Al Qaeda? Oh heavens no - Treacher: "Let the record of the Benghazi attack show...whatever Obama needs it to show."

It was that darn You Tube guy.  Washington Examiner: "Al Qaeda is alive and GM is half-dead."

Does anybody really know what time it is?

Obama took some time out of his busy day partying with Beyonce and Jay-Z to appear on Letterman to feign ignorance about the size of the national debt:

Then Letterman went back to the tally: “Now, do you remember what that number was? Was it $10 trillion?”
Then came the payoff, as the president made clear that he really didn’t want to utter the word “16”: “I don’t remember what the number was precisely.”

He don't know nothin' about no debt.  This one:

Who's going to pay for this?  Sure, "the rich."

Extra - Powerline: "Obama's answer was a masterpiece of prevarication."

More - From Twitchy.

Even Pennsylvania? - Daily Caller: "University of Colorado model prediction model points to big Romney win": "A presidential election prediction model developed by two University of Colorado professors points to a big win for GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney in November.  The model, the only of its kind to use more than one state-level economic indicator, has correctly predicted the winner of every presidential election since 1980."  The fundamentals of this election still matter.

A low-quality product doesn't sell

Opinion Journal: "The Fourth Estate, still thrilling to the spirit of '08."

Big Journalism: "Newspaper ad revenues collapse to 1950 levels."

Gallup: Only 26% of Americans think journalists have high ethical standards.

Yeah, this would have been better - And it provides a template on how to frame the debate going forward.  Opinion Journal: "What Romney might have said."

Romney does himself no favors

How can a guy who has been running for President for a decade open himself up for another line of attack that he's elitist and out-of-touch?  I'd like to think Allahpundit has it right here:

This was recorded awhile back at a fundraiser, just like Obama’s infamous “bitter/clinger” comments in 2008. Remember how big that blew up? That’s how we ended up with President McCain.

And everybody was suitably shocked when then-candidate likened his low bowling score to the Special Olympics.  But Romney doesn't have the advantage of a press that's, um, objective and non-partisan.  MSNBC will be running stories around the clock about how deeply Obama cares about all those people he put into poverty.  Meanwhile, Romney tithes to his church?  Tax dodger!

Extra - From Patterico and Doug Ross.

Government Motors update - The Truth About Cars: "GM execs want their jets back, want taxpayers to take a bath."  Nothing doing, GM...the Feds are going to hold tight to that stock like a Facebook founder.  It's gotta go up sometime, right?

Free speech 2012

Because it's absolutely normal for five deputies to arrest a man in the middle of the night on a probation violation.  Glenn Reynolds: "Why Barack Obama should resign."

Or as somebody on the Internet noted: "Death to the filmmaker!"  White House: "Hold on, we'll get him for you."

The "Defend the Constitution" memes are coming up.  Here's my contribution:

Extra - From Hit and Run: "Filmmaker Nakoula voluntarily accepts ride from police."

More - Powerline: "In order to spare themselves the sort of critical scrutiny to which they are unaccustomed, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have fallen in with the absurd claim that violence has broken out in eleven Muslim countries, and terrorists armed with RPGs and (reportedly) mortars carried out a military operation to assassinate a U.S. ambassador, as a result of a 14-minute YouTube video. As always, Obama’s first priority is to point the finger of responsibility elsewhere."

I'm sure the media will be reporting this any day now - Zero Hedge: "On this week in history, gas prices have never been higher"  "For those that do eat or use vehicles; for the first time in history, national average gas prices for the 2nd week of September were over $4.00."

Waivers update - Mickey Kaus: "Welfare fight, round four."

Answering that 3 a.m. call

It looks like Hillary Clinton's famous ad about Obama's readiness has come to this: he's ready to answer that 3 a.m. call as long as Beyonce and Jay-Z are at his side.  Now who wants some sweatshirts?  Whoot!

Old and busted: "Yes we can!"
New and busted: "Nobody could have fixed this."

Here are some headlines from the past couple days:

Zero Hedge: "Jobless claims spike is fourth largest in 2012 as producer prices surge by most since June 2009."
Hot Air: "Great news: Middle class sinks to all-time low in 2011."
CBS News: "Survey: One-third of Americans in 'lower classes' since Obama took office."
NPR: "Gas sends wholesale prices up the most in 3 years."
and finally: "Does this look like an economy that's moving forward?"

And yet two years ago, when it looked like the economy was on the mend, the Obama administration was hanging the "Mission Accomplished!" banners:

We're asked to believe that the Obama administration knew all along that things would take longer than four years to improve. "I never said this journey would be easy," the president claimed in Charlotte. On the contrary, the president stated explicitly on Feb. 1, 2009, that if he failed to get the economy turned around in three years, he would be looking at a "one-term proposition."
If the Obama administration knew from the start that the so-called "hole" left by the previous administration was too deep to climb out of in one term, why did they repeatedly claim that the recovery was at hand? "Recovery Summer," the White House website promised, would begin in June 2010.
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner authored a New York Times op-ed in August 2010 proclaiming "Welcome to the Recovery." Geithner wrote, "(A) review of recent data on the American economy shows that we are on a path back to growth." Though acknowledging continuing challenges, Geithner assured readers that "the actions we took ... to stimulate the economy helped arrest the freefall, preventing an even deeper collapse and putting the economy on the road to recovery."

It's pretty clear that Obama never thought his policies would lead to such a weak recovery and had no Plan B.  Should have told better stories.

Eleven after 9/11

CNN: "Unity marks solemn, familiar ceremonies on 9/11 anniversary."

GM's Bizarro business model

From The Truth About Cars: "Your tax dollars at work: GM loses its shirts on every Volt"

GM loses around $49,000 on each Volt it builds says Reuters. GM sold a record 2,831 Volts in August, but that may “have pushed that loss even higher. There are some Americans paying just $5,050 to drive around for two years in a vehicle that cost as much as $89,000 to produce,” says Reuters after a deep data dive into the elusive profitability of GM’s green halo car.

