guy who made the original call for a new Tea Party. In the discussion about the debt, he gets it right yet again...
Yes, Santelli... stop spending! A few very relevant points are made in this video. But the most important one is this, as stated: In August, we will have $203 billion of revenue. We will also have $362 worth of bills.
Now lets just think about that for a second. Suppose you had a company, and you were taking in $2.03 for every $3.62 spent. Wouldn't you take a serious look at your spending? Of course you would.
Earlier, I wrote about how Jon Stewart can't admit that he was wrong about Fox News viewers being the most "misinformed" viewers. I did a bunch of research on one of Fox News' rivals, and applied the same standard that Jon Stewart did. Which I thought was kinda brilliant.
Shortly after that, a number of people all started using the same argument that Politifact used (a few of) the wrong studies. That there was a thin difference between being 'misinformed' and not knowing what the facts were. If one person had come to this conclusion, I'd chalk it up to one person splitting hairs. But it wasn't one person. It was a herd of Dems. So I googled, and came up with the FireDogLake post that seems to be the source of it all:
...The three Pew polls measure how informed viewers are. They don’t even belong in the discussion, because they don’t go to Stewart’s point.
Let's go back to Stewart's point:
Who are the most consistently misinformed media viewers? … Fox viewers, consistently, every poll.
If we constrain our definition of "misinformed media viewers" to the FireDogLake version of what Stewart meant, then we're not talking about 'every poll'. We're talking about one polling service: PIPA. Moreover, we're talking about what PIPA asked people, and what PIPA felt was 'misinformation.' I ran into this study before, which is why I wanted to focus on it. A lot of the questions are subjective, but no question was more wrong in my opinion then this one:
When TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed it
NOTE: the second vote, while not initially appearing to be connected to TARP, does have TARP bootstrapped onto it. Read the text.
Now keep in mind, PIPA said that Fox viewers were 'misinformed' if they believed that most of the Republicans were against TARP. How do they form that opinion? Wait. Let's do this. Suppose you asked viewers who supported TARP more, dems or reps? What do you suppose the vast majority of MSNBC viewers would say? I'm going to jump into the pool and suggest that their 'misinformation' rating would go way, way, way up, along with those who listen to NPR.
When President Bush made the same mistake during his campaign for President in 2000, he was roundly criticized as unintelligent.
Yet, Barack can continue to make gaffe after gaffe, and its not a reflection on him.
To be fair, I don't consider "The Internets" to be that big of a gaffe. But then again, I wasn't the one making fun of Bush for doing the same damn thing.
The Washington Post recently fact checked one of Obama's speeches on the debt, and gave him "Two Pinocchios." A sample of what they wrote:
The president’s claim of an “unprecedented” effort to trim federal regulations is laughable. And it would be nice to hear Obama acknowledge for once that, until a few months ago, his administration was eager to do business with Gaddafi.
They also take apart his efforts to blame corporate jet companies for robbing the public coffers of taxes. Read the piece. Its pretty good.
At least, according to Obama. Boehner asked the question of the president in his Twitter Town Hall. But Obama, according to the CNN video on Real Clear Politics, said:
Eventually, I'm sure, the speaker will see the light
Remember how Obama kept saying that most of his campaign contributions came from small donors?
Uh. Turns out its not true. Guess who actually is getting small donors? According to AP, Michelle Bachman.
...Bush and Obama depended more on thunderstorms of money — bundles of checks collected by big-money donors, each written for the maximum amount allowed by law. Bachmann's accounts are instead filled with small contributions sent by devoted supporters.
Cool for Michelle. Although that won't quell the liberal belief that she's being sponsored by corporations.
I've seen some ridiculous gaffes by Obama, but this one took the cake.
I need to start by introducing you to Medal Of Honor winner, Sergeant First Class Jared C. Monti. Jared lost his life in Afghanistan. According to the official website:
With complete disregard for his own safety, Staff Sergeant Monti twice attempted to move from behind the cover of the rocks into the face of relentless enemy fire to rescue his fallen comrade. Determined not to leave his Soldier, Staff Sergeant Monti made a third attempt to cross open terrain through intense enemy fire. On this final attempt, he was mortally wounded, sacrificing his own life in an effort to save his fellow Sohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifldier. Staff Sergeant Monti's selfless acts of heroism inspired his patrol to fight off the larger enemy force
The president presented his parents with the Congressional Medal Of Honor, after giving this 14 minute speech on Jared.
It is a moving ceremony, one which I'm fairly certain that the parents will not forget.
“First time I saw the 10th Mountain Division, you guys were in southern Iraq. When I went back to visit Afghanistan, you guys were the first ones there. I had the great honor of seeing some of you because a comrade of yours, Jared Monti, was the first person who I was able to award the Medal of Honor to who actually came back and wasn’t receiving it posthumously.”
