You know, when I think of these things, I really should just go ahead and post them right away…it’ll make me look more prescient and brilliant than simply linking:

This is something that’s been on my mind for quite a while, and Chris Wallace put great words to exactly what I’ve been thinking lately with regard to the Supreme Court’s ultimate decision on ObamaCare:

(sorry for the commercial, the discussion with Brit Hume starts at about 3:50)

The gist is that win or lose with SCOTUS, it’s a lose situation for Obama:

Either he loses his signature legislative victory because it’s unconstitutional, or the well-over 50% of Americans who hate it have no other recourse than to elect Republicans to both houses of Congress and the White House and Obama loses obviously in that case.

This, I think, lends itself to the point I was making earlier today that this is an opportunity for those of us who love Liberty and Independence to make crystal clear the choice we have before us this year: Do we continue down the path of governmental intrusion into and management of our lives, or do we assert ourselves and tell the dictators in Washington that, No thanks, we’ll take care of our own lives?

(Interestingly, Brit makes an excellent point that I’d not thought of: Basically, with our fiscal house in such disarray, ObamaCare cannot stand on its own failures anyway. That our debt and unfunded social liabilities are so massive that it doesn’t matter what happens with the Supreme Court or—it seems he’s suggesting—with repeal even through legislative remedies…that it will collapse simply because it cannot be afforded. Scary stuff, especially considering the likelihood that he’s wrong, and that the unaffordability of any mandate dating all the way back to the New Deal has never kept this country from burying itself in debt in order to continue to feed its appetite for mother’s milk from the teat of the government trough…if you’ll excuse my abusively mixed metaphors.)

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

Common sense solutions from my candidate for President….

Herman Cain in Wall Street Journal: “My Plan to Revive Economic Growth”
Published: Thursday, September 15, 2011

Last week, President Obama unveiled his eagerly anticipated jobs plan. After 43 minutes of his speechifying, Americans were left wondering: We waited 30 months for this?
Indeed, it seems Mr. Obama’s first term has been spent advancing a legislative agenda that pays no mind to our ailing economy and the Americans whose sufferings are casualties in his ideological war. After a failed stimulus package, preferential industry bailouts, and the disastrous government overhaul of the health-care industry, it seems the plight of the American worker has remained an afterthought.

This is the worst jobs recovery since the Great Depression. If the Obama administration’s aim was to merely tie for last place with the previous worst recovery, it would have created eight million more jobs, based on comparative data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If our recovery were more typical of the postwar era, as former Sen. Phil Gramm reported on this page in April, we would have 14 million more jobs today.

As a longtime leader in the business community, I know firsthand that government does not create jobs. It can only create the conditions in which businesses operate. These conditions can spur growth, or they can suppress it. The conditions imposed by the current administration have suppressed growth.

Still, there is hope. That hope begins with economic certainty, a sort of assurance the president seems unwilling to provide. I, on the other hand, have proposed a plan that would stabilize and grow our economy:

“Cain’s Vision for Economic Growth,” also known as the 9-9-9 Plan, is founded upon three guiding economic principles: Production drives the economy. Risk-taking creates growth. Units of measurement must be dependable.

The plan begins with restructuring the tax code to include the broadest possible base at the lowest possible rate. The elements are:

• A 9% corporate flat tax. Businesses would deduct purchases from other businesses and all capital investment. The resulting gross income is taxed at 9%.

• A 9% personal flat tax. Individuals would deduct charitable contributions, then pay 9% on the rest of their income. Capital gains are excluded.

• A 9% national sales tax. This levy would be placed on the consumption of all new goods. Used goods purchased would be excluded.

My plan would also permanently eliminate taxes on repatriated profits, as well as payroll taxes and the estate tax.

All of these measures would free up capital, spur production, and incentivize risk-taking, thereby fueling the economy and creating jobs. The plan has been designed to be revenue neutral initially, and then revenues would grow in line with the economy.

