What's 2 trillion between friends?

$2,000,000,000,000. That's the amount by which the Obama administration raised its ten-year estimate of the nation's budget deficit from the one it made only a few months ago. Now, $2 trillion is a lot of money. But even more significant is the fact that this revision represents almost a 30 percent increase -- no tiny percentage of the earlier $7 trillion figure. It seems that expenses are higher -- up 24 percent this year, the largest increase since the height of the Korean War -- than originally estimated, and revenues are lower. The resulting deficit, says Peter Orszag, Obama's budget director, is "higher than desirable". He might have added that the administration's critics had it right when they claimed that the earlier estimate represented a turn around the dance floor with that old seductress, Rosy Scenario.

There's worse: the new estimate assumes that Medicare and Medicaid spending will be cut by $622 billion, even though Congress has made it know that it is reluctant to make any such cut. Then there is the $600 billion in revenue included for the sale of emission permits, despite the fact that the House has given away so many permits in order to buy support for the cap-and-trade emission-reduction that the program will produce at most $450 billion. Those two items alone come to almost another trillion dollars in red ink. Throw in another trillion-plus for Obamacare, and it is no surprise that senior economist Bill Gale, at the liberal Brookings Institute, says that the deficit will hit over $10 trillion over the next decade, a figure he finds "deeply alarming".

This year, the deficit will come to 11.2 percent of GDP, and by 2019 the debt will be equal to 76 percent of the value of the nation's output of goods and services, almost double the 41 percent when Obama took control of the nation's finances. No problem, say White House economists. Unsustainable, says Warren Buffett, among others.

Stelzer notes that Obama may be hanging himself in a way he doesn't even realize. Bernacke has promised he'd soak up -- remove -- all this extra money he's dropped into the country from helicopters. But when? If it's 2011... That's what happened to Bush the Elder.

George Will is on a similar roll, but hitting the Cap and Tax schemes harder.

The supposed means of paying for the president's $1 trillion health-care plan include substantial Medicare cuts that will never happen, and the auction of carbon-emission permits that, instead, would be given away by the Waxman--Markey cap-and-trade legislation the House has sent to the Senate.

That legislation is a particularly lurid illustration of why no serious person nowadays takes seriously Washington's increasingly infantile bandying of numbers. The point of cap-and-trade is to impose a ceiling on the nation's greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions—primarily carbon dioxide. The legislation endorses the goal of holding the global carbon--dioxide level to a maximum of 450 parts per million by 2050. That. Will. Not. Happen.

Steven Hayward and Kenneth Green of the American Enterprise Institute do the math. The 450 level is less than the 2030 projected level for all countries other than the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's 30 developed nations. Which means the global goal would be unreachable even if in 2030 those 30 disappear—if they have zero emissions. Waxman--Markey endorses the goal of reducing all of this nation's GHG emissions 83 percent below 2005 levels by 2050. In 2005, the United States' carbon-dioxide emissions were 6 billion tons, so an 83 percent -reduction would permit about 1 billion tons—what America's emissions were in 1910, when the population was 92 million and the economy was one twenty-fifth of today's. But by 2050, the population probably will be about 420 million, so per capita carbon-dioxide emissions would have to be 2.4 tons—one quarter of 1910's per capita emissions.

Hayward and Green say that historical data indicate that the last time emissions were that low was 1875....

Obviously Hayward and Green are correct that meeting the 2.4-ton goal "is not going to be seriously attempted." So why do the same politicians who want to radically expand government's control of health care pretend otherwise? Because they are not serious people. Which is why so many Americans are seriously alarmed.

I didn't know Obama was still sneaking in that absurd $600 billion in cap and taxes into his budget math.

Update: Obama's Borrowing 10 Times Greater Than Reagan's: And Reagan's deficits were considered unsustainable. And won and ended the Cold War.