This truly is the worst possible gaffe the president could have committed. Now granted, he did call the parents to apologize. But this fits under the heading of "imagine if Bush said this...?" Because if this were any other president, we'd still be talking about this today.
I hate, hate, hate when people can't admit when they were wrong.
No one is more problematic at this then Jon Stewart. Granted, admitting that you're wrong isn't as funny as sticking to the premise that you're right in lieu of the fact that Politifact screwed you to the wall.
So let's start here. 3 minutes in... Stewart says:
"Who are the most consistently misinformed media viewers? … Fox viewers, consistently, every poll."
Fox actually scored better than its two direct cable-news rivals -- MSNBC, which is a liberal counterpoint to Fox, and CNN, which is considered more middle-of-the-road. Also scoring lower than Fox were local television news, the evening network news shows and the network morning shows.
Ouch. Politifact concludes, after showing several different studies:
So we have three Pew studies that superficially rank Fox viewers low on the well-informed list, but in several of the surveys, Fox isn’t the lowest, and other general-interest media outlets -- such as network news shows, network morning shows and even the other cable news networks -- often score similarly low. Meanwhile, particular Fox shows -- such as The O’Reilly Factor and Sean Hannity’s show -- actually score consistently well, occasionally even outpacing Stewart’s own audience.
Of course, Jon Stewart admitted he was wrong, and moved on. Oh wait. He didn't. Ugh. Like the rest of the left, he doubled down instead of admitting that he was wrong. Stewart went on the air to say that if he was wrong, it was because he watches Fox News... whom he still claims is consistently wrong.
To keep his claim true, Stewart quotes a number of Politifacts.
Fox was never reviewed by Politifact, as a network.
They DO review individual people who have made statements on opinion programs, and then they find the statements to be true or false. In fact, if you notice, the very first quote that Stewart refers to comes from Glenn Beck. After that, he kinda doesn't mention/refer to the fact that the statements he's quoting are from opinion makers on Fox. However, Politifact does list them in one, handy, statement. What you'll notice is that Stewart is using statements from Beck, Palin, O'Reilly, and even Karl Rove as "Fox News" statements.
Now most people understand that if you list off a bunch of commentaries, you'll find people who have statements that aren't completely true. And if Stewart did that, he'd have to admit that the same thing happens on other networks.
Like... I dunno... lets do this with MSNBC.
Olbermann:
"Subsidies for oil and gas companies make up 88 percent of all federal subsidies. Just cutting the oil and gas subsidies out would save the U.S. government $45 billion every year."
Gov. Sarah Palin "got precisely zero support for her call for Alaska's Democratic Senator Mark Begich to resign because Ted Stevens' corruption conviction was overturned."
Under changes being debated, state employees in Wisconsin "who earn $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 a year might have 20 percent of their income just disappear overnight."
With his decision on whether to fire Gen. Stanley McChrystal, President Obama "has to fix yet another problem he inherited from the Bush administration."
Now I'm not even on the staff of Comedy Central writers, and I came up with that 'short' list, from just 4 people who appear on MSNBC. Should I presume that Stewart did the same thing as I did, when he researched Fox? That he took the time to compare it to other networks?
Of course he didn't. Because like many people on the left, he can't admit that his premise was wrong. He will continue to look for evidence that proves him right, ignoring anything to the contrary.
There is a thin difference between ignorance and arrogance. Ignorance is not knowing. Arrogance is the presumption that you already know.
The biggest problem that we're going to encounter in the future is the money that the government has not allocated, for items they promised to pay for.
In a corporate environment, these are known as liabilities. Corporations have to use accrual accounting instead of cash accounting.
In cash accounting, its real easy to calculate your balance. You just indicate revenue - expenses. So if you spent $50,000, but made $60,000, you would indicate $10,000 of profit. Now here's where things get complicated. Let's say that you owe $200,000 to someone who billed you for services to your business, but you didn't have to pay the bill for another 2 years. In cash accounting, you still had $10,000 of profit. On paper, your business is making money.
Corporations can't use cash accounting for this reason. They have to indicate what their liabilities are on their balance sheet. Somewhere on their financial statement, they would have to indicate that they owe $200,000.
How does this relate to our government? Our government does what no business would ever be allowed to do: they put off obligations (money owed), often sell bonds to cover these expenses, and then indicate a balance that doesn't reflect this debt.
If I've lost you, you can always read this USA Today report that puts it into perspective.
The $61.6 trillion in unfunded obligations amounts to $528,000 per household. That's more than five times what Americans have borrowed for everything else — mortgages, car loans and other debt. It reflects the challenge as the number of retirees soars over the next 20 years and seniors try to collect on those spending promises.