But these policies must be coupled with sound money. A dollar must be worth the same tomorrow as it is today. Stabilizing the dollar’s value starts with the federal government taking significant measures to rein in its spending and pay down the national debt. Americans must be assured that the federal government will live within its means and get serious about eliminating our crippling debt. Repealing ObamaCare, Sarbanes-Oxley and the Dodd-Frank bank-regulation bill would be critical steps.

Finally, my plan promotes enterprise zones, also known as “empowerment zones.” Coupled with tax reform and monetary stabilization, empowerment zones would revitalize inner cities by providing tax credits to businesses that hire workers living and working in underprivileged areas.

Some of the most tragic unemployment numbers can be found in minority communities and in urban centers around the country. Empowerment zones would create a whole new generation of wage-earners providing for their families. The late Jack Kemp, a secretary of the department of Housing and Urban Development and a dear friend, was one of the first lawmakers to propose empowerment zones. He understood the tremendous economic benefits they would provide.

Each job lost today is not merely a statistic. Americans are struggling to determine whether to pay their mortgages or buy groceries, whether to buy school uniforms or pay the electric bill.

Such despair is unfitting for the greatest nation the world has ever known. After all, it is inherently American to work, to risk and to dream. Our government’s policies should encourage that, not stifle it.

Mr. Cain, a Republican, is running for president of the United States. He is a former chairman and CEO of Godfather’s Pizza and a former chairman of the board of directors to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

I am proud this morning to announce my support for Herman Cain for President.

This is a personal decision by me and does not reflect the views of my co-bloggers nor should be construed as an official endorsement by GOPROUD of which I am a board member.

Now that I’m done with that disclaimer….let me shout this from sea to shining sea — AMERICA NEEDS HERMAN CAIN!!!! I have been flirting with the Cain candidacy for over a year now. I had the pleasure to meet him at CPAC and I have been closely following his campaign long before most people knew his name.

I felt it was important to declare my preference publicly today as I have decided to become actively involved in Team Cain to assist in the South Carolina primary and beyond. I owe my readers the transparency of knowing why I am writing about certain things and not to be confused by my intent.

Why Herman Cain? Well, haven’t been this excited about a Presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984 (the first year I was old enough to truly know anything and make a difference).

Some will now say, “now Bruce….there will never be another Ronald Reagan!” And that is true. And I am NOT equating Mr. Cain to Mr. Reagan. What I am saying is that Mr. Cain excites me with his common sense ideas, love of country, and ability to connect to the American psyche. Choosing a President has always been a “gut feeling” thing for America. I have a great feeling about Herman Cain.

Herman Cain has been plucked by destiny to arrive at America’s electoral doorstep at just the right time. He has a solid business background, is an inspirational leader of people, and understands the complexities of the world economy. He wasn’t a community organizer, he is a jobs and growth creator. He wasn’t a concocted creation of America’s radical left and academic centers of power, he is a true child of the American Experience. He has never scoffed at American values, he embraces our nation’s special place in the history of mankind and knows we are teetering on the edge.

Mr. Cain is familiar with rescuing failing enterprises, which to me is his most important qualification. In a sheer coincidence to the timing of my announcement, Daniel Henninger wrote this yesterday in the Wall Street Journal:

Does a résumé like Herman Cain’s add up to an American presidency? I used to think not. But after watching the American Idol system we’ve fallen into for discovering a president—with opinion polls, tongue slips and media caprice deciding front-runners and even presidents—I’m rewriting my presidential-selection software. [Emphasis added.]

Conventional wisdom holds that this week’s Chris Christie boomlet means the GOP is desperate for a savior. The reality is that, at some point, Republicans will have to start drilling deeper on their own into the candidates they’ve got.

Put it this way: The GOP nominee is running against the incumbent president. Unlike the incumbent, Herman Cain has at least twice identified the causes of a large failing enterprise, designed goals, achieved them, and by all accounts inspired the people he was supposed to lead. Not least, Mr. Cain’s life experience suggests that, unlike the incumbent, he will adjust his ideas to reality.

