Category Archives: Political Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

You’ll Be As Shocked As I Was

15 Comments

…to learn that the president has no class:

Wanda Sykes isn’t of any interest to me. The fact that the American president was five feet away from her and had to laugh about her joke was of interest. A comedian wishes a citizen dead and the president laughs?

I can’t imagine such a “joke” being told about (say) Michael Moore during a Bush WHCD. I thought that the idea of the WHCD was supposed to be a “roast,” with those being lampooned in attendance, not a vicious attack on the president’s absent political enemies. And had such a thing had occurred, I can’t imagine the former president laughing at it. But with this president, we don’t have to imagine it. In many ways, it’s a return to the juvenile antics of the White House during the Clinton years. But it apparently gave Chris Matthews an extended leg tingle (shameful that, too, because Rush used to let him guest host for him back in the nineties), so I guess that’s all right.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Obamacare

28 Comments

And your doctor:

Doctors will consolidate into larger practices to spread overhead costs, and they’ll cram more patients into tight schedules to make up in volume what’s lost in margin. Visits will be shortened and new appointments harder to secure. It already takes on average 18 days to get an initial appointment with an internist, according to the American Medical Association, and as many as 30 days for specialists like obstetricians and neurologists.

Right or wrong, more doctors will close their practices to new patients, especially patients carrying lower paying insurance such as Medicaid. Some doctors will opt out of the system entirely, going “cash only.” If too many doctors take this route the government could step in — as in Canada, for example — to effectively outlaw private-only medical practice.

These changes are superimposed on a payment system where compensation often bears no connection to clinical outcomes. Medicare provides all the wrong incentives. Its charge-based system pays doctors more for delivering more care, meaning incomes rise as medical problems persist and decline when illness resolves.

So let’s expand Medicare to everybody. Great.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Obviously, The Answer Is “No”

12 Comments

Madam Speaker, have you no decency?

It’s kind of hard to run a witch hunt when you’re the lead witch.

[Tuesday morning update]

Some questions for the Speaker:

You said that you concurred with the letter written by Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) that raised concerns about waterboarding. Is there any documentation to back that up? Did you sign the Harman letter? Were you aware of it in real time, or only later, when it was declassified? Did you send your own letter? Did you ever express your concerns with President Bush during any of your meetings with him between 2002 and 2008?

As I say in comments, I’m all for a truth commission, as long as it’s a whole-truth-and-nothing-but-the-truth commission. Bring it on.

[Bumped]

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

I Like The Rail Option, Myself

2 Comments

Thoughts on how to pay for Obamacare.

Also, Tigerhawk on taxes:

I’ve clipped some inflammatory excerpts for your morning indigestion, but it is worth scrolling through to get a sense for the breadth and nature of the proposal. The short version is that President Obama is pushing absolutely staggering increases through the corporate and business tax systems. Direct taxes on business are, in general, inefficient and economically disruptive, but they are also peerless in their complexity, which means that few voters and essentially no reporters will make the effort to understand what is being done to them.

Trust me on this: something awful is being done to you.

That rail option’s looking better and better. With tar and feathers, of course.

[Update a few minutes later]

Obama Trek: the search for more money.

Boldly going where no American fascist president has gone before.

[Update]

They just keep on spending:

If not treated promptly, FSD, like alcoholism, leads inevitably to complete physical breakdown, loss of homes, jobs, cars, respect, everything. The breakdown is not limited to the sufferer, however. Like the alcoholic who must drink hard liquor every waking moment, massive budget deficits are the key symptom of late-stage FSD. The alcoholic dies, but with FSD, the nation, not the spenders, goes bankrupt. Even today, with Obama just beginning to manage the government, Geithner’s Treasury department must offer higher interest rates on bonds it sells to finance planned deficits because bondholders worry about Washington’s future repayment ability if taxes are not soon hugely increased. But those increases would kill economic growth, sending government revenues spiraling downward and eventually leaving Washington only one choice – repudiation of debt or bankruptcy. Either way, American prosperity will be a distant memory for generations to come. Intervention cannot come too soon.

But at least we’ll all be equal in our poverty. And that’s what’s important, right?

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Uncategorized

$1.8T

47 Comments

That’s the size of the current projected budget deficit for this year:

The deficit for the current budget year will rise by $89 billion to above $1.8 trillion — about four times the record set just last year. The unprecedented red ink flows from the deep recession, the Wall Street bailout, the cost of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus bill, as well as a structural imbalance between what the government spends and what it takes in.

As the economy performs worse than expected, the deficit for the 2010 budget year beginning in October will worsen by $87 billion to $1.3 trillion, the White House says. The deterioration reflects lower tax revenues and higher costs for bank failures, unemployment benefits and food stamps.