Most people are familiar with the fact that we are currently $14 trillion in debt as a country, or that we are now running deficits of over $1 Trillion a year. In this post, I explained how the current administration is now running a deficit averaging $1.7 Trillion a year. But most people aren't aware of how much we truly are in debt.
So as you listen to congress talk about cutting $10 billion, or even $50 billion from the budget, and as you hear congressmen protecting their pet projects, remember that figure: $61.6 Trillion.
ABC News reports that Obama's 2012 campaign is trying to mislead its minions in their latest video. The video is reportedly a compilation of issues that the Republicans talked about in the latest debate. However...
...the video, which Messina calls a “highlight reel” and the DNC titled “What in the world are they talking about?” selectively uses clips from the 2-hour forum suggesting that the candidates were focused on idiotic issues, or battles from the past, when all of the topics the video hammers the Republicans for talking about were ones they were asked about at the forum.
Huh... the DNC is dishonest? When did that happen? Here's the video, below.
If you want to compare that to what they were actually asked about... watch the CNN video. The debate actually starts 2:15 in:
I'm not talking about those who have actual mental deficiencies. I understand that a child with a mental limitation or someone who has a severe and limiting disease is not capable of the thought process that we know as logic.
However, there are adult creatures known as 9/11 conspiracy theorists who actively ignore logical thought in order to come to the conclusion that a plane didn't actually fly into a building on 9/11. Or, alternately, that a burning building cannot collapse due to structural damage.
This idiot, the one who uploaded this video, is one of those tools:
Now naturally, upon seeing this video, I tried to explain to the idiot in question that elevators can fail if there is a plane that flies into a building. Because while all modern elevators have safety features, they all have limitations. They were not meant to keep an elevator from falling after the cables are cut and when tons of burning liquid kerosene are poured on top of them.
This idea was not acceptable to the idiot who posted this. He/she/it responded with:
Approximately eight 100-millionths of one percent of elevator rides resulted in an anomaly ..... that about sums it up. So right there your odds are 1 in 80,000,000,000. Now multiply those odds with all the other anomolies, like three steel buildings collapsing from fire in one event on the same, when a steel building has never collapsed from greater fires. NORAD off duty .... etc. The official story, with your fireball down shafts, is at least a billion trillion to 1, if even that
I wanted to reply to IranContraScumDid911. But not too ironically, they blocked me from posting anything else as a response. Which makes sense, because they also wrote this:
Four plane crashes disappeared in one event? What are the odds not one tail or wing would never be recovered? The black boxes disappeared?
I'm going to work backwards. The only way that the conspiracy theorist could believe that four planes did NOT disappear in one event is if they honestly thought that the bulk of New York who SAW the planes fly into the two twin towers were all lying. They furthermore would have to believe that the people in the Pentagon, who lost friends, were also lying. Finally, they'd have to believe that the people who were working in ATC, who literally dedicate their lives to the idea of planes not running into things, were complicit in this lie. Its kinda like believing that a hospital full of doctors were all involved in killing 400 patients on the same day. But I digress. The point is that when the writer says:
"What are the odds not one tail or wing would never be recovered?"
...They are actively denying that the four planes were witnessed hitting said items. They are denying that the video of the first plane hitting the first tower (taken by firefighters, no less) is real. They are denying that the second plane hitting the second tower (taken by scores of different news outlets) is real. The odds of you recovering a wing of a plane that hits a building while traveling at 600mph is approximately 0.0000001%. That's a guess on my part.
100% of cases where a commercial airplane has slammed into a building has resulted in elevator failures. The fact that you cannot grasp this (or that you believe that because the odds of non-airplane-related-elevator-crashes are so great) boggles my mind. Here's a parallel thought for you to ponder. Your chances of sitting in your office on an average day and having a plane plow into your building and immolate you in a gigantic ball of flame are 5,000,000,000,000,000 to 1.
The mere fact that someone can't believe that an elevator would fail in a building that was slammed into by an airplane hurts my brain. Its someone who believes in a perfect world.... where nothing fails, even under the most extreme circumstances. Again, if it were an actual kid, I'd have no problem. Kids have trouble grasping simple concepts. Adults shouldn't. Planes that smash into buildings are annihilated. Buildings that are hit by commercial aircraft suffer severe damage.
Elevators that have a plane fly through their shaft can fail.
The Obama administration approved 204 new waivers to Democrats' healthcare reform law over the past month, bringing the total to 1,372.
Neat. Now the Hill article makes it clear that they are only temporary, and that its just for one part of the health care law. However, how shitty can a law be, when you have to issue 1,372 temporary waivers for companies affected by it? For that matter, how fair can it be?
