Brace yourselves for continuing headlines like these from yesterday’s DrudgeReport: Chinese Yuan Hits Record High Against US Dollar… Starving Horses Serious Problem As Hay Prices Continue To Skyrocket… Stocks continue post-election drop… Faber: Prepare for Massive Market Meltdown… Wealthy Dump… Read More »Slouching To Armageddon
Brace yourselves for continuing headlines like these from yesterday’s DrudgeReport: Chinese Yuan Hits Record High Against US Dollar… Starving Horses Serious Problem As Hay Prices Continue To Skyrocket… Stocks continue post-election drop… Faber: Prepare for Massive Market Meltdown… Wealthy Dump… Read More »Slouching To Armageddon
I particularly liked this piece and think you will also:
Any President Who Gave This Speech Would Win In a Landslide
Posted by Harvey on May 3, 2012 at 3:20 pm
Back before Bill Whittle became a PJ Media video star, he had a blog called Eject! Eject! Eject!, which was the oddest site in the entire blogosphere.
Bill would post absolutely nothing for weeks at at time, then he’d post an essay about as long as a Stephen King novel, but it was so incredibly brilliant that EVERYONE would duct tape their kids to the couch and throw their phones out the window so that they could read it straight through without interruption.
IMAO reader Hunter [High Praise!] wrote something recently that reminded me of that, and he asked me to post it, which I do with great pleasure.
Yes, it’s long.
Yes, you’ll wish it were longer.
Duct tape. Kids. Couch. Phone. Window. Enjoy.
______________
My Presidential Address to a Special Joint Session of Congress Regarding the Federal Budget
Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am here on behalf of my fellow Americans to speak to you tonight about wrath,
about fury,
about betrayal,
and about blood.
Although the names change over time, and regardless that some members may rightly plead personal innocence, this body together with the office I am now privileged to hold have, within the last few decades, betrayed the public trust, and by acts both of commission and omission have fostered upon the hardworking and honest citizens of this country the greatest financial calamity known to human history.
How dare I call this the greatest financial calamity, when we do not have to push wheelbarrows full of cash to the store to purchase bread, and the bills in our wallets are not printed in denominations of trillions? I dare because I’m speaking in terms of real dollar values, of total assets, of real wealth and actual things, not in percentages of GDP.
It is well known that on numerous occasions in human history entire civilizations have been destroyed. People have beenRead More »Where Are The Honorable Men?
From Ed Driscoll comes this spot-on analysis of why the Democrats can’t submit a budget. In short, they cannot reveal what they are up to and where they want to take the country: As Ace writes, “I’ve said this forever,… Read More »Why There Is No Budget
From DirectorBlue comes this analysis of Obama and the current budget:
J. Wellington Wimpy — better known simply as “Wimpy” — was Popeye’s recurring sidekick in the long-running cartoon series.
And Wimpy had a motto that could just as well be President Obama’s: “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today”
As Cato explains, Obama’s budgets consist of tax hikes now, with spending cuts and accounting gimmicks sometime… in… teh… future.We’ve become so used to these unfathomable levels of deficits and debt—and to the once-rare concept of trillions of dollars—that we forget how new all this debt is. In 1981, after 190 years of federal spending, the national debt was “only” $1 trillion. Now, just 30 years later, it’s past $15 trillion…
As ATR points out, the “Obama Plan Uses Budget Gimmickry To Mask Explosive Spending“:
• The budget continues to call for spending at historic levels: the request sets spending forRead More »A Wimpy Budget
Doug Ross (DirectorBlue) discusses the Obama budget. His treatment is so complete that there is little left to add: A Chart From the Obama Budget That Is So Horrifying It Must Have Been Left In Accidentally There are many historic “firsts”… Read More »The Obama Budget
There is no stronger case that can be made for my Impeach Them All article than the President himself. He is delusional and/or a liar with no shame. As the campaign season heats up, his pathological tendencies become exaggerated. If you want to see an energy crisis, hook Obama to a polygraph any time he appears in public. The device would drain the grid as it attempted to keep pace with the fabrications.
Equally disgraceful is the mainstream media. They are either brain-dead or so deeply invested with this man-child that they have chosen to go all in for his re-election. Surely they cannot be so ignorant or ideological as to believe what Obama spews. I suspect they ignore his serial “whoppers” in an attempt to aid his re-election.
Perhaps George Orwell’s vision is upon us:
In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.
The media can help Obama with the dumb vote. By the “dumb” vote, I refer to those who can’t name the Vice-President, in which century the Revolutionary War was fought, how many branches of government there are and a host of similar questions. Come to think of it, that is precisely Obama’s constituency and his strategy. Promise more to the takers, lie to the ignorant, cozy up with the rich and race-bait for the ethnic vote is a good summary of his campaign strategy.
That strategy can work only with a compliant media running interference for him. It works if the mainstream media prostitutes themselves by not calling out his hypocrisy and lies.
While that strategy might win for Obama, media assistance is suicidal for the media. By overwhelming margins, the public now believe them to be biased. It shows in their declining ratings.
This suicide will not be mourned by the American public, especially the large portion that has already abandoned tradtional media. Their plunging market share is due as much to integrity as technology issues.
Perhaps matters are changing when Politico refers to Obama’s budget as “borderline delusional.” Perhaps media are getting cold feet as it becomes harder and harder to support this wacko candidate. I would like to believe so, although I think the two are joined at the hip.
To see what the mainstream media did not report with respect to the sham budget, read Investors Business Daily’s take below:
Obama’s 2013 Budget: A Monument To Irresponsibility
Posted 02/13/2012 06:54 PM ET
Financial Ruin: What do you call a budget that boosts spending $227 billion, adds $329 billion to an already huge deficit, and does nothing to fix the entitlement crisis? If you’re President Obama, it’s called “fiscal responsibility.”
