Washington's 'Forever Flu' Fleeced Americans (VIDEO)

I don't say this kind of thing often, but this man is fucking brilliant. 

Bill Maher last night on "Real Time":

Democrats Are Bankrupting America (VIDEO)

Wyoming Senator John Barraso:

Sen. John Barrasso: "The Democrats seem to be determined to bankrupt America. This spending spree is a reckless tax and spending spree. It really does seem to be Bernie's [Sanders] effort to socialism. It's his manifesto." pic.twitter.com/Om9TEtKdvv

— The Hill (@thehill) July 25, 2021

Biden Lobbies for Democrats' Infrastructure Scam (VIDEO)

 Passage of the bill really depends on one person: Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

At the New York Times, "Democrats Roll Out $3.5 Trillion Budget to Fulfill Biden’s Broad Agenda."

Leader McConnell May Back Biden's Infrastructure Boondoggle

Apparently this is the one piece of the Dems' legislative agenda that McConnell will support --- probably because the bill is larded with billions in bipartisan pork-barrel spending.

At Politico, "Pigs fly: McConnell weighs giving Biden a bipartisan win":

Something strange is happening in Washington: Mitch McConnell might go along with a central piece of Joe Biden’s agenda.

The self-appointed “Grim Reaper” of the Senate, a minority leader who said just two months ago that “100% of my focus is on standing up to this administration,” has been remarkably circumspect about the Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure deal. He’s privately telling his members to separate that effort from Democrats’ party-line $3.5 trillion spending plan and publicly observed there’s a “decent” chance for its success.

Other than questioning its financing, McConnell has aired little criticism of the bipartisan agreement to fund roads, bridges and other physical infrastructure, even as he panned Democrats’ separate spending plans on Wednesday as “wildly out of proportion” given the nation's inflation rate.

His cautious approach to a top Biden priority reflects the divide among Senate Republicans over whether to collaborate with Democrats on part of the president’s spending plans while fighting tooth and nail on the rest. Many Democrats predict McConnell will kill the agreement after stringing talks out for weeks, but the current infrastructure talks are particularly sensitive for the GOP leader because one of his close allies, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, is the senior Republican negotiator.

McConnell is aware of the conventional wisdom that he will ultimately knife the deal and is taking pains not to become the face of its opposition...

RTWT. 

 

Ann Coulter Speaks Out After President Trump Signs $1.3 Trillion Spending Bill (VIDEO)

I can't find his tweet, but Carmine Zozzora was raggin' on Ann Coulter yesterday, saying how she lost him a while ago. I gotta say I'm surprised how often she rags on Trump, but that's her shtick.

At Fox News:

Republicans Abandon Traditional Goal of Balanced Budget

Following-up from Sunday, "U.S. Budget Deficit Could Balloon to $1 Trillion This Year."

It's kinda like when you've lost the battle over waist-size: You say screw it and start wearing sweats all the time. You're never going to lose all those pounds you've packed on over the last few of years. You let yourself go.

That's what it is with the budget. America has let go. Of course, if something can't go on forever it won't. At some point America's going to have a budget reckoning. Bills are coming due. It's going to be a nasty political blowout at that time. We'll all be Mel Gibson in the "Road Warrior" at some point.

At WaPo, "Trump plan will drop GOP’s traditional goal of balancing budget within 10 years":

President Trump is remaking the Republican economic playbook in his own image, abandoning ideological consistency in ­favor of a debt-busting strategy that will upend how Washington taxes and spends trillions of dollars each year.

On Monday, Trump is slated to announce a new budget plan that will no longer seek to eliminate the deficit over the next decade, forfeiting a major Republican goal, according to three people familiar with the document. The plan will call for a range of spending cuts that reduce the growth of the deficit by $3 trillion over 10 years, but it will not attempt to balance the federal budget, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the proposal before its official release.

The decision to relinquish the deficit goal comes after Trump pushed a $1.5 trillion tax cut through Congress late last year and signed a two-year budget deal last week that lifts federal spending limits by $500 billion, suspends for one year the ceiling on the national debt and is expected to lead to $1 trillion annual budget deficits.

The Republican turnaround on economic policy stands in sharp contrast to the party’s opposition to President Barack Obama’s stimulus program during the Great Recession. At that time, Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), now the speaker of the House, warned of a “debt crisis” and said that “spending is the problem.” Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, then a congressman from South Carolina, derided Obama’s spending plans as a “joke” and backed a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget.

Now, GOP leaders are largely silent on the two issues that had preoccupied them for the past decade — total spending and the growth of federal entitlements — while Trump has signed legislation that will lavish cash upon both defense and domestic programs far beyond what he had earlier proposed.

