The 12 Step Program for Liberals

The president said today that the jobs figure (88,000 added last month) is - "a step in the right direction." That's like an alcoholic saying - "I only had 5 scotches today as opposed to my usual 7."

Honestly, the White House should enroll in the 12 step (economic reality) program. And, being the good guy that I am I created for your reading pleasure the 12 step program for liberals who wish to end their addiction to stupidity:

1. We, progressives, admit we are powerless over applying disastrous Keynesian economic models over and over again and expect the results to be different than the previous twenty times.
2. We Came to believe that the power of the free market is greater than even Obama, and can restore economic sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of Paul Ryan and the Tea Party.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves and found ourselves in an echo chamber called MSNBC.
5. Admitted to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our utter and total lack of economic literacy.
6. Are entirely ready to have the Paul Ryan and Tea Party remove all these defects of our character.
7. Humbly asked the Tea Party to make the government smaller and lower taxes.
8. Made a list of all future generations that we have harmed through our incessant borrowing and spending, and became willing to make amends to them all by cutting spending and shrinking government.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible by promising never - ever - ever to spout Keynesian nonsense and bogus social justice claims ever again.
10. Continue to take personal inventory and not yell RACIST every time we are confronted with irrefutable facts.
11. Sought through meditation to improve our conscious contact with The Tea Party, looking only for knowledge so that we have the power to understand that borrowing money and raising taxes will not get us out of a recession.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, so that the next time some dimwitted liberal starts spouting about social justice and big government we will use a reasoned argument describing in detail why taking from half of the country and giving it to the other half is a recipe for economic disaster.

Your welcome America - make sure you send this to your liberal friends so they can get started on their recovery today!

Thought he lost the memo

Ok, I'm eleven, painful, paragraphs into Krugman's rant today over on the Times' Op. ed. Page and I found myself wondering; did PK miss the memo? He spends the first eleven paragraphs 'shooting the messenger' (i.e. S&P) for the downgrading of the nation's credit rating and not one single word about those evil Tea Partier terrorists/hostage takers. Well I should have known this Nobel laureate, cum extreme left water boy, wouldn't let me down. Finishing his, ahem, propaganda column of left leaning talking points with a masterful flurry (emphasis mine):

No, what makes America look unreliable isn't budget math, it's [sic] politics. And please, let's not have the usual declarations that both sides are at fault. Our problems are almost entirely one-sided — specifically, they're caused by the rise of an extremist right that is prepared to create repeated crises rather than give an inch on its demands.

The truth is that as far as the straight economics goes, America's long-run fiscal problems shouldn't be all that hard to fix (nah, easy as pie, tax, spend, tax spend, repeat…). It's true that an aging population and rising health care costs will, under current policies, push spending up faster than tax receipts. But the United States has far higher health costs than any other advanced country, and very low taxes by international (lets run some more jobs overseas)standards. If we could move even part way toward international norms on both these fronts, our budget problems would be solved.

So why can't we do that? Because we have a powerful political movement in this country that screamed "death panels" in the face of modest efforts to use Medicare funds more effectively, and preferred to risk financial catastrophe rather than agree to even a penny in additional revenues.

The real question facing America, even in purely fiscal terms, isn't whether we'll trim a trillion here or a trillion there from deficits. It is whether the extremists now blocking any kind of responsible policy can be defeated and marginalized. 

Well done Paul! You managed to get all today's Dem talking points into one column.

I know Paul and his ilk are desperately trying to correlate the debt ceiling debate, and by extension the Tea Party's role in it, with the downgrading from S&P. But that makes no sense. The Tea Party caucus was trying to LOWER the nation's spending and thereby make the country's ability to re-pay our debt better in investor's eyes. If congress had taken Obama's approach and passed a 'clean' ceiling extension without corresponding cuts, does anyone truly believe S&P or the markets would be pleased?

File under knock me over with a feather # 2

Yesterday Jay Carney, White House press secretary, said "The White House doesn't create jobs". And in other news it is confirmed that there is no Santa Claus. Okay, I'd like to give the man some slack here but, alas, I can't. This administration slammed an $800 billion Keynesian "stimulus" program down our throats, not to mention cash for clunker, dollars for dishwashers etc. that accomplished exactly squat unless you buy the company line that it saved or created 2.5 million jobs. A number that is virtually impossible to verify, yet they tout it as if an absolute number. They have pivoted to Jobs more times than gaffe-o-mattic Joe has put his foot in his mouth. At what point do these folks realize that, gasp, the Keynesian economic model is a steaming pile of crap?

As an example of this abject refusal to see reality, last week, the Nobel Prize laureate, Paul Krugman, was pushing the same nonsense on ABC's This Week. He was paneled with George Will, George Stephanopoulos and Grover Norquist. (Editor's Note: I was stunned to see that Norquist did not have horns and a forked tail as I was led to believe by the mainstream media). I swear I thought Will was going to reach over and smack Krugman on the head and say "Could you please smarten the F up?"

After Norquist made the point that Texas had created over half the net jobs over the last 24 months by deregulating the market (Texas has no income tax), the great and powerful Krugman said in his most peevish voice, "That's not true. The statistics just don't prove that." Well said sir, nothing to see here just move along.

Further, Krugman, after interrupting Will over and over again, said that the problem was that the stimulus was, ahem, too, small. That being said, George Will had the money shot at the 5:35 mark implying that the Democrats should run on the slogan "the government is too frugal." Brilliant.

I swear it is painful to watch Krugman on these panels. He looks like a shocked laboratory rat, trying to carry water for the Dems. You can see him physically pulling away from Will knowing he's about to get slammed. This Keynesian nonsense doesn't work huh? Well once again, knock me over with at feather.