Not So Fast, Slub - I Think Ezra Klein's on Our Side!
— Geoff

Yesterday Slublog made a few excellent points regarding Ezra Klein's attempt to pin the majority of the recession's job losses on former President Bush. One of Slub's arguments was that the stats Klein used unfairly attributed all job losses through July 2009 to Bush, even though Bush was a lame duck President as of November 2008.

I'd like to take a slightly different tack in pointing out Klein's folly - how his attempt to slam Bush ends up undermining everything he believes. So contra Slublog, let's accept that bogus ground rule: Bush owns the economy through July 2009. Now take a look at one of the libs' favorite charts, a Nancy Pelosi special (click to embiggen):

You've probably seen it before - it's gone viral in the sinistrosphere.

But now let's modify the chart per Klein's groundrules:

And there you have it: the formidable team of Ezra Klein and Robert Shapiro have proven that Obama's influence on the economy came well after Bush had set it on the road to recovery! According to them, Bush reduced job losses by 70% before Obama's policies took effect!!

I love it when the Left and the Right can come together on these sorts of issues.

Posted by: Geoff at 10:56 PM | Comments (100)
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Chrissy Matthews: It Wasn't a Tingle, It Was a Thrill
— Dave in Texas

Can't buy a thrill.

Ok, what the hell is that at .43 secs though?

Thrill? Tingle? Gut-rumble?

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 05:38 PM | Comments (143)
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Overnight Open Thread
— Maetenloch

FYI for you OH-area morons there's going to be a SW Ohio Moron meet-up going for next Fri, Sep. 17th, somewhere around Cincinnati. Look in the yahoo group or contact Lacey for more details.

So Who's Spending on the Military?

Here's a map of the world showing how much each country spends on the military as a percentage of its GDP. Overall the world average is 2% but clearly there's quite a bit of variation. The Arabian peninsula seems to be a hot spot with most countries there spending 10%+ of their GDP. I doubt they actually view Israel as a likely threat so I assume that they're arming up against Iran and each other.

Among first-world powers China spends 4.3% followed by the US at 4.06% and Russia at 3.9%. Of course we have defense commitments around the globe and have been fighting two concurrent wars so our relative defense spending is actually surprisingly low. Russia meanwhile is busy trying to make up for all the lean years in the 90's with their recent oil revenues.

But China has been on spending spree for over a decade now and is clearly trying to make their military the strongest in the region. Given their surplus of unmarried nationalistic young men I just don't see anything good for us or the world coming from that. The only hopeful factor is that historically China's never been able to get its act together long enough to really threaten its neighbors. Still it could be a very rocky 20 to 30 years ahead of us. more...

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:16 PM | Comments (863)
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Palestinian Authority member busted in sting trying to buy "stolen" weapons in Miami
— Purple Avenger

Things are going so swimmingly for the PA in the Arab world that they need to buy their weapons in Miami? Times are tough all over I guess. Even tougher now that the "sellers" were FBI agents running a sting.

A Palestinian Authority member who hails from the West Bank and a Hialeah man who came from Cuba seven years ago have been charged in Miami with conspiring to possess stolen weaponry -- including M-16s, AK-47s and roadside bombs -- for export to the West Bank...

...According to criminal complaints, the two men began negotiating in April 2009 to buy 300 stolen automatic weapons from FBI undercover agents and police officers...

Dumbasses. I could have told them if someone is trying to sell you 300 machine guns in Miami, there's a 99.999% chance the sellers are either FBI or BATF. 5 or 10? Maybe we can talk. 300? Run away from that deal as fast as you can.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 04:03 PM | Comments (173)
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Hoh Boy: Murkowski Meets With Libertarian Candidate
— Ace

Just can't wean herself off the public tit.

Kohlhaas said there have been talks with unidentified Murkowski backers about a Libertarian run.

"To their credit, they have reached out," he said.

He described the talks about philosophy, platform and issues as fruitful and constructive, but described her candidacy as a Libertarian as seemingly impossible.

I am less concerned about this than I had been. I am convinced now that Joe Miller is a rock star. Yes, she can threaten him.

But this guy? WestPointDesertStormBronzeStarYaleLawConservativeJudge?

He's the next Scott Brown, except a conservative, red-state Scott Brown.

Thanks to Dr. Spank.

Posted by: Ace at 01:29 PM | Comments (314)
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Obama's Former OMB Director: Yeah, We Should Keep All The "Bush Tax Cuts" For Awhile. Then We're Going To Have To Raise Taxes On The Middle Class
— DrewM

Peter Orszag says, you can keep your damn tax cuts for two years then it's back to work for your masters at the federal government.