Great article by NBC. It turns out that Mayor Daley can keep 1 million worth of campaign contributions that he never spent. So the next time you pay for parking, allow yourself to wonder out loud about that parking meter scandal... and how Daley sold the rights to parking in the city to LAZ.
The other day, I found myself in another stupid Facebook debate with someone didn't know their facts.
I should be used to this by now. But it never fails to get to me when someone who leans to the left insists that I'm uninformed while saying something that's provably not true.
This all started when a friend posted a link to a Paul Krugman article. I called Paul an idiot (my bad) and then stated why he was an idiot: That all of the spending he championed failed to bring down the unemployment rate.
Now I'd reprint the debate verbatim if I could. But as it happens far too often, a friend of my friend kept using insults until the original friend blocked us both from her Facebook account. So by trying to correct the record with facts, suddenly, I'm the asshole. Even though I wasn't the one calling her other friend names.
I know. I know... I'm losing the point of why I wrote this. Paul Krugman was for spending shitloads of money through the government. We all agree on this. He believed that it would result in a lower unemployment rate. It is also true that Krugman was upset that only $787 BILLION dollars was being spent on the stimulus program. Krugman believed this to be small. Which makes sense. I mean, if you're going to be a Keynesian economist, why wouldn't you believe in spending more money? Ideally, by spending 50 Trillion Dollars, we'd go into a huge economic boom that would never be matched! Right?
My friend's friend insisted that Krugman was right. That the stimulus was too small... which is why it had no effect. He said that Krugman readers would know that Paul predicted that the stimulus bill would fail to reduce the unemployment rate. But Paul didn't say that. In fact, Krugman said:
Unemployment is currently about 7 percent, and heading much higher; Obama himself says that absent stimulus it could go into double digits. Suppose that we’re looking at an economy that, absent stimulus, would have an average unemployment rate of 9 percent over the next two years; this plan would cut that to 7.3 percent, which would be a help but could easily be spun by critics as a failure.
Wow. A 7.3% unemployment rate would be spun into a 'failure' of Obama's $787 economic plan. Presuming, of course, that the president didn't have a fawning media that would change his every failure into rainbows and unicorns.
In case you didn't know this (or were arguing with me on Facebook), the nonfarm unemployment rate for April of 2011 was 9.0%. I created this handy chart to show you what's the stimulus plan results have looked like, vs. the predicted results. Note that the uptick in unemployment in April has not been added.
A lot was made when a Fox affiliate accidentally put Obama's name in the screen crawl when Osama was killed. Keep in mind, it was an affiliate. But more importantly, they were not the only one to do so in the news.
When someone says a phrase like, "Every scientist agrees" or "All economists will tell you", it grates on my nerves. Because economists don't agree. If they did, there would be one economic theory and we'd all follow it. Scientists have a similar problem. The job of a scientist is to challenge conventional wisdom and question knowledge as we understand it.
Naturally, when I heard Obama say:
Economists from across the political spectrum agree that if we don't act swiftly and boldly, we could see a much deeper economic downturn that could lead to double-digit unemployment and the American dream slipping further and further out of reach...
...I laughed. It presumed a world full of Keynesian economists, economists who believe in government intervention. Luckily, Politifact debunks this notion:
"...But we do know that Obama is wrong when he says there is "no disagreement that we need action by our government." Clearly, there is disagreement. We rate his statement False."
The Drudge Manifesto is not a great book. However, it has one moment in it that was well worth reading. Its the story of how Drudge found himself sitting on the political story of the decade, and how he realized that it truly was a big deal.
In the Drudge Manifesto, Matt describes the moment before he pressed the return key. He had double checked his facts, and apparently, his gut told him that the reaction that he was getting from everyone confirmed that it was real. Still... he knew that the moment he touched the return key, he was making a huge accusation.
Web Posted: 01/17/98 23:32:47 PST -- NEWSWEEK KILLS STORY ON WHITE HOUSE INTERN
BLOCKBUSTER REPORT: 23-YEAR OLD, FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN, SEX RELATIONSHIP WITH PRESIDENT
**World Exclusive** **Must Credit the DRUDGE REPORT**
At the last minute, at 6 p.m. on Saturday evening, NEWSWEEK magazine killed a story that was destined to shake official Washington to its foundation: A White House intern carried on a sexual affair with the President of the United States!
I used to write for a college newspaper. We never had anything that big to write about. Yet, every time, before you sent a story off, you'd reread it to make sure you weren't saying anything you'd regret later. Not just because of lawsuits. (Libel is a huge issue in the newsroom) You didn't want to write anything that you would have to retract later.
So when I read that part in the Drudge Manifesto, it gave me chills. Imagine having the biggest story of the year. The political story of the decade. You don't have an editor to look over your shoulder. Its just you, and your keyboard. And your accusation is against the most powerful man in the world.
