Explosion in Norway - Reuters: "Explosion rocks central Oslo."

Hey, what's another billion? - The Truth About Cars: "Chrysler is now an officially an Italian company; total taxpayer cost: $1.3b."

The economic morass - Maggie's Farm has a bunch of links on "the refusal of politicians to recognize the limits of government or to understand Econ 101."

Taking can-kicking to a whole-new professional level

First, there's this headline: "Trust in federal government hits a new low."

And why wouldn't it when it's packed with brave and principled leaders like the iconoclastic Senators known as the Gang of Six? Look upon their mighty works to avoid the financial collapse of our government:

Yesterday, the so-called Gang of Six—a cadre of Republican and Democratic Senators working independently from the administration and Congressional leadership—released a proposal to reduce the projected federal deficit by $3.7 trillon over the next decade. According to The Washington Post, it "requires lawmakers in the coming months to cut agency spending, overhaul Social Security and Medicare, and rewrite the tax code to generate more than $1 trillion in fresh revenue." It's so...so...bipartisan. But maybe not in an entirely good way.

The logic of this approach is unassailable: the federal government must raise taxes and cut spending in some manner yet to be determined.

The underwear gnomes were more responsible.

And then there's our President who keeps mouthing poll-tested words like "balanced approach" without ever deigning to provide the smallest clue what he would do to solve the debt crisis. Still, you gotta tip your hat to a guy who has the overarching self-regard to say things like this:

"This is actually a self-created crisis in some ways. It has to do with folks who are digging into set positions rather than saying how do we solve a problem," the president told KMBC, a CNN affiliate in Kansas City, Missouri.

Ah, you see, Obama doesn't believe he exacerbated the debt crisis or the poisonous Washington culture that has prevented resolution. It's all those other guys who aren't providing solutions, darn it.

Extra - USN&WP "How Obama blew a big debt deal": "Yet Obama has had plenty of chances to do something big about runaway spending and the mushrooming national debt, and he's taken a pass every time." Unless you count speeches and commission-assembling.

More - Zero Hedge goes for the "air quotes" record.

Quote of the day - Via Legal Insurrection, here's Vegas icon Steve Wynn explaining why nobody wants to hire workers: "And I’m telling you that the business community in this company is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the President of the United States. And until he’s gone, everybody’s going to be sitting on their thumbs."

For good measure, check out this Bloomberg article: "Why employers are slow to fill jobs." Choice quote: "We live in a time of extraordinary uncertainty about government policy with respect to taxes, health care, financial regulation, monetary issues, environmental regulation, and other areas." Better to just hunker down until November 2012.

"Friday Night Lights" farewell

The reckoning of runaway government - Opinion Journal: "Get ready for a 70% marginal tax rate." "Many Democrats demand no changes to Social Security and Medicare spending. But these programs are projected to run ever-growing deficits totaling tens of trillions of dollars in coming decades, primarily from rising real benefits per beneficiary. To cover these projected deficits would require continually higher income and payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare on all taxpayers that would drive the combined marginal tax rate on labor income to more than 70% by 2035 and 80% by 2050."

There's a trillion dollars right there - Commentary: "If polls should inform policy, what about Obamacare?" Yeah, right. The extreme unseriousness of this White House is epitomized by its ridiculous insistence that we spend $53 billion on high-speed choo-choo trains.

A good review of something so bad - Zero Hedge: "A brief history of Obama's fiscal record."

And for good measure here's Victor Davis Hanson with "St. Obama and the Debt Dragon."

The end of the beginning? - Calculated Risk:"Debt ceiling charade almost over." If you say so.

Missed the chance - The Atlantic's Clive Crook thinks that Obama passed up a golden opportunity to get a balanced debt deal by ignoring the Bowles-Simpson commission.

TGI "Friday Night Lights" - Tonight's the final episode of one of the freshest shows to ever grace television, one in which does not involve hip New Yorkers riffing on each other and sipping lattes. NPR replayed a Fresh Air piece with Coach Kyle Chandler today.

Speechifying ain't leading

Charles Krauthammer reminds us that even though there's been no shortage of Obama press conferences recently, he's yet to offer anything that could be called a plan to deal with the debt crisis:

All of a sudden he’s a born-again budget balancer prepared to bravely take on his own party by making deep cuts in entitlements. Really? Name one. He’s been saying forever that he’s prepared to discuss, engage, converse about entitlement cuts. But never once has he publicly proposed a single structural change to any entitlement.

Hasn’t the White House leaked that he’s prepared to raise the Medicare age or change the cost-of-living calculation?

Anonymous talk is cheap. Leaks are designed to manipulate. Offers are floated and disappear.

Say it, Mr. President. Give us one single structural change in entitlements. In public.

Obama's been pushing for the "big deal" but he's never touched entitlements which is the only pathway to genuine debt control. We're not going to get it by cutting back on park rangers.

Calling the bluff - Megan McArdle: "Go ahead, GOP, make Obama's day." "Because it is a bluff. Obama is not going to shut down the government rather than accept a short term deal. He's also not going to default. Doing so would virtually ensure that even if he doesn't have to raise the debt ceiling in 2012, come January 2013, he'll be cleaning out the Oval Office to make room for the next resident."

Everybody act surprised, the Obamacare chronicles - Hit and Run: "CBO: Government's innovative health savings programs don't work."

Good question - Hot Air: "If default would be a catastrophe, why is Obama opposed to a short-term deal that would avert it?" He better warm up to the idea, because that's the way this is heading.