In the face of the dueling deficits, the best approach is a compromise: extend the tax cuts for two years and then end them altogether. Ideally only the middle-class tax cuts would be continued for now. Getting a deal in Congress, though, may require keeping the high-income tax cuts, too. And that would still be worth it.

Why does this combination make sense? The answer is that over the medium term, the tax cuts are simply not affordable. Yet no one wants to make an already stagnating jobs market worse over the next year or two, which is exactly what would happen if the cuts expire as planned.

Higher taxes now would crimp consumer spending, further depressing the already inadequate demand for what firms are capable of producing at full tilt. And since financial markets don’t seem at the moment to view the budget deficit as a problem — take a look at the remarkably low 10-year Treasury bond yield — there is little reason not to extend the tax cuts temporarily.

So much for not raising taxes for anyone making under $250K.

Orszag is also nuts about the politics of this. It will be just as hard to raise taxes in 2 years leading up to the '12 elections.

Here's the thing I never get about liberals, if taxes are bad in a recession because they do bad things to the economy, why is raising taxes ever a good thing? And oh, I thought whenever conservatives talk about cutting taxes the cry is always that there's no proof they stimulate the economy? It seems liberals want to have it both ways when it's convenient.

The real truth is they are simply more interested in increased government influence over the market and individuals. If you have to run more of your money through them just to get by on what you are allowed to keep and the "services" you are given (with your own damn money), then government is more and more important and powerful.

In Orszag's telling of it, cutting the federal budget is simply a non-starter, there's nothing left to cut.

LetÂ’s look at the facts. The projected deficit for 2015 is 4 percent to 5 percent of G.D.P., depending on whose assumptions you use. A sustainable level is more like 3 percent or lower. So we need deficit reduction of 1 percent to 2 percent of G.D.P., or about $200 billion to $400 billion a year by 2015. These figures are uncertain, but theyÂ’re the best we have (and they may well turn out to be too optimistic).

How much savings is plausible on the spending side? Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security will account for almost half of spending by 2015. Even if we reform Social Security, which we should, any plausible plan would phase in benefit changes to avoid harming current beneficiaries — and so would generate little savings over the next five years. The health reform act included substantial savings in Medicare and Medicaid, so there aren’t further big reductions available there in our time frame.

The other half of the budget is mostly net interest (which is not negotiable unless we renege on our debt) and discretionary spending. Discretionary spending is split roughly equally between defense and non-defense spending. The defense component already assumes a phase-down in both Iraq and Afghanistan; saving an additional 5 percent of the PentagonÂ’s base budget would be a substantial accomplishment and would yield about 0.2 percent of G.D.P. Cutting 5 percent out of non-defense discretionary spending, a stretch politically, would save about as much.

Put aside the farce of the health care bill saving any money and consider the rest.

He says we need to save between 200 and 400 billion dollars a year over the next 5 years. Unpossible! Raise taxes to the levels of the 1990s and everything will be fine!

How about we cut spending back to the horrible days of...2007 and 2008? How could this miracle be accomplished? By rolling back the spending increases that the so-called "stimulus" bill baked into the cake moving forward.

All of the major news outlets are reporting that the stimulus bill voted out of conference committee last night has a meager $789 billion price tag. This number is pure fantasy. No one believes that the increased funding for programs the left loves like Head Start, Medicaid, COBRA, and the Earned Income Tax Credit is in anyway temporary. No Congress under control of the left will ever cut funding for these programs. So what is the true cost of the stimulus if these spending increases are made permanent?

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) asked the Congressional Budget Office to estimate the impact of permanently extending the 20 most popular provisions of the stimulus bill. What did the CBO find? As you can see from the table below, the true 10 year cost of the stimulus bill $2.527 trillion in in spending with another $744 billion cost in debt servicing. Total bill for the Generational Theft Act: $3.27 trillion.

Ignore the debt service number on the added spending and focus on the $2.527 trillion over the next decade. Let's see, divide by 10, carry the two, ah yes. that's $250 billion in cuts per year over the next decade. That's right in the 200-400 billion range, right?

Of course, I'm interested in cutting back below the level of the Bush years but this seems like a good start.

Let's be honest, economics has nothing to do with the Democrats tax positions. They simply want to 'spread the wealth around' to their favorite groups and increase federal power. Nothing more, nothing less.

