Stop me if you’ve heard this one before …

*

Someone inform Obama it’s not a very funny joke if it’s true. Glenn Reynolds being quoted in the WSJ:

At his Arizona State University commencement speech last Wednesday, Mr. Obama noted that ASU had refused to grant him an honorary degree, citing his lack of experience, and the controversy this had caused. He then demonstrated ASU’s point by remarking, “I really thought this was much ado about nothing, but I do think we all learned an important lesson. I learned never again to pick another team over the Sun Devils in my NCAA brackets. . . . President [Michael] Crowe and the Board of Regents will soon learn all about being audited by the IRS.”

Ha ha ha … what a knee slapper.

And then there’s this:

What is undeniable and suspicious is that the IRS has rapidly expanded its budget and personnel under President Obama. Nearly every Obama budget has requested large increases in the agency’s budget. This year the Obama administration requested a $1 billion increase to bring the IRS budget to $12.9 billion, a more than 7 percent hike when other domestic agencies are getting cut. From 2009 to 2012, the IRS budget increased by about 20 percent. It has hired 5,000 more agents, and most of the extra money has been dedicated to enforcement, not taxpayer assistance.

Not surprisingly, audits under the Obama administration have soared.

Nothing to be worried about. So, some conservative organizations were targeted for auditing by the IRS? No harm has been done:

Some Democrats took to the airwaves on the weekend to suggest that while the IRS shouldn’t have been targeting conservatives, no one was harmed. Former senior White House official and chief Obama politico David Plouffe tweeted that what the IRS did was “dumb and wrong,” but that it was “Impt to note GOP groups flourished last 2 elections, overwhelming Ds. And they will use this to raise more $.” In Mr. Plouffe’s moral universe, all that matters is partisan advantage rather than the apolitical tax enforcement Americans expect of their government.

Since conservative organizations “flourished” in the last election cycle- no harm was done. Of course … Obama won.

The harm is in fact real, if hard to measure precisely, because any missive from the IRS is enough to chill political spending and speech. Answering the IRS questionnaires can take hundreds of hours. The Jefferson Area Tea Party dropped its plan to register as a 501(c)(4) to avoid the atmosphere of intimidation.

And the “no harm was done” is about as valid as the ever-popular “everyone does it.”

Keith Koffler states it bluntly:

The organizations that were being probed by the IRS in early 2012 represented perhaps the single greatest threat at the time to President Obama’s reelection. They had millions of dollars ready to go for advertising while Republican National Committee was still getting its act together and Mitt Romney’s campaign was just starting to think about running against Obama.

There’s every reason to suspect someone very senior in the administration either ordered something or knew something.

Beyond the political implications of this scandle, the IRS has nearly infinate power to ruin your life, and is effectively run by civil servants, who trend liberal.

Progressives, and by this I include Obama, believe that the proper way to fund and grow the size of government, which is of course a social good, is to create an ever-bigger government agency to bully and investigate the citizens. Intimidation. You can’t make the tax code simpler with a flat tax, so compliance is more straightforward. No. A byzantine code makes much more sense, because … ?

This scandal is what is BOUND to happen when you create such a behemoth. Ninety-seven years of social engineering brought us this nightmare.

*I have the EXACT shirt worn by Morrissey in this video.

FIAF- The Sky is Falling Edition

Obama’s handling of Benghazi was ENTIRELY political. THAT, my friends, is the problem. He reacted politically and people DIED. Peggy Noonan:

But here’s the thing. More is expected from the president than mere politics. That’s why we tend to re-elect them. A sitting president is supposed to be bigger, weightier, more serious than his rival.”

So people died, and then he lied. Repeatedly. To cover it up.

From the day of the attack until this week, the White House spin was too clever by half. In the weeks and months after the attack White House spokesmen said they were investigating the story, an internal review was under way. When the story blew open again, last week, they said it was too far in the past: “Benghazi happened a long time ago.” Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, really said that.

Think of that. They can’t give answers when the story’s fresh because it just happened, they’re looking into it. Eight months later they don’t have anything to say because it all happened so long ago.

Think of how low your opinion of the American people has to be to think you can get away, forever, with that.”

Well, it’s worked so far.

Both parties are over-reaching, according to this reporter, but he’s got a “but”.

Both parties are wrong about Benghazi. Existing evidence does not point to a far-reaching cover-up on the scale of Watergate, as Republicans want you to believe. But it is not, as the White House claims, nothing.

