Terrible news as long-time blog-friend Patty Ann has died.

Rocketman at POWIP remembers her:

Patty Ann was a lovely woman who was always witty, cheerful, and kind. And she will surely be missed. I canÂ’t help but get the feeling that, if at all possible, heaven will be a little brighter today because sheÂ’s joined itÂ’s ranks.

That's from Stace McCain who's also lowered the flags to half staff.

She was a wonderful woman. Few people just make other people feel good about themselves and life. She was special.

Posted by: Ace at 01:06 PM | Comments (95)
Post contains 95 words, total size 1 kb.

You can hardly fault Reality for being unable to penetrate the Reality Based Community's defense -- it's an airtight scheme, gorgeous in design and flawless in execution, in which Reality is barely able to so much as reach midfield before being stripped of the ball.

It's as if the Reality Based Community has erected an impregnable wall on the 50 yard line: Thus far, and no further.

MVPs...? It's hard to answer, because when a defense is operating at this level of perfection, both finesse and smashmouth simultaneously, how do you pick out stand-outs without, by negative implication, suggesting that other members of the team performed anything less than brilliantly?

But if we're forced to chose MVPs from this Murderer's Row of All-Time Reality yardage-deniers, I guess we'd have to say the Four Horsemen would be, as usual, the Never Give An Inch quartet of Charles Johnson, Kos, Eric Boehlert (who works for a $15 million a year outfit unable to get more readers in a month than I get in a week), and, of course, the Sister Act Double Threat of Joy Behar and Barbara Walters.

And yet... we expect such performances from them. Week after week they put up eye-popping statistics in a defense against Reality so awesome in its design and so ferocious in its execution that we stand in childlike awe of these... Heroes.

I'll say it: Heroes. When someone is operating that this high a level of superlativeness, you almost become a kid again, just marveling at them and realizing, as kids fortunately never realize, I can never rise to that level of achievement. Almost like comic-book crusaders -- touched by some strange X Factor, apart from humanity itself, both blessed and cursed at the same time to be so far above their biological fellows.

However, this Wrecking Crew of Reality-demolition is so on top of their collective game we just have come to expect a highlight reel every time they take the field.

But when someone we never even heard of before -- someone who subbed in at the last moment because the starting strong safety, Amanda Marcotte, turned her ankle in practice the Friday before -- steps in and performs even above and beyond that Fearsome Foursome's heroism... well, that requires some notice.

Matthew Shaffer is the first sports writer I've seen calling out Cannonfire on what is almost certainly a career game.

First, he proposed the Yfrog hack that rallied the hell out of Team Reality Based Community in the second quarter, when things seemed to be a little too close for comfort. Then, even after his theory was discredited and disproved, he nevertheless continued building on it.

He just don't have any quit in him, as they say.

And then -- in the closing second of the fourth quarter, when other members of the Reality Based Community were just basically jogging around in anticipation of the showers, the game well in hand -- he did something truly remarkable.

He suggested that Anthony Weiner himself was now part of the conspiracy.

Anthony Weiner today said that he sent the picture via Twitter to Gennette Cordova. He said that he had never spoken to her on a personal level. She tells the same story, and there is no reason to doubt her.

Thus, Weiner made the most amazing confession conceivable: That he just sent a crotch shot out of the blue to someone he did not know. Worse, he used Twitter -- which places all images on public display, even when sent as a direct message. (The example here proves the point; that painting was sent by "Chalice" as a DM, yet it is also public.) Moreover, he did this incredible thing knowing full well that there were political enemies tracking his every move on Twitter.

Sorry.

I don't believe that scenario. I accept every part of his confession except for the statement about the night of the 27th.

I wouldn't believe that part if Weiner personally called me up and insisted.

Wouldn't believe it if Weiner personally told him he was guilty?

Now that's a game face for y'all.

While you guys are out chasin' ass and getting drunk after the game, you know what this guy's doing?

Windsprints. And leg presses.

He's doing the tip drill all by himself, and then tackling himself.

And what are you p*ssies doing? Whining that Madden 11 didn't make you a franchise player?

Gotta earn that right, Cuz.

After explaining it's simply too ridiculous to be credited as possible that a Congressman would indiscreetly sext a Comely Coed....

...

My imagination is as good as anyone else's, but my brain refuses to accept the possibility.

Why would he lie about the night of the 27th? Because, as is now established, and as we have all long suspected, there is a lot else in his history that he does not want investigated or discussed further.