In the message Obama attached to his 2013 budget, he claimed that he’s “taken many steps to reestablish fiscal responsibility.”
But his budget is a colossal monument to irresponsibility, continuing a deficit-fueled spending spree that will take the country ever closer to fiscal ruin.
Just how big is this budget’s spending splurge? Among other things:
• It increases projected federal spending for this year and next by a total of $227 billion, and adds $329 billion to projected deficits for those years.
• It includes another $315 billion in stimulus spendingRead More »Our Liar-In-Chief and His Pravda Press
This response is from a regular reader sent directly to me. I blocked out his name only because I don’t know whether he wants it to be revealed. I am in complete agreement with what he says. It is precisely this reason that I believe the situation is hopeless.
As I have said on other occasions, the situation might be resolvable with a hard-nosed turnaround specialist in charge. Even here, the emphasis is on “might!” In a political context where citizens have been conditioned to believe they are entitled to live at the expense of government (read that to mean other citizens because government has nothing that it first does not take from someone else), the situation is beyond hopeless.
Instead, our politicians pretend and lie about the true economic condition, which is equivalent to dead man walking.
Monty,
Today the CBO released “The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2012 to 2022”.
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/126xx/doc12699/01-31-2012_Outlook.pdf
It is ridiculously long…but make sure to look at pages 14 & 67… They are the 2 most important pages in the report…in my opinion.
The CBO is projecting a $1.079 Trillion deficit in 2012.
And they are projecting Spending to skyrocket to $5.520 Trillion in 2022 (from $3.598 Trillion in 2011).
Congressional Budget Office reports another $1 trillion deficit
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/72205.html“The government faces a fourth year of trillion-plus deficits in 2012, according to new projections released Tuesday—numbers which also show little relief in the future unless Washington comes to grips with needed changes in its tax and spending policies.
The $1.079 trillion deficit now projected for this fiscal year ending Sept. 30…”CBO: Taxes Will ‘Shoot Up by More Than 30 Percent’ Over Next 2 Years
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/cbo-taxes-will-shoot-more-30-percent-over-next-2-years“According to the CBO report, federal tax revenues equaled $2.302 trillion in fiscal 2011, and will increase to $2,523 trillion in fiscal 2012, $2,988 trillion in fiscal in 2013, and $3,313 trillion in 2014.
As a percentage of GDP, according to CBO, federal tax revenues were 15.4 percent in fiscal 2011, and will be 16.3 percent in 2012, 18.8 percent in 2013, and 20.0 percent in fiscal 2014.”America already has a $15+ Trillion National Debt — 100% of GDP (and rising).
The U.S. fiscal crisis can be simply summarized. Since 2009, the federal governmentRead More »Government Is Dead Man Walking
h/t NII
H/T DougRoss@Journal: “I thought it was a disgrace,” he said. “I rarely heard a speech by a president so shallow, so hyper-partisan and so intellectually dishonest, outside the last couple of weeks of a presidential election where you are allowed to call… Read More »Krauthammer’s Take On Obama Speech
Clarence Darrow was surprised by the incompetence of Presidents and stated: When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now I’m beginning to believe it. Mr. Darrow, were he still alive, would not believe yesterday’s… Read More »Presidential and Political Baloney
As political events in Egypt play out, including likely contagion to other parts of Africa and the Middle East, attention is diverted from the real threat to our country — government insolvency. From Jeff T. Allen, writing in American Thinker:
There will soon be a crisis affecting US citizens beyond any experienced since the Great Depression. And it may happen within the year.
Unlike the Great Depression, however, we will enter such a shock in a weakened state, with few producers among us and record mountains of debt. More cataclysmic is the specter of inadequate food, as less than 4% of us farm …
Fantasy Land
Political lip service will not solve this problem, only spending cuts will. Yet lip service is all we get. President Obama’s State of the Union address spoke of the problem but not to the problem. Obama offered no spending cuts, while proposing a host of new spending programs. The release of his budget reflects more of the same – phony promises but no real action
President Obama continues to revel in his world of fantasy and duplicity while the economy and world crumbles. Mr. Obama appears delusional and more interested in political posturing than constructive effort.
Newly elected Republicans seek $100 billion in immediate cuts but struggle to get to this level. Smaller numbers elicit calumny from Democrats and the media. Democrat Majority Leader Harry Reid reacted this way to the potential cuts:
“In many cases, these proposals may mean taking workers off the assembly line or taking teachers out of the classroom or police off our streets,” Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and majority leader, said.
Characteristically, Reid touches the political hot buttons in an attempt to scare people. While Reid is correct that low-level cuts will be harmful, it is for an entirely different reason than he suggests. Small cuts ensure a government default, civil unrest and economic collapse.
Head-in-the-sand politics must end. Feigned ignorance and cowardice will not serve politicians well. Reality is on the way and they are apt to be run over by it. For politicians like Majority Leader Reid, the remainder of this article may be detrimental to your health. Do not proceed without a cardiac care unit on standby.
Fiscal Conditions
John Mauldin, in his recent newsletter, argues that public spending in welfare states has reached a turning point:
Clearly, we are looking at a watershed event in public spending in the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe. Because of the Great Financial Crisis, the usual benefit of a sharp rebound in cyclical tax receipts will not happen. It will take much longer to achieve any economic growth that could fill the public coffers.
Welfare states are faced with life-or-death problems that may not be soluble. To understand the gravityRead More »Faking Our Way to Sovereign Bankruptcy