The administration’s response to the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on U.S. installations in eastern Libya was inaccurate, irresponsible and shrouded by campaign-style spin. It belied President Obama’s oft-broken promise to run a transparent government.

If nothing else, Benghazi is a blow to the credibility of the president and his potential successor, then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. This could be big.

So – extreme incompetence, but not a BIG coverup? Just a little coverup.

Whateve.

Appropriate:

Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi

Keep saying the name,even if you have to explain to LIV where it is and what happened there (and you will).

I hope this guy is right about the gathering storm of Benghazi ruining Hillary Clinton’s presidency hopes, and crippling Obama’s remaining time in office. We’ve gotten our hopes up before, but the press will cover for Obama, and Hillary’s lied before and gotten way with it …

That’s because, right from the jump, the administration has been lying through its teeth about what happened on the night of Sept. 11, 2012 — the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, as it happens. It transparently lied about the Mohammad video, threw the scapegoated filmmaker in jail (where, last time I looked, he still is), and convened a bogus “accountability” board to whitewash the whole damn thing so as not to disrupt the precious Narrative that Osama was dead and al-Qaeda was on the run.

It was all a lie, of course, and some of us knew it at the time. I wrote about it repeatedly on the Post’s Op-Ed page: you can find examples here, here and here. In this case, however, what happened in Benghazi, Foggy Bottom, the White House, and the Obama re-election campaign headquarters in Chicago was (as the saying going) worse than a crime: it was a blunder. And that blunder may now bring down the man who never should have been president in the first place, for grotesque dereliction of his duty as commander-in-chief[.]

But Obama couldn’t be bothered at the time, because 1) it didn’t fit one of the narratives he using in his re-election run and 2) he had a big fundraiser the next day and needed his beauty sleep (Hey, can I just eat my waffle?)

And hell is what is coming, one way or the other, because this time — unlike the Clinton impeachment — the big dogs are in play, in the form of hordes of very pissed-off special ops agents, patriotic spooks, forcibly retired generals and clandestine operatives who know where the bodies are buried. If the Obama administration turned its back on Chris Stevens and the three other brave Americans who died that day for crass political purposes — and, worse, if it let them die as collateral damage in its own gunrunning operation to Syria — the men and women who stand watch for this country all through the night are going to come out of the shadows, quickly.

Worse than Watergate.

What Communism? Where?

May Day, otherwise known as Workers Day, was a few days ago, and it’s always fun to watch folks dance around the fine line of merely celebrating “workers” versus going full-throated communist.

I mean, can’t a person merely admire the aesthetics of Soviet Agitprop? What’s not to love?

On facebook, in celebration of May Day, an old friend posted a picture from 1933.

Yea, some of them were socialists, and even communists, she argued, but the movement faded, and she just really enjoyed the minimalists energy of it all.

Also to be admired from the movement, was the alignment between Jews and blacks in the pursuit of equality an civil rights.

That was all part of the useful idiot aspect of the movement; cloaking the communist ideology behind movements targeted at specific populations. The jews and blacks were united for “freedom and equality” underneath the banner of a hammer and sickle. And if you don’t get the irony of that …

Fast forward to today’s useful idiots.

The jews are now a target, of course:

Predictably, Schumer’s co-religionists are scorned, too. “Smash the Jews,” one guy with anarchist patches on his jacket shouts. “Terrorists!” (A guy from Breitbart, who almost started a brawl for defending Israel amid the maelstrom, had his camera rolling, so hopefully he caught this.)

Communism co-opts what ever civil rights argument it believes will advance it’s agenda. Civil rights in the 30′s for blacks and Jews.Black power in the 60′s and 70′s. Feminism. Gay rights. And now immigration. It can all be used by communists.

The protest is billed as a “Unified Rally for Immigrant Rights & Worker Rights,” and the transnational crowd is out in full force. “The rally will be a mix of speakers and entertainment drawing attention to the struggles and victories of labor unions, workers, immigrants and the 99%,” promised Occupy’s website. It didn’t disappoint. “No to E-Verify” chants the Socialist Workers Campaign, which is supporting its own member, Dan Fein, for mayor. Next to the subway station, the Workers World Party flies its flag: “La Lucha Obrera No Tiene Fronteras!” (“There are no borders in the workers’ struggle”). A series of speakers explain that they are illegal immigrants and feel oppressed by America’s “unfair laws” and “racist deportation.”

“May Day” is a celebration of these things- not a “study”, and I guess I just don’t see the reason to celebrate communist propaganda from the 30′s.

