Time for Thorns

An administration’s annual midsummer budget update generally comes out in mid-July.   Are you surprised His Oneness isn’t releasing his now while he is still pressuring  Congress to approve his planned takeover of the health care segment of our economy?

By any stretch of the imagination do you believe that the budget update  will NOT show higher deficits and unemployment,  and slower growth than projected in  Obama’s budget in February and update in May?   Of course you don’t,  because if there were any good news to reveal,  there would be rapturous HEADLINES,  and His Oneness would be on tv graciously accepting the plaudits of the media.

I haven’t had time to study up on this, but at a glance,  about half of Obama’s budget cuts come from Defense.    North Korea recently launched missiles,  so His Oneness responds by cutting  our missile defense.    Huh?   That makes about as much sense as it would have made for me to take a bicycle instead  of my big dually truck to go out on the flooded  roads today.

Here’s the WaPo take on it today,  and  a rather more informative one from Bloomberg.    I’ll do another post when I’ve had time to wade through it all,   as I’m sure there will be more thorough discussions tomorrow.

His Oneness has offered us yet another fine example of his leadership style, which is “Do as I say, not as I do.”    So even without the cooperation of the White House press office, Mark Knoller of CBS News, figured out that the 2 flights on Air Force One,  plus the 4 on Marine One, used over 9,000 gallons of fuel.

Of course, that is not the story the Obama Administration wants out front when it comes to his first 100 days in office.   In the customary presidential two-step, the White House is downplaying the importance of this initial period.  It must be mere coincidence that a press conference has been scheduled for  —- the 100th day.

Here are 4 pieces  Obama does not want you to contemplate:  first, the Wall Street Journal on his recent apology tour;  then George Will at the WaPo on the budget follies;  back to the WSJ for a critique of Obama’s behavior among assorted dictators and tyrants;  and last to Commentary, for a look at careless diplomacy, which is the only sort this administration appears capable of conducting.

If you were instinctively less than impressed by the WaPo article trumpeting Obama’s determination to cut a whole $100 million from the budget, Greg Mankiw shows why you’re right.

An aide to Sen.  Mitch McConnell (R-KY)  has  this comment:

“[T]he government will pay $100 million in interest per day over the next 10 yrs on the stimulus bill.”

I think it’s safe to say this characterizes the flaccid weakness of  the determination of His Oneness to actually make anything approaching a hard choice.

The transcript is here,  if you care.

Some comments on the fly:

A repeat of  ” a tax cut to 95%of all working families”  –  sure, just as long as they don’t use any energy…

“… new plan that will partner government resources with private investment to buy up the assets that are preventing our banks from lending money.”   — well, actually it is the government’s policies and regulations  which are preventing lending.   And why should we believe His Oneness wants this partnership to work,  when he spent weeks as Basher-in-Chief of the financial industry?

“..health care system that controls costs and entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid”  –  Europe already has the socialized medicine system he wants us to have,  so why isn’t Europe immune from the fiscal mess?

“I’m as angry as anybody about the bonuses” — no you weren’t,  until the public got mad.

“To cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term…”   “This budget is inseparable from this recovery.”  —    Let’s see, even if you do halve your deficit, it will  still be about double any of the Bush-era deficits Republicans created.    And as the Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore points out,  if we simply left the current budget in place, the deficit would go down by 75% all by itself, not the 50% Obama promises.

He made wanting the authority to takeover and restructure certain firms sound quite reasonable, especially since no one asked the obvious follow-up questions.

Liberals have called for “sacrifice” for years, but Obama won’t.   Of course,  he doesn’t consider higher taxes, increased energy costs and crushing debt for generations real sacrifice.

“Invest” is substituted for “spend”.

He still wants to reduce tax deductions for charitable donations and to reduce mortgage interest deductibility.   “There’s very little evidence that this has an impact on charitable giving.”     That fib makes the jaw drop.

His stem cell answer made it very clear he has spent far more time shooting baskets than wrestling with any moral issues.    He did not limit  funding to the so-called “leftover” IVF embryos,  nor did he rule out funding for research on cloned embryos created for that purpose.   Does the man actually not know that adult stem cells have already produced therapies, while embryonic ones have not?

The press asked rather more serious and critical questions than at the first one,  but I don’t think a single reporter from a business publication was called on.

He was flat, leaden, and had that professorial tone he gets, which irritates the hell out of me.

For those who’d like a little levity in this first fullweek of January, try this — His Oneness is naming a special watchdog for government spending:

http://www.google.com.nyud.net:8090/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5inrEKORts9qm_kHvrkASSZ5Dqq8QD95II74O0

Nancy Killefer, a professional efficiency expert, is to scour the federal budget and find programs that don’t work.  I can save her an awful lot of trouble — the only thing in the federal budget which actually works is the military.