Scenes from today's debt talks

With both sides far apart, House majority leader Eric Cantor advocated for a smaller package to get past the looming Treasury deadline and calm the markets:

That’s when Cantor said he would be willing to abandon his own insistence on having just one vote on the debt ceiling if they could agree to a smaller package of cuts in exchange for a shorter-term hike that would require another increase before the 2012 election.

As Charles Krauthammer noted, "long-term" planning for this President is one day after Election Day. So, no, we can't have another vote that might put Obama on the spot again.

But Obama said he wouldn’t do the debt-limit increase incrementally and that he would veto a short-term bill.

“That’s when he got very agitated,” Cantor told reporters.

“Obama lit him up. Cantor sat in stunned silence,” said an official in the meeting. “It was incredible. If the public saw Obama he would win in a landslide.”

And there's your White House mentality on bald display. Job #1: Getting Obama re-elected. Job #2: everything else.

Extra - Hot Air: "I don't want to get my hopes up but we might be in store for another 45-minute lecture tomorrow on corporate jets." Oh boy.

Nobody wants to do nothin' in Washington

I've been thinking about Senator McConnell's trial balloon to let President Obama raise the debt limit in three steps, and I decided I don't like it. Politically, it's a shrewd move. But philosophically, I'm so very sick and tired of politicians in Washington refusing to lead. This goes for the various Washington "czars" and Medicare's Independent Payment Advisory Board, and the latest showdown, waiting for the bond market to put sufficient pressure on the major players. Anything to pass the buck.

I mean these guys work about 30 weeks a year and every week is three, four days tops. And they're not digging ditches: all they have to do is represent the will of the people. But apparently putting words on a piece of legislation and then pushing a button to vote is too much.

If I had my druthers, Congress would be holding daily votes on raising the debt ceiling, so everybody can be on record. OK, you don't like the Ryan budget? What's the alternative? As Ari might say, let's vote it out. Do something.

Related - National Review: "Leadership by default."

They like the green - The Truth About Cars: "Where does the UAW stand on fuel economy?"

Elevating the discussion

Here's Jonah Goldberg:

Similarly, his shopworn rhetoric has become more desperate. On July 5, he said of the debt-ceiling negotiations, "It's my hope … that we'll all leave our political rhetoric at the door." The next day he insisted that "the debt ceiling should not be … used as a gun against the heads of the American people to extract tax breaks for corporate jet owners, for oil and gas companies that are making billions of dollars because the price of gasoline has gone up so high."

When Obama says people should drop their political rhetoric, he means everyone else.

Presidential.

Obama's gonna kill Grandma - The Social Security Administration chief actuary confirms that only the Treasury can withhold Social Security checks. Hey, whoa, let's tone down the rhetoric here.

Erin Go Broke - According to Moody's, Ireland has joined Greece and Portugal in junk bond status.

Inevitable: Obama scares Grandma - Hot Air: "Obama: No, I can't promise that Social Security checks will go out."

Here's the irony: up until last year, payroll taxes were running a surplus and Social Security benefits could be paid from incoming revenue; the program was expected to run this way until 2016. But thanks to the awesome Obama economy, last year Social Security ran a deficit and has to cash in $46 billion in Trust Fund treasury bills in 2011. So thanks to Obama's mishandling of the economy, he can make this credible threat! It's a win-win, baby.

The urgency of now!

Powerline has some comments also:

If not now, when? How about two years ago? Or last year? Or in February, when Obama proposed a budget that contemplated, on the most optimistic assumptions, adding at least $600 billion of new debt every year for the next decade? Obama is now fixated on the “deadline” of August 2, 2011, but where was he in 2009? Or 2010? Or prior to last week? It has been over two years since the federal government has had a budget. For Obama to adopt a sanctimonious “eat your peas” approach to the federal budget is so disingenuous that it is not surprising that Republicans find him infuriating to negotiate with.

Isn't it now obvious to even the most diehard Obama-ite that the Bowles-Simpson debt commission was just a delaying tactic to push off difficult choices and pork up the government? Even at this late and urgent date, Obama has yet to put on the table a proposal that will cut the deficit even as much as we're borrowing on a monthly basis.

Mr. Serious Responsibility wants to talk it out now.

Extra - Leadership is hard, and stuff.

More - Legal Insurrection: "A completely irresponsible president who just months ago proposed a budget with devastating deficits, repeatedly demanded that the deficits and debt be dealt with now, without any delay. Where has he been for two years?"

And this - Verum Serum: "If a tax increase is key to any deal, why didn't Democrats raise taxes the last six times they raised the debt limit?" That is, when they had wide majorities in Congress. It's a mystery, indeed.

The time has come for action! - Here's the Minuteman with "Pretty Ambitious Kabuki": "Obama has sat on the sidelines for months, demagoguing Republican proposals and letting Biden grind away with Congressional leaders. I would never claim to be smart enough to be a Democrat strategist, but does Obama really imagine he can run onto the field in the last five minutes and then get credit for some sort of leadership?"

Well, it's been established that Obama thinks the average American is - ahem - misinformed, so he probably thinks the masses can be fooled again.

Liberals plan to kill Social Security

Man, I'm loving this editorial from the Washington Post which could have been ripped from the archives of this blog: "Never-cut-entitlements liberals would hurt the poor by not giving ground."

