Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

There’s Nothing Like Data Tom DeLay says spending is causing the deficit. Is he right? What’s really causing the deficit? War? Recession? Spending? Tax Cuts? Some of each? If the latter, how much of each? To take a quick look at some of these issues, I grabbed data on Federal Revenue, Spending, and GDP from […]

DeLay Speaks On the giant Bush deficits, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) says the deficit is “a spending-driven deficit.” DeLay is actually partly right here–spending increased somewhere around 9% over the last two years, but that’s only around $100 billion. The other $400 billion of projected deficits must have come from somewhere… massive tax […]

Unintelligent Design? I’m a bit late on this topic (see Not Geniuses and Jesse), but this is hillarious. And, as far as I can tell, it’s really, really, not a parody site like whitehouse.org. However, Not Geniuses and Pandagon failed to mention the prize the winners receive: authoring the next Biology textbook for the great […]

Gary Hart on The Daily Show Hart runs off a laundry list of things that have gone south (employment, federal budget, slow economic growth, tax equity, national security, foreign relations,…), concluding that “This guy ought to be thrown out.” Stewart then quips, “If it goes like this, Sharpton may win.” Then they go into a […]

Tax Cuts in Action This just in: The White House is expected Tuesday to forecast record budget deficits in excess of $400 billion this fiscal year and next with little hope of a turnaround anytime soon. The simultaneous operations in Afghanistan and Iraq are running around $60b per year, so we can forgive the administration […]

Not Quite Rootin’ Tootin’… …but U.S. intelligence on Iraq was “darn good”, says President Bush. And there’s more; Bush also said “When I gave the speech, the line was relevant.” Relevant! But was it acccurate? And there’s that word again, the one rarely heard before the war, but now mandatory in every statement: “And I […]

Must See: Bush Writing the SOTU Via Atrios, who got the story from Media Whores Online, who in turn got the story from the White House web page: action photos with captions of President Bush drafting, editing, and pondering the State of the Union speech. The photos are good, but I like the captions even […]

Huh? I know North Korea is in the Axis of Evil and all, but explain this: Finnish officials were at a loss to explain an allegation made on Thursday by a U.S. official that North Korea has been caught trying to sell pornography in the small Nordic country… …U.S. Ambassador to Australia Tom Schieffer made […]

On the Lighter Side I came across googlism.com, a site that uses google search results to capture the essense of a person, place, or thing. I must say that I like the Googlism’s for “Angry Bear”: angry bear is a dangerous bear angry bear is the last thing they want to run into angry bear […]

Nevermind My bad. Sorry. White House Says Case Closed. AB UPDATE: Time Magazine seems to disagree.