Mad Debt – Mark Steyn – National Review Online

Somewhere or other, they’ve a vague memory of having seen a newspaper story accompanied by a Congressional Budget Office graph with the line disappearing off the top of the page and running up the wall and into the rafters circa mid-century. So they usually say, “Well, fortunately I won’t live to see it.” And I always reply that, unless you’re a centenarian with priority boarding for the ObamaCare death panel, you will live to see it. Forget about mid-century. We’ve got until mid-decade to turn this thing around.

Otherwise, by 2020 just the interest payments on the debt will be larger than the U.S. military budget. That’s not paying down the debt, but merely staying current on the servicing — like when you get your MasterCard statement and you can’t afford to pay off any of what you borrowed but you can just about cover the monthly interest charge. Except in this case the interest charge for U.S. taxpayers will be greater than the military budgets of China, Britain, France, Russia, Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, India, Italy, South Korea, Brazil, Canada, Australia, Spain, Turkey, and Israel combined.

via Mad Debt – Mark Steyn – National Review Online.

Catching on yet?

Yep:

Are you starting to understand the scope of what we are talking about now?  Obama is going to embezzle considerably more than the entire economic output of Canada, India or Russia to his cronies before the 2012 election — and that is just counting this round of spending.  This doesn’t include the other $5 Trillion he has already burned through since 2009.

China is not going to lend us this money because they simply don’t have anything close to that much money to lend.  This $2 Trillion is going to come from the Federal Reserve.  Where is the Federal Reserve going to get $2 Trillion?  They are going to print it out of thin air.  We are in the midst of the largest currency debasement ever seen in human history.  There is only one result that can come of currency debasement:  hyperinflation and total economic and societal collapse.

Have you also forgotten the so-called “Bush tax cuts”?  Yeah.  Those rates are going to expire on January 1, 2013.  Obama will presumably still be occupying the Oval Office at that time assuming that he is not forcibly removed or that the Republic is still intact at that time.  Taxes will increase significantly at that point, and the Congressional Budget Office has scored everything put before them given the fact of the massive tax increases on 1/1/2013.  Do you understand that?  When these Republicans and even these so-called “Tea Party Freshmen” tell you that there are no tax hikes in their “plan,” they are consciously, willfully, knowingly lying to you through their teeth.

via Blog: We The Stupid.

Jonah Goldberg + Epic Rant = Instant Classic

Epic Rant is Epic:

So flashforward to this week. Tom Friedman — who knows a bit about Hezbollah — calls the tea partiers the “Hezbollah faction” of the GOP bent on taking the country on a “suicide mission.” All over the place, conservative Republicans are “hostage takers” and “terrorists,” “terrorists” and “traitors.” They want to “end life as we know it on this planet,” says Nancy Pelosi. They are betraying the Founders, too. Chris Matthews all but signs up for the “Make an Ass of Yourself” contest at the State Fair. Joe Nocera writes today that “the Tea Party Republicans can put aside their suicide vests.” Lord knows what Krugman and Olbermann have said.

Then last night, on the very day Gabby Giffords heroically returns to cast her first vote since that tragic attack seven months ago, the vice president of the United States calls the Republican party a bunch of terrorists.

No one cares. I hate the “if this were Bush” game so we’re in luck. Instead imagine if this was Dick Cheney calling the Progressive Caucus (or whatever they’re called) a “bunch of terrorists” on the day Giffords returned to the Congress. Would the mainstream media notice or care? Would Meet the Press debate whether this raises “troubling questions” about the White House’s sensitivity? Would Andrea Mitchell find some way to blame Sarah Palin for Dick Cheney’s viciousness? Would Keith Olbermann explode like a mouse subjected to the Ramone’s music in Rock and Roll High School? Something inside me hidden away shouts, “Hell yes they would!”

via To Hell with You People – By Jonah Goldberg – The Corner – National Review Online.

Pajamas Media » A Double Tragedy for Norway

There’s a lot more to this story than meets the eye, and a lot less. At face value, a man murdered 90+ minors. Just below the surface, people with much invested in vast arrays of politicizing such things – on both sides, mind you – are scrambling for blame, cover, excuses, et al. People asking why he did this, well, aren’t very curious – he laid it out in a manifesto, leaving few stones unturned.

I’ve read some of his manifesto, and I’ll read some more. Here’s an interesting reaction from PJ:

During those hours when we all thought this was a jihadist attack, one thought that crossed my mind was that this would change the political map of Norway. For years, the Progress Party, which is the second largest of Norway’s seven or eight major parties, has led the way in calling for more responsible policies on the immigration and integration of people from Muslim countries — and has been demonized as a bunch of right-wing extremist xenophobes who hate Muslims.

I assumed that after this attack, Norwegians would vote in a Progress Party-led government in the next elections. Now it appears that the man who committed all these murders is a former member of the Progress Party and is, indeed, a right-wing extremist xenophobe who harbors (according to Dagbladet) a “violent hatred for Muslims” and multiculturalism, and who targeted the Labor Party youth camp because he blames the ruling Labor Party for the Islamization of Norway. Norway’s political future looks very different now, in short, than it did 24 hours ago.

via Pajamas Media » A Double Tragedy for Norway.

Obumble And The Press: Clueless Together | Wizbang

Um, what he said:

It’s quite clear:  Your policies have simply failed.  Worse yet, they were impotent from the start.