Harrowing borrowing:

According to the Obama administrationÂ’s mid-session budget update, the federal government will have to borrow nearly 40 percent of its total expenditures in 2010, reports CNSNews.com Staff Writer Matt Cover. The report shows that 39.9% of all federal income will be borrowed, making borrowing the single largest share of revenue in 2010. The next largest component of federal revenue is the personal income tax, which accounts for only 27.3% of federal funds

ObamaÂ’s borrowing is 10 times greater than ReaganÂ’s, which was fueled largely by defense spending as America battled the Soviet Union for dominance in the Cold War. ObamaÂ’s 2010 spending is almost entirely domestic, by contrast, with mandatory spending programs, such as the bank bailout and stimulus spending programs nearly equaling defense expenditures despite two ongoing wars.

In fact, defense spending, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, account for 19% of federal spending while mandatory programs such as the bailout and the stimulus spending programs account for 18.9%.

Posted by: Ace at 08:53 AM | Comments (3)
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Pic via Red Square at The People's Cube

At Rasmussen. 53% disapprove, which I'm pretty sure is also a new high.

And more poll analysts predict "moderate to heavy" Democratic losses next year. Everyone's cautious to say they don't mean the Democrats will lose the House -- but that just seems to me to be part of everyone's natural reluctance to predict big changes. It feels a lot safer, less out on a limb, to predict the Republicans just getting close.

I'm guessing there's a fairly decent chance that the Republicans will win the House, but no one wants to talk about that much, preferring to talk up the Republicans getting "within striking distance." After all, in a wave type election, it could be that virtually every contest is lost by the Dems. Elections almost always turn on the economy, and it seems to be getting worse.

"There was more breadth to the global downturn than we’ve ever seen, so it’s going to be very difficult to re-start the broader global economy,” Stephen Roach, chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia Ltd., said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. “It’s too early to put all this behind us.”

Yesterday's Gallup: Mostly steady at 50-42.

With adults, not likely voters. Tends to confirm Rasmussen.

Correction: Just Another Poster corrects me, noting that the Gallup number I posted is from yesterday; today's figure doesn't come out for an hour or so.

Updated: A tiny bit of noise in today's Gallup -- 51-42.

Posted by: Ace at 07:41 AM | Comments (3)
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One of the best political speeches I've read in a long while was delivered by Barnaby Joyce recently. Not super polished, or slickly smooth, or honed for brevity, but he hit the ball and hit it hard. He is after all as he says, an accountant by trade, not a slick politician deft in the art of lying. more...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 07:21 AM | Comments (17)
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A week ago I wrote about the likely California primary contest between Carly Fiorina and state Assemblyman Chuck DeVore. They're going after Senator Barbara Boxer, whose numbers are looking pretty weak right now.

At the time, I didn't know much about DeVore (or Fiorina, for that matter). To remedy that, the Assemblyman was kind enough to go on the record and answer my questions.

The interview is lengthy, so I've cut it into three parts. The first part, in which we talk about DeVore's campaign strategy, current polls, and Carly Fiorina, is below the fold. In the second and third parts we actually get into the issues—California and national issues, respectively. Those will go up tomorrow and Wednesday.

Update: The second part of the interview is here.
The third part of the interview is here. more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 06:22 AM | Comments (6)
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The publisher said Ridge's book would talk about political pressure to raise the Terror Threat Level.

Ridge now said no such thing ever happened.

"I'm not second-guessing my colleagues," Ridge said in an interview about The Test of Our Times, which comes out Tuesday and recounts his experiences as head of the nation's homeland security efforts in the first several years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

...Now, Ridge says he did not mean to suggest he was pressured to raise the threat level, and he is not accusing anyone of trying to boost Bush in the polls. "I was never pressured," Ridge said.

I guess that's the end of the Olbermann booking.

Publishers release jazzed up quotes all the time to generate some interest in what otherwise is likely to be a deathly boring book. I guess they figure the walk back won't get as much attention and the PR buzz from the initial release.

Given Ridge's less than electric public personality, it's hard to blame them for wanting to make it seem exciting. Who in their right mind was going to read this book before they heard that quote? Now we can all go back to ignoring it.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:01 AM | Comments (3)
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Happy Monday! Ugh, Hello September?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:51 AM | Comments (2)
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Thanks to Maet for putting up with you insufferable punks last night. And what does he get for all his trouble (including giving you a clip showing a shot from a nuclear cannon?) Nothing but trouble, thatÂ’s what. His hands are still shaking so badly he could barely type up this week's commenter stats, which are below the fold.

