Couldn’t Help But Notice (082807)

Last week the Congressional Budget Office’s forecasters said what Brian Wesbury (related link has been removed) and BizzyBlog (near the end of this post) have been saying for a while:

The deficit for the budget year that ends Sept. 30 will be about $158 billion, or $90 billion less than the deficit recorded for 2006, the nonpartisan agency reported.

….. Higher-than-expected tax revenues are the main reason for the improved numbers, the office said.

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James Lewis, at American Thinker, on last week’s Rove resignation reax, and much more, including a related history lesson:

Rove was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying, “I’m not going to stay or leave based on whether it pleases the mob.”

Not just one, but two separate Washington Post staffers split the peaceful summer night with howls of outrage. Eugene Robinson and Monica Hesse tore at Mr. Rove’s flesh in two WaPo columns, just for using that little word, “mob.”

Their united outrage proved his point: They are a mob. Funny, because the Media Mob commonly describes itself in just those terms: as “sharks” looking for “blood in the water” to start a “feeding frenzy.” “What bleeds, leads.” Sounds like a classic lynch mob, doesn’t it? But the victims aren’t supposed to answer back. They must hemorrhage silently, while the drooling newshounds bay at the moon to celebrate yet another kill. Well, Mr. Rove didn’t play along this time.

In 1991, Supreme Court Justice-to-be Clarence Thomas struck back with the words “high-tech lynching” to describe the smears hurled at him by the liberal media to kill his chances at the Senate Judiciary Committee. For a few days the white Media Mob froze in its tracks. Perhaps at that magic moment it recognized itself as a mob in a Black man’s eyes. Because Justice Thomas was born in the Jim Crow South, and he knew exactly what he was talking about when it came to lynch mobs. Clarence Thomas’ nomination passed the Committee within days of his verbal counter-attack. Then the Media Mob just fell back into its old ways.

The Big Media are a mob. That should be Politics 101. They are a tiny, unchecked power elite, locked into life-long careers in the remnant of a crumbling monopoly over America’s national conversation.

Interesting. When I saw the quote, I thought “the mob” was the left-wing blog fringe, not Old Media. Maybe they’re one and the same now.

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Ohio not-secret ballot — This is very weak.

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Aw geez, not this stuff again:

Sarkozy still popular after 100 days as French economic woes loom
PARIS, Aug 22, 2007 (AFP) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy completes his first 100 days in office on Thursday still riding high in opinion polls despite disappointing figures on the economic front as he prepares to rev up reforms.

Earth to AFP: The French people are smart enough to know that Sarkozy’s budget and economy responsibility hasn’t started yet. So are you. Stop posturing.