It is time for Americans to face the possibility that Barack Obama does not know what he is doing.  He is unqualified for the position.  He has not the intelligence, the experience, or the fertile imagination to successfully perform the demands required to be the President.

He is in way over his head.  And the country is suffering due to his inadequacies.

via Obumble And The Press: Clueless Together | Wizbang.

One President Left Behind: McConnell Schools Obama on Debt – Page 2 – Ann Coulter – Townhall Conservative

Obama’s big idea for taming a government with a $3.83 trillion budget and a $14.3 trillion debt is to collect — in the best-case scenario — another $300 million a year from corporate jet owners. That would cover .007 percent of the federal budget or .002 percent of the national debt. Is it happy hour yet?

Instead, Democrats demagogued the issue, with Obama flying around the country on Air Force One, claiming that if the debt ceiling is not raised, America will default on its debts and the entire economy will collapse.

If Republicans cut government spending, recipients of government checks come after them with pitchforks. If the Republicans refuse to raise the debt ceiling to force spending cuts, the economy collapses.

In general, the trend seems to be in the direction of higher spending and endless debt.

The government will just keep spending and spending until we’re all on bread lines. But there won’t be any bread because within 10 years, nearly the entire federal budget will go to pay Social Security and Medicare recipients. (On the plus side, a lot of us will be speaking Greek by then.)

via One President Left Behind: McConnell Schools Obama on Debt – Page 2 – Ann Coulter – Townhall Conservative.

Oh my: Angry Obama storms out of debt-ceiling negotiations « Hot Air

A lot of the commentariat bash Allahpundit, but this is beyond-priceless, one of the better paragraphs posted at HotAir in its history. Aside from enjoying the commentary, the bolded part had my laffing:

The Democratic spin on what happened is that Cantor “rudely” interrupted The One mid-finger-wag and he got huffy and walked out. As for what he means by “going to the American people,” I don’t want to get my hopes up but we might be in store for another 45-minute lecture tomorrow morning about corporate jets. As an ironic gloss on this drama, read Chuck Todd’s take on how, in principle, Obama and Boehner aren’t all that far apart. If O publicly committed to a truly significant concession, like means-testing for Medicare or raising the eligibility age for Social Security, then maybe the GOP could be persuaded to take another look at letting the Bush tax cuts lapse for the wealthy. But since he won’t, they can’t. Said Boehner to a gaggle of reporters this afternoon, “Dealing with them the last couple months has been like dealing with Jell-o.”

via Oh my: Angry Obama storms out of debt-ceiling negotiations « Hot Air.

Selective Shaming – Mark Steyn – National Review Online

We’re not talking about hacking a schoolgirl’s cellphone here. Real people are dead. Yet nobody’s going to close down any wing of the vast spendaholic DEATFBI hydra-headed security-state turf-war. And while Eric Holder, the buccaneering attorney general at the center of this wilderness of mirrors, doesn’t yet have as many Distinguished Public Servant of the Year awards as Beverly Hall, judging from his cheerfully upfront obstruction of the congressional investigation, he’s not planning on going anywhere soon.

So, at the News of the World, every single employee is clearing out his desk. But, at the Atlantic Public Schools, at the DEATFBI, life goes on. A curious contrast. The striking feature of Big Government, from Athens to Sacramento, is its imperviousness to any kind of accountability — legal, fiscal, electoral, popular. A media mogul, a bank chairman, an oil executive, a corporate-jet depreciation-claimant are easily demonizable: As President Obama cautioned CEOs a couple of years back, “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

via Selective Shaming – Mark Steyn – National Review Online.

Lovin’ it

Just found this blog via one of the other blogs on my reader – it’s so dope I’m adding it to the sidebar. Check it out.

Mark Halperin’s Kinsleyesque Gaffe Lands Him An Indefinite Suspension – Big Journalism

To borrow a favorite phrase from the President, let me be clear: All Halperin did was use the “D” word. And in the context of what he was talking about, the “D” word basically means “jerk.” It isn’t nearly as offensive as, say, Rachel Maddow’s ironic love affair with the word “teabagging” a couple of years ago. I mean, MSNBC clearly suspended Halperin because of the sexual connotation of the “D” word and not because he simply called the President a jerk, right? Because if it wasn’t about the sexual nature of the term, MSNBC just set a new standard for what is suspension-worthy. And if it was about the sexual nature of the term, Maddow and others at the network have dodged some bullets in the past – except for Ed Schultz, obviously, but he was really suspended for being a … well, dick.

It’s all a little confusing but that’s what happens when you have no moral grounding. You create dilemmas and double-standards and all sorts of logical potholes for yourself. Progressives hoist themselves by their own petards constantly because of it. It’s not even hypocrisy, per se. It’s just a lack of boundaries. Like unsupervised children, they will wind up getting in trouble. That said, there is one hardfast rule among those who choose to live within the confines of the Left’s media echo-chamber: Don’t mess with Obama. If you don’t couch your criticism with glowing praise about his intellect or personality, the reaction will be swift. There isn’t any days-long deliberation about what to do when you step out of line and give your honest opinion. It’s a couple of hours max and you’re sitting on the bench indefinitely.

via Mark Halperin’s Kinsleyesque Gaffe Lands Him An Indefinite Suspension – Big Journalism.