Poating will continue as scheduled …

Lee Habeeb has a genius idea:

So what can we do about this perfect storm of factors leading America down the path to becoming Disability Nation? Here’s an idea: Identify all the unemployed recent college graduates across the country, and have them follow around all the people collecting disability, and see how many are doing things like fishing. Or hunting. Or doing off-the-books work. And pay the graduates a bounty for each scammer they out.

In addition to making some extra money and saving taxpayers even more, those young graduates will learn just how corrosive a well-intentioned federal program can become. They’ll learn that people respond to incentives, and if you make not working pay about as much as working, and throw in lifetime medical benefits, you’ll get some bad outcomes. They’ll learn that because of those incentives — and the work of trial lawyers — many able-bodied citizens who should be working and contributing to our society are instead stealing from it.

Of course, the graft in SSD is a feature, not a bug. *whisphers* Democrat voters for life *whispers*

Obama is a big fat lying liar. I know you’re shocked.

During the president’s news conference on the 100th day of his second term, he rebutted suggestions that the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. “Obamacare,” in the coming year might face problems. He made the argument that most Americans — “the 85 to 90 percent of Americans who already have health insurance” — will not notice anything but better health care, such as coverage for children under the age of 26 and no restrictions because of preexisting conditions.

He added that the impact will be felt instead by “that small group of people — 10 to 15 percent of Americans; now, it’s still 30 million Americans, but relatively a narrow group — who don’t have health insurance right now or are on the individual market and are paying exorbitant amounts for coverage that isn’t that great.”

Huh. Wasn’t it a 30 million number that started THIS WHOLE FUCKING THING? That was the reason the government had to take control of health care. But now it’s a small group of people, and “isn’t that great?”

Asshole.

The 30 million number also ignores the scores of people who will most likely begin to lose their health insurance as they get priced out of the market (raises hand) or their employer drops coverage/reduces their hours to part-time so they do not qualify.

*****

BiW said he may fisk this later this week, so I suppose I should leave the heavy lifting to him.

Just think what America would look like without its mostly Southern states. (We could retain “America”: they could call themselves “Smith & Wesson” or “Coca-Cola” or something like that.) Universal health care. No guns. Strong unions. A humane minimum wage. A humane immigration policy. High revenues from a fair tax structure. A massive public-works program. Legal gay marriage. A ban on carbon emissions. Electric cars. Stronger workplace protections. Extended family leave from work in case of pregnancy or illness. Longer unemployment benefits. In short, a society on a par with most of the rest of the industrialized world—a place whose politics have finally caught up with its social and economic realities.

But I don’t want to appear blindly partisan—a sundering of the union would make the other half of America equally fulfilled. The red-state republic could finally establish a theocracy in which the fundamentalist Christian church would legislate all the important aspects of civic life. It could either send its illegal and/or legal immigrants northward or reinstitute a reformed system of indenture whereby immigrants are purchased by bona fide citizens who have a fully modernized respect for private property. It could, taking the lead from the pioneering Kansas legislature, abolish the income tax, raising revenue from, for example, a “pay to work” program. It could ban abortion in all instances, including rape and incest, and use the growing population of orphans to establish an impressive standing army.

It *is* hilarious,but I couldn’t get a single liberal to bite of facedouche yesterday -so perhaps even they know how stupid it is.

*visits comments*

Ba haaa haaa haaa.

Stag
1 hour ago

Since they are talking secession and we need to protect ourselves in case they are serious I demand we start closing ALL military bases and defense contractors in the South and re-allocating those forces north of the Mason-Dixon line.

Because there are a ton of liberals manning the guns on the front lines, and working for defense contractors. The only libs in the military are support staff. They’d get the line cooks and mechanics, while the combat arms remained in the South.

Good luck with that.

Here’s another serious commenter:

Instead, the more prosperous liberal states need to band together and — either through legislation or force majure — deny all economic largesse to these states that are economic parasites, but arrogantly act as blocks to necessary reform. You want to be if the federal “tit”? Fine. Nothing from us in the prosperous liberal states. That starts with the next hurricane or other national disaster. The FBI ceases to do preventive intelligence work aimed at stopping terrorist attacks in your region. Numerous traffic delays for truck and rail shipments into your region.

At some point, your legislators will be changed by your own people to get relief.

Huh.They’re not commmies at all. No, not these fine folks.

It’s funny, because they want to talk about how the blue states are so prosperous, while the Red states are a net drain.

Let’s talk about California. And Texas.

