The inevitable crisis

This article by WashPost's editorial page editor Fred Hiatt is almost too good to excerpt.  We have an entitlement crisis growing and this President, despite his stated promises, is determined to ignore them: "Obama's false victory over the deficit."

In other words, when it comes to entitlement reform, as far as this administration is concerned: mission accomplished.
Which is fair enough, if your horizon is Jan. 20, 2017.
Anyone looking beyond that date should be alarmed at the satisfaction Obama proclaims despite the prospect of ever-rising government debt. What’s most astounding about his flip-flop on entitlement reform is that the biggest victim will be the progressive causes he claims to cherish.

I've been saying this forever: the debt load will squeeze out all the things we call the "government":

Federal debt has reached 74 percent of the economy’s annual output (GDP), “a higher percentage than at any point in U.S. history except a brief period around World War II,” the CBO says, “and almost twice the percentage at the end of 2008.” With no change in policy, that percentage will hold steady or decline a bit for a couple of years and then start rising again, to a dangerous 78 percent by 2024 and an insupportable 106 percent by 2039.
As a result, by 2039 the government will be shelling out interest payments equal to 4.5 percent of GDP, more than twice the average share of the past 40 years.
Meanwhile, with the population aging and costs still rising, payments for Social Security and health programs including Medicare and Obamacare also will soar, the CBO estimates. By 2039 those programs will consume 14 percent of GDP, again double the average of the past 40 years. That’s taking into account the good news that Podesta heralded in his tweet.
Put those together and the government will be spending on entitlement programs and interest alone just about what it spends today on the entire budget. Everything else — schools, pre-K, Pell grants, national parks, mass transit, housing subsidies — will get squeezed, or taxes will soar, or both.

I fear that Americans are so enamored with the road to serfdom, they'll fail to see the danger of government that exists only to tax and send that money to retirees and banks.  At 100% debt-to-GDP, there's virtually no flexibility for a government to respond to major disruptions like the TARP bailout and we become a slave to our creditors.  This was how Eisenhower broke the will of the Brits in the Suez Crisis.  It's not so hard to see how a showdown over Hong Kong or Taiwan would take shape when China floats taking payment on $1 trillion in U.S. bonds.

But, hey, we'll have Obamacare.  Which is nice.

RFK Jr.: Shut up or it's jail for you

Powerline: "Little Bobby, now in full backtracking mode."  Why he never, ever, said he we should throw "denialists" in jail and throw away the key.

Kinda funny and awful

Buzzfeed: "“Modern Family” Editor Live-Tweets Every Passenger’s Worst Nightmare."  It was a drunk woman on a plane being loud and drunk.

I don't travel as much by plane as I used to but, especially after 9/11, it was always my fear that the flight would be grounded due to the airline's hair-trigger response to jerks like this.

Norway says "nei takk" to the Olympics

Thank you Google Translate!  Anyway, Norway heeded the will of the people and pulled Oslo out of contention for the 2022 Winter Olympics, leaving only China and Kazakhstan in the running.  It seems the Norwegians didn't want the headache and recoiled at some of the IOC's outlandish demands.

Democrats hate free speech: the proof

It's been my long-standing position that Democrats hate the First Amendment and now I have the data.  Hot Air: "Poll 51% of Democrats support criminalizing hate speech."  As long as they can define hate speech, the Dems are ready to censor.

By a 2-1 margin, both Republicans and Independents oppose hate crime laws but by well over a 2-1 margin, Democrats say "shut the hell up".  Because Gaia, racist.

Another article proving it's impossible to talk about Social Security

News flash everybody: there are Republicans out there in the American heartland who are suggesting that all may not be well in Social Security land - just like the program's Trustees:

Neither Medicare nor Social Security can sustain projected long-run program costs in full under currently scheduled financing, and legislative changes are necessary to avoid disruptive consequences for beneficiaries and taxpayers.

Crazy talk! sez the New York Times (natch) columnist Gail Collins who has decided it's all a diabolical plot to throw Grandma from the gravy train:

By the way, Social Security is not going bankrupt. In 2033, incoming payroll taxes will no longer be enough to pay for all the benefits. But they’ll still cover about 75 percent of the payments and we could take care of the rest of the problem with a few tweaks — like getting rid of the cap on Social Security taxes. (Currently, all income over $117,000 is exempt from the payroll tax.)

There you go Generation X: you may have an Excel spreadsheet with estimated benefits from Social Security when you retire in 2033 but it's going to be 25% less than you calculated.  Geez, what's the big deal?  Besides, we can just soak those Richie-Riches.

Or can we?  The handshake agreement of Social Security is that it is a universal benefit and everybody gets back a benefit proportional to what was put in.  Raising the income cap means that people like Bill Gates would receive million-dollar Social Security benefit checks every month.  FDR didn't want Social Security to be a welfare program and that's why the income cap exists: the maximum in taxes also caps the maximum benefit.

This important distinction is lost on 98% of the commenters on the NYT opinion page, who are in full torch-and-pitchfork mode.  We shouldn't expect anything different from the paper that puts populist rhetoric above all.

Youths of an indeterminate race and/or religion

Charles C.W. Cooke: "All the facts fit to delete - When the truth is too objectionable to print."

A while ago I read an article about how newspapers would report the last meal to condemned prisoners.  It was the kind of minutiae that readers wanted to know and the media provided the information.  Now I guess it's considered somehow objectionable to know that Timothy McVeigh ate two pints of mint and chocolate chip ice cream before they slipped the needle in.  The media made the decision that's not "news."

Now details are expunged from the public record if they fail to fit a mold on the newsroom floor.  Is it any wonder that the public's faith in the American media is at an all-time low?

