Quote of the Day
To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.
Albert Einstein
Sunday Talk Soup and Obama Caught Lying At Press Conference
I was listening to the Sunday morning podcasts when I heard a preposterous claim made by one of the Democrats that they have put on the table setting domestic spending levels to the lowest level since the Eisenhower Administration. I thought my ears were playing tricks on me, until I read that Obama had made that ludicrous claim during last Friday's news conference which I hadn't seen: "I have already said I am willing to take down domestic spending to the lowest percentage of our overall economy since Dwight Eisenhower."
Before we go any further, that one statement alone is enough to win this blog's first ever "LIAR, LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE" award and to earn the first nomination of Obama to my tongue-in-cheek Jackass of the Year (2011) competition. Former Congressman Weiner seemed to have the inside track, but Obama's lack of leadership and fundamental dishonesty during this crisis may trump even Weiner's boorish behavior.
Outside of the fact that nobody seems to recall him making this statement before even once, and I for one am sick and tired of hearing the Obama Administration demagogues gripe about they had inherited a mess (let's point out most of the jobs lost in the recession occurred on Bush's side of the ledger and the recession officially ended 5 months into Obama's administration, but two years into the recovery, we are spending 25.3% of GDP on the federal level and using Obama's own budget numbers, we will spend over 20% of GDP on an ongoing basis over the coming decade). Related expenditures have increased by 20% over the last Congress while revenues dropped by double-digit percentages, we have the weakest economic growth of any recession in decades and economic conditions are hardly the worst-case scenario Democratic partisans have misleadingly implied: look at economic-crippling, far higher inflation and interest rates Ronald Reagan inherited about 30 years ago. If we look at 1% of $15T GDP, we get about $150B. If we were to get down to the 18% GDP or so of federal spending under Eisenhower, we would be going to cut nearly a $1T PER YEAR (i.e., below $3T federal spending); the GOP would take that deal in a heartbeat. The most aggressive plans I've heard speak of about $4T over TEN YEARS. That works out to $400B per year.
Now let's talk about the facts of life. Older people are living longer, which means that our outlays are increasing even if we assume the number of new senior beneficiaries remains constant. But we already know the largest count population of American people (between 1945 and 1965), means that Medicare/social security enrollments are about to escalate radically. We have $50T in unfunded entitlement liabilities. And we haven't even talked about ObamaCare which will be heavily subsidized by the government. Medicare and Medicaid are already implicitly subsidized by shrinking private-sector plans. If companies start dumping their own plans (because program penalties are far cheaper than providing the benefit), program subsidies will skyrocket--totally missing from Democrats' Ponzi scheme smoke-and-mirrors accounting projections.
Let's now go back to Obama's disingenuous, deliberately misleading rhetoric. Pelosi argues that any cuts in the 60% of the budget in entitlements and social safety net are not acceptable. Obama suggests a quid pro quo in exchange for class warfare tax hikes--which would bring in roughly $70B. I've heard some proposals which reflect things like increased age criteria and COLA changes, but any of these would likely get phased in over several years. Do you think there's any chance Obama whom hasn't supported a single meaningful cut in domestic spending over the past 2.5 years, hasn't actively proposed or supported austerity in even a single category of spending, hasn't announced any meaningful layoffs or salary cuts and refuses to give back residual TARP money or unspent allocated stimulus money, will even give back any of the 20% domestic expenditure dollars increases won over the last Congress, never mind scale back failed post-Eisenhower Great Society programs? If you believe that, there's a bridge in Brooklyn that Anthony Weiner will sell you.
Jeff Flake R-AZ: US Senate 2012: Thumbs UP!
I have favored candidates in this blog (McCain over Obama was a no-brainer), but I haven't formally endorsed candidates. (Maybe I have an occasional Arizona reader of this blog; my endorsement and $5 will get Jeff a cup of coffee at Starbucks.) In this case one of the best Congressmen in the past 50 years is running to succeed retiring Jon Kyl. He has been strongly pro-economic growth, a fiscal hawk, pro-immigration reform, and pro-limited government. He has been endorsed by probably the highest IQ executive at the state or federal level, another personal favorite, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA), House Budget chair Paul Ryan (R-WI), the Club for Growth and a Tea Party offshoot.
Guest Editorial: A. Barton Hinkle/Reason.com,
"The TSA's Invasive Search Contest"
Satire: Thumbs UP!
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
ELO, "Shine a Little Love". Second only to "Do Ya?" on my personal ELO shortlist. I remember when this song soared up the charts and this is one of the few songs I loved the very first hearing. Glorious arrangement, infectious tempo, great percussion, upbeat love song, terrific songwriting, some nice staccato, brilliant vocal harmonies: why can't today's musical acts produce anything so wonderful?
I'm in a romantic mood, just caught the last 20 minutes of "August Rush" on a cable channel over the weekend, one of my favorite all-time movies. Louis Connelly, lead singer of a bluesy rock band, has a chance encounter with Lyla Novacek, a Juilliard-trained cellist, at a party. They realize from the start they are soulmates, get caught up in the magic of a moonlit night on the building roof and make love. Lyla's controlling disapproving father splits up the couple the next morning. Lyla's one encounter yields a prematurely born son, Evan. Lyla's father decides that Evan is an impediment to Lyla's budding musical career and, without Lyla's knowledge, gives him up for adoption. He tells Lyla that Evan died from complications of his premature birth. An emotionally devastated, mourning Lyla no longer has interest in a career as a professional musician. Louis, after several years of fruitlessly fighting the father to reunite with Lyla, finally accepts reality, has split from his band and moves on with his life.
Evan gets lost in the system and around the age of 11 escapes to join a community of homeless children headed by an adult musician, the Wizard, whom maintains tight control over the group. At one point Evan escapes from the Wizard and finds refuge in a black church. The pastor eventually discovers Evan's prodigious musical talent and gets Evan enrolled at his mother's alma mater. Evan's musical talent stands out even in Juilliard, and one of his compositions is featured as the core performance in a major park concert, which figures in the movie's climax. Evan is convinced that his unknown parents are out there and his music will somehow bring them together. Louis, who doesn't know he has a son, is coincidentally in NYC for a gig on his reunited band tour and has a memorable mutually respectful chance encounter with Evan in a small city park. However, the Wizard had recently discovered where Evan was and reasserted control over Evan, taking him out of Juilliard with no intention of letting him attend the concert.
Lyla's father on his deathbed, around the time of Evan's joining the Wizard's community, confesses to a still-grieving Lyla that her beloved presumably dead son is alive; finding Evan becomes her obsession, a search complicated by Evan's publicly-known pseudonym, August Rush. Friends and colleagues prevail upon Lyla in the interim to agree to a comeback appearance as a second-billing featured opening act performer.at Evan/August's concert. Louis, in a cab on the way to the airport for his next gig, spots his one true love Lyla's name on the concert sign. Evan escapes the Wizard in an attempt to conduct the symphony during the performance of his work. Lyla, who was in the process of leaving the concert, is moved by the magic of Evan's music and somehow knows she must seek out the young conductor. Louis spots Lyla moving through the crowd. At the front of the crowd before the orchestra, Lyla (Keri Russel), who has this genius of nonverbal communication through facial expressions, "tells" a reunited Louis they have a son, this extraordinary child prodigy composer/conductor she knows through maternal intuition is Evan; Evan turns to face his long-lost parents and realizes his dream of family reunion through music has come true. I love, love, love this movie.