Just to follow up on all things nuclear cannon-like, a reminder that the clip along with many others can be found on the DVD ”Trinity and Beyond” (aka “The Atomic Bomb Movie”) We talked about it on a post many many months ago with special emphasis on that freaky-ass scene near the end when the Chinese conduct their first test and a bunch of their soldiers are seen riding horses at top speed towards the blast site wearing gas masks and waving rifles. Had a definite “Planet of the Apes” feel to it. The DVD is narrated by (wait for it)…William Shatner! The link above has a couple of other clips along with original trailer.

In other science-ish news, a British team has beaten the worldÂ’s longest-standing land speed record, which was for a steam-powered vehicle.

” Engineers from Hampshire in the south of England have broken the world's longest-standing land speed record - the fastest speed for a steam-driven car. The car, nicknamed the World's Fastest Kettle, reached an average speed of 225kph over two runs at the Edwards Air Force Base in California.”

Nitpickers and naysayers will naysay that it’s actually propane-powered. I’ll admit it would be a lot more impressive if there were a guy standing behind the driver shoveling coal into the boiler. There’s a vid at YouTube of the team ‘splaining how it all works, but you’d have to listen to people talking in British accents and I just don’t have the heart to do that to you tonight. Next up for the team: Balloon-speed record.

More fun below the foldÂ…

more...

Posted by: Open Blog at 05:42 PM | Add Comment
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Yesterday Andrew Sullivan had a post on his blog about the WaPo's article that DrewM mentioned below and managed to completely embarrass himself. Ann Althouse pointed out a major error, but trust me there are plenty of others. Here's the post in its entirety:

A commenter on Ann Althouse's pro-torture blog reminds readers what the Washington Post chose to omit from its story - KSM's debriefing from the Red Cross:

"During the harshest period of my interrogation I gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear in order to make the ill-treatment stop. I later told interrogators that their methods were stupid and counterproductive. I'm sure that the false information I was forced to invent in order to make the ill-treatment stop wasted a lot of their time," he said."

The bulk of the information seems to have come when he was not being tortured - from traditional, legal and ethical interrogatory methods used by the West as a way to distinguish civilization from barbarism. But, as we now know, the barbarians were at the very heart of the American government for seven years.

The original post not including his quote from the WaPo article was only 6 lines long. Yet he managed to make the following outright mistakes, unfair accusations, and other assorted idiocies:

1. The Washington Post did in fact include the quote from KSM in its article as you can see here.
2. Ann Althouse does not run a pro-torture blog. Only in Sullivan's bizarro world could you believe this.
3. Sullivan is overly credulous of KSM. Sure he helped plan the murder of thousands but he would never tell self-serving lies to the Red Cross. That's simply inconceivable.
4. The information revealed by KSM didn't come during the moments when he was undergoing EIT. Well duh. The point of these methods is primarily to break the detainee's will to resist and get them to reveal something (anything) that makes further holding out pointless. It's not like cops have to do the whole good cop/bad cop routine for every single detail a suspect reveals. Once is usually enough, and the details come out after the routine.
5. He claims that the Bush administration were barbarians for the last seven years. You can only misuse a word so far before it becomes meaningless. I wonder where actual head hackers like KSM fall on the Sullivan scale...really bad barbarians?

So in just six lines he managed at least 5 major stupidities. That has got to be approaching a Fisk-ian level of compressed stupidity.

Posted by: Open Blog at 05:19 PM | Comments (3)
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h/t Doug Ross. As the faces of the Democratic Congress Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid represent everything I find most reprehensible about the political class. First politicians have no class and second there should be no political class. I find it fundamentally offensive that there is an entire group of people who spend their lives confiscating the wealth created by others and giving to their allies. Pelosi, Reid, Murtha Kennedy and yes Obama have never spent a single day of their lives being productive. They have looted the productive efforts of better people than themselves and decided they knew better what to do with them.