On Sunday, amid a backlash from conservative groups, Mulvaney defended the decision, while acknowledging that ballooning deficits are “a very dangerous idea” and that he wouldn’t have voted for the legislation if he were still in Congress. In an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” he said that his job now is “to get the president’s agenda passed,” which included Pentagon funding that Democrats would allow only if the administration accepted big domestic spending increases.

On the same show, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), the leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said the bargain was unacceptable. “The swamp won,” he said. “And the American taxpayer lost.”

A month and a half before signing the spending legislation, Trump demonstrated similar ideological flexibility with his tax cut, shelving his campaign promise to focus on the “forgotten men and women” and signing a bill whose biggest benefits flow to corporations and the wealthy.

As Trump turns next to plans to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure and overhaul U.S. trade policy, his disregard for the traditional Republican economic catechism will again be on display Monday with the release of his detailed spending plan...

More.

Also,  from Matt Kibbe, at Reason, "The Tea Party Is Officially Dead. It Was Killed by Partisan Politics."

U.S. Budget Deficit Could Balloon to $1 Trillion This Year

I've long ago given up any hope that the political system, regardless of which party's in power, will get a handle on our perpetual budget deficits, and concomitantly, the national debt.

But a projected $1 trillion deficit for this year does seem like some apocalyptic milestone, my god.

At Forbes, "Trump's Federal Budget Deficit: $1 Trillion and Beyond."

And while I'm still in the neocon camp, I'm definitely in favor of winding down the Afghanistan deployment these days. It's just gone on too long. No once can say the U.S. didn't make an effort there, or at least some kind of effort. Perhaps a different strategy, or different historical circumstances (like no Iraq war in 2003), would have made things better.

In any case, I give props to Rand Paul on discussing the budgetary drawbacks of endless wars. A few years ago I would have blown off such talk. But not now. It'll be 17 years this November.

From Face the Nation this morning:

Scary West Virginia Newspaper Cover

Well, there's a been a load of stories about how the Trump budget includes cuts that would harm key constituencies, especially the white working class demographic the propelled the campaign to victory.

But I gotta say, Chris Cillizza's got a point:

This West Virginia newspaper front page should scare Republicans https://t.co/rSockUQ8aG pic.twitter.com/u7xwy5Fat9

— Chris Cillizza (@TheFix) March 17, 2017

Get Ready for the Mother of All Corrections

From Jeremy Warner, at the Telegraph U.K., "Get ready for the mother of all stock market corrections once central banks cease their money printing."

A great piece.

Read it all at the link.

Hillary Clinton Wins South Carolina Primary (VIDEO)

I think this is the turning of the tide.

South Carolina's results were never in doubt, although the margin for Clinton is pretty spectacular. And with just a few days until Super Tuesday, the importance of the Palmetto State for Clinton can't be understated. She can start to put Bernie away.

At the Last Tradition, "Hillary burns the Hell out of Bernie Sanders in huge SC primary victory thanks to the always reliable robotic Black vote."

And at the New York Times, "Hillary Clinton Wins South Carolina Primary."

Plus, at ABC News, "Black Voters Boost Clinton in South Carolina" (via Memeorandum):

Overwhelming support and record turnout among black voters and her best showing to date among whites gave Hillary Clinton a powerful victory in Saturday’s Democratic presidential primary in South Carolina.

Blacks accounted for 61 percent of South Carolina Democratic primary voters in ABC News exit poll results, breaking the state’s record, 55 percent in 2008. And Clinton won 86b percent of their votes, a crushing score. Indeed she did significantly better with blacks in South Carolina than Barack Obama in 2008...

Keep reading.

Hillary Clinton Regains Momentum After Crushing Defeat in New Hampshire (VIDEO)

And she's going to consolidate that momentum in South Carolina, which holds its Democrat primary next Saturday, February 27th.

At the Washington Post, "Clinton defeats Sanders in Nevada; black voter support appears decisive":

LAS VEGAS — Hillary Clinton held off a powerful late challenge from rival Sen. Bernie Sanders in Nevada’s Democratic caucus vote Saturday, securing a narrow victory that helps the former secretary of state regain momentum after a crushing defeat in New Hampshire.

Nevada was the first state to test support among minority voters, who have long been expected to be in Clinton’s camp. As it turned out, preliminary entrance polls showed Latinos favoring Sanders, despite having voted for Clinton 2-to-1 when she ran in 2008. African American voters, meanwhile, appear to have overwhelmingly supported Clinton — a development that could bode extremely well for her given the run of Southern states with large black electorates voting in the coming weeks.

