Obama '08?

From Douglas Holtz-Eakin

a former director of the CBO deserves some respect for competence on the subject matter, no matter what you think of his friends or politics.

Pfff, bullshit. All of a sudden you are claiming that holding a government job is an indication of competence?

You probably do not pay attention enough to know this

But if workers have higher wages, they will also qualify for increased Social Security benefits when they retire. So the extra money raised from payroll taxes is already spoken for. (Indeed, it is unlikely to be enough to keep Social Security solvent.) It cannot be used for lowering the deficit.

I have to wonder about a former head of the CBO that would make such on obvious mistake.

Money spoken for in a later year is a future liability but that future liability isn't counted in calculating deficit which is yearly revenues - outlays.

But everything he wrote in the piece in question is either well known and widely reported or obviously true.

Not a very credible dismissal of some obvious political deceptions by the administration. The CBO is of course the same unbiased source that you were using previously to defend earlier scoring of very selective sections of versions of the health Care Bill. Have they suddenly become unreliuable?

This string of bad news has only compounded an already palpable sense of loss and longing on the left, an enveloping fear of the inevitable: rejection. The right, and most importantly, the middle, unnerved by spending in a recession and unhinged by Obama in the White House, have not bought into the liberal vision of a new America. In fact, they’re increasingly weary of it, if not hostile to it.

it is now clear that Obama failed at Politics 101...he miss read the nation and thus over reached in a reckless and irresponsible manor.
What do we do now that the great hope has failed, and both parties are ****? It will be interesting to watch.

a reckless and irresponsible manor.

What do we do now that the great hope has failed, and both parties are ****? It will be interesting to watch.

NEW YORK " US actors and liberal intellectuals joined a list to be published Friday of nearly 2,000 people accusing President Barack Obama of allowing human rights violations and war crimes.

"Crimes are crimes, no matter who does them," the statement reads over pictures of Obama and his predecessor George W. Bush due to appear in the New York Review of Books.

The statement, published as a paid advertisement, accuses Obama, who was elected in 2008 with the enthusiastic support of US liberals, of continuing Bush's controversial approach to human rights in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in domestic security.

It takes aim especially at Obama's decision -- reported by US officials -- to authorize the killing of a radical Islamic cleric and US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, who is accused of ties to Al-Qaeda in Yemen.

"In some respects this is worse than Bush," the statement says. "First, because Obama has claimed the right to assassinate American citizens whom he suspects of 'terrorism,' merely on the grounds of his own suspicion or that of the CIA, something Bush never claimed publicly."

Among the signatories are linguist Noam Chomsky, "L.A. Confidential" actor James Cromwell, actor Mark Ruffalo and prominent Bush-era anti-war protestor Cindy Sheehan. By midday Thursday there were 1,804 signatures.

They also lambast Obama for having refused "to prosecute any members of the Bush regime who are responsible for war crimes, including some who admitted to waterboarding and other forms of torture, thereby making their actions acceptable for him."