No other GOP candidate can bring the fight to Obama over the sorry state of the American economy than Herman Cain. Our other choices are, I’m sad to say, more of the same old thing — career professional politicians. Yes, even Ron Paul, folks.

So there you have it. My big announcement. Herman Cain is the first Presidential candidate I will actively and ENTHUSIASTICALLY campaign for through blood, sweat, money & tears since Ronald Reagan in 1984. That’s a long time of being unmoved by GOP nominees, don’t you think?

There will be more to say about Herman Cain and the issues. But I wanted to stand up today and proudly declare my support for the 45th President of the United States of America and the next true heir of the American Experience — Mr. Herman Cain.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Just noted that Patty Murray, the most junior of the three Senate Democrats Harry Reid picked for the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, was first elected to the Senate in 1992.  The most senior Republican, Jon Kyl, was first elected in 1994.

Democrats Max Baucus and John Kerry were first elected in 1978 and 1984 respectively.  Republicans Pat Toomey and Rob Portman both elected last year.

Toomey and Portman are solid, sensible conservatives from swing states.

Seems Harry Reid prefers Washington veterans while Republican leader Mitch McConnell turned to newcomers.  Smart move, Mitch. Seems the Kentuckian has been reading the tea leaves.

The Republican picks will be more attuned to what Americans are thinking while the Democrats will be champions of the political class.

UPDATE:  Just realized Pat Toomey once helmed the Club for Growth.  Makes me like the pick even more.

Yesterday, after a hectic weekend with family and friends, I, a blogger without a paid staff (indeed without any staff) put forward a proposal to address Standard and Poor’s downgrade of the federal government’s financial condition.  Within several hours, our readers had offered their own suggestions and critiques of some items on my lost.  Now, Jennifer Rubin is also soliciting views from her readers.

A few hours before I offered my proposal, President Obama addressed the downgrade, roughly 50 minutes after he was slated to speech on the crisis.  Instead of putting forward a plan or even an outline of a plan, he announced that he intended to present his “own recommendations over the coming weeks on how we should proceed.”

Over the coming weeks?  A number of savvy pundits and financial analysts had been predicting the downgrade for weeks.  Shouldn’t the President of the United States have been prepared for this?

He had a whole weekend and a stable full of advisors. Couldn’t he have come up with an outline on his own and farmed it out to them, had them refine a few of his points, discuss the political and policy pitfalls of each before drafting his statement?

As Bryan Preston put it, in response to the downgrade, he showed “even less ability to lead” than he had during the debt debate.  He made “no substantive moves at all to calm the markets. He was silent for days while his political team engaged in one of the most obviously dishonest responses in living memory, and then he was late to his own speech today.”  (Via Jim Geragthy’s Morning Jolt, available by subscription.)

Glenn Reynolds has a nice roundup of pundits offering views similar to those Preston put forward.

Now, if a blogger who follows politics can come up with a plan to address the downgrade, why can’t the President of the United States, with a whole staff paid to help him lead the nation, do the same?

UPDATE: Within minutes of this post going up, our readers were offering suggestions on how to improve this plan. I already realized some things I had left out, including repealing Obamacare and Dodd-Frank, not to mention Sarbanes-Oxley. So, please feel free to chime in and I’ll offer an updated post later this week with a more comprehensive plan.

And I’ll daresay we unpaid bloggers will put forward a GayPatriot plan before the president puts forward his.

Glenn has a good roundup of conservative and libertarian critiques of the president’s remarks earlier today on the downgrade, including this devastating analysis from Jennifer Rubin:

All he can do is promise to raise taxes.

Now that’s not exactly right. He did trot our proposals for a one-year extension of the payroll tax cut and extension of unemployment benefits. And he promised to make his own proposal to the debt committee. That’s it. It is what he has been saying for what seems like forever. He has nothing new.