It's hard to pick among them for the biggest villain, and at least Kennedy had the common decency to die and deny them that 60th vote, but Reid has always made me ill. He is not bright, weak and arrogantly drunk with unearned power. He is petty, venal and pretty much any other invective you wish to employ. But in a ray of light shining on his fetid, animated corpse he is actually in trouble for re-election. Thankfully so are many other members of the Socialist Democratic Party. There are many reasons for him to get on with his long-deserved dirt nap, but this has to rank pretty high up there. Sherman Frederick of the Las Vegas Review-Journal writes.

On Wednesday, before he
addressed a Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce luncheon, Reid joined the
chamber's board members for a meet-'n'-greet and a photo. One of the
last in line was the Review-Journal's director of advertising, Bob
Brown, a hard-working Nevadan who toils every day on behalf of
advertisers. He has nothing to do with news coverage or the opinion
pages of the Review-Journal.

Yet, as Bob shook hands with our senior U.S. senator in what should
have been nothing but a gracious business setting, Reid said: "I hope
you go out of business."

Later, in his public speech, Reid said he wanted to let everyone
know that he wants the Review-Journal to continue selling advertising
because the Las Vegas Sun is delivered inside the Review-Journal.

Such behavior cannot go unchallenged.

You could call Reid's remark ugly and be right. It certainly was boorish. Asinine? That goes without saying.

But to fully capture the magnitude of Reid's remark (and to stop him
from doing the same thing to others) it must be called what it was -- a
full-on threat perpetrated by a bully who has forgotten that he was
elected to office to protect Nevadans, not sound like he's shaking them
down.

Wow, how nakedly revealing of what a horrible person, and even worse Senator, Reid is. He believes he is above reproach and that the "free" press is only free to cheerlead as our country is remade as a progressive paradise. Mr. Frederick continues with what should become a rallying cry for all Nevadans who believe in representative government controlled by the people.

For the sake of all who live and
work in Nevada, we can't let this bully behavior pass without calling
out Sen. Reid. If he'll try it with the Review-Journal, you can bet
that he's tried it with others. So today, we serve notice on Sen. Reid
that this creepy tactic will not be tolerated.

We won't allow you to bully us. And if you try it with anyone else, count on going through us first.

That's a promise, not a threat.

And it's a promise to our readers, not to you, Sen. Reid.

Posted by: Uncle Jimbo at 04:30 PM | Comments (6)
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Shocking, except it's not.

The British government decided it was “in the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom” to make Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, eligible for return to Libya, leaked ministerial letters reveal.

Gordon BrownÂ’s government made the decision after discussions between Libya and BP over a multi-million-pound oil exploration deal had hit difficulties. These were resolved soon afterwards.

The letters were sent two years ago by Jack Straw, the justice secretary, to Kenny MacAskill, his counterpart in Scotland, who has been widely criticised for taking the formal decision to permit MegrahiÂ’s release.

The correspondence makes it plain that the key decision to include Megrahi in a deal with Libya to allow prisoners to return home was, in fact, taken in London for British national interests.

Edward Davey, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, said: “This is the strongest evidence yet that the British government has been involved for a long time in talks over al-Megrahi in which commercial considerations have been central to their thinking.”

Two letters dated five months apart show that Straw initially intended to exclude Megrahi from a prisoner transfer agreement...

Straw then switched his position as Libya used its deal with BP as a bargaining chip to insist the Lockerbie bomber was included.

The exploration deal for oil and gas, potentially worth up to £15 billion, was announced in May 2007. Six months later the agreement was still waiting to be ratified.

...

In a letter leaked by a Whitehall source, he wrote: “I had previously accepted the importance of the al-Megrahi issue to Scotland and said I would try to get an exclusion for him on the face of the agreement. I have not been able to secure an explicit exclusion.

“The wider negotiations with the Libyans are reaching a critical stage and, in view of the overwhelming interests for the United Kingdom, I have agreed that in this instance the [prisoner transfer agreement] should be in the standard form and not mention any individual.”

Within six weeks of the government climbdown, Libya had ratified the BP deal.

It is bizarre to me that leftists want to subcontract out the US foreign policy to foreign powers. The naivety here is astounding -- the assumption that every other country except the US cares only for the greater, general good and easily sets aside its own nationalist ambitions and pecuniary gain.

Posted by: Ace at 09:19 AM | Comments (16)
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