With tax credits, the Chevy Volt costs around $32K and GM loses $49K.  Remember when the White House was criticizing Romney's time with Bain by saying government is not about making a profit?  They weren't kidding.

Extra - The Corner: "The Democrats' GM fiction."

More - Gateway Pundit: "Obama makes lying about Ohio auto jobs a campaign staple."

Can you tell me where I can buy this $3.50 gas you speak of?

Greatest invention ever (crosswalk technology subcategory) - Via Chive, here's a video of a crosswalk console in Germany.  When you're allowed to cross the street, the screen will show a green bar that indicates how much time is remaining.  But when you're waiting, the console will allow you to play a game of Pong with the person across the street.  Technology is fun.

You, yes you, are going to pay for all this stuff - Opinion Journal: "Desperately seeking middle-class taxes."

The college scam - Maggie's Farm: "Everybody should go to college."  There's an old Bloom County cartoon in which somebody is buying an engagement ring and asks: "Who decided that it was a necessity to get a shiny rock before you can get married?" and the jeweler declares "Guilty!"  The colleges have subtly advanced this elitist trope that the only way to get ahead is to go to college.  It is empirically untrue and the idea is filling the coffers of for-profit schools like the University of Phoenix.  As Mike Rowe or John Ratzenberger would advise: learn a trade.

Will the media finally break out of its Obama reverie?

Here's a post from Doug Ross: "Real unemployment is now 11.7%; propaganda gap hits new level."  The jobs report was awful in every way from downward revisions of previous months, a drop in manufacturing jobs, and the lowest participation rate for men since they starting keeping labor statistics.

And yet, the morning of the jobs report, Joe Scarborough was declaring the jobs report "good news" and a "tailwind" for the President.  It fell to Chuck Todd to tell Joe he was an idiot.  But can you blame Joe?  He's just a pixel in the larger MSM brotherhood out to protect their guy.

Remember when gas prices were the top story on the news every night?  Today, not so much.  Newsbusters: "Networks hype gas prices four times more for Bush than Obama."  Nobody talks about Gitmo anymore and there's zero interest in Obama's secret kill list.  But if Paul Ryan says that Obama stole $716 billion from Medicare to pay for Obamacare (he did) then it's time to deploy the "fact checkers."

At some point, that J-school education has to kick in and they'll remember the class on balance and objectivity.  Until then, brace yourself for some "fresh" reports on Romney's tax returns.

Extra - From Instapundit and Ace.

More - Big Government: "Do your job, mainstream media, people are suffering."

Everybody out of the labor pool

Zero Hedge: "The reason why the unemployment rate dropped: the labor participation rate is at fresh 31-year lows."

At a campaign stop today, Obama laid blame for the anemic job growth.  I'll give you three guesses who he blamed and the first two don't count.

Extra - James Pethokoukis - "The awful, awful August jobs report."

Fire up the teleprompters

Wall Street Journal: "Obama to press plan to revive the economy."  Seems to me that should have been on your "to do" list four years ago, champ.

Extra - Commentary: "Obama's recycled promises."

More - Opinion Journal: "Mr. Obama was elected first and foremost with a mandate to fix the economy. Yet when he found himself by rare confluence of luck with 60 votes in the Senate, he put nurturing a fragile recovery secondary to the pursuit of pent-up liberal social policies."

Snap review - This was Obama's speech from 2008: it was full of "we're gonna do this and that" and "the path forward" and "we should choose this way forward" as if he hasn't been President for four years.  There wasn't a hint of a mea culpa for record debt, unemployment, and food stamps.  Well, that may not be true: I think he said things have been tough so he fell to his knees just like Lincoln.  Because he was a President too and therefore a great man.

And, dear Lord, the pandering.  This election isn't about me...it's about you!  Because you're marvelous.  It's you who are the hope.

Finally, as I predicted, there was nothing on entitlement reform, which will swallow the entire budget in 23 years.  Instead it was snark, small-ball, smarmy smiles and straw men.  I can't imagine independents and undecided voters would buy into this.

And this - Charles Krauthammer just called it the "emptiest major speech" Obama's ever given.  Now Joe Trippi is saying that Joe Biden's speech was better...literally.  Gee, maybe they should have brought Clinton out again.

Finally - I need to go to bed but a lot of the adjectives I'm hearing are "flat" or "resigned" or that Obama seems "weighed down."  And I have to wonder: did Obama see some bad news in tomorrow's job report?  The consensus report is something like +120,000 jobs with the unemployment rate staying at 8.3%.  Hmm.

Woman in RNC ad is a Republican - libs freak out

I have to admit I thought this was a spoof, but apparently it's real.  The Republicans ran a tongue-in-cheek ad of a woman "breaking up" with Obama and the lefties shouted "Aha! she's not a Democrat!"

Jim Treacher: "This might be the dumbest nontroversy you'll see all day"

Seriously. They really do think you’re this stupid. I’m surprised they aren’t pointing out that she’s delivering her lines to a cardboard cutout, not the real Obama, and calling that a “problem.”

I think they're trying a little payback after "Republican women for Obama" were actually Democrats.  For extra fun today, a "former Bain employee" who spoke at the DNC never worked for Bain.  Fake but accurate, I presume.

Yeah, right - Ace of Spades: "Obama will address entitlement reform tonight."

Guess who isn't going to be pushing Grandma over a cliff tonight?  The guy who stole $716 billion from Medicare.

Elizabeth Warren's twaddle - There's a reason why this non-Cherokee is trailing in the polls against Scott Brown here in Massachusetts: everything she says is the most vapid, vaporous, platitude-laden nonsense.  Early in her sappy, silly speech tonight she talked about all the jobless in Massachusetts who are "hammered" by corporations and oil companies and nameless Republicans.  This tragedy occurs in a state led by a Democrat governor, an overwhelmingly-Democrat state legislature, in a country led by a Democrat President.  But darn those "fat cats!"

