Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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The “Where did I hear that before?” roundup

If you thought you’d heard it before, yes, you’d heard the State of the Groundhog,

Ed Morrissey points out that a minimum-wage hike is the wrong way to lift working poor, but Ed misses the point: politicians don’t want to lift the working poor. Instead they prefer doom, despair and agony if it serves their purpose,

No doom, despair and agony for Obama. After a $900 Valentine’s Day dinner, Obama’s spending a few days on Florida’s Atlantic Coast

relaxing with friends he did not identify. Mrs. Obama’s office did not respond to a question about her plans for the weekend.

[Update: Michelle’s going to Aspen.]
This will be his second vacation of the year. Back on 9/11/12 he did nothing on Benghazi, when he was President AWOL:

On the night of 9-11, after the US Embassy in Cairo was stormed, and after hearing that the US Consulate in Benghazi was under attack, Barack Obama did nothing.

After being briefed by his top security advisers at a pre-planned meeting in the White House around 5:30 PM EST, he never picked up the phone again to see how things were going. And four innocent Americans including the US ambassador to Libya, were slaughtered.

This email was sent to State Department officials, White House officials, Secret Service officials at 6:07 PM EST on 9-11, from Benghazi officials the night of the terrorist attack.

The email clearly blamed Al-Qaeda linked group Ansar al-Sharia for the attack on the US consulate.
This was before the lifeless body of Ambassador Stevens was dragged from the consulate ruins.

This was at least the third email sent to the White House on 9-11 from Benghazi.

Now that Lautenberg is finally(?) retiring – unlike the last time he retired, when he said “Just when i thought i was out, they pull me back in” –

everybody in NJ wants to be a Senator.

Why Should I Care About the U.S. Debt?

Name the party!

No biological clock for men: Cary Grant was a first-time dad at age 65, and now Steve Martin’s a first-time dad at 67.

Hugo Chavez? He’s aliiiive!

Why Was an Iranian Official Found with Millions in Venezuelan Money?

Meteorite Strikes Central Russia, Up To 500 Injured, not to be confused with the asteroid heading our way today.

You learn something new every day: Penises are called chubbies.

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Drunk with debt

Explaining the debt in beer terms we can all understand,

U.S. Debt Jumped $72 Billion Same Day U.S. House Voted to Cut Spending $6 Billion

The national debt jumped by $72 billion on Tuesday even as the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives passed a continuing resolution to fund the government for just three weeks that will cut $6 billion from government spending.

If Congress were to cut $6 billion every three weeks for the next 36 weeks, it would manage to save between now and late November as much money as the Treasury added to the nation’s net debt during just the business hours of Tuesday, March 15.
…
Congress would need to cut spending by $6 billion every three weeks for approximately the next six and a half years (338 weeks) just to equal the $676.3 billion the debt has increased thus far this fiscal year.

Salud!

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Into the post-Keynesian era

As the G20 give up on Keynesian economics and the PIIGS, the USA, and the world brace for the consequences of their spending, Jeffrey Sachs points,

we need to abandon short-term thinking in favour of the long-term investments needed for sustained recovery.

Keynesian stimulus was premised on four dubious propositions: that it was needed to prevent a global depression; that a short-run fiscal boost would jump-start the economy; that “shovel-ready projects” could combine short-term cyclical and long-term structural agendas; and, last, that the rapid rise of public debt occasioned by stimulus need not be a concern. That these ideas were so widely accepted was a testament to the perennial political attractiveness of tax cuts and spending increases.

Of course, dyed-in-the-wool Keynesians never die, they just dismiss Sachs’s words as sophistry.

Here in New Jersey the governor is doing something about the spending. It was high time someone did.

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Hocked, distracted, and in deep denial

Richard Fernandez writes about unsustainable debt:
I Want My MTV

When there’s no money left in the till talk inevitably turns to what color of the garbage bins should be or whether Christians should be allowed to wear crucifixes to work. The really important public issues like carbon trading take center stage. Across the Atlantic in California, Victor Davis Hanson was noticing the same obsession with irrelevant forms in a state facing the same challenges as Britain. As the actual poverty rose in California the ’socially conscious’ turned in upon themselves, living in overpriced, politically correct communities, seeking solace in “ambiance — that is, living among people like themselves … Why? I have a theory. It allows them to be liberal and progressive in the abstract, without having to live the logical consequences of their utopianism, or deal with the underbelly of American life.”

This may explain the strange inverse relationship between shrinking resources and growing promises. When you can’t provide the real then promise the fake. The bleaker the reality the more soaring the vision. The higher the price of oil, the smaller the military budget, the costlier the medical appliances the more grandiose the goals of the administraton become. Why aim for incremental environmental improvement when you can make the seas can fall. Never mind if one must accept a nuclear Iran; at least we’ll have a world without nuclear weapons! If Israel can give up Jerusalem there’ll be peace in the Middle East at last! Why fix the health care system where it’s broken? Fix it all.

And it’s all going to happen in the future, that wondrous, inexhaustible cornucopia of a place which will lend us everything we want, and roll it over when we can’t pay. It will do it even though its peopled by people that are too much trouble care for; like the children who should never be born because pregnancy, according to one judicial nominee being considered by the administration, is “involuntary servitude” comparable to slavery. Can you have a future without people, without cheap, abundant and secure energy? Can you have a future without truth? Why sure you can. Just you wait and see.

Go read the whole article.

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Watch I.O.U.S.A. at 1PM today

CNN is playing the I.O.U.S.A. documentary on the growing debt and deficits, and I received an email stating who is discussing the issue,

    Featured Panelists Include:

  • Peter G. Peterson, Founder and Chairman, Peter G. Peterson Foundation
  • David Walker, President & CEO, Peter G. Peterson Foundation
  • Sen. Bill Bradley
  • Maya MacGuineas, President of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
  • Amy Holmes, political contributor for CNN
  • Joe Johns, CNN Congressional Correspondent
  • Diane Lim Rodgers, Chief Economist, Concord Coalition
  • Jeanne Sahadi, senior writer and columnist for CNNMoney.com

I.O.U.S.A. is on today Saturday, April 10, 1:00-3:00 p.m. EST or Sunday, April 11, 3:00-5:00 p.m. EST.

Here’s the on-line version,

And another reason to watch: The lefties are angry over I.O.U.S.A.

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Obama on the debt: Do as I say, not as I do

Trying to soothe Chinese nerves on the calamitous state of his monetary policy, Obama comes up with this:
Obama: Too much debt could fuel double-dip recession

BEIJING, Nov 18 (Reuters) – President Barack Obama gave his sternest warning yet about the need to contain rising U.S. deficits, saying on Wednesday that if government debt were to pile up too much, it could lead to a double-dip recession.

I guess Obama must think that the Chinese can not read the news:
National Debt Now Tops $12 Trillion, an all-time record high:

It gets worse. The same document projects that by the end of the decade, the National Debt will hit $24.5 trillion — exceeding the Gross Domestic Product projected for 2019 of $22.8 trillion.

By Obama’s own estimation, then, we’re in for a “double-dip recession,” the Obamaism for all-out depression.

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Third-world debt levels

Debt held by the public by percentage of GDP:

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Heritage Foundation has more.

Meanwhile, in the news,
Obama Says U.S. Long-Term Debt Load ‘Unsustainable’

In his New Mexico appearance, the president pledged to work with Congress to shore up entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare. He also said he was confident that the House and Senate would pass health-care overhaul bills by August.

“Most of what is driving us into debt is health care, so we have to drive down costs,” he said.

A question for the President:
Since when has instituting a single-payor, single-provider system driven down costs?

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