When it comes to Social Security, the no-benefit-cuts caucus argues that the program is not the major driver of current deficits. This is correct but irrelevant. The program is on a course to run out of enough money to pay promised benefits in 2036. The longer policymakers wait to make adjustments the more painful these adjustments will be - and the more risk they pose to the most vulnerable beneficiaries that Democrats assert they want to protect. Fixing Social Security is important for its own sake; it is going to have to happen sooner or later. If the debt ceiling debate presents a sensible occasion for getting that done, at least in part, so much the better.

As I've noted before "doing nothing" means that promised benefits will be automatically cut by about a quarter once the Trust Fund runs dry in 2036. There's little compassion in that, especially for the Americans who will need it most.

Incomprehensible numbers - Zero Hedge: "Several inconvenient truths about the debt ceiling and "deficit reduction."

Roughing it - I'm camping this weekend and, man, is the WiFi weak.

The debt bomb expands - Remember when Erskine Bowles of deficit commission fame called the nation's debt "the most predictable economic crisis in U.S. history"? Here's James Pethokoukis with "U.S. debt crisis might be on fast track."

Related - Legal Insurrection: "Slow motion political crash." And Powerline, too.

And this - Here's your idiom for the moment.

The greatest broadband ever

Brought to you by the bestest stimulus program that saved us from Armageddon or something:

Eisenach and Caves looked at three areas that received stimulus funds, in the form of loans and direct grants, to expand broadband access in Southwestern Montana, Northwestern Kansas, and Northeastern Minnesota. The median household income in these areas is between $40,100 and $50,900. The median home prices are between $94,400 and $189,000.

So how much did it cost per unserved household to get them broadband access? A whopping $349,234, or many multiples of household income, and significantly more than the cost of a home itself.

Hat tip to Ace of Spades which headlines with "$7 million per house" to watch kittens on YouTube - but at this point, who's counting anymore?

Raise the debt limit or we'll shoot this dog

So the big chatter today is that the NY Times' token moderate David Brooks wrote that Republicans who reflexively vote against any tax increase "have no sense of moral decency."

Well.

Let me restate, as I have before, that I agree that there must be some taxes to go along with deep budget cuts so that we can rein in a runaway budget that is currently borrowing 46 cents for every dollar spent. It's foolish to play "chicken" with the credit of the United States. Mr. Reasonable has called for yet another chit-chat session, and the Republicans should carve out the best deal possible.

But let me respond to Mr. Brooks and others: there are quite a few of us in flyover country who think that piling historical levels of debt on future American generations is the real moral indecency. This particular outrage, which animated the Tea Party, is one that this President has never grasped given his empty rhetoric and risible "budget cutting" proposals. Now we have a couple dozen new GOP faces in Congress who were elected largely on this issue that we cannot keep borrowing and spending. According to Mr. Brooks, they should ignore these voters and "do the right thing" because the heavens will fall if the debt limit isn't raised just one more time (and again after the election, one supposes.)

Maybe we wouldn't be engaged in this latest round of brinksmanship if Congressional Democrats or the President had proposed a federal budget - as required by law. Or if Obama had adopted the recommendations of his own bipartisan debt commission. Or if the Democrats had simply raised taxes on "the rich" when they had filibuster-proof majorities in Congress. Or if they had adopted a stimulus program that didn't just pile another $800 billion of new debt to make things worse than if we had done nothing.

Ah, but now it's the Republicans who are being unreasonable about raising the debt limit.

Extra - Town Hall: "David Brooks needs a vacation" "Perhaps David Brooks should reserve his lectures on moral decency for the party that has shamelessly accelerated our debt crisis through its reckless spending binge."

More - From Ed Morrissey on Hot Air.

"Why can't everyone be as altruistic as me?" - Hit and Run: "Obama uses bully pulpit to demand end of political rhetoric."

We love hot dogs, baseball, apple pie, and Chevrolet - Sports Illustrated: "14 crazy baseball facts."

Happy Birthday, America!

Friday night news dump

Just go and grill some hot dogs, America, and pay no attention to that new report from the Council of Economic Advisors. Weekly Standard: "Obama's economists: 'Stimulus' has cost $278,000 per job."

When the Obama administration releases a report on the Friday before a long weekend, it’s clearly not trying to draw attention to the report’s contents. Sure enough, the “Seventh Quarterly Report” on the economic impact of the “stimulus,” released on Friday, July 1, provides further evidence that President Obama’s economic “stimulus” did very little, if anything, to stimulate the economy, and a whole lot to stimulate the debt.

Nice work if you can get it. And you can't.

Indebted - Mark Steyn: "Obama's Declaration of Dependence" "On Independence Day 2011, debt-ridden America is now dependent, not on far-off kings but on global bond and currency markets, which fulfill the same role the cliff edge does in a Wile E. Coyote cartoon. At some point, Wile looks down and realizes he’s outrun solid ground. You know what happens next."

Yeah, well I know and I suspect that Tim Geithner knows, but I don't think the guy at 1600 Pennsylvania has a clue.

Typical Daytona race - Lots of lead changes, crashes at the end. Congrats to David Ragan for getting his first NASCAR win!

I finished in fourth place in my fantasy league using Algorithm #4.

America - The exceptional country.

Harry Potter vs. Star Wars

I had a good laugh at this comparison, although I would have added the duo designed to provide comic relief.

Harry Potter: the Weasley twins

Star Wars: R2D2 & C3PO.

Eight more and they can play a game of touch football - Reason Online: "In Maine, Obamacare's new high risk pool attracts just 14 enrollees."

So much for hope and change

Legal Insurrection on Obama's presser: "Do not underestimate the ability of this man to appeal to our worst jealousies and envies, while telling us he is doing the opposite with a smile on his face."