Dora always asks hard questions

Can YOU spot the unsustainable entitlement?

I think the answer is "red."

Hit and Run: "Medicare is doomed"

When Democrats accuse Republicans of wanting to “end Medicare as we know it,” they are right. But Democrats do too. “Medicare as we know it” is no longer an option.
Leaving aside Medicare’s fatal moral defect—that it’s coercively funded—the program is doomed. It has tens of trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities. It threatens working generations with a crushing tax burden. Because of the relative size of the Baby Boom generation, soon there will be only two workers to pay each retiree’s medical bills. Younger people might have other plans for their money.
So something’s got to give, no matter which party is in power.

The Democrats and their cronies in the AARP are trying to sell Americans on the soothing notion that Medicare is a "sacred promise" but the truth is that the well is running dry:

One of the great ironies of this convention already is that speaker after speaker denounces Republicans for being unable to tell the truth or get their facts straight. Meanwhile, one of the most important truths of modern governance—we are well and truly out of money—sits neglected in the corner. This might be a great way to rally the Democratic base, but it's thin gruel for the majority of Americans who think, correctly, that the nation's finances have spun out of control.

Now let's pass that Buffett rule already.  It will pay for literally hours of government spending.

Message discipline - The Democrats run a video declaring "we all belong" to the government.  The Obama campaign declares: "we don't know nothin' about that."

Let's light this candle!

The DNC starts tonight and it's time to celebrate the good news:

Hot Air: "It's official: We are now $16 trillion in debt"
Zero Hedge: "Manufacturing ISM misses, third month in contraction territory; biggest miss in construction spending in one year."
Business  Insider: "FedEx is one of the world's biggest bellwethers, and it just cut its forecast"
PJ Tatler: "June 2012: Food stamp usage increases three times faster than job creation."

Extra - James Pethokoukis - "U.S. is much worse off than four years ago."

I tell you these are honorable men - Given the stories of the complicated relationship between Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and the former's desire for a Hillary presidency, I wonder if Bill might be preparing the Mark Antony speech.  In the "friends, Romans, countrymen" oration from "Julius Caesar," Antony cleverly turns the crowd against Brutus and the assassins all the while insisting they are "wise" and "honorable."

It's interesting - to say the least - that Clinton is not letting anybody see his speech.  By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes...to North Carolina.

Hostile to business - WashPost: "Obama faces mounting questions over 'you didn't build that' remark"

The timeline of this gaffe is telling: for a solid week, the White House issued no kind of clarification - "we meant roads and bridges!" - until the snap poll results rolled in and then the Most Articulate President ever had to cut a quick commercial to explain what he really meant.  Of course, to believe Obama wasn't being derisive of the hard work of small business owners, you merely need to review the rest of the speech.

Oh, sure, roads and bridges.  Gotcha.

Cut and paste

Entitlement nation - Opinion Journal: "American character is at stake" "What is monumentally new about the American state today is the vast empire of entitlement payments that it protects, manages and finances. Within living memory, the federal government has become an entitlements machine. As a day-to-day operation, it devotes more attention and resources to the public transfer of money, goods and services to individual citizens than to any other objective, spending more than for all other ends combined."

Fact-checking the fact checkers on welfare reform

Mickey Kaus returns to the work requirement that Obama scrapped: "Credulous fact-checkers fall for 20% scam"

Raise caseloads by 20% and Sebelius’ standard will probably be met. (Maybe raise caseloads 30% just to be sure.) So what looks like a tough get-to-work incentive is actually a paleoliberal “first-get-on-welfare” incentive. But the point of welfare reform isn’t to get more people onto welfare.
It’s understandable that MSM reporters and non-profit checkers–some of whom may have been given only a few hours to get to the bottom of a subject they’ve never written about before–would easily fall for a bit of bureaucratic fakery. Do they have to be so self-righteous about it?

Judging by the MSM's over-reaction to Paul Ryan's speech, it's pretty obvious they're wired into the Obama campaign's Twitter feed and swallows whole the spin.  "False balance" indeed.

Jesse and Creed

The last "Breaking Bad" until 2013 is tonight?  That's quite a long wait.

Predictive model says: Obama's gonna lose

For all you Eeyores out there who think this election is going to be a squeaker: take heart.  Today's Boston Globe has an article (behind pay wall) about the IHS Global Insight model that takes a handful of economic and political factors then calculates the incumbent's percentage of the vote:

The Lexington economic forecasting firm takes two economic indicators plus three political variables, plugs them into a formula, and out pops the percentage of the popular vote the incumbent party is expected to win. The formula has correctly predicted the outcome in 14 of the last 16 presidential elections.

Indeed, most of the model's predictions have been within a percentage point and the worst miss was the 1972 election that underestimated Nixon's re-election share by 4.8%.  And what does the model predict for The One?

The most recent update of the formula, using July economic data, shows President Obama losing decisively, with just over 45 percent of the popular vote.

In other words: landslide territory for Romney.  But if you want to go old-school, there's always the President's approval rating:

A president’s job approval rating is one of the best indicators for assessing his chances of reelection. Typically, the president’s job approval rating on Election Day will be close to the share of the vote he receives. Currently, 48% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the president's job performance.

That's Rasmussen's poll.  This morning, Gallup posted Obama's approval rating at 43%.

These numbers all predict a loss for Obama and America still has to digest the new benchmark of $16 trillion in debt and an unemployment rate that - at best - will stay at 8.3%.  Have fun at your convention, Dems.

Is today the day? - U.S. debt clock is about to turn over $16 trillion.

Update - Well, it looks like this is the official one and as of Sunday morning it's at $15.996 T.  That means we're almost certainly going to hit the big 1-6 on Labor Day, right before the DNC.

