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.