“Some may have doubted us, but we never doubted each other,” Clinton told supporters gathered at a Las Vegas hotel ballroom. Clinton congratulated Sanders on a close election, but she got in a few digs, too.

“It can’t just be about what we’re going to give to you; it has to be about what we are going to build together,” she said in an unmistakable reference to Sanders’s large and expensive plans for government-run health care, college and more.

Clinton’s campaign cast doubt on the strength of Sanders’s support among Hispanics, pointing to majority-Latino precincts that she won...

Keep reading.

Also, at PuffHo, "Civil Rights Legend Says Sanders Supporters Yelled 'English Only' at Her."

Well, Sanders won't pick up Latino voters that way, obviously.

Bernie Sanders Has Momentum in Nevada (VIDEO)

I think I'll roll over laughing if Sanders wins the Nevada caucuses.

At CNN, via Memeorandum, "Poll: Clinton, Sanders in a dead heat for Nevada":

Washington (CNN) Likely Democratic caucusgoers in Nevada are split almost evenly between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders ahead of Saturday's caucuses, according to a new CNN/ORC Poll. — Though Clinton holds an edge over Sanders

And at KTNV News 13 Las Vegas:

Bernie Sanders Campaign Rally at Bonanza High School, Las Vegas, Nevada (VIDEO)

Bernie was fired up, heh.

Via KTNV News 13 Las Vegas:

Las Vegas, NV (KTNV) - Six days before the Nevada caucus, Sen. Bernie Sanders spoke in Las Vegas Sunday.

The Democratic presidential candidate hosted a rally at Bonanza High School.

Sanders talked about a wide range of topics, including immigration reform, college tuition, minimum wage and health care.

"When mom is out working and dad is out working and the kids are out working, wages in America are too damn low," he said.


Sanders called for raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

During his speech, the senator projected confidence, remembering how Hillary Clinton was once the overwhelming favorite in the race...

Some Economists See Huge Costs in Bernie Sanders' Agenda

Following-up from last September, "Bernie Sanders' Socialist Agenda Would Expand Government to the Tune of $18 Trillion (VIDEO)."

At the New York Times, "Left-Leaning Economists Question Cost of Bernie Sanders's Plans":

WASHINGTON — With his expansive plans to increase the size and role of government, Senator Bernie Sanders has provoked a debate not only with his Democratic rival for president, Hillary Clinton, but also with liberal-leaning economists who share his goals but question his numbers and political realism.

The reviews of some of these economists, especially on Mr. Sanders’s health care plans, suggest that Mrs. Clinton could have been too conservative in their debate last week when she said that his agenda in total would increase the size of the federal government by 40 percent. That level would surpass any government expansion since the buildup in World War II.

The increase could exceed 50 percent, some experts suggest, based on an analysis by a respected health economist that Mr. Sanders’s single-payer health plan could cost twice what the senator, who represents Vermont, asserts, and on critics’ belief that his economic assumptions are overly optimistic.

His campaign strongly contests both critiques, defending its numbers and attacking prominent critics as Clinton sympathizers and industry consultants.

Mr. Sanders, on “Fox News Sunday,” reiterated his oft-stated claim that progressive critics dispute: “A family right in the middle of the economy would pay $500 more in taxes and get a reduction in their health costs of $5,000.”

But by the reckoning of the left-of-center economists, none of whom are working for Mrs. Clinton, the new spending would add $2 trillion to $3 trillion a year on average to federal spending; by comparison, total federal spending is projected to be above $4 trillion in the next president’s first year.

“The numbers don’t remotely add up,” said Austan Goolsbee, formerly chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, now at the University of Chicago...

Radical leftists, at Daily Kos and elsewhere, smeared the Wall Street Journal when it came out with its $18 trillion estimate of Sanders' policies in September, but $2 trillion over 10 years would add $20 trillion to the national debt if nothing else changes in Washington's budgeting.

I get a kick out of listening to the old Jewish "democratic" socialist, but America can't afford his agenda.

Keep reading, in any case.

Donald Trump Announces Tax-Cutting Plan (VIDEO)

Following-up from earlier, "Trump Plan Cuts Taxes for Millions."

This is starting to sound even more bold and significant than I thought.

At CBS Evening News, "Trump announces tax plan: Presidential hopeful Donald Trump has unveiled his new tax plan. Major Garrett has the details."

Trump Plan Cuts Taxes for Millions

Millions! Millions could get tax cuts!