There's that math again - Here's Social Security trustee Charles Blahous at E21 with "Is it becoming too late to fix Social Security finances?"  "Social Security’s future, at least in the form it has existed dating back to FDR, is now greatly imperiled."

Cars go 'clunk' - Zero Hedge: "More bad news imminent: August US auto production set to plunge by most in 16 months."

Back to these familiar walls

Fox News: "Romney-Ryan play to youth vote, seek those disillusioned by 'fading' Obama promise."

Paul Ryan: "College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life."

You made a mistake, dude.

Extra - Legal Insurrection: "Faded poster."

There goes the Flint vote - Mediaite: "Michael Moore: Start practicing the words 'President Romney'."  Heh-heh, now we can start the voucherization of America.  Bwa-ha-ha!

Barack Obama, mindreader

At every campaign stop, Obama's been lying about the $6,400 that seniors would allegedly have to pay if they opted for the old version of Ryan's reform bill.  But Obama realized that, eventually, the truth would catch up with him.  Not from the mainstream media, mind you, but it would come up in the debates.  So he's slightly modified his approach to the lie:

I do not think it is a good idea to set up Medicare as a voucher system in which seniors are spending up to $6,000 more out of pocket. That was the original proposal Congressman Ryan put forward. And there is still a strong impulse I think among some Republicans for that kind of approach.

They're evil, I tells ya!

Paul Ryan, whippersnapper - The man from Wisconsin gave a great speech tonight.  However, I can't forget the words of my college roommate who noted that Ryan is the first Presidential or Vice Presidential candidate who is younger than me.

Now I feel old.

Oh, we're still talking about how Obama cut the work requirement in welfare?

So let's keep talking about how Obama is gutting the work requirement for welfare!

From a purely political perspective, the waivers were a spectacular screw-up.  Essentially, Obama may have lost his presidency to make a few antipoverty bureaucrats at HHS happy.

The MSM keep protecting their snowflake by claiming the waivers to let states bypass the work requirement in the welfare law are not what the Romney campaign claims.  Well, what were they?  After all, nobody questioned the 16-year-old law until Obama found some unique sidestep around the law.

It looks like to believe that Obama didn't cut work requirements, you have to believe he'll make welfare recipients work even harder.  It's quite a leap of faith:

Now, as we all know, it's usually the case that when executive agencies claim legally dubious new powers they only use them to do good things, especially when they promise not to abuse their new authority. But still I have to ask: Why claim authority to waive the work requirements if not to undermine them? HHS insists that the whole point is to strengthen the law’s promotion of work, and points to a requirement that any waiver must be tied to a plan to increase the number of people moving to work by at least 20 percent. But of course the easiest way to do that is just to enroll far more people in the program. And as Clinton pointed out in his 2006 op-ed, the biggest success of welfare reform was reducing the rolls. The Obama administration may not have actually gutted welfare reform. But it has put a big, sharp machete up to its belly.

I, for one, welcome our President's authority to fundamentally ignore current law...in about five months.

Building the "We Built It" theme - Commentary: "Why "We Built It" is so effective"  "The president was only speaking from his heart when he gave his memorable critique of individualism. It wasn’t really a gaffe because it was just Obama discussing his core philosophy about society."

First and Main

NPR has been running a series of "man on the street" interviews with voters across the nation.  Last week, a restaurant owner in Wisconsin pretty much said she won't be hiring: "Wisconsin business owner relates to Romney's resume"

When it comes to the federal health care law passed under Obama, Wendt says she's not sure how it will affect her yet, since it hasn't been fully implemented.
"But, well, it won't be good," she says. "It'll cost more. Supposedly with a small business, if you have over 50 employees, then you need to do something — it'll affect those. I don't have 50 yet, I have 46, but you know what, I won't get 50. You know what I mean? If it means I'm going to have to pay. And a lot of small businesses just won't hire anybody else."

What a heartless woman.  Meanwhile, the Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight have rolled out a new ad with an "independent" businesswoman from Massachusetts whose catering gig grew to a $3 million business under Romney's business-crushing years as governor.

The future we choose

As we rapidly close in on a national debt of $16,000,000,000,000, Zero Hedge reminds us of the current trajectory of borrowing:

But wait. You aint's seen nothing yet. At this rate of growth, total US debt will surpass: 

$17 trillion on June 10, 2013;
$18 trillion on March 23, 2014;
$19 trillion on January 3, 2015; and
$20 trillion on October 16, 2015

And on, and on, and on...

Don't worry: Obama's plan to raise taxes on 2% of the population will bring our $1.2 trillion yearly deficits crashing down to...$1.15 trillion.  Forward!

The back-burner is getting crowded

From Opinion Journal: "Cheesecake Factory Medicine":

So get a load of Mr. Orszag's Tinker Bell alternative, which he called the "most important institutional change" after ObamaCare passed in 2010: the Independent Payment Advisory Board composed of 15 philosopher kings who will rule over U.S. health care.
Who are these Orszag 15? Well, nobody knows. The board was supposed to be up and running by the end of September, but the White House is avoiding naming names for Senate confirmation until after the election. No one knows, either, what this group of geniuses will propose, but that too is part of the grand Orszag plan.

Of course, Obama doesn't want America to know that he's appointing a board to slash Medicare so...he doesn't.  Add this to the "fiscal cliff," the Sequestration Transparency Act, the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, the next fight over the debt ceiling, entitlement reform, meeting with the Jobs Council, and selling off the government's stake in General Motors to the list of "things that can wait" until after the election.

It's called leadership, people.

Every word he says on Medicare is a lie including "and" and "the" - Obama spent his weekly address talking about Medicare and as Grace-Marie Turner details, nearly everything he said was false.

Extra - Yuval Levin: "They'll just lie."  "In other words, the ad pretends Obamacare does not exist, ignores the reality of the Romney Medicare proposal, and presents a series of flatly untrue claims in its place."  I'm sure the famously objective scribes at the New York Times will be pointing this out any day now.