And to pretend that liberally run cities are some sort of economic powerhouse – I give you Detroit. Which is about as BLUE as they come.

Catching up with the news of the last few days …

Well, this is shocking. Golden Gate Pot Party leaves behind a huge mess.

Who would have thought that a bunch of pot smokers would get stoned, eat like pigs, and then leave their mess behind?

Many other unofficial events – like spontaneous gatherings for July Fourth – can draw hundreds if not thousands of people to parks. But July 4 activities do not typically involve as much excessive drug and alcohol use as the April 20 festivities, Silverman said.

Still, Silverman described Saturday’s activities as relatively smooth and free from violence, other than a robbery and the numerous ambulances called for medical problems related to the drugs and alcohol. He said issuing tickets for littering or other infractions would have overwhelmed the department’s resources.

Yes, let’s make pot legal. Then we can have events like this all the time.

Our problem is that we don’t embrace “diversity”

Uhm… People will prattle:

“Our politics are ominously and stubbornly polarized along overlapping lines of race, generation, education, region, and religious faith. But a society forever absorbing the new dissolves alienation and disrupts radicalization. So long as the instinct to include remains common in America, attacks like the one in Boston will remain rare.”- National Journal’s Ronald Brownstein.

We shouldn’t be concerned about this “rare” incident of terrorism (by Muslim extremists) because … ??

Ironic, because the rare occurrence of mass gun violence has given liberal the vapors. SOMETHING must be DONE. For the children.

But Muslim extremism is no big deal, and we should encourage DIVERSITY. WSJ:

Around this time, Tamerlan grew more confrontational in his religious beliefs. Ruslan Tsarni, the boys’ uncle, said he realized in 2009 that Tamerlan had changed and was spewing “this radical crap.” People who knew him say Tamerlan would express outrage when he perceived a religious slight and was critical of Muslim immigrants’ efforts to assimilate in the U.S.

In one incident last November, Tamerlan confronted a shopkeeper at a Middle Eastern grocery store in Cambridge, near a mosque where he sometimes prayed, after seeing a sign there advertising Thanksgiving turkeys.

“Brother, why did you put up this sign?” the shopkeeper, Abdou Razak, recalled him asking angrily. “This is kuffar”—an Arabic reference to non-Muslims—”that’s not right!”

Yea, that’s some great diversity there.

Radical Islam is a poison of the mind. The problem wasn’t that this family wasn’t embraced for their diversity. It was that Islam poisoned the mind of the mom and the son. It is a creeping Cancer.

Abstinence Only Approach in Ohio? Uhm … No.

On facedouche, a friend linked this article on an Ohio Republican proposal on public school sex ed. It made a few claims which are clearly inaccurate.

Today, Republicans on the Ohio House Finance Committee voted to adopt changes to the two-year state budget that will significantly restrict the teaching of sexual education in the state, mandating an abstinence-only approach.

Not true.

The language also states that class instruction in Ohio may not provide materials that condone sexual activity among unmarried students. It even allows a parent to sue if an educator violates the restrictive provisions in the law.

In short, the state budget now mandates that Ohio adopt an abstinence-only approach to sex education program.

Humn … sexual activity should be “instructed” and “condoned”?

Quick review-

Condone: verb [ with obj. ]
accept and allow (behavior that is considered morally wrong or offensive) to continue: the college cannot condone any behavior that involves illicit drugs.
• approve or sanction (something), esp. with reluctance: the practice is not officially condoned by any airline.

What’s the problem?

Should kids be encouraged to have sex? To experiment sexually with non-intercourse activities, which (of course) would NEVER EVER lead to them doing the deed?

That argument aside, let’s go to the full text.

Prohibits the instruction of sexual education coursework by an individual who or an organization that endorses student nonabstinence from sexual activity as an acceptable behavior, or promotes, endorses, advocates, or condones “gateway sexual activity.”

Specifies prohibitions, conditions, and exemptions for sexual education course instruction when dealing with contraception, sexual demonstrations, sexual materials, and sexual activities and messages that encourage experimentation with sexual activity.

Grants a student’s parent or guardian a cause of action against an individual who, or an organization that, promotes gateway sexual activity or demonstrates sexual activity in sexual
education instruction.

Defines “gateway sexual activity” for purposes of the amendment as “sexual contact,” as defined under current law in the Criminal Code, which is the touching of another person in an erogenous zone.