In particular, Breitbart has made it clear that he possesses an explicit shot, probably involving an erection. If I were Weiner, I might say anything -- anything -- to forestall that image from being made public.

Breitbart clearly demanded public justification for his decision to run a story based on a shady source whose name he does not know, and whom he himself had come to suspect of malfeasance.

Did Breitbart contact the congressman and blackmail him?

His answer? No, not explicitly, but Breitbart's public declarations constituted a disguised extortion threat, and hence an effective blackmail scheme.

You know, if I had just three of this guy on my squad, I wouldn't just win the Super Bowl. I'd actually take my team into entirely different sports leagues and take home every goddamn trophy they have, too.

Dog Snowboarding? Competitive Line Dancing? Extreme bowling? Shit yeah, Son, mark 'em down as already won.

Game Summary: At Next Media Animation. Well, it's not really a game summary. I'm just keeping the riff going. more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:00 PM | Comments (305)
Post contains 1006 words, total size 6 kb.

Obama's had a hell of a run. President Obama has been in office going on three years but thusfar he's only had difficulties with Bush's Guantanamo policy, Bush's War in Iraq, Bush's War in Afghanistan, and Bush's Economy.

Of course, along the way, he did get a polling boost from President Obama's Takedown of Usama Bin Ladin.

Like that old joke between husband and wife: "Your kids need to be disciplined." But our kids managed final round in the spelling bee.

Obama's might have to start taking responsibility for his misbehaving, surly, underachieving brat of a Depression.

Asked who they trust to do a better job on the economy, 45 percent named congressional Republicans while 42 percent chose Obama. ThatÂ’s a marked turnaround from a mid-March Post/ABC survey when 46 percent said they trusted Obama to do a better job handling the economy and just 34 percent named Republicans in Congress.

Among electorally critical independents, 44 percent said they trusted Republicans more to handle economic issues while 39 percent preferred Obama. In March, independents favored Obama on the question 40 percent to 29 percent.

Now you've probably noted that what I quoted does not actually implicate the "Who has the burden of blame question?" I am trying to get an answer here; the article says that the public has shifted pretty far to the blame-Obama position, but they seem to have forgotten to include the actual figure. That's not a partisan thing -- the headline is about just this finding -- but they do seem to have brain-farted and forgotten to include the figure the whole article's about.

So, I'll make up a number. It used to be 25% that blamed Obama; now it's 42%.

Where did I get that? I made it up, what did I just say?

Lots of other findings, including Obama's Usama Bounce now lost, and more than 60% of the country saying they've ruled out a vote for Sarah Palin as President.

(By the way, why do these articles keep resorting to locutions like "almost two thirds" or "more than six in 10" when they could just use the actual number, like 64% of whatever? Annoying. I can guess at the rough rounded number and be right "seven in 10" of the time. It's the exact number that's interesting.)

And, while I am inclined to support T-Paw, he only fares a little better than Palin in a head-to-head with Obama; Palin runs 17 points behind, T-Paw, 11 points.

But there is someone who's actually ahead of Obama. He's not my guy, and I don't know how he can possibly win the argumentative case on ObamaCare while claiming that RomneyCare was good and necessary, and ohmygod this latest thing about global warming, it's like he's walking around with a baseball cap that says "PLEASE DON'T SUPPORT ME," but....

Among all Americans, Obama and Romney are knotted at 47 percent each, and among registered voters, the former governor is numerically ahead, 49 percent to 46 percent.

That's a real grim milestone for Obama. Even if you don't want to just jump on Team Romney over a single poll (I'm resistant to that myself), that is, I think, the first time a named Republican has been ahead of Obama in a poll.

Isn't it?

Posted by: Ace at 11:15 AM | Comments (227)
Post contains 580 words, total size 4 kb.

I'm a little conflicted on this -- I don't actually believe the "joke" claim. On the other hand, it's hard to really go after the Comely Coed.

But if, like Verum Serum, you just happen to notice this... odd concordance... what are you going to do?

This is a tricky situation. I assume that it is widely believed that we don't know the real situation with the Comely Coed. I believe the media even believes this.

On the other hand, what are we going to do? We can't really get aggressive with her. She's not exactly a target that inspires partisan aggressiveness. She's just a girl at school.

This is a pretty damn deft way to handle it from Verum Serum.

You don't have to me mean to notice, now that Verum Serum points it out for all of us, that the Proposed PR Statement is awfully similar to the Comely Coed's.

Now, it can be asserted: Well of course and so what? The Comely Coed found herself in a jam, due to Weiner's actions, so why couldn't it just be that she was an innocent, as she says, but did in fact seek a little help in demonstrating that from some old PR hands?