While the president dithers, let me offer a 5-point plan to address the problem:

1. Using the FY 2007 budget as a baseline, with adjustments for inflation and population increase, redraft the FY 2012 budget.  Task House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan to set up a committee to find more cuts.
2. Set up a commission composed of businessman and scholars from the Cato Institute to identify those federal regulations which stifle innovation, exploration and growth.  As soon as their report is complete, task the various agency heads to rescind those regulations.  Reduce the staffs of the agencies responsible for enforcing said regulations.
3. Immediate across the board salary cuts for all federal employees (save active duty military).
4. Repeal Congressional Budget Act of 1974.
5. Simplify the tax code along the lines of the 1986 Tax Reform Act.

Of course, this basic framework may require some tweaking.  There are, for example, some good things in the 1974 Budget Act.  And we may be able to identify a smart CEO to helm the regulatory relief committee.  (And we may want scholars from think tanks other than Cato.)  But, this is a start.  And it represents not just a break from the last two-and-one-half years, but from the last ten years as the immediate past president was not much of a fan of deregulation.

Lady Thatcher unpacks it for us:

The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.

Too bad the president didn’t acknowledge that in his remarks today. (Stay tuned for my 5-point plan to address the downgrade.)

A Facebook friend who was one of the first to champion the then-junior Senator from Illinois had this to say about the man he so enthusiastically backed for the 2008 Democratic nomination:

S&P downgrade of US credit rating from AAA to AA+ is a stark reminder why Obama will go down as the worst President in modern history. Congress – both houses, both parties – rank pretty high on the pusillanimity index too. They should all be ashamed of themselves.

Emphasis added.

The president’s chief political advisor keeps giving us a foretaste of the 2012 campaign, attack Republicans.  This time, David Axelrod is going after presumptive Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney:

“Having ducked and dodged and dithered throughout the debt-ceiling debate, and then dropping in on the final day and opposing the compromise, it’s pathetic that Mitt Romney was the first out of the gate with a press release blaming the president after S&P issued its report,” Mr. Axelrod, who is advising Mr. Obama’s campaign, said in an interview.

Ducked and dodged during the debt-ceiling debate?   Hmmm. . . . sounds like the behavior of another man running for the White House in 2012.  Only that guy is the only announced Democratic candidate.  The good news is that Axelrod doesn’t think that kind of politics will play:

“I don’t think the American people are going to reward that kind of politics,” he said. “People are looking for constructive ideas about how we build a better future. The president is offering those.”

He is, Mr. Axelrod?  Then, please do tell us what’s his plan for the FY 2012 budget and proposal to reform entitlements.

Oh, whoops, I read that wrong.  You said “constructive ideas” not plans.  Guess that’s how Obama governs.

(H/t Politico)

When you run for an office, lambasting its occupant for his fiscal failures, you know that should you succeed in replacing him, you’re going to have to clean up the messes he will have left behind. In the third presidential debate in October, then-candidate Barack Obama detailed the fiscal mess he would be inheriting should he win the presidential contest that fall:

From the Washington Post:

Standard & Poor’s announced Friday night that it has downgraded the U.S. credit rating for the first time, dealing a symbolic blow to the world’s economic superpower in what was a sharply worded critique of the American political system.

Lowering the nation’s rating to one notch below AAA, the credit rating company said “political brinkmanship” in the debate over the debt had made the U.S. government’s ability to manage its finances “less stable, less effective and less predictable.”

Wonder if we would have seen this downgrade if the president had offered a plan of his own at the outset of the debate.

Downgraded because we spend too much:

S&P said the downgrade “reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government’s medium-term debt dynamics.” It also blamed the weakened “effectiveness, stability, and predictability” of U.S. policy making and political institutions at a time when challenges are mounting.

“Democrats,” Professor William A. Jacobson writes

own the downgrade. They fought Republicans and Tea Party supporters every step of they way, and forced a deal which was insufficient. They played class warfare and race politics against arguments that we needed to drastically change our spending habits.

