Category Archives: Business

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Why Barack Obama Is Scared As Hell Of Paul Ryan

25 Comments

Because as Iowahawk says, the president has to fear the math.

I wish that the debate was between Obama and Ryan, rather than Obama and Romney. Because Ryan versus Biden is going to be Godzilla on Bambi. Except Bambi didn’t have hairplugs.

[Sunday morning update]

Watch and tremble, Democrats. Lines around the block to see Romney-Ryan in North Carolina, while the donks are worried about filling their convention hall there.

It’s not 2008 any more. And considering what happened in Wisconsin earlier this year, I suspect it’s going to look a lot more like 2010.

[Afternoon update]

I don’t know about the “hope” part, but this is definitely change: “Only $51 to enter an Obama fundraiser in Chicago, but the room is only half full.”

I think they may run out of money before the election. It would seem fitting that his campaign’s finances are run pretty much the way they’ve been governing.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Milquetoast Mitt

21 Comments

Mark Steyn says that Romney has to get a little more apocalyptic:

As noted here previously, the International Monetary Fund predicts that China will become the world’s dominant economic power by 2016. So the guy elected in November will be the first president since Grover Cleveland to know what it feels like to be the global also-ran. Even this, however, understates the size of catastrophe the United States faces. There are no precedents in history for a great power spending itself to death on the scale America is doing. Obama has added $5 trillion to the national debt, and has nothing to show for it. Do you know how difficult that is to do? Personal debt per citizen is currently about 50 grand, but at least you got a La-Z-Boy recliner and a gas-fired barbecue out of it. Obama has spent America’s future, and left no more trace than if he and his high-school “choom gang” had wheeled a barrow of 5 trillion in large notes behind the gym and used them for rolling paper. Right now, combined total debt in the United States is just shy of $700,000 per family. Add in the so-called “unfunded liabilities” that a normal American business would have to include in its SEC filings but that U.S.-government accounting conveniently absolves itself from, and you’re talking about a debt burden per family of about a million bucks. In other words, look around you: the paved roads, the landscaped shopping mall, the Starbucks and the juice bar and the mountain-bike store . . . There’s nothing holding the joint up.

Hmm. “There’s nothing holding the joint up. Steyn 2012”: How’s that poll with the focus groups? Not exactly “Morning in America,” is it? But what happens when you blithely ignore debt for a few decades? Here’s a headline from the Wall Street Journal’s “Smart Money” this very week: “More retirees are falling behind on student debt, and Uncle Sam is coming after their benefits.” Maybe that’s the slogan. “It’s twilight in America: More retirees are falling behind on student debt.”

The good news is that this was probably written before the news of the Ryan pick. It will be interesting to see Mark’s response to that.