This is possible, of course. But then, we're back into that problem I keep having, that these innocent explanations are a lot more convoluted than less-innocent hypotheses.

I honestly don't want to, as I just tweeted to her, "ding" the Comely Coed unnecessarily. Whatever happened here, she is either entirely innocent or guilty of flirting (etc.) with a married guy, which isn't cool, but then, she's not the one who took the vow of marriage and the oath to defend the Constitution.

The problem is that she is 21 years old. And that means that Weiner's sending a junk-shot to her is kind of a big deal. And his claim -- that this was a "joke" -- can't be permitted to stand.

It wasn't a "joke." He sent the same picture out when he intended to get cybernetically busy with Megan Broussard. There was no clown nose on his penis-- so in what fashion did he intend to signal a "joke" with this particular deployment of the Congressional member, whereas in other cases he intended it to signal sexual interest?

I contacted the Comely Coed by Twitter to ask about this, telling her I thought Verum Serum's piece was suggestive. She answered, "Really? It's so desperate."

I don't think it's desperate. And I told her so. I think it's an interesting and suggestive find. It's not conclusive, like I'd call some things. But suggestive? Yes, I think it's very suggestive. It suggests a conclusion. It may not go all the way home in proving that conclusion, but it does suggest one.

@stranahan (Lee Stranahan) goes one step further and suggests a comparison to the statements put up by the parents of the underage girls might be similarly suggestive.

Like I said, this is tricky. It's hard to really "go after" these girls who are either victims or, at worse, victims who were game for some amount of Weiner's awfulness.

The entire reason that we are particularly interested in girls younger than 21 here (or, frankly, just 21) is that we assume that an older, craftier, more experienced guy has too many advantages over a young girl in this situation, and it ergo is immoral to try to make moves on them. It's not fair. It's not right.

But that same reason also restrains us from really going after them, because-- well, see above. We assume that it's unfair for a 46-year-old wannabe Cassanova to try out 30 years of accumulated sleazy pick-up maneuvers on people too young and inexperienced to see through this crap. And that makes them sort of victims, even if not wholly innocent victims.

So Weiner has us in a tricky spot, doesn't he? On one hand he's talking with girls that he should not be secretly communicating with under any circumstances: on the other hand, the girls he's talking to are sympathetic (as young girls tend to be) so that dissuades us from really getting sharp with them here.

I really like Verum Serum's piece, in getting at these questions in a deft way.

And, bear in mind: No matter what you think, please don't forget that we are not in some big important mission to really rough up any of these collateral-damage people just because we think they're not being fully candid.

Don't go bananas on them. The very reason it was improper for Weiner to talk to them at all -- it's unfair; they're young and naive -- is the very reason we have to treat them with, ahem, kid gloves.

One Important Point: If Weiner wanted to protect the Comely Coed, he could say "I did not have inappropriate contact with the Comely Coed, who's just a victim here, but I did have inappropriate contact with another 21 year old."

See, doing that, then we don't have to involve her at all. Because he would have conceded what we endeavor to prove.

We could just take that admission and never speak of the Comely Coed again. Because we wouldn't have to. The only reason we're even discussing her would no longer exist. We mention her to demonstrate he was going after 21 year olds-- if he admits that, we have no need to ever mention any particular 21 year old again.

But of course he's not doing that. Once again he's hanging her out to twist in the wind to protect what's left of his career, which isn't even all that much.

And... Of course, if Representative Weiner really was only concerned about these collateral damage victims, he could do the honorable thing and resign.

His claim is that he sent a college girl -- apparently 21, though of course, he could not have been certain she was a sophomore or even a freshman -- a picture of his erection, unsolicited, as a "joke."

And then he says: I don't think I've done anything wrong enough to resign over.

Really? Really?

You just admitted to unsolicited indecent exposure to an unwitting girl in college -- not a minor, but just fortunately right over that line -- a picture of your erection, as a "joke," but you don't think that that's incompatible with serving in a high office of public trust?

Resign. If you care about your other victims.

But you don't, so you won't.

Posted by: Ace at 10:10 AM | Comments (239)
Post contains 1130 words, total size 6 kb.

Dan Boren will announce later today that he will not seek reelection in 2012, a serious blow to Democrat efforts to retake the House. Oklahoma has five seats, and this is the only one held by a Democrat. Boren, a 37 year old conservative who bucked Pelosi's leadership, won comfortably last November with 57% of the vote. Although anyone named Boren as always been a safe bet for reelection in Oklahoma--his father, David Boren, served as governor and senator--the southeastern Oklahoma district, "Little Dixie," is not safe and went for John McCain by a 2-1 margin in 2008.

