Marx’s quip about history repeating itself first as tragedy, then as farce seems especially applicable to today’s news. After going through the entire Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame psychodrama about African yellowcake, we now hear that Zimbabwe plans to sell Iran uranium. For all the anger at Bush’s budget deficits, a single month of Obama’s red ink now equals federal borrowing for the entire 2007 budget year. A better way of looking at it might be in terms of the Democrats’ offer to cut $6 billion from the annual budget — or 1/37th of what the U.S. Treasury is now borrowing each month.
It's only a farce if you know it's a farce. A British paper broke the yellowcake story yesterday, and a day later it's being ignored by virtually every media outlet in the U.S. Same goes with the $ problem. The propagand, er, journalists, don't care, therefore, the people don't know.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseCutting $6 billion thus represents about twenty-one hours worth of Obama's deficit.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWe're headed for a cliff and I'd wager that 50+% of the folks don't have a clue and/or don't care.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuseeverytime I'm confronted by someone who spouts the "yellowcake lie" aka Wilson I simply tell them to Google "yellowcake, Iraq, Canada" and remind them that Iraq managed to purchase the stuff from somebody ...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat "anger" about Bush's deficits do you mean? Conservatives, including the leading opinion-makers at NRO, were almost entirely silent about the Bush administration's profligacy. Just by way of example, if NRO had attacked Bush's Medicare Part D proposal -- Republicans' own unfunded $1 trillion forray into health care -- it would have been defeated, as it should have been. Add to the list your relative silence over TARP, bailouts, and other Republican-sponsored responses to the financial crisis.
"Conservative" like those at NRO must fight spending excess from "conservative" law-makers, even if it means the lawmakers' pet projects are defeated. That you failed to do so in the past gives your critics the easy argument that you are really more interested in harming liberal politicians and helping "conservatives" rather than controlling spending.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'd be harder on President Obama's insistence on borrowing enormous and unjustified sums - it was the primary reason I wanted George W. Bush booted out in 2004.
Except that the House of Representatives - now Republican-controlled - is only nominally less interested in unjustified borrowing.
For all the fighting about $60 billion (formerly $100 billion) in "cuts" to certain programs, take a look at the amount by which the publicly held debt will increase between now and the end of FY 2011 (a period for which for the most part, no money has been appropriated). The GOP isn't interested in doing squat.
If the House wanted to, it could appropriate only the money for March-September 30, 2011 that would be equal to anticipated revenues. That is, they could, if they wanted to, balance the budget for the remainder of FY 2011 now - not five or ten years out or by following Representative Ryan's pathetic "roadmap."
But they're following the plan set forth by Rahm Emanuel of taking advantage of a "crisis". They're uninterested (or at least only slightly more interested than President Obama) in ending the massive and unjustified accumulation of debt but instead are simply shifting spending priorities away from stuff they don't like to stuff they do like while purporting to do it because of "overspending."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDorsaiGuy - yep, I have a link to that story in my favorites. I have to revisit it every few months to convince myself I have not been transmogrified to an alternate dimension.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe House can't really do much, which is better than Pelosi/Reid/Obama doing all kinds of damage. Simply having the House as a roadblock is a victory in itself. However, they could pass a trillion dollar budget cut plan, and it would be an act of futility. So go easy on the one branch of government that can prevent the other two from continuing the operation they had prior. It will take 2012 and Republican wins all over this country at every level to actually have the people in place to begin the real work.
Oh, and as to the story above, yeah so, you can expect more of the same until 2012 as well, it is business as usual, with the exception of the House being able to not do much till then, lest I repeat myself.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@JSB, I think VDH is referencing the liberal crocodile tears about how the wars were bankrupting the country. But, I think you must have been asleep in the Bush years. There was a lot of criticism about Bush's compassionate conservatism as it related to more spending. There was criticism from the right on NCLB and Medicare Part D. The NRO archives aren't that easy to search, but I'm sure we could find some heavy hitters making points about spending.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@JSB,
for your walk down memory lane, just a sampling of NRO articles on spending and bailouts:
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