I didn't see the press conference but I read about it and the most striking thing is that Obama is voting "present" yet again. By law, the President is supposed to propose fixes to Medicare when the plan's trustees give a warning called the "Medicare Trigger" - Obama simply ignores it. By law, the Senate is supposed to submit a budget and the Democrats have not done so for nearly 800 days. Meanwhile the President's own "budget" amounts to a speech so vague that the CBO chief famously said "We don't estimate speeches."

At every turn, this President seems piqued that he's asked to take some leadership. But he doesn't want to take positions, so he falls back into the same shopworn tropes of class warfare and industry vilification. This country is overspending $1.6 trillion a year and we're going to fight this by changing depreciation schedules for corporate jets? Utterly absurd.

Extra - With the White House abdicating responsibility, Congress scrambles for Plan B. At least Obama has made solid plans for something.

More - From Zero Hedge.

And this - From Powerline: "Obama's performance exemplified his chronic inability to lead."

For the good of the State, let's get biz-ay!

I'm linking to this AoSHQ post about the reach of the Commerce Clause only because I thought of it first:

Can we mandate that people have more children? Seems to me we could fix some of the demographic problems with SS and MediCare if only people had more children.

And here's me, way back in December:

I was thinking about the P.D. James book (and similar movie) "The Children of Men" set in a dystopian future of mass infertility. As the population ages and dies away, there are no children being born to support the creaky, desperate society. I know this is bit of a stretch but what if the government declared that – in the interest of regulating commerce and keeping the factories running with workers – birth control should be outlawed?

Oh, heavens no, it would never come to that. That's crazy right-wing talk.

Extra - The law blog Volokh Conspiracy has varying reviews of today's opinion.

Bring me bagels - My wife recently came back from a trip down to New York City and the first thing I said to her when she came home to Massachusetts was: "Did you bring me any bagels?" She didn't, but she brought back Taylor Ham, so all was forgiven.

Still, I don't know what makes a New York/Northern New Jersey bagel so great but the scribes at Slate have an idea. (H/T Maggie's Farm.) Now if I could just get a pipeline on Cluck-U-Chicken then all would be right in the world.

That's what you get with a freshman senator - David Frum writes in "Obama is his own worst enemy" that "The job has overwhelmed the man."

Um, yeah. Isn't that the knock on Obama from 2008 when the highlight of his resume was running his Presidential campaign? No wonder he wants to get back out on the trail, like Captain Queeg, reliving his magical moment. Ah, the strawberries...I mean Iowa. Good times.

What debt? Let's fund some green jobs! - BBC News: "Is the US in denial over its $14 trillion debt?" Amtrak Joe wants a fast choo-choo.

What is it now, Microsoft? - Geez, another round of automatic updates? I got work to do.

And the hits just keep on comin'

Lawrence Lindsey explains why any budget deal to cut the national debt will be dwarfed by a normalization of interest rates which will lead to more expensive payments on the debt we already have. From "The deficit is worse than we think":

First, a normalization of interest rates would upend any budgetary deal if and when one should occur. At present, the average cost of Treasury borrowing is 2.5%. The average over the last two decades was 5.7%. Should we ramp up to the higher number, annual interest expenses would be roughly $420 billion higher in 2014 and $700 billion higher in 2020.

The 10-year rise in interest expense would be $4.9 trillion higher under "normalized" rates than under the current cost of borrowing. Compare that to the $2 trillion estimate of what the current talks about long-term deficit reduction may produce, and it becomes obvious that the gains from the current deficit-reduction efforts could be wiped out by normalization in the bond market.

As Charles Krauthammer noted, this is all "heading towards a train wreck on August 2nd." The Democrats want huge tax increases on the wealthy they couldn't pass when they had wide majorities in both houses of Congress. Their other brilliant idea is eliminating tax subsidies (the same ones every other industry in America employs) for the oil and gas companies to save a whopping $2 billion/year - or roughly half of what we overspend every day. The Republicans are boxed in by the Tea Party freshmen who were elected to stop runaway government borrowing and spending.

For the record, I think income tax rates need to go up such that everybody bears some burden for the federal government we "enjoy". (Then maybe more people will wonder if it's worth the expense.) On the other side of the coin, we can't realistically pare down our $1.6 trillion deficit without restructuring entitlement spending; it's a fantasy to believe otherwise.

Despite the warnings from the credit rating agencies, it seems our *cough* leaders *cough* in Washington believe we can escape this debt crisis with just a "haircut." But unless dramatic action is taken - and soon - it's going to be haircut today, amputation tomorrow.

That was unexpected - Zero Hedge says "Welcome to the recession: Manufacturing surveys imply US economy has entered second month of a (re) recession."

Speechworld vs. Realworld

Here's Mark Steyn:

In Realworld, political speeches would be about closing down unnecessary federal bureaucracies, dramatically downsizing or merging others, and ending makework projects and mission creep. The culture of excess that distinguishes the hyperpower at twilight would be reviled at every turn. But instead the “hugely persuasive” orator declares that there’s nothing to worry about that even more government can’t cure. In Speechworld, “no hill is too steep, no horizon is beyond our reach.” In Realworld, that’s mainly because we’re going downhill. And the horizon is a cliff edge.

Jon Stewart noted that the topic of Obama's latest speech - the meager drawdown of a couple of surge troops from Afghanistan - was so inconsequential that he should have done a Facebook update instead.

Serpentine, Shelley!

Rest in peace, Peter Falk.

The CinC did the right thing - ABC News: "President Obama apologizes to family of fallen soldier."

