Tag: politics

And with no surprises, apparently. Here it is. No doubt it will be thoroughly checked out. Now, if we are to credit the “cunning plan” theorists, we should see a massive uptick in Obama’s approval ratings. I note that in addition to apparently exploding the conspiracy theories about his birth in Kenya, it also blows away the theories of those who claimed that it had already been released or could not be released.

While Donald Trump is taking credit for Obama’s 180 on the long form certificate release, I suspect that it has a little bit more to do with Jerome Corsi’s upcoming book. I assume there must be some interesting stuff in there to have finally forced Obama’s hand.

UPDATE – Key word above being “apparently”. The document released by the White House appears to be digitally altered. Here we go again…..

Here we go again:

Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, whose outspoken libertarian views and folksy style made him a cult hero during two previous presidential campaigns, will announce on Tuesday that he’s going to try a third time.

The fact that Ron Paul was absolutely right about everything he warned Republicans during the last primary should make him the automatic nominee. Naturally, this means that the Republican leadership is going to do everything they can to stop him so that they can throw up a sacrificial RINO like Romney to secure a second ObamaHillary’s first term.

Anyhow, Rep. Paul just guaranteed that the Republican debates will be a lot more interesting. I can’t wait to hear Romney stumbling over his defenses of invading Libya, raising the debt ceiling, and letting the banks off with foot massages since hand slaps would be too harsh.

Before the Republican Party caves again:

Federal borrowing is on pace to hit the legal limit on the national debt in less than a week. As set in a law passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama on Feb. 12, 2010, the legal limit on the national debt is $14.2940 trillion. As of the close of business Tuesday, according to the Daily Treasury Statement released at 4:00 pm today, the portion of the national debt subject to this legal limit was $14.268365 trillion. (The total national debt, including the portion exempted from the legal limit, was $14.3205 trillion.)

This left the U.S. Treasury with the authority to borrow only an additional $25.635 billion before it hits the statutory debt limit.

Of course the Republicans are going to cave. Even the normally credible Sen. Paul has said that he would vote for raising the debt ceiling just this one last time so long as Democrats promised that they would contemplate considering the possibility of thinking very hard about pretending to cut federal spending at some point in the distant future. Rep. Cantor has staked out a similarly tough position preparatory to waving the white flag.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor fired off a stark warning to Democrats that the GOP “will not grant their request for a debt limit increase” without major spending cuts or budget process reforms.

Got that? Process reforms. Major process reforms! I feel much better now. Surely the economy is saved!

Even the editors at NRO can’t stomach the ludicrous no-cuts deal that Boehner is attempting to strike with the Senate and White House:

We initially supported the deal House Speaker John Boehner cut with the White House to cut $38.5 billion from the rest of the fiscal year 2011 budget. It was only a pittance in the context of all of Washington’s red ink, but it seemed an acceptable start, even if we assumed it would be imperfect in its details. What we didn’t assume was that the agreement would be shot through with gimmicks and one-time savings. What had looked in its broad outlines like a modest success now looks like a sodden disappointment….

As they push a bargain that is still not fully understood, Boehner and the leadership have put their members in an awful fix with another deadline to keep the government open fast approaching. We’d vote “no,” even if we understand the impulse to move on to more important matters and to avoid a leap into the dark that might include a politically damaging shutdown. At the very least, freshmen and other conservatives should be frank about the deal’s shortcomings, refusing to exaggerate its merits as their leadership often has. The episode is strike one against the speakership of John Boehner.

I think it was fairly obvious from the start that Boehner was a fraud, his tears and odes to the Tea Party notwithstanding. I have very little confidence that he will stand up and refuse to raise the debt ceiling next month either, which would explain Treasury Secretary Geithner’s apparent confidence that he will soon have more money to spend.

The problem with the NRO perspective is that the advertised $38.5 billion deal wasn’t any more financially serious than its $300 million revised version, it merely provided better window dressing for the House Republicans. But as Republican cheerleaders, the NRO editors have real cause to be concerned because Boehner’s actions are all but guaranteeing some sort of third party challenge to the Republicans in 2012 and 2014.