Via Instapundit.

But there is no doubt that we’ve been living beyond our means and we’re going to have to make some adjustments.

Now, what I’ve done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut.

Candidate Barack Obama, October 15, 2008

THIS CAN’T BE GOOD: U.S. Borrowing Tops 100% Of GDP: Treasury. “The new borrowing took total public debt to $14.58 trillion, over end-2010 GDP of $14.53 trillion, and putting it in a league with highly indebted countries like Italy and Belgium.”

Glenn Reynolds, August 4, 2011

Via James Pethokoukis at Reuters.com:

From Goldman Sachs today: We have lowered our forecast for US real GDP growth further and now expect real GDP to grow just 2%-2½% through the end of 2012. Our forecast for annual average GDP growth has fallen to 1.7% in 2011 (from 1.8%) and to 2.1% in 2012 (from 3.0%). Since this pace is slightly below the US economy’s potential, we now expect the unemployment rate to be at 9¼% by the end of 2012, slightly above the current level.

2. Even our new forecast is subject to meaningful downside risk. We now see a one-in-three risk of renewed recession, mostly concentrated in the next 6-9 months. There are three specific issues that concern us. First, a worsening of the European financial crisis, and a failure of European policymakers to respond adequately, could lead to a further tightening of financial conditions and credit availability, which would worsen the economic outlook globally. Second, our forecast assumes that the payroll tax cut—currently scheduled to expire at the end of 2011—is extended for another year, but if that failed to happen the fiscal drag in early 2012 would increase significantly. Third, increases in the US unemployment rate have historically had a tendency to feed on themselves, and this could happen again.

Pethokoukis makes this comparison to the 1980 & 1984 elections:

The consensus used to be that President Obama might be OK if the jobless rate fell below 8 percent by Election Day.  That seems increasingly unlikely. The economy is, at best, in slow-growth mode, just churning and churning, creating few jobs.  Comparisons to President Reagan’s 1984 “Morning in America” campaign are looking ever-more ridiculous.  Under Reagan’s tax-cut driven recovery, unemployment fell from 10.8 percent in December 1982 to 7.2 percent by Election Day as the economy grew 4.5 percent in 1983 and 7.2 percent in 1984. In fact,  Jimmy Carter’s 1980 campaign might be the better comparison. The unemployment rate jumped from 6.0 percent in December 1979 to 7.5 percent on Election Day 1980 as the economy shrank 0.3 percent.

All I know is that outside of the 4% unemployment rate of the DC Beltway, it is more like Mourning In America under the Obama regime.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

The National Review‘s Kevin D. Williamson sums it up:

In one of the most awkward and vapid performances I can remember his having given, Pres. Barack Obama yesterday made it clear that he has learned absolutely nothing from the debt-ceiling debate — that he may be incapable of learning. He continued to talk nonsense about government “investing” in this, that, and the other, and said that was how the nation creates jobs. It was a self-discrediting performance.

Emphasis added.  (Via Instapundit.)  Williamson also details how he would balance the budget.

Even after his $800 billion stimulus failed to generate the promised employment numbers, the president still thinks we should be spending more money to jumpstart the economy .  He sounds like a man who, after maxing out his credit cards, ask Visa to raise his credit limit so he can spend a little more to get his life in order.

Um, Mr. President, weren’t you paying attention during the recent debate?   We don’t have the money to fund your new schemes — or any new schemes for that matter.

Someone looking for new means of government “investment” at a time when federal borrowing exceeds the Gross Domestic Product is not fit to lead.

Kudos to Yahoo! for this headline on their homepage yesterday:

More than anything this exposes the emptiness of the Democratic and left-wing bellyaching about the deal and reminds those of us who wish to reduce the size and scope of the federal government that we still have our work cut out to us.

