Quote of the Day
The way of the world is to praise dead saints and persecute living ones.
Nathaniel Howe
Joe Biden's "Summer of Recovery"
Remember when the Vice President was predicting last spring that we would soon be adding 250,000 to 500,000 jobs a month? As soon as a program goes off the federal tit (e.g., cash for clunkers, home mortgage assistance, etc.), the relevant sector gets killed--like a 27% drop in existing home states last month. We're seeing GDP growth go from 5% to 3% to 2% ... Have no fear, because Joe Biden assures us that "no doubt we're moving in the right direction."
But I'm getting fed up with the constant Bush bashing and the outright lying by the Vice President: "For eight years before we arrived, Mr. Boehner and his party ran this economy and the middle class into the ground. They took the $237 billion surplus they inherited from the Clinton Administration and left us with a $1.3 trillion deficit, and, in the process, quadrupled the national debt – all before we had turned on the lights in the West Wing."
I'm not happy with the Bush record on spending, but this is materially false. First of all, it was a GOP Congress--not Clinton, whom achieved those budget surpluses. Second, it's the Democratic Congress, not President Bush, whom left the country with a $1.3T deficit is fiscal year 2009. And the fiscal 2008 deficit was about $450B. The only plausible explanation for how they come up with a $1.3T number is to make Bush fully responsible for the entire 2009 fiscal year, when in fact, Bush served just under a third of the fiscal year, but the Congress did not pass a budget until April 2009--roughly 3 months after Bush left office--and the budget passed without a single Republican vote.
Let's next go to the fiction that Bush "quadrupled the national debt". If you go to TreasuryDirect, you will find, even after the GOP Congress put Bill Clinton on a fiscal diet, Clinton went from about $4.1T to $5.7T, roughly $1.8T--which the Democratic Congress over the 2 fiscal years ending next month will probably end at about $2.7T. Bush did add just under $5T over 8 years--almost doubling the national debt, but far below quadrupling it.
Here's some political advice, Mr. Biden: stop griping about the difficulty of the fragile economic recovery and pointing fingers. Obama and you ran for the jobs you have. Most voters understand excuses when they hear them.
MilkCowGate?
Feminist groups are incensed at former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, currently on the President's bipartisan commission looking at social security and other budget items, because he snapped at a liberal critic making a colorful reference to the sacred cow of American politics, social security, calling it a milk cow with 310 million tits.
The NOW president remarked, "The ugliness of his disrespect for women is matched only by his dogged determination to dismantle Social Security by cutting benefits or increasing the retirement age." Dismantling social security by putting the program on better fiscal footing? I don't think so...
Political Humor
"President Obama is on vacation. This is his sixth vacation. He’ll have plenty of time for vacation when his one term is up." –David Letterman
[Millions of other Americans are on vacation. The only difference is, Obama's vacations are paid...]
“A year into Obama’s first term in office, unemployment is higher, the national debt is higher and there are more soldiers serving in Afghanistan. When asked about it, Obama was like, “Well, technically that is change.” – Jimmy Fallon
[And there still is hope: the mid-term elections...]
Musical Interlude: The American Songbook Series
Sarah Vaughan, "What a Difference a Day Makes"