I love a lot of things about my country, but the freedom of speech is probably what I value the greatest. There is something very comforting to me that Drudge was able to break this story with minimum repercussion (barring the democrats, themselves, who first called it an outrageous lie, and then openly defended the president having an affair with a 22 year old).
As I sit here behind my own keyboard, I'm reminded of both the privilege that I have, and the responsibility that comes with it. With that in mind, from here on, I promise to renew my commitment to make sure that what I post is not only relevant, interesting, and topical... but that I can say without hesitation that I believe it to be 100% true.
ABC news caught up to Obama, and asked him about one of his biggest flip flops since Gitmo. When asked if it was a mistake to vote against the debt limit as a senator, the president said:
I think that it’s important to understand the vantage point of a Senator versus the vantage point of a…President. When you’re a Senator, traditionally what’s happened is this is always a lousy vote. Nobody likes to be tagged as having increased the debt limit for the United States by a trillion dollars… As President, you start realizing, "You know what? We-- we can’t play around with this stuff. This is the full faith in credit of the United States." And so that was just a example of a new Senator, you know, making what is a political vote as opposed to doing what was important for the country. And I’m the first one to acknowledge it.
That's a very long winded way of saying that as a senator, he was trying to take political advantage of a situation. But now that he's a president, he has to be an adult.
I'm glad that the president is acknowledging his mistakes. (Even if he is doing that whole "I'm better then most people" thing, while doing it) What appalls me is that at no point does he recognize how completely craven it was for him to "play politics" with trillions of debt.
I just wanted to remind everyone who first bought up the controversy about a presidential candidates citizenship:
"I would like to see Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) as a presidential candidate, but I heard that he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. The Constitution requires that a president be a "natural born" citizen of the United States. Is Sen. McCain barred from the presidency? – Steven R. Pruett, Falls Church, Va."
That was in 1998. The writer wrote to a political beat reporter for the Washington Post named Ken Rubin. Ken answered, in part:
"McCain has an adoring media on his side, and a reputation as someone who will make the difficult choices. What he shouldn't have is any question about his eligibility to be president."
An adoring media on his side. Huh. That sounds familiar. Anyway, the point is, Barack isn't the first person who's birth has been questioned, as the report points out. (There's more there... I won't belabor it. Read the article.) The biggest difference is that this adoring media finds race to be the motivator, but when McCain's detractors were questioning his citizenship, everyone understood it to be about: 1) politics and 2) whether or not he was a citizen
When you start suggesting that you should "hang bankers", you're just a tiny bit away from being a complete idiot.
It feels like it was just yesterday that the left was complaining about the violent rhetoric of the right. I love how the bankers point out how inconsistent Max's arguments are.
I've been watching a steady stream of misinformation and straight out lies about Glenn Beck lately. No matter what you think of the man, its not cool to lie about him.
So let's start with the lie. Which, naturally, starts with Media Matters:
Beck failed to ask Hagee about controversial statements, instead asked him if Obama might be the Antichrist
Reading that, one might conclude that Glenn Beck actually thought that it was a valid question to ask Hagee if Obama was the anti-Christ. Right? That can't POSSIBLY be taken out of context.
I mean, Huffpo carried it too! And those sounds formed a question that sounded out across the airwaves unto disbelieving ears. That question: "Is Barack Obama the anti-Christ."
We are not making this up. Glenn Beck, serious newsman, needed to find out if Barack Obama was the Devourer of Worlds, Son of Harlots, Bearer of the Mark of the Beast. John Hagee had to be thrilled by the question: somehow, Beck managed to make Hagee look reasonable.
You'll note that on that link, it says 'video not found'.
Huh. I wonder why.
Beck has a video.
You should watch it. It pretty much proves that both Media Matters and Huffpo can. Not. Be Trusted.
US DEBT: Jan/2001 $5.7 Trillion Jan/2007 $8.6 Trillion
In the 6 years of Republican control, the debt was raised by 2.9 Trillion.
Jan/2009 $10.6 Jan/2011 $14.0
From 2007 to 2009, the debt rose by $2 Trillion. 2 Trillion. In 2 years of Democrat control of congress.
Now that was NOTHING compared to the drunken spending that would ensue after a Democrat took the presidency.
By this year, this January, our debt is 14 Trillion.
In two years, the president and congress have raised the debt by 3.4 Trillion.
Now I'm watching Democrats calling Republicans hypocrites.
Democrats and Obama have raised the debt by more in two years then the Republicans and Bush did in 6 years... and democrats have the balls to call the REPUBLICANS IRRESPONSIBLE?
Combining the two terms that Bush was in office, the total number of military fatalities in Afghanistan was 630. From 2001 to 2006, the total was 358.
