HT to TMF Global Gains.

Technorati Tags: Rising Unemployment, Destruction of the American Economy, Bush Legacy, Barack Hussein Obama the Dangerous Choice

The nonpartisan agency said today the deficit will remain above 4 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product for the foreseeable future while the publicly held debt will zoom to $20.3 trillion, amounting to 90 percent of GDP by 2020. By then, interest payments on the debt will have quadrupled to more than $900 billion annually, the report said.

Deficits between 2011 and 2020 would total $9.76 trillion, the CBO said.

Economists generally consider deficits topping 3 percent of GDP to be unsustainable because that means government debt is growing faster than the ability to pay back the money.

“The news today from CBO is clear: The president’s budget will continue to lead our nation into a fiscal catastrophe – an ever worse one than the president’s own numbers suggest,” said Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the top Republican on the House Budget Committee.

Exactly.

The CBO estimated that subsidy cuts to student-load lenders would save $20 billion less than Obama said, and that TARP would cost $10 billion more. On other matters, it wasn’t so sure:

The CBO said that it couldn’t analyze what the administration projects to be $743 billion in revenues from health-care legislation but “assumed that the policies would have the effect set forth in the budget.” Likewise, it uses the administration’s cost estimate of climate-change legislation–which the White House says would have no effect on deficits–for its figures.

Has anyone ever seen revenues that weren’t overestimated or costs that weren’t drastically underestimated? Please. The one thing that we can count on is that the CBO’s deficit estimate of 20.3 trillion dollars will more likely end up being 25 trillion. Speaking of incorrect:

The CBO also said that Obama’s debt projections were optimistic.

Gee, ya think?

Obama, who inherited a flood of red ink from his predecessor George W. Bush, has promised to halve the 1.3-trillion-dollar deficit he took on by 2013.

Instead, Obama will multiply the Bush deficit by more than 15 times! Yet another broken Obama promise. Anyone keeping count?

What’s the difference between a Democrat and a drunken sailor? A drunken sailor stops spending money when he runs out of money!

Technorati Tags: Congressional Budget Office, CBO, Deficit Spending, Bankrupting America, Destruction of the American Economy, Putting Our Grandchildren in Debt, Barack Hussein Obama the Dangerous Choice

The big news out of the most recent Democratic presidential debate was that two of the leading Democratic candidates, Senator Clinton and Senator Obama, endorsed the Bush Doctrine that is at the core of our current president’s foreign policy.

We’ve heard over and over again that the Bush administration’s spending is out of control. But according to Investor’s Business Daily, that isn’t necessarily true if measured against the "most important" yardstick of all — spending as a share of GDP:

Spending as a share of GDP is the most important measure of the size of government, since it measures what government actually takes from the national economy. . . .

So rather than a "record" spender, as some claim, Bush is actually below average. . . .

Many on the right have criticized Bush for too much spending, at times rightly so. But this has been picked up by Democrats, who now style themselves as fiscal conservatives. They’re not. . . .

Money quote:

For the record, Bush came into office in January 2001, a time of unique challenges both to our nation’s economy and to its security. They included a stock collapse that erased $8 trillion in national wealth in the space of a few months, a first-ever terrorist attack on U.S. soil that killed 3,000, and a recession that Bush inherited but didn’t cause.

If Bush had pushed to cut the budget in 2001, he might well have been impeached for economic incompetence. A decline in spending would have hurt the economy in the short run, extending the recession and making the recovery in jobs even tougher.

The relevant facts are that, over the past three years, federal spending as a share of GDP has been remarkably stable: 20.2% in 2005, 20.3% in 2006 and 20.2% in 2007. And over the same period, the deficit has been cut in half as a share of GDP.

Instead of flying into Baghdad and surrounding himself with his generals and the Iraqi government, Bush flew to al Asad airfield, west of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province. He brought with him his secretaries of State and Defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the commander of U.S. Central Command. He was met at al Asad by General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, as well as Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kemal al Maliki, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, and Vice Presidents Adel Abdul Mehdi and Tariq al Hashemi. In other words, Bush called together all of the leading political and military figures in his administration and the Iraqi government in the heart of Anbar Province. If ever there was a sign that we have turned a corner in the fight against both al Qaeda in Iraq and the Sunni insurgency, this was it.

In writing this article, Kagan hints at a comparison between Lincoln and GW Bush. Given that our nation is bitterly divided, as it was during the civil war, and given the number of souls freed by each man, the comparison may be more apt than most will admit.

Four of the five cases announced today were decided by the conservative majority led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., as the divisions that narrowly but decisively split the justices on social issues were on full display. . . .

Today’s decisions added to the court’s rising number of 5 to 4 votes this term, substantially higher than last year’s total. A few of them favor the court’s liberal wing, but conservatives are on a recent roll.