But, at least Yahoo!’s Chris Moody is acknowledging that in Washington-ese a spending cut is not a reduction in the current level of spending, but a reduction of projected future spending:

Much of the problem has to do with the language of Washington, which, you might have noticed, is different from the speech you hear almost every other place on Earth. When most politicians talk of “cutting” spending, they don’t always literally mean that they intend to reduce current spending levels. Instead, under this version of fiscal discipline, Congress merely agrees not to spend as much money as it initially had planned. Once that deal is struck lawmakers then turn around to sell their proposals as “cuts.”

Take the “debt ceiling deal” President Obama signed on Tuesday. Let’s say that the federal government, when all is said and done, actually slows the growth of spending by $2 trillion over a decade–the minimum amount promised. After 10 years’ time, if all $2 trillion is not spent, there will actually be an increase of about $1.8 trillion.

Read the whole thing, especially for the video on the minuscule nature of the cuts in the recent deal.

In the coverage of the Reagan budget “cuts” in the 1980s, we only saw such candor in the conservative media.

SOMEWHAT RELATED: Paul Ryan asks, Where’s Your Budget, Mr. President? Via Instapundit.

UPDATE:  So, the “public backlash” the president is enduring from his liberal base over the deal is anger that spending increases aren’t going to be as large as forecast?

Last year, during “the healthcare debate’s final hours”, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) insisted that “his GOP colleagues need to do more to ‘differentiate themselves’ from the hateful speech spewed” by a handful of Tea Party protesters.

Now, instead of a few fringe members of the Tea Party making untoward comments about their ideological adversaries, we have members of the leadership of Mr. Frank’s party engaging in mean-spirited name-calling. According to Politico,

Vice President Joe Biden joined House Democrats in lashing tea party Republicans Monday, accusing them of having “acted like terrorists” in the fight over raising the nation’s debt limit, according to several sources in the room.

And he wasn’t alone.  Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi “pulled out a Star Wars reference on the House floor, saying that Speaker John Boehner chose to go to the dark side’ and court the most conservative members of his conference, rather than work on a bipartisan compromise.”   The New York Times called the better part of the debt deal “a nearly complete capitulation to the hostage-taking demands of Republican extremists.”

Sources in the paragraph above via James Taranto who reports today that the vice president’s office claims the Delaware Democrat did not use the term, but that members of Mr. Frank’s caucus did.  He also provides numerous examples of some very uncivil discourse on the left.  And over at the Sundries Shack, Jimmie offers a snapshot of some of the civil Democratic discourse during the debt debate. (Via Instapundit.)

Do hope Mr. Frank and his Democratic colleagues do more to ‘differentiate themselves’ from mean-spirited discourse.

Andrew Malcolm reflects on Obama’s leadership style as manifested in recent negotiations with congressional Republicans:

Obama will, no doubt, have more to say about the deal today. See if he throws in more sour grapes as he did after the GOP won its Bush tax cut extensions in last December’s talks. Back then, Obama, who promised to bring both sides together if elected in 2008, called his fellow deal-makers “hostage-takers.”

. . . .

Obama stepped into the stalled talks in recent weeks. He never offered his own new debt reduction plan, but used several public statements and closed White House meetings to show executive leadership and criticize other plans.

He used his poll-tested “balanced approach” demand numerous times (meaning more taxes as well as spending cuts) and sent aides like David Plouffe out to repeat how Republicans were demanding “my way or the highway.”

Via Instapundit.  Read the whole thing

Wasn’t Obama the guy who was “trying to break is a pattern in Washington where everybody is always looking for somebody else to blame.“

If I were a federal Representative or U.S. Senator, I’d be getting a lot of calls today from party leadership making the case for the debt compromise package.  I remain ambivalent about it.  Enough liberals are “freaking out” about the package, with one Democratic Senator calling it the “Death Of Keynesian Economics.”  All that sounds good.

But, I don’t like this idea of a superduper congressional committee to find even more cuts.  That sounds like passing the buck to me, avoiding those “tough decisions” the president tells us we need make.