If you included 2007, that number would be 475. Or 7 more deaths then there currently are in 2010.
Let's put this in perspective: 2009 317 2010 468
During the 7 years of the Bush presidency, 630 of our brave soldiers died in Afghanistan. During the past two years of the Obama presidency, 785 soldiers died in Afghanistan.
Now don't get me wrong. I want our soldiers fighting these battles. However, why is it that Barack, who complained about the deaths of American soldiers, is being given such a clear free pass on this?
Let me put it another way: What would be the response if a McCain/Palin team lost more soldiers in the first two years of their presidency then Bush did in the previous 7?
Truth be told, though, for the most part conservatives haven't actually been using the words in such a way as to lend themselves to double entendre. With one or two exceptions, almost all of it has actually been coming from the left, which seems to have adopted the joke en masse during an earlier round of these protests back in February. After many hours of investigative journalism -- the kind that makes you wish you'd just gone to law school instead -- I think I've traced the meme's birth back to February 27th, when blogs like Instaputz and Wonkette started using it independently of one another. They were inspired by a photo that the Washington Independent's David Weigel shot of one protester carrying a sign that was, if you knew that second meaning, pretty funny: "Tea bag the liberal Dems before they tea bag you !!" (sic).
Since then, the left has used it so often, that Oxford added it to their dictionary. Here's how various lefty websites covered this event. The Huffington Post:
Keith Olbermann took credit for popularizing the word on MSNBC Tuesday night. But the word "teabagger" actually started to spread after the Washington Independent's David Weigel photographed a protester at the first D.C. Tea Party Protest in February holding the sign, "Tea Bag the Liberal Dems Before They Tea Bag You!!"
It actually wasn't Keith, but Rachel. Although you have to give Keith credit for copping to it. What Mediaite wrote:
Their definition doesn’t touch upon any of the raunchier, more testicular connotations of the word, which Keith OlbermannandAnderson Cooper had a lot of fun with in April. Cooper can take a lot of credit for the popularization of the phrase: in response to David Gergen’s questions about the Republican Party’s abilities to organize and articulate a message, Cooper infamously quipped, “It’s hard to talk when you’re teabagging.”‘
And, just to make sure you can read the original Oxford posting, click on it for the details.
It turns out, if you want to get technical in a way that makes late-night college dormitory arguments go on forever, O'Donnell was correct. In fact, it is a well-worn talking point on the religious right, in particular, that the phrase "separation of church and state" is not in the Constitution.
By now, everyone has seen this video of MoveOn member Lauren Valle being taken down by Rand Paul supporters.
What you probably haven't seen is the event leading up to it:
So Lauren shoved her sign into the window of a moving car, and in response, Rand Paul supporters were keeping tabs on her. That's why in the first video you can literally hear Rand Paul supporters calling for the police as they take down Lauren.
There are a few issues that I want to address with this. The first one being the assertion that Lauren's head was stomped on. That's just not true. I have still frames from the video to prove it. In the middle image, I copied the shape and size of her head from the 3rd frame, and overlapped it with center image. That's why it appears white. So point #1 was that she had rushed his car earlier, trying to put a sign through it. Point #2 is that she wasn't 'stomped' on the head. As this series of images show, he was stepping on her shoulder when she rotated her shoulder forward. His foot stays on her shoulder, but doesn't hit her head.
Reports from news outlets say that she received a concussion from this. I'm not sure how. But I digress.
My final point is about how members of the left have said that this is 'typical' of Tea Party behavior, and how the Tea Party is made of thugs. Which pisses me off, considering the make up of these videos.
This one is from the Town Hall meetings on health care. You remember those? The ones where democrats felt that if you disagreed, you should be ejected from the 'open' meetings, and slapped around. As in this case:
Then there was the guy who cold cocked a Tea Party protestor...
But by far, my worst example of violence against the Tea Party movement is this one. Please watch.
Kenneth Gladney was supposed to get his day in court with his attackers on October 27th. I can't find any news of it, anywhere... but I'll keep looking.
In the meantime, Lauren is being supported by everyone from Media Matters to Think Progress as a useless victim who just happened to be wandering through a crowd of thugs when she was attacked. I beg of you, for the sake of context, to share the video of Lauren pushing her sign through the window of that moving car. She's an idiot. Not a victim.
MTV, BET and CMT are casting the audience for town hall meeting with President Obama. Shooting Oct. 14, 4 p.m. in Washington, D.C.
Seeking—Audience Members: males & females, 18+.
To apply, email townhallaudience@mtvnmix.com and put “Town Hall” in the subject line. To ensure that the audience represents diverse interests and political views, include your name, phone number, hometown, school attending, your job and what issues, if any, you are interested in or passionate about. Also, provide a recent photo and short description of your political views. Submission deadline: Oct. 14. No pay.