Reaganesque.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Middle class, businesses get break, but overseas profits would face a one-time 10% levy":

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump unveiled an ambitious tax plan Monday that he says would eliminate income taxes for millions of households, lower the tax rate on all businesses to 15% and change tax treatment of companies’ overseas earnings.

Under the Trump plan, no federal income tax would be levied against individuals earning less than $25,000 and married couples earning less than $50,000. The Trump campaign estimates that would reduce taxes to zero for 31 million households that currently pay at least some income tax. The highest individual income-tax rate would be 25%, compared with the current 39.6% rate.

Many middle-income households would have a lower tax rate under Mr. Trump’s proposal, but because high-income households generally pay income tax at much higher rates, his proposed across-the-board rate cut could have a positive impact on them, too. For example, an analysis of Jeb Bush’s plan—taxing individuals’ incomes at no more than 28%—by the business-backed Tax Foundation found that the biggest percentage winners in after-tax income would be the top 1% of earners.

Mr. Trump’s plan appears designed to help him, as the GOP front-runner, cement his standing as a populist—though that message is complicated by the fact that the billionaire, like other Republican leaders, would eliminate the estate tax.

“My plan will bring sanity, common sense and simplification to our country’s catastrophic tax code,” Mr. Trump said in an interview. “It will create jobs and incentives of all kinds while simultaneously growing the economy.”

But Mr. Trump will face a challenge in convincing skeptics that his aggressive tax cuts can be implemented without adding to the federal deficit.

To pay for the proposed tax benefits, the Trump plan would eliminate or reduce deductions and loopholes to high-income taxpayers, and would curb some deductions and other breaks for middle-class taxpayers by capping the level of individual deductions, a politically dicey proposition. Mr. Trump also would end the “carried interest” tax break, which allows many investment-fund managers to pay lower taxes on much of their compensation.

A significant revenue gain would come from a one-time tax on overseas profits that could encourage U.S. multinational corporations to return an estimated $2.1 trillion in cash now sitting offshore, largely to avoid U.S. taxes. His proposal would impose a mandatory 10% tax on all of that money, even if the money stays overseas, but allow a few years for the tax to be paid. The Trump campaign estimates that many companies would choose to bring their money back home, boosting jobs and investment in the U.S...

More, plus the unhinged leftist reaction at Memeorandum.

Plus, at Politico, "Trump: My tax plan is 'going to cost me a fortune'" (at Memeorandum).

Bernie Sanders' Socialist Agenda Would Expand Government to the Tune of $18 Trillion (VIDEO)

Now that's impressive!

At the video, MSNBC's Chris Hayes is getting a woody!

At the Wall Street Journal, "Price Tag of Bernie Sanders’s Proposals: $18 Trillion":

WASHINGTON—Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose liberal call to action has propelled his long-shot presidential campaign, is proposing an array of new programs that would amount to the largest peacetime expansion of government in modern American history.

In all, he backs at least $18 trillion in new spending over a decade, according to a tally by The Wall Street Journal, a sum that alarms conservatives and gives even many Democrats pause. Mr. Sanders sees the money as going to essential government services at a time of increasing strain on the middle class.

His agenda includes an estimated $15 trillion for a government-run health-care program that covers every American, plus large sums to rebuild roads and bridges, expand Social Security and make tuition free at public colleges.

To pay for it, Mr. Sanders, a Vermont independent running for the Democratic nomination, has so far detailed tax increases that could bring in as much as $6.5 trillion over 10 years, according to his staff.

A campaign aide said additional tax proposals would be offered to offset the cost of some, and possibly all, of his health program. A Democratic proposal for such a “single-payer” health plan, now in Congress, would be funded in part through a new payroll tax on employers and workers, with the trade-off being that employers would no longer have to pay for or arrange their workers’ insurance.

Mr. Sanders declined a request for an interview. His campaign referred questions to Warren Gunnels, his policy director, who said the programs would address an array of problems. “Sen. Sanders’s agenda does cost money,” he said. “If you look at the problems that are out there, it’s very reasonable.”

Calling himself a democratic socialist, Mr. Sanders has long stood to the left of the Democratic Party, and at first he was dismissed as little more than a liberal gadfly to the party’s front-runner, Hillary Clinton. But he is ahead of or tied with the former secretary of state in the early-voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, and he has gained in national polling. He stands as her most serious challenger for the Democratic nomination.

Mr. Sanders has filled arenas with thousands of supporters, where he thunders an unabashedly liberal agenda to tackle pervasive economic inequality through more government services, higher taxes on the wealthy and new constraints on banks and corporations...

Still more.