Romney in a homage to Thatcher - Slate finds that Mitt Romney (intentionally) copied a Tory ad campaign from circa 1979, right down to the UB40 form.

Americans are gloomy - Contentions has the numbers: "Survey says: Economy will be same or worse a year from now." It's almost like there's a malaise over the country.

Remember when Jon Stewart said the NY Times wasn't as biased as Fox News? - Good times. Hot Air: "NYT on Libya: Bailing out of a war before it's won will hurt U.S. credibility."

Just readin' what they put on that teleprompter - When I read this story on Ace of Spades about the Commander-in-Chief flubbing a military honor, I said "can't be true" and even the Blackfive link only had a text description. But a little digging found the video on Military Times; be sure to check the comments below.

Quote of the Day: "We don't estimate speeches."

Of course, proposing a budget with numbers printed on paper means leadership and we all know how Obama feels about that. He outsourced debt reduction first to the Bowles-Simpson commission and then to Joe Biden; I can't help but wonder if the Republicans' walking away from the latest yak-fest is designed to finally force Obama to take ownership for a solution.

No more voting 'present.'

The Obama job market

Victor Davis Hanson explains the mindset in the world where jobs are made:

Two thoughts: One, the latest Democratic idea of borrowing even more money is de facto proof that all the bailouts, borrowing, vast increases in unemployment and food-stamp monies, Obamacare, etc., have done nothing but terrify employers, who are holding off buying and hiring. And, second, when one adds in the National Labor Relations Board roguery, the presidential quips about the wealthy, the Chrysler creditor mess, the nonstop spread-the-wealth, already-made-enough-money demonization of those who make over $200,000, etc., we are witnessing a sort of psychological stasis in which millions of employers are shrugging and collectively sighing, “I think I’ll pass until this crazy outfit is out of here.”

Hanson posted that in the morning and by the end of the day, CNBC reported this headline: "Firms have a record $800 billion of cash but still won't hire."

Where did I put my Oliver Peoples sunglasses? - New season of Burn Notice starts tonight. Yay!

Some would say this is a self-indulgent post. Others aren't reading it anyway.

I have to crow about this just a little bit. Before Obama's speech tonight announcing he's pulling back the troops he sent into Afghanistan, I predicted to my family he would use his old "some on the extremes say 'this' but me, in the middle, say 'that'." The President did not disappoint:

Some would have America retreat from our responsibility as an anchor of global security, and embrace an isolation that ignores the very real threats that we face. Others would have America over-extend ourselves, confronting every evil that can be found abroad.

We must chart a more centered course.

Obama: the reasonable counterbalance against nameless extremists he invented.

Extra - Stephen Green remembers it this way: "Here it comes! “Some would retreat from Nevada… ” Others would nuke the crap out of Holland…” “But I am the sane centrist!”"

Here comes stagflation - Zero Hedge: "Fed lowers GDP, raises unemployment and inflation estimates."

Medicare, we hardly knew ye - Testifying before Congress, two Medicare trustees declared that an unreformed program means "ending Medicare as we know it." So, by all means, do nothing.

Both but more of one - The director of the CBO writes that we need to raise taxes and slash spending to reduce the federal debt. But he also notes that while revenues have averaged around 18% of GDP for the past 40 years, total outlays are projected to be 24% of GDP which is 6% higher than the average during the same 40-year period.

Extra - Doug Ross says Greece is the word.

San Francisco faces the "Children of Men" scenario

"Keep that kid safe - we need him to pay off the national debt."

Here are some stories that fit together. First, the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the average city pension in San Fran pays more than the average worker earns. At least there are plenty of jobs to pay taxes.

Not so fast: Companies leaving California in record numbers. Well, at least there will be a new generation of people to support the pensioners.

Not so fast: "San Francisco losing kids as parents seek schools, homes"

New census figures show that despite an intense focus by city and public school officials to curb family flight, San Francisco last year had 5,278 fewer kids than it did in 2000.

The city actually has 3,000 more children under 5 than it did 10 years ago, but has lost more than 8,000 kids older than 5.

Just 13.4 percent of the city's 805,235 residents are younger than 18, one of the smallest percentages of any city in the country. In 1970, those younger than 18 made up 22 percent of San Francisco. In 1960, they made up 25 percent.

A pension fund bankrupting a city? Why, that couldn't happen in America.

Jobs that Americans will do...if they could - Robert Samuelson discusses how even though we have 9.1% unemployment, there are a good number of positions out there that employers can't fill. For good measure see: "Siemans chief warns on US skills shortage."

The days of graduating from high school and getting a high-paying job in the factory are long gone.

We're not gonna take it - In light of recent personal events, I found that this Boston Globe story about workers preparing to find new jobs hit home: "Unhappy but gaining confidence, more workers seek new jobs." "Even as companies slashed pay and increased workloads during the recession, many workers were happy just to have a job. Now, as the economy slowly improves, many disgruntled employees who waited out the worst of it are ready to jump ship."

NASCAR Fantasy league update

If you'll recall, a couple weeks back I decided that I'm completely inept at picking winners for my NASCAR fantasy league, so I employed a driver-picking algorithm to choose my drivers. The key is to find the right combination of driver statistics to make a good predictive rating. Here's how it's been going after three races:

Kansas - algorithm #1 - 7th place (out of 10)

Pocono - algorithm #2 - 6th place

Michigan - algorithm #3 - 3rd place

Actually, I was in first place near the end of today's race until Junior cut a tire with ten laps to go. So I'm going to stick with Secret Algorithm #3 for now and see if I can keep moving up.