According to Politico's report:
"We’re just trying to get the broadest, most diverse audience possible," she said, denying that either Republicans or ugly people would be screened out.
Whew. If they screened out both Republicans and the ugly people, there wouldn't be any one left.
This really is riveting. I'm not kidding. Please watch this.
Please watch it. Christopher Coates was under pressure from the DOJ not to testify. He did anyway, as someone who worked for the Voter Rights division. Coates testimony is that there were people inside of the DOJ who felt that Voter Intimidation cases should not be pursued if the victim is white. Furthermore, when the Obama administration took over the DOJ, they promoted those people into positions of power. Coates was then told that he should only pursue 'traditional' Voter Rights intimidation cases, which he understood as being where a non-white person was the victim.
I used to be a big Bill Maher fan. I mean a huge one. I loved watching his show as he went on to challenge the bloated whales of the world, and poke fun at everyone with an equal amount of spite. Somewhere along the way, Bill became extremely hateful of Christians. In this interview, he says that what he likes about the president is that he doesn't seem to rely on his faith too much. Yet, that's kinda what the president has been saying for a while, as in this example.
This leads me to why I don't like Bill Maher anymore. He's failing to question authority. In fact, he's protecting it... all the while making fun of the underdogs. In this case, the Tea Party. In this interview, Maher actually accuses 'almost all' of the opposition to Barack to be based in racism. Bill, you are an asshat.
I say that with all sincerity. I cannot stand people who cannot just think critically and listen. Its not like conservatives have a reason to suddenly be interested in a liberal president or his policies. I get that Bill is a little bitter at conservative women who were on his panel, and who wouldn't sleep with him, and why he's pursuing them with all of his bitter glee. I don't like it, but I've seen guys like that before. I get why Bill doesn't trust religious people for the same reason. Bill travels with the Playboy set, and I imagine that crosses really are one of the biggest turn-offs for him, since Christian women tend to say 'no' more often. But I'll never get why he's fallen into playing the race card. Its a real easy way to make people like me actually disrespect him more. Its proof that he is just angry at conservatives, and can't open his mind long enough to listen to what we are saying. That's a damn shame.
I'll never understand why it is that when a conservative talks about Christ, he's obviously nutters. Yet, when a Democratic president talks about Christ... well, isn't that special? From the New York Times:
“I’m a Christian by choice,” the president said. “My family, frankly, they weren’t folks who went to church every week. My mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew but she didn’t raise me in the church, so I came to my Christian faith later in life and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead. Being my brothers and sisters’ keeper, treating others as they would treat me, and I think also understanding that Jesus Christ dying for my sins spoke to the humility we all have to have as human beings, that we’re sinful and we’re flawed and we make mistakes and we achieve salvation through the grace of God.”
Now don't get me wrong. I believe that everyone should be able to worship the God of their choice. I just don't get why, when a Republican talks about God, they are crazy people who believe in a fairy-tale. But when a Democrat says something about their faith? Well, you know...
Apparently, it doesn't matter because they don't actually believe it.
I want to work for Andrew Brietbart. He seems to be the only one in the US willing to stand up to anyone and just ask the right questions. I love, love, love this video:
If you have a friend who is on the left, ask them to watch this video, and get their reaction. If they tell you that it doesn't matter, because the source of the video seems to be on the right... then ask them why they believe the videos that portray Tea Party activists as ignorant. Thanks to Founding Bloggers for the video.
Keep in mind: New York is one of the most liberal cities in the US. The state is pretty blue.
A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in the state finds that 57% are angry at the government’s current policies, including 36% who are Very Angry. These findings are slightly lower than those found nationally. Thirty-eight percent (38%) are not angry at these policies.
Roughly half (52%) of voters in the state say neither party’s political leaders have a good understanding of what is needed today. Thirty-seven percent (37%) disagree, while 12% are not sure. These findings, too, are lower than those measured nationwide.
Only 28% of voters in the Empire State feel that most members of Congress care what their constituents think. Fifty-seven percent (57%) don’t believe this to be true, and another 15% are undecided.
In the first 19 months of the Obama administration, the federal debt held by the public increased by $2.5260 trillion, which is more than the cumulative total of the national debt held by the public that was amassed by all U.S. presidents from George Washington through Ronald Reagan.
Read the article. Its a pretty good explanation of our debt. ABC News explains more... even though it contains our president explaining away how he's trying to cut our debt.
Over the past year alone, the amount the U.S. government owes its lenders has grown to more than half the country's entire economic output, or gross domestic product.
Even more alarming, experts say, is that those figures will climb to an unprecedented 200 percent of GDP by 2038 without a dramatic shift in course.
