SODDI

Sunday, August 7, 2011 by Dick.

Ex-presidential candidate and Vermont’s former governor, Howard Dean told Bob Schieffer this morning that George Bush and the Tea Party caused the financial crisis.

Some other dood did it.

The SODDI defense, sometimes including “Plan B,” comes up in a criminal trial when there is no question that a murder, assault, or theft happened, but somebody else was in the room as a convenient fall guy. “Black guy, big head” actor Steve Harris liked to say in the television legal drama The Practice. The Other Dude can often remain unnamed, just a wraith who creates reasonable doubt. The real Plan B is invoked when the Other Dude gets a name.

Republicans in Congress and on the street, of course, blame President Obama for all of the nation’s problems. “Hold the line,” Jim DeMint told Speaker John Boehner.Some other dood did it.

One of Rufus’ good friends, the very liberal born-again Zoroastrian musician Tom Minor, posted a Youtube video showing “How The Bush Tax Cuts Blew Up The Deficit And Debt.” It has easy to understand pictures, he wrote, “for all your friends who try and sell the BS that this debt is Obama’s fault.”

Some other dood did it.

If George Steinbrenner were still alive, how long do you think Barack Obama would last as the manager for the hated (in Vermont, at least) New York Yankees? I reckon he’d get tired of keeping power hitters Reid, McConnell, Inouye, Durbin, and Kyl, Boehner, Cantor, Pelosi, McCarthy, and Hoyer on the payroll when they couldn’t do anything but fumble.

Some other dood did it doesn’t work on the diamond.

Howard, and Jim, and Tom all missed the boat. They should have used the Shaggy Defense.

Reggae artist Shaggy’s number one hit song It Wasn’t Me portrays a man who asks his friend Shaggy what to do after his girlfriend caught him with another woman. Shaggy’s advice is to deny everything. Say “It wasn’t me,” despite all evidence to the contrary.

The Shaggy Defense described singer-songwriter, arranger, performer and record producer R. Kelly’s position when charged with child pornography after cops found a video of Mr. Kelly having sex with an underage girl. “You say that was me on camera, butt naked, face hanging out, banging on the kitchen floor? Nope. Wasn’t me.”

Worked in court.

Probably wouldn’t keep the manager or the players on the roster in the real world, though.

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Citing the ongoing deficits and the unlikelihood that the current crop of politicians would ever solve them, Standard and Poor’s downgraded the United States debt from AAA to AA+ yesterday. It is the first debt downgrade in U.S. history.

I know. S&P must be the Other Dood.

Posted in National Debt, Taxed Again, Throw Da Bums Out, Banking, Politics & News, Random Access | 2 Comments »

The Email Lied

Monday, May 23, 2011 by Dick.

If any other of our presidents had doubled the national debt, which had taken more than two centuries to accumulate, in one year, would you have approved?

Dean “Dino” Russell is a roofer here in the middle Keys. Dancing about on roofs all his life has made him the most physically fit man in the Home Depot; it also gives him an overview of life. He is the third-most conservative man I know.

He also likes his role as rouser of rabble.

He sent me another ubiquitous email. You know the kind; it starts with “Did you know?” and ends with “send this to all your friends.”

This one blames President Obama for doubling the national debt — that masterpiece that we as a nation, Dino avers, have spent 220 years building from the original pence that fell out of Alexander Hamilton’s pocket. As an interesting digression, Andrew Jackson had four Secretaries of the Treasury, more than any other U.S. president; Mr. Jackson also paid off the entire public debt in 1835. That was the only time in U.S. history that this country has been debt free.

The email was wrong about Mr. Obama doubling our debt. He hasn’t quite done that. Yet.

I know a lot about public debt partly because I know how to Google but partly because it isn’t rocket science. Debts are like diets. Whether you have a spending problem or an eating problem, when you consume more than you work, somebody gets fat.

Dino’s email made 23 claims about all the bad things Mr. Obama has done from doubling the debt twice to not reading Arizona’s state law on illegal immigrants. The mail says the president joined another country to sue the great state of Arizona. The email called him out for mispronouncing Marine Corps and miscounting the states and not knowing Spanish; for putting 87,000 people out of work by using a forged document and for needing a Teleprompter; for spending “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to go to a play, to pitch the Olympics in Denmark, and to plant a tree on Earth Day; for stealing General Motors from we stockholders and firing the CEO; and making a joke at Special Olympians. He is called cheap for the gifts he gives other heads of state, subservient for bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia, and criminal filling his cabinet with crooks. He apparently won’t help white flood victims in the Midwest and has created 32 Czars.