From The Hill:

The decision came as a surprise to Oklahoma Democrats and threatens the party's ability to hold the Republican-leaning seat.

"I never had any idea that he was not planning to run for reelection," said Wallace Collins, the state party chairman.

The 2nd district went for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2008 by more than 30 points.

Boren was one of the few Blue Dog Democrats to survive the GOP wave in 2010.

The four-term incumbent bucked his party on healthcare last year and voted against the Democrats' reform bill. He subsequently faced a primary challenge, which he easily survived. He handily won reelection in November with 57 percent of the vote.

Because of Boren, this has been regarded as an easy hold for Democrats. Now it is an easy GOP pickup. It could be that Boren is reading the tea leaves differently than most. And it could be the start of a trend for "safe" Blue Dogs. More from the Washington Post.

Update: Commenter "Quilly Mammoth" points out that the seat was formerly held by Brad Carson, a strong Democrat, who appears to be interested in running again. So I may have been too quick to call it an easy GOP pickup. Regardless, Carson will have a tough fight on his hands with this president and this economy.

Posted by: rdbrewer at 09:55 AM | Comments (69)
Post contains 341 words, total size 2 kb.

Continuing with the no-Weiner-but-all-boned diktat from the Head Moron, here's a pretty good summary of what ails some random country:

_____________ has become the poster child of an Entitlement Society – the public sector has extended everywhere and private capital has been crowded out by the need to keep the public sector employment in place

Take a guess. Answer below the fold. more...

Posted by: andy at 09:27 AM | Comments (61)
Post contains 323 words, total size 2 kb.

You've earned an open thread and an MSPaint map again.
Updated our frontrunner, Generic Republican, using the recent polling and PVI stats, for June:

I don't know what is more depressing though. My skills with MS Paint, or that this is where we stand at 9% unemployment.

New Open Thread Rules:
No discussions about Weiner, bacon, hobos, Ace, myself, my maps, each other, the dog you saw vomiting in the front yard, broken glass, or bad music.
NO obligatory 80s references, snark, commentary, or pseudotrolling.

No discussions about anyone whose name rhymes with Nailin', Gomnee or Dawventi, or Christina Henricks.

No comments by anyone with an I, O, S, or T in your name.

No Jeffs, Jeffes, Jeifs, Jiffs, or Goffs.

No comments fewer than 16 characters or more than 30.

No haikus, poems, sonnets, parody songs, parody sonnets, or parody-within-parody.

Absolutely no discussions of fat people, fat people falling down, or fat people falling down ontop of each other. This includes discussions of using fat people crashing into each other at high velocities to create anti-matter.

No zombie references.

Last rule- ignore everything I said and hijack the hell out of this.

Posted by: CAC at 09:11 AM | Comments (120)
Post contains 215 words, total size 1 kb.

God, I hate this whole stupid thing.

Look: Sarah Palin was speaking casually, not in an interview, but while doing something else, in a queue or something. Instead of saying "Paul Revere warned the colonists about the British," her brain skipped ahead to the last part of the sentence, and thus said "Paul Revere warned the British."

The left and the media -- but I repeat myself -- is going bananas over this. Here's what they postulate: Sarah Palin, former mayor, former governor, former nominee for vice president, didn't know that Paul Revere's mission was to warn the colonists of a coming British attack.

They are claiming that she does not possess the common knowledge possessed by a first grader.

Plausible? Is that as plausible as "She tongue-tripped while speaking"? Let's run the tape of Sarah Palin making this statement.

Whoops! #Hacked! #WhoCanISue?

That seems to be Barack Obama combining simple arithmetic with his knowledge of American government and history and coming up with the answer that he's "visited fifty seven states" and still has one more to go.

And then immediately says that by "one more" he means "Alaska and Hawaii," which, breaking out my World Atlas, actually appears to be two states.

So he thinks the country has 59 states? Or 58, including the apparent "Double State" of Alaskawaii?

Even if you give him a break on that -- he thinks the country has Forty nine states? Or forty eight?

Isn't fifty a rather easy number to remember? His own home state -- allegedly (but I kid) -- is immortalized in a television program called Hawaii Five-O, the Five-O noting that Hawaii is the fiftieth state.