Conservatives Need to 'Get Activist'

This is interesting, from Neo-Neocon, at Legal Insurrection, "Problem: Passive Right, Activist Left."

However, I don't know if conservatives are truly "passive." Are they right-wing Alinskyites? Not sure, but the tea party movement wasn't bean bag.

Greece Passes Austerity Measures

At WSJ, "Greece’s Parliament Passes Austerity Measures Required for Bailout":

Greece’s Parliament passed austerity measures needed to secure a fresh bailout, but a rebellion within the ruling Syriza party is testing whether Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras can hold his government together as he seeks to complete the deal.

The measures, which include steep spending cuts and tax increases, were approved early Thursday by 229 lawmakers in the country’s 300-seat Parliament, many of them opposition lawmakers. Among the 149 lawmakers in Mr. Tsipras’s left-wing Syriza party, 32 voted against the deal—including former finance chief Yanis Varoufakis—and six abstained.

To counter the rebellion within his party, the Greek premier is expected to announce a cabinet shake-up on Thursday, according to government officials. But it remains uncertain how long Mr. Tsipras can continue in office without calling new elections.

The vote “is a serious division in Syriza’s parliamentary group,” said a government spokesman. “The basic priority of the prime minister and the government is the successful completion of the agreement in the coming period.”

The vote came hours after the European Commission proposed a fix to Mr. Tsipras’s other immediate challenge: how to pay a €4.2 billion ($4.6 billion) payment due to the European Central Bank on Monday. To cover that and Greece’s other most pressing bills, the commission called for giving Athens a €7 billion bridge loan from a European Union bailout fund.

In Athens, Mr. Tsipras is expected to replace several ministers—including three who voted against the austerity measures—with people more likely to help him implement the measures required as part of the rescue agreement, officials say.

The Greek premier could also expel lawmakers who vote against the government. That would leave them with a choice of resigning their seat, in line with Syriza’s code of conduct, or carrying on as independents. The former outcome would allow Mr. Tsipras to replace them, while the latter scenario would weaken his power.

Shortly before the vote, he appealed for unity in support of the austerity measures being put to a vote. Parliamentary approval of the austerity measures was a prerequisite demanded in exchange for as much as €86 billion in bailout loans over the next three years from the eurozone and International Monetary Fund.

“I don’t believe the measures will benefit the economy, but we are forced to adopt them,” Mr. Tsipras told lawmakers.

The premier also referred to comments made by IMF chief Christine Lagarde, who on Wednesday urged the eurozone to provide Greece with debt relief. “This is a positive outcome and the only hope of getting out of the crisis,” he said.

Fresh cracks in Mr. Tsipras’s government appeared on Wednesday before the vote, with the resignation of deputy finance minister Nantia Valavani over the bailout, though she last week backed Mr. Tsipras’s decision to seek the new rescue agreement.

“It is one thing to face an exceptionally difficult reality and catastrophe with hope and a future of dignity and independence,” she said in a letter sent to the Greek premier. “It is another issue to handle a catastrophe that will be completed with whatever national income is left heading abroad for the repayment of debt that cannot be repaid in centuries.”

Ahead of the vote, about 13,000 took to the streets to protest against the new bailout, while public sector workers walked off their jobs in a 24-hour strike.

Later on Wednesday, a small group of demonstrators clashed with police, throwing Molotov cocktails. More than 30 protesters were detained, according to police officials.

Nobody knows how long the 40-year-old prime minister can maintain the backing of his own Syriza party, and its right-wing coalition partner Independent Greeks. Completing the bailout agreement is likely to take several weeks. Selling the tough austerity policies attached to it has been Mr. Tsipras’s biggest political test at home since he swept to victory in an election in January on an antiausterity ticket.

The rebellion threatens to leave Mr. Tsipras’s coalition short of a majority in the Parliament. Some Syriza lawmakers have spoken of “threatening” developments for their party if it reneged on its key electoral promise of opposing austerity. Others said they recognized the urgency of Greece’s financial situation as the country faces bankruptcy and a probable exit from the eurozone unless it complete the steps needed to clinch rescue financing...

More.

Also at Euronews, "Greek parliament approves tough reforms demanded by Brussels," and "Greek PM relies on opposition support to pass reforms."

'Toxic' Deal Will Plunge Greece Into Turmoil After Tsipras 'Crucified' by EU Leaders at Summit, Say Analysts

Well, I was right about this, that Greece wouldn't leave the EU, or the Euro itself, although this is sounding pretty harsh.

At the Telegraph UK, "Prime minister Tsipras forced to concede to toughest measures ever imposed on eurozone economy in return for opening talks on a new rescue package worth €86bn."