It stresses that sexual activity should be abstained until after marriage. That there are potential negative side affects for pre-martial sex. That having children out of wedlock is likely to have harmful effect on the mom, the baby, and society. It stresses that STSs are serious, and the only way to be 100% sure to avoid one is to abstain for sexual activity (you can get STDs from some of those “gateway activities”.

(F) Instruction under this section shall not do any of the following:
1. Promote, implicitly or explicitly, any gateway sexual activity or health message that encourages students to experiment with sexual activity.

2) Provide or distribute on school grounds materials that condone, encourage, or promote student sexual activity among unmarried students;

3) Display or conduct demonstrations with devices specifically manufacture for sexual stimulation.

Problem with this?

It isn’t an abstinence only approach, it’s an abstinence friendly one:

Medically accurate information about contraception and condoms may be provided if the information is presented in a manner consistent with provisions of this section and clearly infomrs students that while methods may reduce the risk of acquiring sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy, only abstinence removes all risk.

It continues on to state that “nothing in this section shall prohibit the scientific study of the sexual reproductive system through coursework in biology, physiology, anatomy, health, or physical education.”

So, quick review – it’s best to wait to have sex until you’re married. They’re not going to teach children about sex toys, and blow jobs. It’s going to inform them about birth control, while explaining it isn’t 100% accurate.

Objections?

Obama- Class Warrior. No, really.

It’s a little early in the morning for my head to assplode, but when I saw this headline, I assumed it was a joke:

Barack Obama, class warrior.

They were being tongue-in-cheek? Or ironic- like Alanais- because he ran as a “class warrior” but has done nothing but make things worse for the middle-class on down while living large on the taxpayer’s dime.

But no. They were serious. And this article is EVERYTHING that is wrong with politics. It explains how artfully Obama has presented himself as a class warrior. The optics, and the framing. “Messaging”.

For Obama, this spring’s fights over class represent both a political challenge and a definitional moment. His most consistent argument — that higher taxes on the well-to-do are the essential element in preserving popular government benefits to the middle-class and poor — is in tension with his most consistent promise, that his presidency will break Washington gridlock and elevate problem-solving over ideological purity.

All of that ^^^ is political bullshit. This is all about his political power, and winning some argument that cements HIS power, and fuck what happens to the rest of us.

In the Obama era, the calculation has changed — in part because his electoral coalition of reliable Democrats is now considerably larger than the traditional GOP base coalition. Of his main constituencies — including African-Americans and Hispanics, unionized workers and socially tolerant suburban women — nearly all are receptive to the argument that the interests of the rich are at odds with their own interests. Yet Democrats could pay a political price from these very constituencies if they don’t ultimately address the financing of programs their voters rely on for a decent quality of life.

Yes, see it’s all about their propaganda war to sway low-information-voters. People are losing their health insurance due to rising premiums, and Nancy Sebelius goes out and announces that the costs are falling. People are dropping out of the workforce, because they can’t find a job, but the White House says things are moving in the right direction. The new taxes are hurting EVERYONE, not just the wealthy, but they announce they’ve given tax breaks to everyone, including small businesses. Just lie. Who are you going to believe, Obama or your lying eyes?

The Obama administration is politics at it’s most crass.

Ayres recalled holding focus groups with Republicans of modest means who complained that “the Romneys didn’t have any intuitive understanding of the enormous struggles they were facing.

“These are people who need the $80 to $100 you get to spend two hours at a focus group,” said the pollster. “I remember one woman saying [of Ann Romney’s line]: ‘We struggled so hard we had to cash in some of our stock shares — how am I supposed to relate to that?’”

Republican reformers say it’s imperative that the party have a fresh message that directly addresses the challenges faced by Americans who would benefit little from a change in capital gains rates.

Yes, well what are you going to do with low-information-voters? Who don’t connect the fact that they are struggling AFTER FOUR YEARS OF OBAMA? And, who also don’t understand the economic of how capital gains affect the larger employment picture (who has money to hire, expand, or start a new business, etc). But the democrats just keep presenting the picture of Rich= hates poor people, and they follow along, never thinking through the idea of how many poor people have hired them, or given them a raise. Or how many poor people opened up a new factory or store, and put a ‘help wanted’ sign out front.

People have this nagging sense that something is deeply broken with Medicare and it needs to be fixed,” said Bennett. “But there is reluctance on the part of congressional Democrats to go along with something big on fiscal issues.”

Added Marshall: “We can’t keep pretending loading taxes on the rich is going to fill the funding gap on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.”

Republicans are skeptical Democrats will deal with entitlements in a significant way anytime soon and forfeit their favorite tactic.