How else can you explain their opposition to state laws requiring presidential candidates to prove their eligibility?

The Arizona Senate has approved a revised bill requiring presidential candidates to prove they are U.S. citizens eligible to run for the office. The bill approved Wednesday gives candidates additional ways to prove they meet the constitutional requirements to be president. It was prompted by the ongoing claim by some that there is no proof President Barack Obama was born in the United States and is therefore ineligible to be president.

Democrats argued the bill exceeds the state’s authority and say state officials are not fully qualified to determine the validity of a candidate’s documents.

Logic dictates that if Democrats really believed Obama was fully eligible for the office of president, they wouldn’t object to laws like this Arizona law. The fact that they are so vehemently opposed to such laws is a strong indication that they harbor the same doubts about him that the so-called birthers do, they’re just afraid to admit to them.

Obama’s half-hearted announcement of his purported attempt to win a second term as president tends to support my suspicions that he has no intention of being the Democratic nominee next year. I think he’s looking for an excuse not to run, just as the Democratic elders are looking for an excuse to run someone else.

Not only were the $38 billion in spending cuts merely an insignificant fraction of the $1.5 trillion deficit, which is $330 billion larger than the previously estimated $1.17 trillion estimate, but at least some of that $38 billion doesn’t actually represent a cut in spending:

A close look at the government shutdown-dodging agreement to cut federal spending by $38 billion reveals that lawmakers significantly eased the fiscal pain by pruning money left over from previous years, using accounting sleight of hand and going after programs President Barack Obama had targeted anyway.

Such moves permitted Obama to save favorite programs — Pell grants for poor college students, health research and “Race to the Top” aid for public schools, among others — from Republican knives. And big holes in foreign aid and Environmental Protection Agency accounts were patched in large part. Republicans also gave up politically treacherous cuts to the Agriculture Department’s food inspection program.

The full details of Friday’s agreement weren’t being released until overnight as it was officially submitted to the House. But the picture already emerging is of legislation financed with a lot of one-time savings and cuts that officially “score” as savings to pay for spending elsewhere, but that often have little to no actual impact on the deficit.

In other words, they “cut” money that had already had not been spent as planned, while committing to new expenses. It’s just more of the usual accounting smoke and mirrors; the bi-factional ruling party plays its game to keep the media and public entertained as the Fed continues attempting to put out the fire by pouring more gasoline on it.

UPDATE – Apparently the cuts are even more modest than anyone had imagined: A comparison prepared by the CBO shows that the omnibus spending bill, advertised as containing some $38.5 billion in cuts, will only reduce federal outlays by $352 million below 2010 spending rates. The nonpartisan budget agency also projects that total outlays are actually some $3.3 billion more than in 2010, if emergency spending is included in the total.

The RINOs have cast Mitt Romney to play the conventional Dole/McCain role:

Mr Romney, a former Governor of Massachusetts, declared “it is time we put America back on a course of greatness”, as he launched an exploratory committee for a presidential run. The 64-year-old Mormon father of five was defeated by John McCain in the party’s primary in 2008. But he has emerged as the favourite in a thin Republican field for 2012.

Setting aside the problem of whether Captain Underoos is capable of commanding the loyalty of a party largely comprised of people who view Mormonism as an aberrant cult, Romney’s more serious weakness is that his single biggest political triumph is the passage of Obamacare before it was called Obamacare in Massachusetts. Romney’s nomination simply cannot be logically squared with the Tea Party-fueled electoral victory of 2010, which is why I conclude that he won’t be playing the Dole/McCain role for which he has been selected, he’ll be playing the Giuliani role instead.

Furthermore, in a nation increasingly riven by ethnic and religious differences, it is less and less acceptable to attempt representing people from one geographic place and religion with an individual from a different geographic place and religion. A party with its roots in the South and Midwest will have little interest in being represented by a former governor of Massachusetts, no matter how good his hair happens to be.

Frankly, even the corpse of Ron Paul would make for a far better president than Mitt Romney.