Smart power rules

It's good thing that President Obama used to be a Constitutional Law professor because he knows what's what: "President Barack Obama decided he could continue the air war in Libya without congressional approval despite rulings to the contrary from Justice Department and Pentagon lawyers, according to published reports."

Yeah, but how many Nobel Peace Prizes do those lawyers have? None, that's how many.

Another useless debt commission

After ignoring the advice of his own blue-ribbon debt panel, President Obama outsourced the job to Joe Biden who, after eight days of meeting with Republicans, has done close to nothing:

Biden said that both sides have signaled what they might be willing to accept as part of a larger agreement but that they haven't tackled really tough decisions on health care or new revenues. He spoke to reporters after the eighth in a series of meetings aimed at producing an agreement on budget cuts that would accompany must-pass legislation to allow the government to keep borrowing to avoid a default on its obligations.

Eight days and they haven't even started discussions on runaway entitlement spending which is poised to consume the entire federal budget. Instead, they've been jerking around with the 12% of the budget dealing with park rangers and Pell grants. This past week the Senate voted to end ethanol subsidies which account for $5 billion - almost as much as the federal government is borrowing every day - and the White House threatened a veto of even this.

Meanwhile, the IMF is warning the U.S. on its humongous budget deficit and estimating lower growth rates because of debt, meaning less opportunity and fewer jobs for Americans. But, by all means, let's blow another $80 billion on "green" jobs which do not exist.

Extra - From Doug Ross.

More - Sheriff Joe gets tough: "Time to 'get real' in deficit talks." Yeah, sure, whatever.

The lockbox is bare - USA Today: "Payroll taxes raid Social Security." Short takeaway: the payroll tax cut is making Social Security's finances worse and Washington is raiding other parts of the budget (and borrowing) to make up the shortfall.

Stanley Cup update - Hey, who told the Bruins they can win in Vancouver? It's 3-0 for the B's after two periods and they're looking solid tonight. I probably won't be able to update from here on, but it's looking like the Bruins might win their first Cup since 1972.

Update - Bruins win!

After the crisis - From Jim Lacey with "Entitlement Overstretch": "It is a sad state of affairs when one has to pin the long-term hopes of this great nation on a crisis so monumental that one has to count on the “day after” to return reason to the nation’s fiscal policy."

Bruce Springsteen and "Neil Young" sing "Whip My Hair"

Legal stuff - Legal Insurrection has some commentary on the Wisconsin Supreme Court affirming the collective bargaining bill today.

Unclear on the concept - Obama's super lamo-o job council has slashed a bunch of jobs. You know what that means? We need another commission.

Losing the argument - In Opinion Journal, two lawyers for the states' case against Obamacare write "Why Obamacare is losing in the courts - The government's lawyers keep changing their arguments as each one is exposed as constitutionally suspect."

Meanwhile, in the court of public opinion, "finding out what's in the bill" has not convinced Americans to support Obamacare.

And on a non-governmental level - Megan McArdle has a good post about personal debt with "Should we care if people don't pay their debts?" "The answer seems to be "I don't want to pay, and as long as I'm willing to take the hit on my credit score, no one should judge me." Yet if this were the actual standard by which most Americans lived, would there be any market for unsecured debt? Or even secured debt for items that depreciate quickly? Seems unlikely."

Well, that's just one man's opinion - Unfortunately, it's the opinion of the guy who runs the largest mutual fund in the world. PIMCO's Bill Gross says that Americas's financial state is "worse than Greece." That would Greece, the country where the bond is now rated "junk" status.

In the years 2020 and 2036

The business section of today's Boston Globe featured three articles about growing federal entitlements and the consequences of inaction. In short, the entitlement programs of Medicare and Social Security are going to exhaust their trust funds in 2020 and 2036 leading to automatic benefit cuts for both programs based on current law. Here are some excerpts:

Medicare: "Retiring Boomers, rising health costs are a frightening combination"

By 2020, the Congressional Budget Office estimates, Medicare’s main trust fund will be effectively drained, requiring a strict “pay as you go’’ system financed by payroll taxes and money squeezed from other federal programs, assuming the current structure of Medicare is kept intact. Longer-term projections point to multitrillion-dollar deficits for Medicare stretching late into the century, economists said.

Social Security: "Waiting to address a shortfall could worsen problems, analysts warn"

Whatever solutions lawmakers choose, it’s better they act soon, economists said. Each delay compounds the program’s financial problems, which in turn would require more drastic tax increases, benefit cuts, or both.

Of course, that's also true for Medicare and a host of other federal programs where promises have long out-paced reality. What will happen if we keep kicking the can down the road? "The clock is ticking in the debate over how to fix programs"

If something isn’t done relatively soon, economists say, higher interest rates, a weaker dollar, increased payroll taxes, and deep cuts to other federal programs are among potentially dire consequences that could mean slower growth, higher unemployment, and lower standards of living.

I've said it before and I'll write it again: the problems in Europe don't need to be repeated here in America if we face up to our long-term problems and take positive, if painful, steps towards resolution. The sooner we face up to mathematics, the pain of reform can be spread over decades rather than the sudden shock of automatic benefit cuts.

It's time to be adults.

Waiting for the turnaround - Commentary: "A lost generation in the making?"

Must be a coincidence - WashPost: "Twice in recent weeks, the United States provided Pakistan with the specific locations of insurgent bomb-making factories, only to see the militants learn their cover had been blown and vacate the sites before military action could be taken, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials."