More - NY Times executive editor/zombie Jill Abramson replies: "Brains........I mean 'sweeping conclusions.""

All-American hero - Fox News: "Astronaut Neil Armstrong dies at 82."  There's only one first.

Leaving it for the kids - Mark Steyn: "War on women? The real war is on children."  "We can't do anything about exploding rates of childhood obesity, diabetes and heart disease, but, if you define "health care" as forcing a Catholic institution to buy $8 contraception for the scions of wealth and privilege, we're right on top of it. And above all, we're doing it for the children, if by "doing it" you mean leaving them with a transgenerational bill unknown to human history – or engaging in what Boston University's Larry Kotlikoff, speaking at the International Institute of Public Finance in Dresden last week, called "child fiscal abuse.""

The national debt is expected to hit the $16 trillion mark right before the Democratic National Convention, if not sooner.

It's Friday!

Let's ease up on the math tests:

He means Elizabeth Warren - Legal Insurrection: "Scott Brown surges ahead of Martha Coakley."  One poll was interesting but two polls may be a trend.

I don't know how the whole Cherokee issue is affecting perceptions of Warren but, as a citizen of the Commonwealth, she is running the most vacuous TV ads, full of eye-rolling platitudes like "Washington is sending billions to oil companies!"  Really?  Do they wire it or are we talking about suitcases stuffed with cash?  This past week, Warren's ham-handed attempt to tie Brown to the Akin controversy almost certainly turned away more voters.  This is a shrill and flailing campaign.

Climate (small) change - Watts Up With That?: "Antarctic peninsula was 1.3 degrees Celsius warmer than today 11,000 years ago."  So it's a cooling trend.

General Motors rejects your reality and substitutes its own

Here's a story via The Truth About Cars: an ad about the Chevy Volt has been banned in the United Kingdom because it's just making stuff up: "GM's alternate reality: UK calls Volt/Ampera ad misleading, bans it"

You can see this ad. Television viewers in the UK can’t.  The Chevrolet Volt  is sold in the UK as the Vauxhall Ampera, and its ad has been banned by the UK Advertising Standards Authority. It says the ad is misleading. The ad claims a 360-mile range. GM is a serial offender when it comes to alternate realities, and this ad is the latest installment.

Of course this is coming from the company that is claiming "Detroit is back!" as it slowly slides back into bankruptcy.

When your only answer is more government, every problem looks like a nail

Hit & Run: "Big Government ratchet turns another click"

What’s more, federal health care costs will consume a larger and larger share of the federal budget—and crowd out all other government functions in the process. If current trends continue, then by 2025 just four budget categories—Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and interest on the debt—will gobble up every last federal dollar.
This, naturally, has alarmed many progressives. But don’t worry—as always, they have a plan.
According to The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus, “23 responsible Democrats—some of the left’s leading thinkers in the health-care field—have just come up with a set of answers.” And like a boozer who tries to drink himself sober, their answer is...wait for it...more government.

Easy peasy - free lunch for everyone.



Obama stole $716 billion from Medicare to pay for Obamacare.  It's true.

4 for 4 - USA Today: "CBO projects $1.1 trillion deficit for this fiscal year."

Don't worry America: Obama extended the freeze on federal pay raises so we're on the way.

"This video is private"?  How very odd

I like this freak-out by Greg Sargent: "Obama to media: Romney's whole campaign is based on lies."  Because when he means "whole campaign" he really means only Romney's "work-for-welfare" spots and by "lies" he means things that are entirely true.

But then, a long time ago, there was some dude who took credit for moving people from welfare to work:

And never forget the dignity that comes from work.

We never shall, mysterious stranger!  Can we see your 2008 political ad?  Oh, it's private.  Now.

Harvard economists stirring up trouble again

Robert Samuelson: "Why Ryan might be right"

Overlooked in the furor surrounding Paul Ryan's Medicare proposal -- a plan, it should be recalled, that wouldn't start until 2023 and even then would affect only new beneficiaries -- is a just-published study in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) suggesting that, well, Ryan might be right. The study finds that a voucher-type system might noticeably reduce costs compared to "traditional" fee-for-service Medicare. Three Harvard economists did the study, including one prominent supporter of President Obama's health care overhaul.
The study compared the costs of traditional Medicare with Medicare Advantage, a voucher-like program that now enrolls about 25 percent of beneficiaries. Medicare Advantage has cost less for identical coverage. From 2006 to 2009, the gap averaged 11 percent between traditional Medicare and voucher plans that, under the proposal by Ryan and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., would serve as a price "benchmark."

Also worth noting: Ryan's plan would be voluntary.  If you choose to stay in the sinking ship of Medicare then, by all means, stick around until the IPAB makes the cuts for you.

Free choice in health care...the nerve!

A made-up number for a fake President - Wall Street Journal: "The $6,400 myth": "One of President Obama's regular attacks on Paul Ryan's Medicare reform is that it would force seniors to pay $6,400 a year more for health care. But merely because he keeps repeating this doesn't mean it's in the same area code of accurate."

In other news, Obama suck-up Jonathan Cohn informs us that the latest "distortion" from the Romney-Ryan ticket is that 15% of hospitals will become unprofitable under the Obamacare-Medicare raid.  What follows is the most ineffectual refutation of that "lie" I've ever seen:

An independent analysis of the Affordable Care Act suggested that some hospitals might not be able to adapt these reductions—and that, as a result, 15 percent would become unprofitable. If that happens, they might stop seeing as many Medicare patients, forcing seniors to wait longer for care. Or Congress might decide to ease up on the cuts, cause the law's total cost to rise.
The analysis comes from Richard Foster, Medicare’s chief actuary. He is smart and honest, so you should take what he says seriously. But plenty of smart and honest analysts take a different view.