Well, except for Fox News.

Extra - From Hot Air.

What day is this? Tuesday?

My kid's in the hospital recovering from a pneumothorax due to - I'm not making this up - practicing his trombone too much.  It's going as well as could be expected.

Speak with candor

Roger Kimball: "The fate of free speech."  "What are the major threats to free speech today? Perhaps the overarching condition that threatens free speech is the spread of political correctness. This has sharply curtailed candor about all manner of contentious subjects.  It is no longer possible, in polite society, to speak frankly about race, about differences between the sexes, or a hundred other topics — so-called “climate change,” for example, or the relationship between Islam and free speech."

Backward caps everywhere

We were in Amherst tonight for dinner, unaware that it was homecoming at the University of Massachusetts.  (The football team lost again to go 0-5 on the season.)  I immediately thought of this Simpsons episode:

Thai Man: You quitter!  [sing-song:] Quitter boy!  Quitter boy!
Bart:     I'm sorry.
Thai Man: Now restaurant fail.  Children go to state college.  Serious
          students powerless against drunken jockocracy.  Baseball hats
          everywhere.

And the language...the Algonquin Round Table it was not.  Even with little kids within earshot, you'd think there was only one adjective in the whole world.

BAM! You're getting an IRS audit

PJ Tatler: "Famed Chef Emeril Lagasse Says Obama May Drive Him Broke."

Because war on women

Ace has a recap on the actions of Kathy Rummler whose name has been floated as a potential replacement for Eric Holder: "Surprise! Name Floated as Possible Holder Replacement Has Prior History of Slow-Walking Information."  Just like Holder, Rummler acted as a "heat shield" to the Boy President who had to find about stuff on TV.

I believe the Rummler whispers.  Some think that Holder is making a fast and furious exit so that the Democratic Senate can make an appointment before that chamber flips to the Republicans.  But I think it's just the latest chapter in the "war on woman" narrative.  Cause she's a woman and those old men are going to attack her.  So prediction time: Obama will nominate a woman.

American deadbeat

Zero Hedge: "Meet the world's largest subprime debtor."  "Do you have a friend who consistently borrows 30% of his income each year, is currently in debt about six times her annual income, and wanted to take advantage of short-term interest rates so that he needs to renegotiate with his banker about once every six years? Well, if Uncle Sam is your friend you do!"

Ladies and gentlemen, the paper of record

Neo-Neocon: "The surprise is not that the Times got it so wrong...the surprise is that it ever issued the correction."

This correction from the NY Times comes only a day after an AP reporter dropped the mask on Twitter and a week after it was demonstrated that the media is burying Obama's bad poll numbers like they never did for Dubya.

This raises a question about the media: are they actively lying or merely ignorant?  Is the bubble on Eighth Avenue so impenetrable that it took ten days for the Times to correct a clearly erroneous statement?  Or was there a debate in the Times' newsroom as to whether admitting the mistake would encourage the "wrong" people?

What separates a writer from a "journalist?"  I would guess the perfessers at Columbia would say something about objectivity or the ability to present facts without bias - apparently too much to ask.  Because the Tea Party and Sarah Palin.

The underachievers of the Kennedy clan

Now that winter is approaching, Joe Kennedy will be running commercials in Massachusetts whoring himself out to Venezuela for cheap oil.  At least he's doing something that can be considered constructive (if you're willing to sell out).  Then there's environmental wacko Robert Kennedy Jr., a deluded half-wit who - in the well-worn habit of the Far Left - wants to throw climate deniers in jail:

Kennedy saved his most venomous comments for the Koch Brothers, accusing them of “treason” for “polluting our atmosphere.”
“I think it’s treason. Do I think the Koch Brothers are treasonous, yes I do,” Kennedy explained.
“They are enjoying making themselves billionaires by impoverishing the rest of us. Do I think they should be in jail, I think they should be enjoying three hots and a cot at the Hague with all the other war criminals,” Kennedy declared.

Clearly, this is a man of rational thought.

Extra - Via Maggie's Farm and Power Line.

You had one job

This WashPost article is unintentionally hilarious: "Secret Service reviews White House security after fence-jumper enters mansion."

The Secret Service on Saturday launched a security review to learn how a man carrying a knife was able to get inside the front door of the White House Friday night after jumping a fence and sprinting more than 70 yards across the North Lawn — the first time that has ever happened.

Conclusion of security review: the Secret Service sucks.  Everybody start counterfeiting: nobody's on guard.

Side note: jumping a fence + 70 yards!  Unless this was Usain Bolt, this was an embarrassingly long time to respond to an intruder.

Another viewpoint

Hit and Run: "3 reasons to NOT fight ISIS."

I don't know: maybe they're a JV team after all but they're a JV team pulling in over $1 million a day in boosted oil.  With that kind of inflow, they'll be major league soon enough.

I had a rough week

I *heart* you red wine.

The wrong medicine

Hit and Run: "America's Self-Inflicted Economic Wounds -  "But it's a lousy recovery, and one that most people find unconvincing as hell. Whatever else the sort-of recovery, not really recession may be, it's strong evidence of self-inflicted economic wounds. America may be limping along, but we did it to ourselves."

Stone of Destiny

It's funny but just a couple months ago, on a whim, I rented "Stone of Destiny" from Netflix about a group of Scottish college students who boosted the Stone of Scone from Westminster Abbey in 1951.  I have a funny feeling that Scots are going to vote for independence tomorrow.  Why?  Because the pro-independence Scots are full of passion while the pro-Unity are just holding on to the familiar.

Extra - Seems like there's a lot of "yes" voters here on Reddit.