Anthony Weiner, American hero - You know who he's like? Martin Luther King Jr. Oh yeah.

Meanwhile, the Congressman didn't know he was tweeting with minors when they talked about high school and asked him to the prom.

It ain't me, babe. No, no, no, it ain't me babe - Marketwatch: "Many of us won't be able to retire until our 80s." I'm mortified by the low retirement savings for most Americans since it means either seniors are going to live in penury or the government is going to seize the nest eggs of more responsible savers (ahem) in the name of "fairness."

Good intentions - Here's economist Greg Mankiw on the Center for American Progress's plan for health care equity: "That is, under the likely scenario that healthcare spending keeps rising faster than GDP, the Center for American Progress would give government the power to prohibit people from buying expensive health plans with their own money. That is not my idea of progress."

Revenues down, entitlements up - Reason: "Another trillion dollars in debt (and we've still got four months to go.)" In the fiscal year, that is, borrowing money and sticking the grandkids with the bill.

Here's part of the problem, from American Thinker: "A Nation of Government Dependents" found via Maggie's Farm. This is a comment on the article:

I am an ER doc in a large suburban hospital. Over my 20 years of practice, I have watched the welfare roles grow to twice what they were when I started. More troubling is how attitudes of the dependent have changed. Where once people were thankful for short-term help, they now seek to find every possible penny they can find, and now services are demanded: thank-yous are few and far between. It's so bad now, for example, that I recently had a Medicaid patient come in at 0200 by ambulance- for a pregnancy test...when I asked her why, she told me she didn't want to waste her gas, and she knew the ambulance and the ER couldn't refuse her. It's getting to be almost too much for me sometimes. I've talked to Congressmen and Senators about the abuse, and they are always "woking on it". Meanwhile, we have a patient who has been to the ER 1300 times since 2003 !! When I call the Medicaid office, they tell me there's nothing they can do. I'm convinced that the system is going to have to crash, and I'm really frightened about the people that believe it's their right to have others take care of their needs without a hint of personal resposibility.

Don't worry, Obamacare will cut back expensive ER visits just like they did in Massachusetts.

The piggybank of last resort

This is awful news via Zero Hedge: "30% of people with a 401(k) have taken out a loan against it: new all time record." I know times are tough and homeowners can't cash out on their houses anymore, but there are so many downsides that go beyond the obvious of raiding the fund that will keep you out of cat food after Social Security benefits get scaled back.

Zero Hedge puts in the last word: "Luckily, Americans have demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that when it comes to abusing rainy day capital to satisfy trivial material needs, there is nothing to worry about. Nothing at all." After all, tomorrow is another day.

They've awakened a sleeping giant wicked pissed Boston

I didn't mention this before but on this past Sunday I took my kids to their first ever Boston Red Sox game at Fenway Park. We took a tour bus into Boston (I'm not a fan of city driving) and took our seats in the right field, near the bleachers.

Just as the game was starting, four guys made their way to the upper seats, each wearing a Vancouver hockey jersey. Vancouver had just gone up two-games-to-none in the Stanley Cup playoffs over the Boston Bruins and these guys were met with a chorus of boos.

WELL. Since that game (in which the Red Sox beat the A's) the Bruins have won two games with a total of twelve goals to Vancouver's one (8-1 Monday and 4-0 tonight).

Eleventh Circuit on Obamacare: "You gotta be kidding me."

It sounds like the bipartisan mix of judges on the 11th were not buying the Administration's arguments on the individual mandate. Hot Air: "Federal appeals court highly skeptical of Obamacare in today's oral arguments." Right out of the gate, the chief on the bench asked the question Obama can't answer:

“I can’t find any case like this,” said Chief Judge Joel Dubina of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. “If we uphold this, are there any limits” on the power of the federal government? he asked.

And at AoSHQ, it's noted that if the Framers of the Constitution thought the Commerce Clause could be expanded in this way, they would have also outlined the limitations of such a statute.

Extra - Maggie's Farm: "Enumerated powers."

Stay classy, Wisconsin - Althouse: "Wisconsin protesters disrupt Special Olympics ceremony." Because Governor Scott Walker was there and they got to dress up like zombies.

The WashPost channels Mary McCarthy

Here's the Factchecker on "President Obama's phony accounting on the auto industry bailout":

What we found is one of the most misleading collections of assertions we have seen in a short presidential speech. Virtually every claim by the president regarding the auto industry needs an asterisk, just like the fine print in that too-good-to-be-true car loan.

And here's author Mary McCarthy on Lillian Hellman:

"Every word [she] writes is a lie including 'and' and 'the.'"

It's another Three Pinocchios for the Obama Administration.

The national press is a.) inept, b.) biased, c.) all of the above

I swore I wasn't going to blog about Anthony Weiner but I will hold forth on the embarrassingly feckless "investigative" powers of the mainstream media. There's an absence of objectivity that's been building for years and should have shamed the media into reform after the National Enquirer nearly won a Pulitzer for exposing John Edwards. But it didn't and now they've been pwned yet again.

While the talking heads were asking the Rep. Weiner the same questions and accepting the same answers, all the real information was coming to the surface on the blogs and e-media. Somehow Andrew Breitbart was collecting information that was escaping the putative skills of the Associated Press. While the NY Times was trying to figure out what a "DM" on Twitter meant, the Daily was reporting that all of Weiner's tweets - including the "hacked" ones - originated from a program called TweetDeck. It was on a blog that I found that Weiner had quite suddenly doubled the people he "followed" on Twitter in a transparent attempt to dilute his pool of young hotties. Ace and Patterico and others were asking questions and finding answers even though they never attended the high-falutin' Columbia Journalism School.

