Time for Thorns

Do watch this  12 minute interview  of Rep. Paul Ryan.   I do hope Mitt Romney doesn’t choose him for Vice President,  as I believe he is far more valuable in the House,  doing the heavy lifting on budgetary matters.

And now he  has a bishop  in his corner.   h/t K-Lo at The Corner

The budget submitted by His Oneness  was voted down 99  to nothing in the Senate,  which means it got exactly ZERO votes in the entire Congress.   Even the  auto workers  union opposed it.   Didn’t the same thing happen last year?

Budget Committee Chairman Sen. Kent Conrad is being praised for trying to  bring up a budget,  which Sen. Harry Reid prevented to avoid forcing his members to take tough votes and to keep voters from realizing what will happen to them if Democrats retain the Senate majority.   But if you fail to keep your word,  you deserve scorn,  not glory.   Only n the perverse world of liberalism do you get a pat on the back for thinking good thoughts.  And that’s before you cravenly try to save your own ass by claiming things which are  demonstrably not true.

Now that the smoke has cleared from the hearings on the budget presented by His Oneness,  we don’t have to look through anything thicker than some fog and a few weeds to see the real truth —   Obama and the Democrats have not the slightest intention of doing anything about the deficit except expanding it.  And Treasury Secretary Geithner thinks he’s being clever when  he admits the new  budget doesn’t touch the problem,  but they don’t like Rep. Paul Ryan’s sensible plan.

Adam Zyglis has drawn a  biting cartoon  about matters budgetary.

Sen. Jeff Sessions  explains that  you ain’t getting one.

Up until a couple of years ago,  I was one of the millions of home computer users who lent processing power to the S.E.T.I. Institute projects.  They made some changes which I thought made my computer system more vulnerable to attack,  so I dropped out.  But it was a way for me to participate in science,  and I was always delighted when my computer was working on a project with interesting data.

Sad to say that S.E.T.I. hs  fallen prey  to a budgetary crisis.

That’s what I thought of Obama’s campaign speech.   It was a campaign speech,   not really a deficit reduction speech.   His Oneness could barely utter the lies fast enough.

Obama does not believe in free markets.   They must be controlled by the government,  which means they are not free.  He does not believe in capitalism,  because that means the government is not directing the economy.  “We believe,  in the words of our first Republican president,  Abraham Lincoln,  that through government,  we should do together what we cannot do as well for ourselves.”   Did not-so-honest Abe really say that?  Perhaps,  but he paid as little attention to the Constitution as His Oneness does.

Obama is still trying to blame Pres. George W. Bush for our current fiscal mess.   He decries the Bush tax cuts,  but is going to keep them except for all he deems rich.

The bottom line is that he says the increasing deficit is a terrible thing,  but he’s going to spend still more,  which will increase the deficit,  and he’s going to  raise your taxes   under the guise of decreasing the deficit.   Got that?

Want proof?   Start with Obama claiming the same $4 trillion in savings that the  Bowles-Simpson deficit commission recommended,  but instead of doing it in the proposed decade , taking 12 years.   Kevin Williamson  points out  that Obama doesn’t address entitlements,  while Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget does.   His Oneness believes that  the rich get  so by taking from the poor,  which is the required view for socialists and other lefty isms.   A hundred economics courses and a thousand years of history will not convince him otherwise.

Clive Crook saw the speech  as a waste  of breath (h/t Joseph Lawler).   Still,   Obama’s  new budget  offers four times the cuts of his original,  which is nothing to sneeze at.

Investors Business Daily says His Oneness  has failed at leadership on the debt.   Andrew Stiles points out that the President’s new  new proposals consist  of taxes and more taxes.   Does that mean the Democrats won’t be releasing their alternative budget?    Tony Blankley  explains why Democrats can only pretend to reduce spending.

Charles  Krauthammer likes Sen. Jeff Sessions’ take.   Sessions says we are beyond speeches and  need numbers.   There is lots of hyperventilating about  budget gimmickry,   but I always assumed  some of the savings would come from grabbing leftover and unspent funds.  I think the purists are making too much of it.  After all,  if that money wasn’t taken back,  it would sit in government accounts,  adding to the debt,  as agency heads are notoriously reluctant to return such funds to the Treasury.    As Steven Hayward says,  there is  a bright side to it.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin  previews the speech,  beginning with a fantasy,  and also has an  interesting post up.   The Left is  increasing its pressure to preserve its favorite entitlements.   Andrew Malcolm has  a nice bit on why His Oneness is speaking.

No matter what your view,  we have come a long way from VP Biden instructing us that we had to spend even more taxpayer money to save the economy to even Democrats pretending we should spend less.   You must acknowledge something has happened when Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has gone from saying ObamaCare had to be passed so we could find out what was in it,  to whining that  elections shouldn’t matter so much.   Yes,  it was so much more pleasant when everybody wanted to spend,  spend,  spend.

I have other duties during the speech today,  so I’ll have to watch it on tape,  which is generally what I prefer to do anyway.

These days I’ll take a win when it’s available.   But no,  progressives have no intention of cutting anything,  lest there possibly be someone other than their cronies who escaping owing their survival to the government.

Andy McCarthy  grumbles here,  and Mark Steyn  responds here.   This is just the opening round in a real fight,  with the main events coming over raising the debt limit and next years budget.