Predictably, the Red Rag NY Times is up in arms about the decisions, printing a small slew of articles and editorials in protest. Indeed, the editorial spells out the Times’ view in no uncertain terms: Three Bad Rulings.

Whether the rulings are “bad” or not depends entirely on one’s point of view.

The court upheld the right of a principal to suspend a student who promoted drug use by creating a banner that proclaimed, “Bong Hits 4 Jesus”. In light of the lack of discipline in our public schools, I don’t know that a restriction on children’s free speech is uncalled for.

The court split hairs in ruling that tax money could be funneled to faith-based initiatives if the source was the executive office rather than congressional decree (which is prohibited by precedent). But the unspoken conclusion is that precedent may be overturned by this court if the proper case presents itself. In other words, a bad precedent created by a liberal court may be overturned in the future.

But the high point of the day had to be the loosening of restrictions on free speech as a result of the Constitution-shredding McCain-Feingold. The court ruled that the only advertisements that can be kept off the air in the days before an election are, in the words of Chief Justice Roberts, “susceptible of no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate.”

Describing and then dismissing the rationale for the advertising restrictions, Chief Justice Roberts used a phrase that seemed to sum up the new majority’s view toward campaign finance regulation. “Enough is enough,” the chief justice said. . . .

It may be only a matter of time before the court reconsiders its 2003 decision upholding the constitutionality of the entire law, or at least expands its Monday decision to strike down any restriction on advertising. Three of the five justices in the majority, Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas, declined to sign the chief justice’s opinion because it did not take that step.

Even before the last election I was vocal in my feelings that Bush’s domestic policies are little short of disastrous. But the conservatation* of the Supremes offsets that a little.

* Shakespeare made up over 3,000 words. Allow me this one.

Update: Liberal spin is gearing up on this one. Check out this headline: Supreme Court Sides With Administration, Corporations In New Decisions.

What liberal media?

Coulter lists notable Bush appointments:

• Colin Powell: first black secretary of state
• Condi Rice: first black female national security adviser
• Alberto Gonzales: first Hispanic attorney general
• Spencer Abraham: Arab-American secretary of energy
• Carlos Gutierrez: Cuban-American secretary of commerce
• Elaine Chao: Asian-American secretary of labor
• Norman Mineta: retarded-American secretary of transportation (how true!)
• Gale Ann Norton: secretary of the interior
• Ann Veneman: secretary of agriculture
• Margaret Spellings: secretary of education

Humorous Coulter Quote:

A New York Times profile of Rice at the time waited until the last sentence to note in passing that Rice was “only the second woman, and the first black woman, to hold the job.” (In a separate column by me, it was noted that Rice was the “first competent woman” to hold the job.)

Average Poverty Rate First Five Years of an Administration
Reagan	14.5%
Clinton	14.1%
Bush 43	12.3%

Go read the whole thing.

Technorati tags: Poverty, Economic Classes, American Economy, Exploding Liberal Myths, Exposing Media Lies, Stopping the Spin.

Blogs represent the voice of the people–often against the most powerful elements in our society–so they do represent a kind of high-tech democracy in action. …

Still, I have to wonder, why do media commentators devote so much attention to radically left-wing blogs–especially when these blogs hardly represent the views of SUV-driving, church-going, baseball-loving moms and dads? …

The fact of the matter is that Democrats simply cannot control their left flank for very long–hence the ascendancy of the conservative movement. No matter how much the Democratic Party chieftains claim that abortion is a tragic choice … no matter how much they talk about personal responsibility and getting able-bodied men and women off the public dole … their liberal colors eventually show.
This is why, despite claims that the Democrats are going to enjoy an electoral blow-out this fall, it would be wrong to count the party of Reagan out.

Update: Today’s other must read is a Front Page Magazine article that starts out with comments from Karl Rove in a recent interview in which he said that the internet has created a healthy dialogue on the right, helping to gain influence and broaden the appeal. However:

Among Democrats, my sense is that the blog world has tended to strengthen the far Left of the Democratic Party at the expense of liberal, but somewhat less liberal, members of their party. It has tended to sort of drive their party even further to the Left rather than focusing on good ideas that would help unite people around common goals and common purposes. Instead, the Internet for the Left of the Democratic Party has served as a way to mobilize hate and anger — hate and anger, first and foremost, at this President and conservatives, but then also at people within their own party whom they consider to be less than completely loyal to this very narrow, very out-of-the-mainstream, very far Left-wing ideology that they tend to represent.

As you can imagine, this stirred things up a bit on the lefty blogs and FrontPage doles out some of the best of the best. A sample:

I hate Rove as much as I hate Bush and all republicans, and I hate the fact that Rove said we are filled with hate. That is sooo hateful!! I wonder how far we can get riding this emotion called hate?

Read it all to bring a smile to your face.