Lucid Links of the Day (022609)
Noteworthy Net-worthies:
Michelle Malkin busts the Baltimore ACORN break-in perps — “No Tears for These Foreclosure “Victims”
At USA Today, Eric Holder paraphrases Kermit the Frog — “It’s Not Easy Closing Gitmo”
Nancy Morgan — “A Contrived Crisis? You Decide”
From AP at Investment News — “NYSE may allow penny stocks”
From Monday (Tuesday print) at the New York Times — “U.S. Is Pressed to Add Billions to Bailouts,” including even more to AIG.
Maggie Thurber raised a great issue last week that I left on the cutting-room floor in my Pajamas Media column on “The Punk Presidency” — “Chicago Tea Party and re-default rates.”
AP, on your tax dollars and/or our kids’ and grandkids’ future obligations at work — “GM Posts $9.6 B(illion) 4Q Loss, Burns Through $6.2B in Cash”
Fidelity’s “Ned” Johnson speaks out (finally) — “Edward Johnson slams FDR,‘New Deal II’ — Blames feds for crisis, derides U.S. spending”
In Belgium, a postcard arrives — after 83 years.
Old article, great description, lacking only the word “Pretend” — “NARAL Catholics Line Up for Obama”
Obama forecasts $1.75 trillion deficit this year
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090226/bs_nm/us_obama_budget_11
So it seems we slightly underestimated the budget deficit this year. /sarc/ on top of the various and sundry bailouts…
Lucid is just a relative state of mind. Somehow insane is no longer sufficient to describe the financial plans of the Democrats.
Hmmm, I sense an investment opportunity here, what companies supply the materials to make Federal Reserve Notes????
Comment by dscott — February 26, 2009 @ 9:33 am
Good one by Jennifer Ruben: Obama Removes the Mask
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obama-removes-the-mask/
Back to my first post
A little more detail on the savings Obama touts and makes the prescient point:So Obama is going to spend $4 trillion, run a $1.75 trillion deficit and offer the banks another $750 billion bailout, but can only find a measly $1.164 billion in annual savings in the entire Federal budget, not counting his “significant undisclosed” defense cuts.
http://www.redstate.com/california_yankee/2009/02/26/obamas-budget-4-trillion-in-spending-a-175-trillion-deficit-and-another-750-billion-bank-bailout/
As opposed to the Reuters piece: Obama will aim to bring the deficit down by 2013 to $533 billion, or 3 percent of GDP.
The punch line of course is that: “Tax increases on wealthier Americans and a troop drawdown from Iraq will curb the shortfall, the budget will say.
So in order to get to $533 billion in annual deficit spending in 2013 from the proposed $1.75 trillion deficit of the 2010 budget, a period of 3 years, $1.22 trillion will come out of the military budget and increased taxes on those with means. Since the military budget is around $600 billion including the GWOT that means taxes must be raised by an additional $600+ billion A YEAR. Seems like a lot of hand waving will employed to deflect criticism from the absurdness of the plan. My favorite hand waving ploy is the spending over 10 year #s when in fact we are talking about 3 years. Nothing like lumping the numbers together to hide the discrepancies.
For the next four years we are going to hear from the Democrats that we must cut federal spending by disengaging from foreign interventionism (slash the military budget), the rich can afford to pay more taxes (confiscate private capital and divert it from the economy) and we save money by spending it on social programs like universal health care (which will cost more and provide less as evidenced by Britain and Canada).
Comment by dscott — February 26, 2009 @ 11:26 am
I enjoyed Nancy Morgan’s post and I’m glad there are others out there questioning the events that have led to present situation. This story needs to get out there as loud and as often as humanly possible.
Last summer I stopped reading the Wall Street Journal and read almost exclusively Bloomberg and Russia Today for my news relating to the failing banks. My reason for doing this was because the WSJ, as were most of the US MSM, was telling half of the story, as if this crisis was exclusive to only the US. It wasn’t and if folks were paying attention to Iceland, for instance as events unfolded there, we might have realized our descent.
I valued her frank opinion about the contrived nature of this crisis; I concur fully. Yet I am amazed at the number of so called “conservative republicans” that label those that have this opinion as “aluminum hat wearers.” Yet these “conservative republicans” present dramatic blog postings daily blaming only the democrats for this present economic state, and rallying around the republicans like the they are lily white. Talk about battered wife syndrome.
I have to tell you we have too many on the right side that are missing the fundamentals. They don’t grasp the history of US Constitution or the basics of the Constitution, limited government, and sadly, a free market perspective that is based upon something close to the Chicago or Austrian schools. But until these battered “republican” wives wake up and realized they are being intercoursed by the ORP and GOP and start to educate themselves we are in deep trouble. This includes a number of the SOB Alliance members. We have to stop the silly party flag waving. We must get beyond this silly conflict of party politic paradigms and start talking about norms and ideals.
If Ms. Morgan is correct, which I believe she is, then we had a large number of republicans in on this, and that means the party is corrupt. My advice is to leave and move to another party as I have, or at the very least form something new. But if we don’t wake up now we are in trouble because at the moment our side is definitely under strength. I don’t think there is a silent majority out there somewhere in middle America; I think there is a legion of idiots and they will do anything they are told just as long as you don’t stop their sports, porno, test messaging, or yoga classes.
Comment by Brian — February 26, 2009 @ 2:44 pm
#3, Ms. Morgan is IMO on to something. I’d like to know more about the day in mid-Sept. 08 when all this money started flowing out. Whose money was never answered, as if it was some kind of decision made by millions of little people all of a sudden. I’m skeptical.
Comment by TBlumer — February 26, 2009 @ 5:37 pm
I am too. When red flags were raised few said anything about it, Rush was one of the few to have voiced concern, but then it was too easily explained and then swept under the rug.
Comment by Brian — February 27, 2009 @ 1:23 am
As I have stated several times, what the Democrats have done since essentially taking control in Nov’ 06 is economic terrorism. Schumer’s IndyMac statement was a “dry run” not unlike the Islamofascist’s pre-9/11 capers. We are dealing with ultraleftist goon squads in government. The sooner we recognize it, and call them what they are, the better off we and the country be.
What they are engaging in now is classic political business cycle behavior. the Obamunists spending fiasco and policies are design to ride the economy’s natural recession-recovery cycle to the 2010 midterm elections. They will take credit for any improvement as proof of their policies, although few will have been implemented. That is why most of their spending and tax increases occur in 2011. These deleterious effects then will be felt, but it will be too late as they will have 2 more years to make a full socialist transformation of America. The term “political business cycle” must be burned into the minds of every voter so as to preempt this strategy.
I am not convinced that B. Hussein even expects (or wants) a second term. His legacy of Marxism will have been achieved. When he loses, he will be hailed as a martyr by the Left; and his visage will hang next to Marx, Lenin, and Stalin in their hall of fame.
Comment by Joe C. — February 27, 2009 @ 10:33 am