I suppose the show was filmed after Alaskawaii was partitioned into two different states, most likely for administrative convenience, since they're a thousand miles apart and having nothing at all in common, except I think they both have salmon and probably both get The Super Station. (But is it really?, Sean Spencer just emailed me to ask.)

So how could he think America has 49 states (or 47 plus a hitherto unknown Double State)? Or 59, as he actually said?

And crucially, does anyone in the media believe, or postulate, that this is evidence that Obama is not just not terribly intelligent, but actually, in fact, profoundly mentally challenged with an effective knowledge base beneath that of a first grader?

No, they don't. And neither do I, actually. I don't cite this video to prove Obama is dumb. I cite it to prove the media is dumb. And also dishonest.

What is the operative assumption the media demonstrates in never, not even once, alluding to this strange conception of American state numeration Obama apparently subscribes to? That a simple brain-fart is commonplace and says nothing about the speaker's intelligence whatsoever.

And in Palin's case?

Well. That assumption just goes out the window. She's actually a Mentally Retarded Female, despite not wearing the government-ordered MRF bracelet.

Is that really the conclusion I am being invited to draw from these facts?

Really? That, it is seriously proposed, should be my take-away?

So, we have a case of two slips of the tongue. One completely embargoed by the media, and the other a source of "real news" chatter -- and because the media cocoons itself in a reinforcing bubble of group-think in which the "right" is defined by David Frum and Meghan McCain and the "left" is defined by Daily Kos Diarists.

Not even Kos himself; no, Kos is a centrist. Just a common-sense guy who believes in stuff you should obviously believe, as reporters do.

But his diarists... welllll, some of them tend a little left.

Bloggers have a reputation -- well-earned -- of being rather juvenile and stupid. And part of that juvenility and stupidity is due to the fact that most of us work on a clock of a half hour to an hour: Every 30 to 60 minutes, another post has to come up, whether it's a keeper, or it's a bit dumb, or whatever it is.

Even so, just because you're occasionally going to Post Stupid, doesn't mean you have to Post Retarded. You don't have to throw all common sense and intelligence out the window just to please your more rapid and indiscriminate readers. If you do that, then Sarah Palin's "flub" winds up saying a lot more about you than about her.

Like this fucking idiot, who I guess is paid a real salary to work at what is usually thought to be a real media organ.

This is apparently what this moron thought was "interesting" and "hot" this day. Of all the interesting stuff in the news, this nitwit seemed to believe that we must all pay strict attention to a commonplace slip of the tongue.

Now: Is that a good writer? Is that a writer with a keen sense of discriminating between the trivial and the meaningful? Is this a writer demonstrating a capacity for interesting thinking, or even just the ability to recognize things of interest?

And of course I don't just want to pick on this particular nobody. Just because this particular nobody, who thinks it's a Stop the Presses moment when a political candidate flubs a sentence on the trail (akin to those various internet ankle-biters who wish to Stop the Presses because you just wrote "Your" when you meant "You're"), was able to secure a paid gig at a national website when I can think of about one hundred conservative bloggers who aren't, what's the word, gaytarded enough to toss out partisan idiot-bait like this who would never even be considered for such a position because Oh my God, they might say something critical of Obama and embarrass the company, well, the point isn't this particular nobody.

The point is that the media is generally made up of morons and hacks who all seem to agree that this is a very telling moment indeed.

Can they answer me why this moment should be telling, and Obama's 57 states (or his various other gaffes, flubs, and stupid utterances) should not be?

No, they can't, and not only can't they, but they never will even try. Because they don't have to. Because they live in a world hermetically sealed from any contrary thought and it's easier for them to pretend the question was never posed at all -- that the question simply does not exist -- than to embarrass themselves in attempting to justify the wildly divergent treatment of the two cases.

Just as a note, I do this all the time myself. If I attempt to write "That ABCNews reporter really ate Weiner's lunch in play-acting a shy, withdrawing manner, encouraging Weiner's bully instincts to kick in, and making Weiner demolish himself," how that often comes out is as...

That ABCNews reporter really eight Weiner's lunch...

Now, do I really think that "eight" is a verb? No. What my brain does -- and I imagine everyone's brain does this -- is work on parts of the sentence five or eight words ahead while dumping the previous words into the "automated grunt-work bitchwork" lobe of the brain (I believe that's the actual anatomical designation, but please look it up).

So while my brain is focused on the last half of that sentence, the dumb part of my brain actually instructing my fingers which keys to hit on the keyboard is often doing dumb shit like issuing the command "TYPE 'eight'" rather than "TYPE 'ate'," as the smart part of my brain actually left a note to do.