But maybe collecting facts is hard. How about unbiased reporting? Mark Steyn takes note of the NY Times initial coverage of the Weiner presser:

...that New York Times “news alert” — “Representative Anthony D. Weiner Acknowledges Communication With Women Online” — nobody who could write that headline with a straight face should be in the news business.

It’s one thing to lose the story to Andrew Breitbart because you’re too snooty to sully yourself with Weiner’s briefs. It’s another thing to pile on and support Weiner’s slandering of Breitbart out of ideological solidarity. But, when the congressman himself is at a press conference admitting he’s e-mailed explicit photos of himself around the Internet and you choose that headline to convey the story to your readers, you’re basically telling them you’re the paper for court eunuchs.

All this reminds me of Jon Stewarts reaction when two college punks managed to bring down ACORN with a feather boa and a hidden camera:

Kudos to Jon Stewart, who doesn’t sugar-coat the embarrassment at all — to the apparent delight of his audience, who get kudos of their own. How can the national news media ignore the many allegations of corruption at ACORN, which gets millions of dollars in federal funding, and allow a couple of independents with $3,000 and a bad wardrobe scoop them on the undercover story of the year? It’s easy when newsrooms are more concerned with political direction than truth.

With the Weiner affair, it's now altogether obvious that the mainstream media is either incapable or unwilling to do the job of investigation and reporting. The online media is going to fill the vacuum.

NASCAR Fantasy League: Save me, Microsoft Excel!

So here's the thing: I'm in a NASCAR fantasy league and, well, I stink. I've had exactly one decent week and the rest of the time I'm scraping the bottom of the rankings. I'm thinking of sending ransom letters to the various teams warning them that unless I get $1000 in unmarked bills, I'll pick them for my lineup, whereupon they'll inevitably crash or their engines will explode. It's truly bizarre the bad luck that follows my teams.

So here's what I'm going to do: no more "gut" picks, no more news feeds, in fact no more free will. I've developed a ranking system based on driver stats at a given track and them I'm plugging them into a spreadsheet to tell me who I should pick.

For those of you uninitiated in fantasy leagues or the NASCAR league in particular, you have a salary cap where you have to balance your good/medium/struggling drivers. So you want to maximize your driver rankings but stay below the salary cap; this is the program I've set up. Microsoft Excel (for example) has a macro called "Solver" although I'll be using the fantastic Open Office spreadsheet for the same calculation. This is an experiment which I'm going to try to stick with for at least ten races.

I've set my team for tomorrow's race at Kansas and, frankly, I wouldn't have picked three out of my five drivers. This will be interesting.

Update: 7th place out of 10. Ugh.

Things that can't go on, don't - Zero Hedge: "Social Security - the Liberals are killing it." The "worst case scenario" for Social Security's finances is the new reality.

If at first you don't succeed, spend spend again - The Hill: "Dems double down on new spending after discouraging jobs report." Of course.

It's unanimous - DNC Chair Wasserman-Schultz is a lying liar about Paul Ryan's Medicare Plan, so says the Associated Press, Factcheck, and the WashPost's Fact Checker who gives her claims "three Pinocchios."

Summer of Recovery 2: Electric Malaise

Fox News: "Employers add just 54,000 jobs in May, unemployment rate rises to 9.1%" This latest news is going to - has to - lead to a whole new spin for the White House where they search out new targets to blame.

Extra - Peter Wehner also evokes Jimmy Carter.

More - From Instapundit.

And this - Obama's re-election slogan is "Help me finish the job"? You've done quite enough.

The British parallel - The UK's National Health Service (NHS) is in trouble and Stata-Sphere sees similar problems for Obamacare which has hit a new low in favorability.

Road to nowhere

Here's Charles Krauthammer talking about the Obama-GOP debt "summit":

The president has chartered a course of remarkable cynicism in the way he attacked the Republican plan and presented none of his own. He hasn’t offered anything. And the Senate, for example, hasn’t even offered a budget - which is required to do by law. The Democrats are placing a bet on cynicism. They might win the election on that.

Businesses and the markets hate uncertainty and yet this is the modus operandi of the Obama Administration. There's been no budget from House Democrats, which sparked the drawn-out "continuing resolutions" of early 2011. There's been no budget from the Senate Democrats for 762 days, in violation of the law. And there's no budget from the President who is a thousand times more concerned with re-election than he is with dealing with the nation's problems.

Here's the cold fact: Medicare will go bust in 2024 and that's assuming that Congress will not pass the "doc fix" to cut payments to doctors; otherwise Medicare is broke in 2016, only five years away. Social Security goes belly up in 25 years. And by "broke" I mean the programs - by law - can only pay out what's coming in from payroll taxes meaning that either benefits will need to be slashed and/or taxes will go way up. Cold fact #2: only one political party seems willing to face up this reality, while the other wants to demagogue these entitlements into their respective graves.

More - As in more uncertainty.

Identify this Johnson

It's NASCAR driver Jimmie Johnson. That wasn't so difficult.

What?

Western Massachusetts update - It's been a strange day as a tornado touched down in Springfield before moving east along the Mass Pike. My commute takes me through Springfield north on I-91 and there were dozens of trees with splintered tops, stripped billboards, and toppled business signs.

Extra - That was fast: a Wikipedia page on the 2011 Massachusetts tornado outbreak.

"Shockingly weak" is the new "unexpected" - CNN: "Shockingly weak job growth in May."