For the current year, the government would borrow 46 cents for every dollar it takes to run the government under the administration’s plan. In one of the few positive signs, the actual 2009 deficit is likely to be $250 billion less than predicted because Congress is unlikely to provide another $250 billion in financial bailout money.

So it’s not all bad news.

Obama didn’t inherit most of this deficit. He created it (or rather, let Pelosi and Reid create it) with the insane porkulus bill, which wasn’t about stimulation at all, but paying off Democrat constituencies. So it’s not surprising that it’s not working. And to the degree that it’s not working, and we get less tax revenue from a shrinking economy, that’s his deficit as well.

Just for contrast, consider that 1.8 trillion was the entire federal budget in the year 2000. This is economic madness.

[Late morning update]

Obama fails the fact check:

-His assertion that his proposed budget “will cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term” is an eyeball-roller for many economists, given the uncharted terrain of trillion-dollar deficits the government is negotiating.

-He promised vast savings from increased spending on preventive health care in the face of doubts that such an effort, however laudable it might be for public welfare, can pay for itself, let alone yield huge savings.

-He pitched a remedy for Social Security’s long-term crisis that analysts say won’t fix half the problem.

Glad someone at AP is finally doing their job.

[Mid-afternoon update]

More thoughts:

President Obama continues to distance himself from this “inherited” budget deficit. But the day he was inaugurated, the 2009 deficit was forecast at $1.2 trillion — meaning $600 billion has already been added during his four-month presidency (an amount that, by itself, would exceed all 2001-07 annual budget deficits). And should the president really be allowed to distance himself from the $1.2 trillion “inherited” portion of the deficit, given that as a senator he supported nearly all policies and bailouts that created it?

The president also talks of cutting the deficit in half from this bloated level. But even after the recession ends and the troops return home, he’d still run $1 trillion deficits — compared to President Bush’s $162 billion pre-recession deficit. In other words, the structural budget deficit (which excludes the impacts of booms/recessions) would more than quintuple.

It’s a good point. What did then-Senator Obama do, if anything, to prevent any of this year’s deficit? If he’d been in charge, it would probably been even bigger, and last year’s as well.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

I’m Sure Glad The DoJ Isn’t Politicized Any More

16 Comments

Did they break the law? Why not — laws are for the little people:

DOJ regulations make it clear that the Privacy Act’s strictures apply to exactly the class of OPR records that were leaked to, and used, by the Post. (I understand that there have been some minor modifications to the regs, but none that would change the analysis here). Thus, the leaking of such documents under circumstances that violate DOJ/OPR rules would appear to be a criminal offense.

The “fairness” the Washington Post calls for is, I assume, out of the question on this issue with this administration. But is it too much to ask that the Obama-Holder Justice Department comply with the law?

It seems to me that DOJ should consider the appointment of a Special Counsel to look into this matter. Surely this is what the Democrats, and the Washington Post, would be calling for if leaks like these had occurred under a Republican adminstration.

Don’t hold your breath.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Rich Idiots

25 Comments

Tigerhawk has some thoughts on the wealthy fools who gave money to Barack Obama and then express surprise when he goes to war against them. I think that this commenter has it nailed:

…a hefty number of the Democratic “rich” are those whose wealth was attained independent of effort.

Actors, musicians, trust fund recipients, etc. People whose acquisition of great wealth leaves them vaguely embarassed and strangely guilty. Bastions of familial wealth…the super rich…are different. They look upon the world as their own little “Pocket God” game.

So they become liberals. Suddenly, their intentions become more important than their actions (past or present). A big poultice is laid upon what is left of their conscience.

I doubt that these people will necessarily change their mind set. Obama delivering a torpedo below their waterline is EXACTLY what they were really bargaining for…like a mentally distressed woman who keeps going back to the boyfriend who beats her up.

I know that this is certainly the Hollywood mind set. It’s the kind of idiocy that has Spielberg visiting Cuba and lauding Fidel. It somehow assuages his guilt at what he perceives to be his own unearned wealth.

I also agree with the commenter who points out that, now that he has the reins of power, Obama doesn’t need the rich any more. He can (or at least thinks he can) retain it without them.

[Update a few minutes later]

What is the difference between Hugo and Barack?

If the Obama administration can put the United Auto Workers on Chrysler’s board of directors, negotiate the terms of its bankruptcy, give a third of the company to Fiat and can even decide how much marketing it should do … does anyone see a functional difference between Hugo Chavez’ and Barack Obama’s views of private companies?

It’s getting harder and harder.

[Update mid morning]

OK, he doesn’t want to turn the US into Venezuela — he wants to turn it into Haiti.