Stacy McCain, who offers some thoughts on the death of Keynesianism, links a post making perhaps the best case for supporting the legislation.  Datechguy, who has actually read the bill, says it

is not an example of steaming in the right direction, it is an example of completing the turn of the ship so it is facing in the right direction but you have to turn the ship before you change directions, this is the turn.

Not quite a step in the right direction then, but turning your body so that the next step you make will be.

UPDATE: In one of her many (must-read) posts on the debt deal, Jennifer Rubin quotes Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the ranking minority leader on the Senate Budget Committee who reluctantly backs the bill as a “first step“. She also reports that he. . .

. . . has railed against the absence of a proper budget process. For over two years, the Senate has not produced a budget. This is not simply a matter of being a stickler for rules. Sessions understood that, without a budget, Senate Democrats could evade responsibility for making tough choices and simply demagogue whatever Republicans proposed.

Emphasis added.  We do need to keep reminding people about that Democratic failure.  Read the whole thing.

Over at YidWithLid, Jeff Dunetz calls the bipartisan debt deal “a huge victory for the Conservative wing of the party.”  He includes a lot of bullet points about the deal as well as the Speaker’s PowerPoint presentation offering details of the “Two-Step Approach” to hold the president “accountable,” contending that it cuts government spending more than it increases the debt limit.  (H/t:  Instapundit.)

Jennifer Rubin agrees with Dunetz that all “in all Republicans have much to crow about.”

I learned of the deal via CNN, having looked up from my cardio machine to see the “Breaking News.”  I initially thought it was a bad deal, given how some commentator on the “news” network seemed to be gloating, but then they showed the president who didn’t seem too pleased, especially when he lashed out at those Republicans who prevented millionaires and billionaires from paying their fair share.

(Question for consideration:  why does Obama feel the need to attack Republicans for this failure to increase taxes on some of the most productive in our society.)

I’ll just say I have mixed feelings about the deal.  I don’t think Republicans should have given in to the president’s demand that they agree to extend to the debt limit through the 2012 campaign.  If Ronald Reagan, as Obama claimed in his speech last week, raised the debt ceiling eighteen times, that means he did it, average, more than twice a year.  Why shouldn’t a president who has lately (rhetorically at least) become so fond of the Gipper have to do it less often, only once in two years?

That said, before the deal was announced Michael Barone said Republicans had won because the fight was on our proverbial turf, “over cuts not more taxes.” (more…)

It seems an article blaming the deficit on George W. Bush (of which I took note late Tuesday night (PST)) originated in a chart the White House developed.

Economics writers Megan McArdle was not as “enamored” with the chart as was one of her Atlantic colleagues:

. . . considering that this graph attributes decisions made by Obama and an all-Democratic Congress–like doubling down in Afghanistan–to Bush, while taking responsibility for basically nothing except the stimulus.  When Obama extends the Bush tax cuts for the rich under pressure from Congressional Republicans, that disappears from his side of the ledger, because after all, he didn’t want to do it.  When Bush enacts Medicare Part D under pressure from Congressional Democrats, the full cost is charged against his presidency.  The list of such silliness goes on.  Our president seems set to coin another presidential motto: “The duck starts here.”

Read the whole thing.  (Via Instapundit.)  Interesting that the White House would divert federal resources (you know those in short supply) to putting together a graphic attempting to exonerate the incumbent for the current debt crisis while passing the blame onto his predecessor.

Observing how the deficit skyrocketed from 1.6% (as a percentage of GDP) under Bush to 10% under Obama, this sage blogress asks, “What changed about Bush policies that made them so much more expensive once Barack Obama took office?”

McArdle adds that she’s not “interested in the Bush-v-Obama, red-v-blue allocation of blame, but the [White House] graph . . . was made by someone who seems very interested indeed in allocating as much blame as possible to Republicans–indeed, more interested in that than anything else.”

Wish this White House has heeded the advice of the guy who said he was “trying to break is a pattern in Washington where everybody is always looking for somebody else to blame.“