And we prefer those analysts on the Obama campaign payroll, so you can stuff it Richard Foster.  It's not an exaggeration to say that Cohn all but advocates the bankruptcy of these greedy hospitals:

To be clear, Foster could be right that hospitals will struggle. But would 15 percent of hospitals losing money be a disaster? In most industries, it wouldn’t be.

You see, the Medicare raid to pay for Obamacare is a form of "tough love" to compel those hospitals to pare back unnecessary procedures that drive up costs.  The exact same compulsion for hospitals to reduce costs by applying market forces is "cutthroat competition."  Free choice = bad.  An unelected board slashing reimbursement rates to hit spending targets = good.

It's all about good intentions.

All over but the shouting - I've been writing forever that entitlement spending will dwarf the entire federal budget and all the petty problems we squabble about on a daily basis.  Adding mightily to the argument is this long and well-sourced post over at Zero Hedge: "America's demographic cliff: the real issue in the coming, and all future Presidential elections."  Bottom line: the pressures of entitlement spending are growing exponentially at the very time we're already borrowing 32 cents on every dollar of spending.

Issues

Hat tip: Doug Ross.

Uncle Choo-choo is cuckoo - Hot Air: "Boston Globe: Biden's "chains" remark sign of tiresome double standard for Democrats."

Yet this will be the first and last note of outrage from the national media which just dismisses our demented Veep as "Crazy Joe."  A heartbeat away.

Eleven

The fiscal cliff - The Weekly Standard discusses spending, taxes and entitlements and says "reform or bankruptcy: pick one."

Related - WashPost: "New rules expose bigger funding gaps for public pensions."  Governor Pat Quinn is trying to reform public pensions in Illinois - that went over as you might expect.

Biden promises inaction and Social Security's bankruptcy - This editorial from the WashPost takes the vice-president to task for making promises that arithmetic can't keep: "Mr. Biden's Social Security promise falls flat."

"Da scheppert nix" - Near the end of the Forbes article "General Motors is headed for bankruptcy again" there's a fascinating anecdote from The Truth About Cars about how the CEO of Volkswagen was rattled by a non-rattling steering column on a Hyundai.  More than anything, the Volkswagen chief's pique illustrates the difference between car companies gaining market share (VW) and those losing the market (GM).

God bless 'em - Obama says: "I'm with stupid."

Obama faces the hard-hitting press

In June, I predicted - in the wake of the "You didn't build that" gaffe - that Obama wouldn't have another press conference.

Well, it wasn't quite a meeting with the White House press corps, but Obama had interviews with People magazine and Entertainment Tonight.  No word on his favorite "Twilight" movie, though.

Extra - Commentary: "President's press abuse could backfire."

Do you know who's "honest, straightforward and sincere?" This Paul Ryan guy - Big Journalism: "Erskine Bowles: Barack Obama scuttled the deficit commission, not Paul Ryan."  Uh-oh, somebody's in line for another Cory Booker hostage video.

Regret

We can't joke about slavery? What's this world coming to? - Powerline: "Douglas Wilder rips Biden for slavery reference."

Extra - Instapundit: "Nice to see an admission of a double standard."

Oh, we're talking about Medicare?  Let's talk about the Obamacare heist

Hey, Grandma!  Did you know that Obamacare is siphoning away $716 billion from Medicare?  Oh that might have escaped your notice.

What's more this three-quarter trillion dollar fund shift is going to be orchestrated by an unelected rationing committee called IPAB:

While Obama has shown appallingly little seriousness in dealing with our runaway deficit spending or the runaway entitlement spending that drives it, he does have his own plan to reduce Medicare costs. It relies upon the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), a creation of Obamacare.
The IPAB is a board of 15 unelected and largely unaccountable bureaucrats who would be empowered to cut payments to Medicare providers. In Ryan’s own words, “Obamacare … puts a new rationing board in charge of Medicare next year to start price-controlling Medicare to deny access to current seniors.” 

What does the chief accountant at Medicare say about this?

Under Obamacare and the IPAB — according to the Medicare chief actuary — Medicare providers would be paid less than Medicaid providers by the end of this decade.  Good luck getting in to see medical professionals when they wouldn’t even get paid as much to see you as they’d get paid for seeing Medicaid patients.

By all means let's keep talking about the one thing Obama never mentions on the campaign trail.

Extra - The Corner: "Obamacare changed everything."

More - The WashPost agrees: "Romney's right: Obamacare cuts Medicare by $716 billion.  Here's how."  The key takeaway is that they argue that Medicare benefits won't be cut, just reimbursement rates to hospitals who "agreed" to this as part of the Obamacare package to get more customers.  (Do hospitals have a unifying body to make these decisions?)  But blithely saying "the hospitals will pay" does not change the simple fact that medical access will wither if doctors aren't paid.

Once again, Medicare's chief actuary doesn't buy it either:

Even more important, however, is that Medicare's own fiscal overseer doesn't think that the projections are likely to prove accurate. In the actuary's note at the end of the report, Richard Foster, the program's chief actuary, warns that "the financial projections shown in this report for Medicare do not represent a reasonable expectation for actual program operations in either the short range (as a result of the unsustainable reductions in physician payment rates) or the long range (because of the strong likelihood that the statutory reductions in price updates for most categories of Medicare provider services will not be viable)."

You can keep believing "somebody else" will pay but there's no such thing as a free lunch.

Ridin' this rocketship to Recovery-ville! - Zero Hedge: "Small business optimism hits 9-month low."  Meh.

It's sitting in the do-nothing Senate - Gateway Pundit: "Obama slams Paul Ryan for not passing farm bill he passed two weeks ago."  Let's be fair: should a President know the status of a farm bill before visiting Iowa?  That sounds like homework.