“Every statement and action in this email is factual and directly attributable to Barrack Hussein Obama,” Dino claims. “Every bumble is a matter of record and completely verifiable.”

Erm, well, no.

The gist of the email was correct. Mr. Obama is sinking the economy. He did nationalize industry and health care. He did steal General Motors from me. He is centralizing power even more. He is almost single-handedly turning the United States of America into the Union of Socialist American States.

But the email got too many facts wrong.

President Reagan doubled the debt Carter left. Bush 41 bumped the debt Reagan left by more than 50% but Clinton did double the debt Reagan left. Bush 43 nearly doubled the debt Clinton left. Bush 43 left a $10 trillion debt against a $15 trillion GDP. Obama admittedly bumped it to $14 trillion against about the same $15 trillion GDP but he ain’t the Lone Ranger.

The email got too many facts wrong about Presidents in general.

We know Mr. Obama didn’t read Arizona’s law. Politicians don’t read laws. Let’s tar the lot of them.

Mexico did file an amicus brief supporting the Obama Administration, not the other way around. Yawn. Let’s worry about the Feds usurping states rights.

Good that Dino didn’t have any problem with George W. Bush’s pronounsations; of course, Mr. Bush knows Spanish.

Many of the 87,000 people affected by the Gulf oil spill are back at work but my wife isn’t and neither are the 15.4 million out-of-work Americans Mr. Obama promised he would help. We should tar him for that but the email didn’t go there.

I use a Teleprompter. So does your favorite soap star but the email didn’t go there. Let’s tar everyone for that, eh?

Every president spends “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to go out of town; it’s the cost we pay to keep them alive until election day but the email didn’t go there.

And so on.

The “facts” ain’t quite what the emailer would like us to believe. That’s too bad because Mr. Obama’s factual performance is so bad for the country that we don’t have to make things up.

“The email tells a story about how atrocious it is in Obamaland,” Dino said. “‘Tis better to lie in a good cause than tell the truth in a bad one.”

That’s the leftist mantra he used to deride. Now both sides believe ideology trumps facts.

It doesn’t.

Posted in National Debt, Throw Da Bums Out, Politics & News, Random Access | 4 Comments »

They Got the Gold Mine (We Got the Shaft)

Thursday, December 24, 2009 by Dick.

The U.S. Senate skulked around in the dark again — that would be the wee hours while it rained on my roof last night. They voted 60:39 to pass another landmark, TRILLION DOLLAR, ObamaCare insurance bailout guaranteed to make less health care available to more people, increase premiums, and raise taxes. (The $500 billion Medicare cuts drive Congressional Budget Office estimates that the bill would cut the U.S. national deficit by $132 billion over 10 years.) Giving up $500 billion to get $132 billion. Wow. Obamathematics strikes again.

The Senate also voted to raise the National debt ceiling.

Coincidence? I think not.

Posted in National Debt, ObamaCare, Throw Da Bums Out, Quickies, Politics & News | 3 Comments »

Dick Sizing Contest

Monday, November 23, 2009 by Dick.

My old friend Lido (”Lee”) Bruhl is a true believer in ObaMathematics^-1-. “We never made any claim to fiscal responsibility, as your Republicans keep doing,” he said this morning after he praised the Senate Health Bill. “The Republicans left the largest deficit ever, even allowing for two wars in progress.”

That has so many holes, I just don’t know where to drive my 18-wheeler first.

Fiscal responsibility. “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits, either now or in the future.” Must have been a famous Republican president who said that.

“My” Republicans: Heh. I have retracted the Goofy vote. I keep trying to join the Librarian party. Unfortunately, they all want to shush me.

Deficits: Deficits are not a dick-sizing contest.

Warning: the following couple of paragraphs include actual fact and even two definitions about counting on your fingers.

The annual “Deficit” is simply the difference between government receipts and government spending.

The ongoing “National Debt” is the total cash money the federal government (that’s We the People) owes to the people and businesses and countries from whom the federal government has borrowed. The government “sells” Treasury Bills, Notes, Bonds and Savings Bonds, and more to our lenders. About 25% of the total national debt was held by foreign governments in 2007. Mainland China holds about $800 billion in addition to the $1.4 trillion cumulative trade imbalance. Each and every one of us We the Peoples owes about $30,400 on the national debt right now. Each. Cash money.

“George Bush left the largest deficit ever,” Lee repeated.

That’s simple obfuscation. There is no deficit “carryover.” The real issue is the national debt.

