The Budget

For the self-described Deficit Hawks / Budget Nannies / Fiscal Conservatives,  here's your chart:

It's hard to see clearly, but here's how it breaks down for the Top Seven:
1) Social Security
2) Medicare
3) Medicaid & SCHIP
4) Unemployment/Welfare & other mandated spending
5) Interest on National Debt
6) Defense Dept
7) Global War On Terror (does NOT include Iraq and Afghanistan)
These 7 items add up to 83.6% of the total budget.

So when you say you wanna cut federal spending, tell me where.  And be specific.  "Waste Fraud and Abuse" is not a qualifier unless you can point to real examples.

How It Works

Everybody's favorite Congress managed to get Unemployment Bennies extended after only an extra month of  doing whatever it is they do to make us think they aren't just jackin' each other off.
From John Cole at Balloon Juice:
You see- you aren’t allowed to just pass a bill extending unemployment benefits at the cost of $2.4 billion dollars, because that would be socialism. It takes another $21.6 billion to grease the palms of the people who own the “moderates” and the “fiscal conservatives,” and once you get the cost up to $24 billion, you have achieved “capitalism.”

Off-Year Elections

Looking at the election results from Tuesday, lots of people keep asking "what does it mean?" 
Here's what it means: Republicans won a couple, Democrats won a couple, and you too can be Mayor of New York City for the low low price of just $100 Million.

People wanted change so they voted for Obama last year.  Guess what - they still want change so they're voting against incumbency.  But guess what else - sometimes change is a scary thing when you're in the middle of it, so there's a tendency to revert to the old familiar ways of doing things. 

Having sobered up a little after the Bush Blowout, some of us are beginning to remember that actually you can't get something for nothing.  If you want good schools and roads and safe food and secure borders and professional cops and clean water and healthcare and and and - then you have to figure out how to pay for it all.  If you don't want to pay for anything, then you don't get anything.  It's not a difficult concept, so it might just turn out that you have to spend some of your hard-earned money on something other than the shit you think you need in order to compensate for your latest feelings of inadequacy (courtesy of your favorite Giant Advertising Company).

It's been a nice party, but now it's time to clean up, and pay up.

War Dead

Another month goes by and we're still spending lives and big piles of money in places where nobody wants us to be, for reasons nobody believes in.

US Dead in Iraq = 4355
US Dead in Afghanistan = 909

Dollars spent for 2 wars since 2001: $928,000,000,000.00 (increases by approx $318 Million per day)

Rich Man's War, Poor Man's Fight

Carbon

Proposals for Cap & Trade to reduce Carbon Emmissions get a lot of ink; and of course, they attract a lot of crap from "both sides" - tho' I can't quite firgure out what there is to be choosing sides about.  Traditionally, the thing is set up as Jobs vs Scenery - which is stupid.  Even if it's possible to separate the Economy from the Environment, it's really not a good idea to try.  The whole thing just doesn't work as a zero-sum game.  We have to have both in balance.  So we need to stop pretending we're smart enough to beat the system.

Cap and trade on SO2 emmissions here from EDF.

The projected cost of cap and trade on CO2 emmissions here from Stanford Univ.

When The Wall Came Down

WaPo ran a cool little recap today in the Outlook Section.

"But the real story of the wall coming down is a lot less tidy than it may appear in the rear-view mirror. The "decision" to open the border was not a conscious choice at all. Instead of a reassuring victory for the forces of freedom, it was a chaotic and potentially violent mess. One of the most momentous events of the past century was, in fact, an accident, a semicomical and bureaucratic mistake that owes as much to the Western media as to the tides of history."

Always good to take another look at memorable events.

Risk Management

Sticking Point(s)

This is one of the things I've been worrying about.  Dumping Will Kill Us

If we aren't careful, we're gonna get a reform law that simply sets us up to fail. Either the public option leads to a system that transfers enormous amounts of money from taxpayers to insurance companies; or it strips out the quaality of care from private plans because it applies so much pricing pressure; or it kills the insurance industry outright; or, or, or, etc.

I think the one thing that's obvious is that this is gonna get painful.

Just The Way You Are

Dove started this a few years ago, and it seemed like a great idea. Real women depicted in a real way. Haven't heard much about it lately; I'm hoping they stick with it.