Because they don’t want to solve anything. They just want to keep their -own ass in Washington.

But just remember- Obama is our Class Warrior. Who golfs every weekend, weather permitting. Who vacations in Hawaii and Martha’s Vineyard, and sends his “class warrior” daughters on spring break to not only a luxury tropical island, but then out West skiing as well! A two-fer.

Who flies a personal trainer into DC from Chicago for his workouts, and has a food taster. Who’s been flying around on AF1, while the economy struggles, to give mostly political speeches. Who has gala parties in the White House for the rich and famous.

A class warrior, that’s who.

FIAF

Alan Blinder continues to demonstrate what a tool he is.

On Wednesday morning, President Obama released his proposed budget for fiscal year 2014, which begins this October. The president is supposed to deliver his budget in early February, but hey, given the pace at which Congress works, who’s counting? The important thing is: This is a fine effort.

GOOD JOB OBAMA.

The numbers. A good budget is based on credible numbers, not on rosy scenarios, mysterious budget cuts to be named later, vague promises of more revenue from closing unnamed tax loopholes and the like. It should also make at least some contact with political reality, rather than being a spreadsheet exercise with no hope of enactment—as, for example, the House Republican budget is.

Credible numbers? When in the very next paragraph he says:

Unless there are some unnoticed skeletons buried deep inside closets, the president’s budget scores pretty well on these criteria. The underlying economic assumptions seem only a bit too optimistic, especially since we know that the economy has been underperforming “reasonable” forecasts for years.

Ba haa haa haa …

The underlying economic assumptions “seem only a bit too optimistic.” He said a mouf-full there.

Next, Obama’s budget adheres to the political realities … if only it weren’t for those nasty Republicans.

Of course, Mr. Obama’s tax increases won’t fly in the House, where the prevailing attitude seems to be that additional revenue is permissible only if the money is dedicated to lowering tax rates. So you might say the president’s budget doesn’t make enough contact with political reality. But that is mainly because the Republican position is so extreme. In a more functional Congress, something close to this budget might be where Republicans and Democrats wound up compromising.

So, let me get this straight – Obama’s budget adhered to political realities, but it won’t fly because the Republicans are just so extreme and unreasonable … that I guess they defy reality?

Then after arguing that the Obama budget addresses our deficit issue …

Importantly, the president’s proposed deficit reductions don’t clobber the economy this year or next. In fact, his budget would actually allow for some modest fiscal expansion in 2014 and 2015. Hooray for that.

More SPENDING!! HOORAY! Just what we need. Because all that other spending did such a bang-up job of fixing the economy.

Now, for a bit of reality, from The Hammer:

The 2014 budget is tax-and-spend as usual. The actual deficit reduction over a decade is a minuscule $0.6 trillion — out of a total spending of $46.5 trillion. And every penny of this tiny reduction comes from tax hikes. Nothing from spending cuts, which all end up getting spent elsewhere.

Moreover, where’s the compromise? The Obama budget calls for not only more spending than the GOP’s, but more than the Democratic Senate’s as well. For just fiscal year 2014, it even contains $160 billion more spending, and $128 billion more deficit, than if the budget — that Obama purports to be cutting — were left untouched!

More, from James C. Capretta:

The president has repeated over and over again the slogan that a budget plan needs to be “balanced,” by which he means the spending cuts must be matched with comparable tax hikes. His own budget fails this test miserably. The only deficit reduction in it comes from a net $1.1 trillion tax hike over ten years (on top of the $0.6 trillion tax hike in the fiscal-cliff deal and $1 trillion in Obamacare). There are zero net spending cuts in the budget. Zero. When the “doc fix” for Medicare physician fees and a smaller change in Pell Grant funding are removed, as they should be, from the administration’s current-law baseline and placed instead with the other policy choices the budget reflects, the budget results in a net $10 billion spending increase over the coming decade.

But, as Capretta notes, Republicans will be accused of merely being political if they reject this “reasonable and balanced” approach to deficit reduction.

Black/white. Up/down.

What the president is offering now can be summed up this way: another massive tax hike in exchange for swapping the sequester cuts with more price controls in Medicare, the “chained CPI,” and other minor tinkering with mandatory spending programs. Total federal spending would not change. Some deal, huh? Congressional Republicans’ acceptance of it would be a political and economic disaster.

Now,one last thing – the Obama schedule:

11:15 am || Receives the Presidential Daily Briefing
2:05 pm || Presents the Commander-in-Chief Trophy to the United States Naval Academy football team; East Room