But let's pretend that such typos and verbal stumbles and brain-farts are really, really, really important indicators of intelligence, except in such cases as we don't wish them to be, such as Barack Obama being apparently unable to work the simple mathematical operation of subtracting 2 from 50.

Yes, yes, dying, dum-dum dinosaur media, by all means, let's talk about interesting stories like this.

Posted by: Ace at 08:41 AM | Comments (409)
Post contains 1343 words, total size 9 kb.

Geoff's chart continues to make news, even though Geoff has moved on from the blog for real life.

Actually the folks at e21 are updating it, but Pethokoukis notes how continuingly awesome it is.

Unemployment continues to be above where Obama predicted it would be without the stimulus; that is, according to Obama's promises and projections, we would have been far better off simply not having a stimulus at all. Unemployment would be lower and we'd have an extra trillion in mad money to play with, if we felt like it.

In related news, because I said so, TMZ reports that Weiner offered PR help to Ginger Lee in crafting a lie to cover their, um, "frivolous exchanges between friends."

I need frivolous friends like this, I tell you what.

No seriously, we now return to our regular not-so-much-dick format. But how can I pass up on this?

See, this is a post about economics. It just has this bonus material.

Via Gabe for the employment stuff and Slublog for the deployment stuff. Those are their Twitter handles, btw, if you want to follow.

New York Post Headline Writer Hits the "WIN" Button With A Sledgehammer: "Erections Have Consequences."

Poetry.

Posted by: Ace at 07:43 AM | Comments (160)
Post contains 214 words, total size 2 kb.

Via James Pethokoukis, Tim Pawlenty is giving an economics speech today. He is live tweeting the speech.

He's also has an op-ed out previewing his arguments.

America's economy is not even growing at 2 percent — and that's what many projections say we can expect for the next decade. That's not acceptable.

Let's start with a big, positive goal. Let's grow the economy by 5 percent, instead of an anemic 2 percent.

It's been done before: Between 1983 and 1987, the Reagan recovery grew at 4.9 percent annually. Between 1996 and 1999, under President Bill Clinton and a Republican Congress, the economy grew at around 4.7 percent annually.

In each case, millions of jobs were created, incomes rose and unemployment fell to historic lows. The same can happen again.

...

We should cut the corporate tax rate by more than half. I propose reducing the rate to 15 percent from 35 percent, recognizing that the tax code is littered with special interest handouts, carve-outs, subsidies and loopholes that should be eliminated.

But just changing business tax rates is not enough. That's because we know most job growth will come from small and medium-size businesses, and their owners are taxed under individual tax rates, not corporate rates. So, pro-job and pro-growth tax reform must include individual tax reform as well.

Five percent economic growth over 10 years would generate $3.8 trillion dollars in new tax revenues. With that, we would reduce projected deficits by 40 percent — all before we made a single budget cut.

The other 60% he says should come from spending cuts.

The crisis that we face requires immediate action. That's why I have proposed capping and block-granting Medicaid to the states, raising the Social Security retirement age for the next generation and slowing the rate of growth in defense spending.

I will also call for Congress to grant the president the temporary and extraordinary authority to freeze spending at current levels, and impound up to 5 percent of federal spending until the budget is balanced.

As an example, cutting even 1 percent of overall federal spending for six consecutive years would balance the federal budget by 2017.

He also calls for passing a balanced budget amendment but doesn't seem to put much stock in it. I think it's a box a lot of conservatives want checked but I don't get why.

First, if you could get enough votes to pass it (two-thirds in both houses before it even goes to the states) you'd have more than enough votes to pass an actual balanced budget.

More importantly, to me balancing the budget is a secondary issue to the level of spending. You can find a way to balance the budget at current Obama levels of spending but that would be a disaster. I'd rather a smaller, more prudent level of deficit at significantly lower levels of spending.

To my mind, the issue isn't simply economics, it's freedom. A less intrusive government tightly boxed into to its proper role should be the real goal.

As for the politics, if it comes down to Romney vs. Pawlenty, at this point I'd lean to Pawlenty. Yes, they both have sinned against conservatism but I think both have a real shot at beating Obama. Pawlenty simply has less baggage than Romney. Mitt is going to spend so much time playing defense in the primaries and genaral, I'd rather a guy like Pawlenty who is at least talking the talk at this point have a shot with a cleaner slate.

Either way...still a long way to go.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:11 AM | Comments (124)
Post contains 612 words, total size 4 kb.