The facts on Ryan's Medicare proposal

American Enterprise: "Three things every voter needs to know about Paul Ryan's Medicare reform plan"

1. No one over the age of 55 would be affected in any way.
2. Traditional Medicare fee-for-service would remain available for all. “Premium support”—that is, government funding of private insurance plans chosen by individuals—is an option for those who choose it. No senior would be forced out of the traditional Medicare program against his will.
3. Overall funding for Medicare under the Ryan-Wyden plan is scheduled to grow at the same rate as under President Obama’s proposals. Is this “gutting Medicare” and “ending Medicare as we know it”? In reality, it’s the market giving seniors cheaper, higher quality choices they can take if they wish, with the traditional program remaining an option.

The trustees of the Medicare program have said that the Trust Fund will be exhausted in 2024.  There was a time when a certain White House resident recognized this problem but now it's the silly season and it's all "Mediscare" all the time.

Extra - Hot Air: "Lifelike talking-points robot doesn't like being reminded that Ryan's Medicare plan won't affect seniors."  "Job one for Democrats: Lie your ass off in the interest of convincing seniors that Romney and Ryan are prepared to reduce Medicare benefits for everyone, regardless of age, instead of exempting people aged 55 and over as Ryan has promised."  On a side note: isn't Wasserman-Schultz a pistol?  She absolutely will not be pushed off her talking points.  Priorities USA?  I think they're John Birchers or something.

Say anything - George Will: "Obama’s desperate flailing about to justify four more years has sunk into such unhinged smarminess that Romney may have concluded: There is nothing Obama won’t say about me, because he has nothing to say for himself, so I will chose a running mate whose seriousness about large problems and ideas underscores what the president has become — silly and small."

In North Carolina - Legal Insurrection has an on-the-scene report: "Lines around the block at Romney-Ryan rally in High Point, NC."

What liberal media? - Newsbusters: "Media first ROFL spin on Ryan: too inexperienced to be President?"

Doug Ross: "As opposed to President Training Wheels, the All-Cook-County Community Organizer?"

Five fundraisers in one day - White House Dossier: "Obama to empty Chicago of money."  Wouldn't it be cool if he worked as hard on, say, producing a budget as he does on fundraising?

USS Wisconsin - The rumors are running hot that Wisconsin rep Paul Ryan will be Mitt Romney's choice for Vice President.  As a longtime fan of fiscal sanity, I would love to see Ryan on the ticket.

Those darn oil companies

Forbes: "ExxonMobil pays $3 in taxes for every $1 in profit."  Meanwhile, here in Massachusetts, Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren is continuing her "Empty Platitudes" tour with a new ad claiming that Washington is "sending" billions to the oil companies.  And by "sending billions" to the dreaded oil companies, Warren means that they're allowed to take the same tax deductions afforded to every business in America:

Technically speaking, the government allows tax deductions for oil companies, and most (but not all) of those are similar to the provisions that allow other businesses to write off the costs of doing business — only they’re specific to the oil-industry operations in this case.
One can certainly debate whether deductions are subsidies, but the president suggested rather clearly that the government is literally giving taxpayer money to oil companies. That’s not true, because the uncollected funds never counted as government revenue in the first place.

I beg to differ: when you have a President that says "you didn't build that" it's obvious that he's already counted your revenue as government property.

Damn, these Americans are stupid - Maggie's Farm: "The kind of thinking which drives me nuts."  Me too.

It's not really eliminating welfare-work requirements because some Republican governors asked for it

Mickey Kaus responds to the point and counterpoint on Obama's new "waivers" for work requirements made law in Clinton's welfare reform bill:

I had some serious doubts about Mitt Romney’s ad attacking Obama’s welfare “waivers”–until I read the New York Times editorial denouncing it. Now I know Romney’s ad isn’t as accurate as I’d thought. It’s much more accurate.

Specifically, he hoists the NY Times on their own editorial petard by noting that giving states the option to allow welfare recipients to be "exempted from the work requirements for six months" (could be longer) is exactly what Romney is claiming in his ads.

Of course the media is circling the wagons around their precious snowflake and the counter-argument of choice is that Republican governors are asking for flexibility with the work requirement, therefore (?) it's not really dropping the work requirement - which it is.  A better question might be: why alter a law that was bipartisan, worked fine, and was uncontroversial for two decades?  Oh, right, the election.

Extra - From Ace of Spades.

Let's vault into a hot meme - I know I'm hopelessly behind the cool kids on this one, but I thought it was hilarious: "McKayla is not impressed."

Release the drones! - Hit & Run: "Which Presidential candidate has killed more innocents?"

The pursuit of happiness* (maximum: $5 million)

The latest brilliant idea in class warfare?  A maximum income.  You can make up to $5 million dollars but then everything above that is taxed at 99%.

[phone rings]
"Mr. Spielberg?  It's the studio.  Great news!  They've green-lighted "Jaws 5: The Revenge of Bruce."
"I don't know, Jennifer, my accountant says that I'm already up to $4.3 million for the fiscal year and I'm still pulling in merchandising cash from Tintin."
"But Mr. Spielberg, a movie would give jobs to hundreds of Hollywood phonies from actors to writers to set builders."
"Well, OK, but we need to find a lead who's under the limit.  [snaps fingers] Get me Tom Arnold!"

And scene.

Extra - Vodkapundit: "An idea whose time has come."

X the text - Kids today know they're not supposed to use their cellphones and drive...so they stopped buying cars.  The Truth About Cars: "Generation Why: Industry blames 4G Generation for 2 million missing car sales."

The "fairness" issue again

Hot Air: "Do the rich pay their fair share?"  Um, yeah.

In 2009, the top 20% of earners brought in an income about 10 times that of the bottom 20% of earners. However, they paid about 221 times as much in taxes.
The top one percent of earners made about 50 times as much money as the bottom quintile in 2009, but paid about 1,500 times as much in taxes

We already have a progressive tax system but it's never enough to feed the beast.  This is the ongoing infantilization of America where it's all candy and no consequences.  Somewhere along the journey we decided to make "somebody else" pay for everything because, hey, we can vote that way.



