Suddenly Anthony Weiner Says He Cares About the Ballooning Debt?

.

Krauthammer on Obama's Televised Tax Announcement: He Was Addressing Daily Kos, NYT and MoveOn

.

Paul Ryan Interviewed by Matthews on Deficit Reduction

.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

h/t: Hot Air.com

Ben Bernanke Has Suddenly Discovered We Have An Incredibly Large Amount of Debt

I guess he just didn't see this developing until a couple of days ago. On April 15 his boss was telling us that we should be thanking him for lowering taxes. And now, out of nowhere, Bernanke is telling us why we need to raise taxes. In a relatively small piece that covers the genesis of our mind bogglingly large debt as well as some of its psychological and sociological aspects, the PJTV column Roger's Rules looks at the debt situation. Here's one long quote from the post:
". . . Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, is warning about the deficit. The man we pay to preside over the country’s money supply has had the amazing revelation that a $1.6 trillion deficit might impede economic recovery. Amazing!
ow do you suppose Mr. Bernanke’s testimony fits into the narrative being woven by the Obama administration? Try this on: the President embarks on a spending spree the dimensions of which are unprecedented in U.S., indeed, in world history, committing us to trillions—that’s “trillions” with an “s”—in “stimulus” packages, bailouts, cash-for-clunkers, cash for socialized medicine, etc., etc. Then he and his minions turn around and point out we are deep, deep, deep in debt. How’d that happen? No one seems to remember. The bottom line, however, is that now you—i.e., we—must pay. And pay. And pay.
"It’s really a breathtaking performance. They rack up several trillion dollars in debt. Then, like the rat who invites you to lunch and then announces he has forgotten his wallet, they stick us with the bill. (The analogy is imperfect and unfair to the rat: at least with him you did get lunch.) “So sorry, we hate to raise taxes, but we just discovered this gigantic deficit and unless we take more of your money, we won’t be able to go on spending, spending, spending like there’s no tomorrow mad that wouldn’t be fair would it?”
“But,” you point out, “taxes haven’t really risen yet.”
"Precisely. And yet even so here’s an ordinary slob like me feeling like Boxer in Animal Farm. What happens when the taxer-in-chief really gets going?
"It was at this point in my musings that I thought about the 19th-century English essayist William Hazlitt: “those who lack delicacy,” he pointed out, “hold us in their power.” Early on in the Obama administration, Governor Mitch Daniels spoke about Obama’s “shock and awe statism.” The staggering spending programs. The government takeover of health care. The cap-’n-trade initiative. The destruction of thousands of perfectly good automobiles for the sake of a “green economy.” It has been difficult to keep up. It’s been a veritable Blitz: the spending, the world tyrants tour, the sudden coolness to Israel and Great Britain, the announcement that our nuclear arsenal is basically just for show, the coddling of terrorists: we now see just how much in earnest Obama was when, a few days before the election, he told his followers that they were on the threshold of “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”"

h/t: Pundit and Pundette

T-Paw talks with Dennis Miller about taxes, spam and Margarita

"It's a Ponzi scheme."

What If They Held a Fed Bond Auction and Nobody Came???

A few choice selections from Mark Steyn's latest.
". . .according to USA Today, when the economic downturn began, the U.S. Department of Transportation had just one employee making over $170,000. A year and a half later, it has 1,690.

"Happy days are here again!

"Did you get your pay raise this year? What’s that, you don’t work for the government? Yes, you do, one way or another. Good luck relying on Obama, Pelosi, Frank, and the other Emirs of Kleptocristan “taking action” to “resolve” that. In the last month, the cost of insuring Greece’s sovereign debt against default has doubled. Spain and Portugal are headed the same way. When you binge-spend at the Greek level in a democratic state, there aren’t many easy roads back. The government has introduced an austerity package to rein in spending. In response, Greek tax collectors have walked off the job.

"Read that again slowly: To protest government cuts, striking tax collectors are refusing to collect taxes. In a sane world, this would be a hilarious TV comedy sketch. But most of the Western world is no longer sane. It’s tough enough to persuade the town drunk to sober up, but when everyone’s face down in the moonshine, maybe it’s best just to head for the hills."
...................................................

"And where’s the president getting all this money to “pour” into his “fight” against high unemployment? Would it perchance be from the same small businesses that might be hiring new workers if the president didn’t need so much money to “pour” away? Heigh-ho. Maybe we can all be striking tax collectors. It seems a comfortable life . . . "
.........................................................

"It’s not the “debt” or the “deficit,” it’s the spending. And the only way to reduce that is with fewer government agencies, fewer government programs, fewer government employees, lower government salaries.

"Instead, all four are rocketing up: We are incentivizing unsustainability, and, when it comes to “some collapse down the road,” you’ll be surprised how short that road is."

Deficit Comparison

h/t: Fuzzy Logic