Lickety-Split Links (012710, Morning)

I don’t know who’s more delusional in this linked video (HT Weasel Zippers via Instapundit), Mark Halperin or President Obama, the subject of Halperin’s discussion with PBS’s Charlie Rose. Partial excerpt:

Halperin: He’s a serious guy, he eschews this kind of phony, populist inspiration rhetoric that may be required for our times. But he wants to treat the country like adults. And he has not in a clear and inspiring way, spoken out about his platform, about the importance of working together, he just hasn’t done it.

Rose: Is it because he thinks he has, but he hasn’t?

Halperin: (appears to have been edited) Increasingly I’m told that he would say the press is against him.

Halperin goes on to say that Obama’s lack of experience with harsh press coverage is “on the job training.” Whose fault is that, Mark?

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Here is the link to the latest John Edwards fiasco, courtesy of the paper no “respectable” publication has believed for over two years, and which has been right all along.

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Obviously I don’t know whether James O’Keefe is or isn’t guilty as alleged. What I do know is, as Patterico points out in reference to O’Keefe’s ACORN sting videos, “(the ACORN) people hung themselves, and this has nothing whatsoever to do with that.” Patterico, who is a prosecutor in his day job, doesn’t see anything criminal.

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A report on the most trusted name in news, with a side order of insufferable, condescending arrogance:

Fox is the most trusted television news network in the country, according to a new poll out Tuesday.

A Public Policy Polling nationwide survey of 1,151 registered voters Jan. 18-19 found that 49 percent of Americans trusted Fox News, 10 percentage points more than any other network.

…. “A generation ago you would have expected Americans to place their trust in the most neutral and unbiased conveyors of news,” said PPP President Dean Debnam in his analysis of the poll. “But the media landscape has really changed, and now they’re turning more toward the outlets that tell them what they want to hear.”

Bleep you, Mr. Denham. People have turned to Fox because it’s fair and balanced. Obviously you have such a hard time handling that you can’t even explain the results of your own poll.

In “totally unrelated” news, “Fox News was the top cable network in primetime last week, averaging the most total viewers between January 18th-24th. The last time FNC topped USA and came in first was during the week of the 2008 presidential election.”

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Don’t have time for graphics, links to spreadsheets, or detailed calcs, but the Congressional Budget Office yesterday lowered its fiscal 2010 collections estimate for Uncle Sam from the $2.264 trillion it had in August to $2.175 trillion. That $89 billion reduction still guesstimates that this year’s collections will end up 3% or so above fiscal 2009’s $2.105 trillion.

I doubt it. The problem is that real collections in fiscal 2010 through almost four months are already about $90 billion below fiscal 2009. To make up that gap and get to CBO’s estimate, the rest of fiscal 2010’s collections will have to beat 2009’s by $160 billion ($90 billion in the hole plus the $70 billion projected CBO increase over 2009 [$2.175-2.105]), or something north of 10%. Failure to get to $2.0 trillion this year wouldn’t surprise me.

CBO is estimating collections of $2.67 trillion in fiscal 2011 (a 20%-plus increase over 2010) and $2.964 trillion in fiscal 2012. Maybe they know something I don’t, but in the absence of economy-stimulating tax cuts, an end to crony capitalism, and serious cuts in wasteful government spending, those two figures strike me as sheer fantasy.