Flashback from Hit & Run: "Top 1% pay 37% of income taxes."

Non-Cherokee Elizabeth Warren lies about policies too

Living in Massachusetts, I'm not accustomed to the barrage of political ads that must come with living in Ohio or Florida.  But the Scott Brown-Elizabeth Warren race for the Senate is a hot one and the spots have been coming in a relentless stream.  Brown seems to be running on personality and bipartisanship; many of his recent ads feature Democrats like former Boston mayor Ray Flynn talking up Brown's ability to play well with others.

Warren, on the other hand, is playing what I call the "Candy for Everyone!" strategy: it's great stuff for all, paid by somebody else.  Her latest ad deplores the fact that China is spending 9% of GDP on infrastructure while, darn it, we're only spending 2.4% and "we can do better."  Hit & Run adds it up:

U.S. gross domestic product is about $15 trillion a year. Increasing infrastructure “investment” to the 9% Chinese level that Warren cites would mean an additional $1 trillion a year in government spending. That’s an immense spending increase. To put it in context, the entire federal government spent about $3.6 trillion in 2011, on revenues of about $2.3 trillion.

How will Elizabeth Warren pay for this extra trillion dollars in spending?  Well - heaven help me - I went to her web site and it's all gonna be covered by a "small" tax hike on the rich.  Just for context, repealing the Bush tax cuts on higher-income Americans is projected to raise $80 billion/year.  We are heading into the fifth straight year of a trillion-dollar-plus budget deficits, Medicare is going broke, Social Security will be underwater in twenty years, and the costs for Obamacare haven't kicked in yet.  There is no mathematical way that Warren can pay for all her goodies when we're already borrowing $4 billion every day.

But we can't say that, can we?  Instead, Uncle Moneybags is going to pave us a new road.  Hooray!

Paying for the Boomers - Robert Samuelson on today's kids who will not escape higher taxes and diminished benefits in the future: "Generation Squeezed."

Stick to the script

Back in June, I predicted that Obama wouldn't have another press conference.

Nice Deb: "No media grousing as Obama goes seven weeks without taking a question from the White House press corps."  Yeah, stay tuned.  I'm sure the media will start confronting their precious snowflake any day now.

Happy anniversary America - Zero Hedge: "On the one-year anniversary of the US downgrade": "As of July 31, 2012 - with two months left to go in fiscal 2012 - US Treasury funded debt was already up by $US 1.14 TRILLION over the year to date. But there is something here that very few commentators have wasted any ink on. A year ago, the budget “deal” concocted between Mr Obama and his Congress was ballyhooing a “plan” to cut $US 1.2 TRILLION off annual budget deficits over a DECADE. Now, the projection for the 2012 budget is that the US government will add that amount to the funded debt of the US Treasury over ONE YEAR. This would be hilariously funny if it wasn’t so tragic."  Emphasis in original.

The Ponzi scheme emerges - Business Week: "Is Social Security still a good deal for workers?"  Nope: "People retiring today are part of the first generation of workers who have paid more in Social Security taxes during their careers than they will receive in benefits after they retire. It's a historic shift that will only get worse for future retirees, according to an analysis by The Associated Press."  As I've said before: the retirement program so good, they had to make it mandatory.

Seasonal adjustments - WashPost: "Wait, the U.S. economy actually lost 1.2 million jobs in July?"  Shhhhh...don't disturb the narrative.

By the way, if you're wondering about the quality of the jobs that were "added" to the economy last month, Zero Hedge has the top line: "Full-time jobs -228,000.  Part-time jobs +32,000."

Ironic - I was browsing through Amazon this morning and in my "recommended" section there were a bunch of survival-type books such as "Living Off the Grid" but they were only offered in Kindle edition.  Heh.

Tough time for the kids - PJ Media: "Millenials' jobless rate: 12.7%."

The pathway to even bigger budget deficits - In "The President's rosy scenario", Professor Greg Mankiw takes note that the Administration is estimating economic growth way out of line with the majority consensus of economists.  It's like depending on a big raise at work and spending the anticipated money now: "Of course, the Administration's optimistic forecast feeds directly into its budget projection.  If we get the slower growth that private forecasters predict, we will get less tax revenue and larger budget deficits than the Administration projects."

I heard Harry Reid is a pederast but I don't believe it - However, I would like to know how he amassed a net worth of over $10 million.  Also, I heard from some guy that all his charitable contributions go to the Communist Party and the Church of Scientology, but he won't release his tax returns so I'm forced to assume the worst.

Thumpa thumpa thumpa vocoder repeat

I consider myself to be quite the music aficionado so this surprises me not a bit: "Modern music really does sound the same."

The scepticism about modern music shared by many middle-aged fans has been vindicated by a study of half a century's worth of pop music, which found that today's hits really do all sound the same.

It's weird, but I used to love to go to Newbury Comics and browse through the rows of music to fill my collection.  Now I order oddball CDs from Amazon such as Fountains of Wayne and "Bachelor Pad Royale" lounge music.  You can have Rihanna, give me Julie London.

Nice work if you can leave it - Via Hit & Run: the former police chief at now-bankrupt Stockton, CA worked for eight months and retired at age 52 with a $204,000 pension.

The Blameshifter-in-Chief knows whose fault it will be if he doesn't get re-elected

It's yours!  NY Times: "Obama supporters barraged with pleas for cash"

“My upcoming birthday next week could be the last one I celebrate as President of the United States, but that’s not up to me — it’s up to you,” Mr. Obama said to his supporters in an e-mail late last week.
Accompanying the e-mail was a link to donate in exchange for a chance to attend his “birthday get-together” in August.

The Obama campaign has been blasting out birthday reminders with the regularity and intensity usually reserved for eight-year-olds.

Extra - Hot Air: "NYT notices Obama campaign's increasing desperation for contributions."