The United States has been a debtor nation since 1776. We borrowed money to finance the Revolution before we were even really a country. National debt varied through most of the 19th century and began a steady growth about 1910. F.D.R. and Harry Truman had Depression-era social programs plus World War II to pay for. They borrowed to do so. On average, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter grew the debt through 1980 at about the rate of inflation. In actual dollars, the national debt quadrupled under Reagan and George H. W. Bush and about doubled under George W. Bush although his early budget surpluses did decrease the debt from 2000-2002; it began to climb again with post 9-11 spending.

A more telling piece of data than the billions of debt dollars is how that debt compares to how much we actually make.

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) measures how much all the goods and services we make sell for in a year.

Let’s compare how the national debt rose against how the GDP rose.

By 1940, F.D.R.’s spending programs had raised the debt to more than 50% of GDP. Eisenhower inherited a debt over 90% of GDP but gave a debt of 56% of GDP to J.F.K. The debt hovered in the 30% range through about 1980 as the go-go economy grew. It was back over 50% of GDP by 1990 and 58% when G.W.B took office in 2000. Bush spending made half the new bump but the tanking economy and real GDP contraction made the debt jump from 65% to 70% by 2008. Now, after a year of ObaMathematics and a flat economy, the national debt is about 90% of GDP.

The 2010 ObaMathematics Budget will bump the debt another 10% to about 100% of GDP. It will remain there as long as real GDP growth (after inflation) actually happens. Since the consensus estimates from most analysts show much smaller growth in GDP, the debt will actually soar past 100% as ObaSpending continues. The CBO projects the debt to double again (to $20 trillion) by 2015. Other estimates take it higher.

Only one American President, Andrew Jackson, ever dropped the national debt to zero. That was on January 8, 1835. Every other president of every political persuasion has increased it.

“I guess you would rather have McCain who would have been amazing on international affairs, but even he admitted he had no ideas or platform for domestic recovery?” Lee said.

Under the circumstances, when the economic “recovery” programs created with ObaMathematics have created somewhere just south of zero new jobs and will run up the debt service We the People must pay to $700 billion per year (seven hundred billion dollars), “no ideas” for domestic recovery sounds like a pretty good idea. Or at least a cheaper one.

We should always choose a President who does nothing over one who does everything wrong.

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^-1-ObaMathematics is a combined arithmetic system in which “2 + 2 = 47,208″ for very large values of 2 and after borrowing from the “4.”

Posted in What? Are They Nuts?, National Debt, Stupidity, Politics & News, PC, Random Access | 2 Comments »

ADD?

Monday, February 23, 2009 by Dick.

Attention to Deficit Disorder.

The 800 pound gorilla put on a wee bit of weight last week when Congress added the G.R.A.F.T. Act to the TARP payments.

Now that President Obama has hit his bailout and stimulus balls right over the fence, he needs something else to do. See, the economy is fixed. People are back at work, the Iraq war is over, American highway bridges have all been replaced, and New Orleans is completely rebuilt.

The President announced his new goal of the week yesterday. He will cut the deficit at least in half by the end of his term.

We owe an eye-popping $10.8 trillion in gross national debt; that amount will sooner or later come due on our personal and corporate income taxes, half of which already pay solely for the military and the interest on the debt. According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the national debt has just about doubled since 2000. The AP reported that the $700 billion bailout alone will send the national debt over $11 trillion. The U.S. Government has never been debt free; we have owed money every year since 1791. In fact, only in the boom years of 1835-1836 has the debt been only $35,000 or so. Every other year but 1837 we have paid interest on millions, billions, or trillions of dollars of debt. I am not Carl Sagan, R.I.P.

NBC News reported yesterday that President Obama acknowledged there is a deficit and that it is as large as it has ever been. Mr. Obama’s budget outline, which he will release on Thursday, will include deficit reduction as a centerpiece in his plans to deliver national health care and national energy changes.

The mechanism to cut the deficit? No more spending in Iraq and higher taxes.

Oh, and by the way? We’re not cutting the actual deficit. We’re cutting the rate at which the deficit increases. You might say we’re sort of reducing how much we borrow. I guess the 800 pound gorilla is still in the corner after all.

My friend “Bob” suggested that we call this piece “DAD” for Deficit Attention Disorder. I would except that sounds so paternalistic. The Obama Administration would never be paternalistic, would it?

Change. It’s what we do™.

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Andy Rooney talked about The Times US presidential rankings on 60 Minutes last night. “Democracy is a great idea,” he said, “but I have always thought we have a great president hidden somewhere in the United States and we’ve just never found him. Or her.”

Posted in National Debt, Society, Politics & News, Random Access | 2 Comments »