Palin is the antithesis to Obama. Palin represents a biblical way of life. Obama represents a satanic cult.—
Palin’s God vs. Obama’s God - Grant Swank
Keep bringin tha nutty, you guys… I’ll grab some popcorn and settle in for a while.
(via danielholter)
Ugh. What a dumb quote.
I actually think Obama and Palin are pretty similar in two ways: little experience but got by on a lot of personality.
During a nationally televised address Tuesday, a visibly tired and worn President Obama informed the country that he was going out for a pack of cigarettes and would be back in 10 minutes or so.— The Onion (via southpol) (via nogoodboyo) (via aubsome) (via ptbruiser)
—This meant that both faced the same post-election choice. Did they want to take their newfound eminence seriously? Or did they want to cash in on their celebrity?
For Palin, the serious path required at least serving out her term as governor before returning to the national stage. For Huckabee, it could have involved anything from starting a think tank to running for the Senate in 2010. For both, it would have meant wedding their political identity to ideas as well as attitudes.
So far, they’ve chosen celebrity instead. Huckabee spent the last year hamming it up on a weekly talk show, and the last month hawking a book of inspirational Christmas stories. As for Palin — well, you probably know what she’s been up to lately.
Nobody should begrudge them their choices. Think tanks are a snooze; Senate races are a grind. Signing autographs for your adoring fans is more fun than rounding up budget votes in Juneau.
But they were the wrong moves if either wanted to become president someday.
Op-Ed Columnist - They Chose Celebrity - NYTimes.com (via bellatoris)
This is a bit rich: The NYT calling out Palin and Huckabee for hanging future presidential hopes on personality and star power instead of ideas. Hello? Have they ever heard of Barack Obama?
—President Barack Obama took office promising to lead from the center and solve big problems. He has exerted enormous political energy attempting to reform the nation’s health-care system. But the biggest economic problem facing the nation is not health care. It’s the deficit. Recently, the White House signaled that it will get serious about reducing the deficit next year—after it locks into place massive new health-care entitlements. This is a recipe for disaster, as it will create a new appetite for increased spending and yet another powerful interest group to oppose deficit-reduction measures.
Our fiscal situation has deteriorated rapidly in just the past few years. The federal government ran a 2009 deficit of $1.4 trillion—the highest since World War II—as spending reached nearly 25% of GDP and total revenues fell below 15% of GDP. Shortfalls like these have not been seen in more than 50 years.
Going forward, there is no relief in sight, as spending far outpaces revenues and the federal budget is projected to be in enormous deficit every year. Our national debt is projected to stand at $17.1 trillion 10 years from now, or over $50,000 per American. By 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) analysis of the president’s budget, the budget deficit will still be roughly $1 trillion, even though the economic situation will have improved and revenues will be above historical norms.
[…]
What to do? The best option would be for the president to halt Congress’s rush to fiscal suicide, and refocus on slowing the dangerous growth in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. He should call on Congress to pass a comprehensive reform of our income and payroll tax systems that would generate revenue sufficient to fund its spending desires in a pro-growth and fair fashion.
Reducing entitlement spending and closing tax loopholes to create a fairer tax system with more balanced revenues is politically difficult and requires sacrifice. But we will avert a potentially devastating credit crisis, increase national savings, drive productivity and wage growth, and enhance our international competitiveness.
The time to worry about the deficit is not next year, but now. There is no time to waste.
The Coming Deficit Disaster - WSJ.com
Mr. Holtz-Eakin is former director of the Congressional Budget Office and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. This is adapted from testimony he gave before the Senate Committee on the Budget on Nov. 10.
I’m glad to see someone is telling them.
(via bellatoris)
Cynical-C Blog: (via Paul Scheer) > OnNovember 20, 2009anytime in 2008, at a Borders bookstore in Columbus, Ohio,Sarah PalinBarack Obama held a book signing event in support of“Going Rogue”his memoir.Palin’sObama’s supporters wantedherhim to run for the presidency, but they weren’t exactly sure whatshe’dhe’d do as president. Short on specifics, most of them were uncertain whatherhis policy positions are. They just felt that they likedherhim.She’she’s “real”. And that the solution to all of our country’s problems—health care, energy, the deficit, unemployment, and the economy—was tocutraise taxes andlowerdrastically increase spending, andPalinObama, they said, would solve them by doing just that.
I’m no Sarah Palin fan, but now you lefties out there know how conservatives felt during the campaign. What—you don’t have any relevant experience? What—nobody knows what you actually believe?
It’s time to pay the piper, my friends.
“Pretty good geo-economic lesson from SNL on US-Chinese relations.” (h/t ptbruiser)
But Obama’s statement is considerably worse than [Richard] Nixon’s. Whereas Nixon merely opined that Manson was guilty, Obama prejudged the outcome of the trial and sentencing. Manson and his co-defendants were tried in state court, a venue where the president has no authority. By contrast, the prosecutors who will handle cases of KSM et al. ultimately answer to Obama.— James Taranto.
Worse still, Obama was defending his own politically charged decision to try the defendants as civilians by offering the reassurance that the outcome is preordained. The president’s claim amounts to an assertion that the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York is a kangaroo tribunal. If this is how the Obama administration views due process, heaven help any American who is charged with a federal crime.
So [Obama is] making a STRONG ENDORSEMENT [for a public option—in his speech tonight], albeit a noncommittal one that leaves WIGGLE ROOM FOR HORSETRADING, because he intends to get “something” done.— James TarantoRemember during the campaign when Obama’s critics faulted him for having voted “present” so often as a legislator? In retrospect, it’s clear that this line of attack was totally unfair. Voting “present” was bold and decisive leadership compared with this.
Once again, I don’t think health care per se was ever really the issue. When pressed, no one in the administration seemed to know whether illegal aliens were covered. Few cared why young people do not divert some of their entertainment expenditures to a modest investment in private catastrophic coverage.
Warnings that Canadians already have their health care rationed, wait in long lines, and are denied timely and critical procedures also did not seem to matter. And no attention was paid to statistics suggesting that, if we exclude homicides and auto accidents, Americans live as long on average as anyone in the industrial world, and have better chances of surviving longer with heart disease and cancer. That the average American did not wish to radically alter his existing plan, and that he understood that the uninsured really did have access to health care, albeit in a wasteful manner at the emergency room, was likewise of no concern.
The issue again was larger, and involved a vast reinterpretation of how America receives health care. Whether more or fewer Americans would get better or worse access and cheaper or more expensive care, or whether the government can or cannot afford such new entitlements, oddly seemed largely secondary to the crux of the debate.
Instead, the notion that the state will assume control, in Canada-like fashion, and level the health-care playing field was the real concern. “They” (the few) will now have the same care as “we” (the many). Whether the result is worse or better for everyone involved is extraneous, since sameness is the overarching principle.
We can discern this same mandated egalitarianism beneath many of the administration’s recent policy initiatives. Obama is not a pragmatist, as he insisted, nor even a liberal, as charged.
Rather, he is a statist. The president believes that a select group of affluent, highly educated technocrats — cosmopolitan, noble-minded, and properly progressive — supported by a phalanx of whiz-kids fresh out of blue-chip universities with little or no experience in the marketplace, can direct our lives far better than we can ourselves. By “better” I do not mean in a fashion that, measured by disinterested criteria, makes us necessarily wealthier, happier, more productive, or freer.