You don't need to wait until 2038 to panic. In the meantime, the poverty rate is rising? AP calls the timing 'unfortunate' for the administration:
The number of people in the U.S. who are in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Barack Obama's watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty.
It is unnerving to wake up and learn that you have a mortgage on your home that exceeds the value of the property. Or, and too often both, you have a credit card line that you cannot repay and the issuer has you on the rack for ever bigger compound interest on the debt. The lesson has been well and truly learned that debt catches up with you. Millions understand that they are just going to have to find a way to live within their means—and then still eke out some savings to pay down debt. And there are well over 14 million Americans without a paying job, so the level of discontent is very high. Just how are they going to regain control of their lives?
So say economists... Of course, they also say that our economy is rebounding, so wtf do they know? From CNN Money:
The recovery is picking up steam as employers boost payrolls, but economists think the government's stimulus package and jobs bill had little to do with the rebound, according to a survey released Monday.
About 71 percent of Missouri voters backed a ballot measure, Proposition C, that would prohibit the government from requiring people to have health insurance or from penalizing them for not having it.
This is just the first step, but its important. It will force the federal government into a position where they will have to assert that insurance is a federal concern. Furthermore, they'll have to back laws that give the federal government a superseding right to fine you if you do not have insurance.
As we all know, government spending is up. Not just on the federal level, but on the state level too. So its worth knowing what your debt is, in the state that you are in, for the state that you are in. CNN Money has provided this handy chart.
From Real Clear Politics, the breakdown. I had read that all but five Republicans had voted against her, and that one Democrat voted for her. So I wanted to know who those people were.
The Democrat was Nebraskan Ben Nelson, who was already targeted by the left. The Republicans who voted against the grain of their party are: Lugar from Indiana, Collins and Snowe from Maine, Gregg from New Hampshire, and Graham from South Carolina.
From 538, who got it from the WH. For anyone who thought that it wasn't right that Fox was chosen for one of the front seats, note that they were the only cable news station that didn't have a seat up front. Despite being #1 in the ratings.
Yet another thing that drives me crazy is when I find out that we've paid for ads to run on television telling people how to take advantage of an entitlement.
One such case is now running on cable, using Andy Griffith as a pitchman for medicare. Of everything that I find distasteful in my government, this is among the worst. I do not want to pay taxes so that the government can buy commercials to tell me all of the great things I'm getting in return for paying taxes. In theory, my representatives can do that themselves.
Yet another one of the White Houses' stage props have turned on them. This time, its not a teleprompter, but Leslie Macko. The president was using her as an example of someone who kept sending out resumes, but who could not get a job.
The only problem with this? Uhm.. it might be that she had two criminal convictions on her record. That might be why Leslie was having trouble becoming employed again.
I debate politics. A lot. Lately, there is one argument that keeps coming up that is about as lame as it comes. Its a variation on blaming Republicans for everything.
On any topic, from cap & trade to running unprecedented deficits, the newest spin is to suggest that Republicans wanted to do it first.
Jill Lawrence dances this theme in her post on Politics Daily.
So many Republicans have changed their ideas on so many major issues that it's hard to keep up.
Jill then plays a very dangerous game of suggesting that some Republicans represent all of them.
Some examples of how Jill is distorting the truth:
1. Financial disclosure...."Republicans are in favor of disclosure," Sen. Mitch McConnell said on NBC's "Meet the Press" in 2000. Seven years later, on the same program, House GOP leader John Boehner declared: "Sunlight is the best disinfectant." But Boehner voted no last month on the DISCLOSE Act, which requires corporations, unions and some other groups to disclose more information about their campaign activities.
WALLACE: But you have indicated — in fact, at one point, you used and then took back the word "childish" to describe this idea of all these bans on gifts and travel. Do you feel, in fact, that bans make less sense than just more disclosure of what happens?
BOEHNER: I think that some of the proposals that were out there — and there have been a lot of proposals offered by members, by outside groups. And I thought some of the proposals were outright childish, treating members like kids.
I think that what we need to do is we need to deal with the underlying problems that we have today. And I believe that disclosure of the relationship between those who lobby us, whether they be paid lobbyists here in Washington, those from agencies, or others — disclosure of those relationships — and let the American people take a look at how this relationship works.
Sunlight's the best disinfectant. I think it will help.
Interesting. So Boehner didn't favor laws that "require[s] corporations, unions and some other groups to disclose more information about their campaign activities." Rather, Boehner favored disclosure of lobbyists and who they work for.
If you google the phrase "Sunlight is the best disinfectant", you'd swear that Boehner endorsed every and any type of financial disclosure. That's how strong this narrative has become. More on this later.
But make no mistake, Jill Lawrence is trying to muddy the waters of real debate.
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