Posted by: DrewM at 11:57 AM | Comments (223)
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A Call for Consistency
— Slublog

Yesterday, I was made aware of this post by Ezra Klein. It is an older post, but an interesting one. In it, Klein tries to defend the stimulus by 'proving' more job losses were the result of Bush administration policies than the policies of our current president. Klein quotes economist Robert Shapiro:

From December 2007 to July 2009 – the last year of the Bush second term and the first six months of the Obama presidency, before his policies could affect the economy – private sector employment crashed from 115,574,000 jobs to 107,778,000 jobs.

Maybe I'm not as studied as Shapiro, but I'm pretty sure 2008 was the last year of Bush's second term. Barack Obama may have been elected in November of 2008, but he did not take office until early 2009. So that's caveat (spin point) number one. Caveat (spin point) number two is the idea that Obama is blameless on the economy until July 2009.

Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on February 17, 2009. When he signed the act, his administration promised that unemployment would not rise above eight percent. Their own predictions showed that unemployment would peak between quarters one and three of 2009, and would begin falling after that. In fact, after the ARRA was passed, Obama said "that 14 days after I signed our Recovery Act into law, we are seeing shovels hit the ground." So two weeks after the stimulus passed, the administration was already claiming jobs were being created or saved.

According to the administration's own Recovery.gov website, the purpose of the ARRA was to:

On Feb. 13, 2009, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 at the urging of President Obama, who signed it into law four days later. A direct response to the economic crisis, the Recovery Act has three immediate goals:

"Immediate" goals. Not 'July 2009 and onward' goals. The moment Obama put pen to stimulus plan and started claiming progress, his administration started impacting the American economy. Or, at least the parts of the economy held dear by Democrat partisans.

How has that worked out for the country's unemployment rate?

Obama's own economists predicted a slowdown in unemployment by July of 2009, if the stimulus were not passed. That has not quite been the case. Unemployment is still over nine percent. In his eagerness to protect Obama, Klein's expert economist glosses over those facts. Actual unemployment has increased after quarter one of 2009. Shapiro argues the exact opposite, that unemployment skyrocketed under Bush, but has been flat post Obama stimulus. The only way to 'prove' this is to fiddle with the timeline and ignore the administration's own predictions and actions. more...

Posted by: Slublog at 11:10 AM | Comments (102)
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OMG: Spitzer and Parker Are Like a Modern Day Gable and Lombard!
— Ace

You know what CNN has been missing in its lineup? Cutesiness.

We really need cutesiness in political coverage, of the kind that champion lightweight/professional ditz Kathleen Parker provides.

So, if you can stomach it, here are long-time john Spitzer and confirmed idiot Parker exchanging cutesy by-play with just a hint of Sam-and-Dianne sexual tension, which is oh so titillating, because you really want to think about a whoremonger getting all up on a deteriorating sorority house-mother.

Posted by: Ace at 11:02 AM | Comments (127)
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Mayor/King For Life Richard Daley Not Seeking Reelection
— Ace

Just this slug and nothing more as of yet.

CUS says he's polling at around 30% approval.

I guess The Machine needs a different frontman.

Points and Figures looks back upon the lamentable Daley rule, and tosses out a horrible name for successor: Rahm Emmanuel.

Posted by: Ace at 10:50 AM | Comments (82)
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Computer Simulations Predict 51 Seat GOP Gain
— Ace

At Hot Air's headlines, political scientists run 1000 simulated contests and find a 51 seat gain to be the most likely scenario. (Or, I guess, that's average of the scenarios, I guess an under-over.)

The below chart shows how many seats the Democrats are expected to win, and the peaks for each interval indicate the frequency that particular seat-count comes up. The red/blue is not about how many seats each wins; it just indicates that if Democrats win under 218 seats, as the case for most of the graph, then the House will be under Republican control.

Credit: Bafumi & Erickson

They cite one successful prediction...

Two weeks before Election Day in 2006, we posted a prediction that the Democrats would gain 32 seats and recapture the House majority.

But that's not a long track record, and I note they don't themselves call out their 2008 prediction. I assume that one was off.

In their chart, there is a genuine possibility of the Democrats only winning around 185 seats. The Democrats hold 256 seats now (including one open seat formerly controlled by them), so... well there seems to be a genuine possibility, on the high end of course, of a 71 seat gain. And I don't even believe that's the ceiling, either.

In more poll news:

Rasmussen: GOP holds 12 point advantage with likely voters. This matches the biggest GOP lead, ever, as found by Rasmussen.

Rasmussen: Fiorina takes (insignificant) lead over Boxer, 48-47. I still go by the rule tied is ahead, even on Rasumussen.

In this video, political reporters tell Scarborough that Feingold is in real trouble in Wisconsin.

Posted by: Ace at 10:07 AM | Comments (118)
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