sfarber

The White House released its own estimates showing a budget deficit for fiscal 2005 in the range of, oh, well over $400 billion, a new record. The Congressional Budget Office predicts a 10-year deficit of around $800 billion, or so, which assumes that the GOP Congress WILL NOT “make the tax cuts permanent”, and that the Iraq war ends in fiscal 2005. Good luck on both; more realistic guesses are $2.3 trillion with a T. We’re now talking about numbers so high that, well, our creditors in Tokyo and Beijing will themselves likely run out of money to finance our...

Quietly, in the pleasant afterglow of the inaugural bacchanalia, the White House sent Congress its latest request for an additional $80 billion for ongoing operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, not in that order of course. This brings the acknolwedged cost of the Iraq fiasco (Afghanistan represents a small fraction of what we spend on Iraq– so small as actually not really effecting the number) to around $280 billion… and counting, most of which will make their way into private hands so that the appropriate kickbacks can be paid, etc. Nancy Pelosi, continuing to be the poster child for what is...

Probably the likely reason why I was nominated for “best non-liberal blog” last year was because of my position in the Terri Schiavo case, a position that, alas, has been reversed by the judicial killers in Tallahassee and now the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to intervene. Terri Schiavo, you will recall, fell into a semi-vegetative state (she can breathe on her own, but cannot swallow and hence needs a feeding tube, though she apparently is conscious a fair amount of the time) over a decade ago. Successfully contending that her condition was the result of a doctor’s medical malpractice, her...

Former presidential secretary to Richard Nixon Rose Mary Woods died at a nursing home in Ohio at 87. Woods was most famous for being allegedly responsible (at Tricky Dick’s direction, of course) for erasing around 18 1/2 minutes of presidential tapes during the Watergate scandal (which she always denied, contending she only erased 4 or 5 minutes’ worth!) Thanks to Hassan bar-Sinister for the heads-up (who also speculates- tasteless joke alert– that her doctors were unable to account for 18 or so minutes of Ms. Woods’ final hours…)

A CNN breaking news e-mail tells me that former Tonight Show host Johnny Carson died, at age 79, of complications from emphysema. As, IIRC, former Tonight Show hosts Jack Paar and Steve Allen have kicked off in the not too distant past, well, insomniacs of times past are losing some of their heroes. Time marches on. Here’s the thing (for those wondering just how I was going to make this about Bush): this is not atypical. Vaunted gains in American logevity have been a tad… illusory (we remain a dismal 42nd or something in world health measures such as longevity...

This week’s visit to our friends at Beijing’s People’s Daily will give us a number of snippets to try to piece together. First, this note that German Chancellor Schroeder promises to work toward lifting EU arms sanctions against China. Naturally, Schroeder also mentioned the EU’s commitment to the “one China policy”. Next, Chinese consumers are expected to buy over 5.8 million cars this year, virtually all of which, I think, will be produced in China itself. Which means that, naturally, Chinese demand for oil will remain quite high this year. Why would Beijing’s CPC House Organ feel the need to...

This week’s visit to Pravda gives us this interestingly mixed up story on the group of Chinese and Iraqis picked up in the Boston area on some kind of plot to detonate a “dirty bomb” in Boston. (It had been speculated to me that this was the “Mitt Romney for President Campaign Kick-Off Event”; fear, after all, seems to be the new political currency. We have nothing to fear except everything. While we’re dismantling everything else FDR ever did– why not his catchphrase too?) I don’t know what to make of the seemingly non-sequitur insertion that “astrologist Hassan Charni predicts...

It’s a winter wonderland here in Brooklyn, with around 4 or 5 inches shoveled off the sidewalk as of around 16:00 local time. As I was telling someone who lives in the outer suburbs, where he said the usual panic buying descended on all area supermarkets, people here in the Big City tend to be cooler about all this. I mean… cool. Over 2,000 other maniacs joined me at the start (and evidently, at the finish) of Central Park’s “Frostbite Seven” (that’s 7 miles). Just looking at the starting temperature (nine degrees Fahrenheit) makes me smile… thanks to a light...

The Snow Man, by Wallace Stevens One must have a mind of winter To regard the frist and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves, Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place For the listener, who listens in the snow, And...

Ignoring my (rather intelligent and sound) advice, Senators Barbara Boxer and John Kerry were the only votes against Condolleezza Rice’s passing through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by a 16-2 margin. My regular readers are aware that my sentiments toward Dr. Rice are probably comparable only to my sentiments towards the President himself. Disdain would be putting it politely. Outright hatred (at a completely visceral and irrational level at that) would probably be more accurate. But that’s not the point. No matter. Senator Boxer gets a pass, here, and actually, she gets my admiration for tilting at windmills: everyone loves...