David Corn

Maybe Steele can lead his party into new and uncharted waters (the future) so far he has been funny and doesn't seem to take himself too seriously.

Will 2010 be a make it or break it for him?

Will the GOP change their chair if it looks like another drubbing in the polls?

If you go the buzzflash.com mailbag for May11th, you'll see my letter on Health Care reform - specifically for mental health care reform.

http://blog.buzzflash.com/mailbag/844

Perhaps the Republicans believe that having an African-American face prominently displayed (as a counter to President Obama) as their spokesman outweighs his numerous gaffes and contradictory statements.

Flan,

Excellent letter - too important a point to be glossed over.

Not just that "all mentally ill patients can recover enough to live independently is false." But the simple truth that "up to a third of all prison inmates suffer some form of severe mental illness" - SEVERE not mild.

Thanks for sharing

Michael Steele like Howard Dean is a clown!

Our view on the federal budget: Obama, Congress go AWOL on fiscal responsibility

USA Today

Only thing sorrier than president’s ‘cuts’ is reaction on Capitol Hill.

When it comes to federal spending, there's a pattern emerging with President Obama, and it's not a flattering one. The president says all the right things about the importance of getting the deficit under control, but his actions don't come close to matching his rhetoric.

An early sign of the disconnect was his heavily publicized demand last month that his Cabinet secretaries shave $100 million from their administrative budgets. Obama said the cuts would "send a signal that we are serious about how government operates" and would help close the "confidence gap" with skeptical Americans. Those cuts amounted to a less-than-confidence-inspiring 0.003% of the 2009 budget, or about 3 cents out of every $1,000.

Then, when he unveiled his 2010 budget last week, Obama made a big deal of his demand for $17 billion in cuts, insisting that the cuts "even by Washington standards ... are significant" and that $17 billion is "real money."

The president got it backward. Out in the rest of the world, $17 billion is a ton of money. But in Washington, where the president is proposing to spend $3.6 trillion next year, $17 billion looks puny — a little less than half a percent of the budget, or the equivalent of cutting a $100 grocery bill by handing back a 50-cent pack of gum.

If the president wants to cut outmoded or wasteful programs, more power to him. But it's disappointing that Obama's repeated pledges to hunt line-by-line through the budget for excess spending didn't produce more than this. Even George W. Bush, who never made a serious effort to balance the budget during his eight years in office, was more ambitious: He proposed $18 billion in similar cuts last year.

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Ouch!

Wanada Sykes wishes she could be this funny!

CBS Sports golf analyst David Feherty apologized Sunday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for a morbid joke that went bad in a Dallas magazine.

Feherty, one of the most popular golf analysts for his sharp wit and self-deprecating humor, was among five Dallas residents who wrote for "D Magazine" on former President George W. Bush moving to Dallas.

"From my own experience visiting the troops in the Middle East, I can tell you this though," Feherty wrote toward the end of his column.

"Despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Osama bin Laden, there's a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death."

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Now that's funny!

"A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents."

~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 - 1799)

Thanks Capt!

Here's one joke that's not so funny!

US red ink rising even higher, to $1.8T
US red ink to top $1.8 trillion, 4 times record; gov't borrows 46 cents for every dollar spent

Andrew Taylor, Associated Press Writer
On Monday May 11, 2009, 3:29 pm EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government will have to borrow nearly 50 cents for every dollar it spends this year, exploding the record federal deficit past $1.8 trillion under new White House estimates.

Budget office figures released Monday would add $89 billion to the 2009 red ink -- increasing it to more than four times last year's all-time high as the government hands out billions more than expected for people who have lost jobs and takes in less tax revenue from people and companies making less money.

The unprecedented deficit figures flow from the deep recession, the Wall Street bailout and the cost of President Barack Obama's economic stimulus bill -- as well as a seemingly embedded structural imbalance between what the government spends and what it takes in.

As the economy performs worse than expected, the deficit for the 2010 budget year beginning in October will worsen by $87 billion to $1.3 trillion, the White House says. The deterioration reflects lower tax revenues and higher costs for bank failures, unemployment benefits and food stamps.

Just a few days ago, Obama touted an administration plan to cut $17 billion in wasteful or duplicative programs from the budget next year. The erosion in the deficit announced Monday is five times the size of those savings.

For the current year, the government would borrow 46 cents for every dollar it takes to run the government under the administration's plan. In 2010, it would borrow 35 cents for every dollar spent.

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Obamas math and science for Dummies class~

Jake Tapper notes that the Congressional Budget Office has some revised numbers on the budget deficit, if by revised we mean completely different than first reported. The deficit projection has increased 50% since January, and CBO director Douglas Elmendorf blames “enactment of recent legislation.”

Gee, do you think he means Porkulus and the omnibus spending bill?

The director of the Congressional Budget Office today updated his projections for the budget and economic outlook and is now anticipating a $1.8 trillion deficit this year, and $1.4 trillion in 2010.

This is up from CBO director Douglas W. Elmendorf’s January 2009 projection of a $1.2 trillion deficit this year. In short, the US government is borrowing 50 cents for every dollar it spends.

The new projected deficit is four times the 2008 deficit, which was a record high for its time.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Hey Antidote, Clint,

How ya gunna blame Bush for this blunder?

Ya want to own it yet?

President Laughs at Wanda Sykes Joke About Rush Limbaugh: 'I Hope His Kidneys Fail'...

White House Finally Rebukes: 9/11 is not 'comedy'...

What was Obama thinking?

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"A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents."

Polling shows independents aren't buying Obama’s promises of prosperity through Big Government

The Libertarian Party ^ | 5/11/09 | The Libertarian Party
Poll: Independents reject Obama, agree with Libertarian PartyPolling shows independents aren't buying Obama’s promises of prosperity through Big Government WASHINGTON -- Despite a deep financial crisis and the election of a left-wing president, political independents still see “big government” as a greater than “big business” by an unchanged two-to-one margin, America’s third-largest party notes today. “Independent voters believed Candidate Obama when he said he would be mainstream. Their trusting votes gave him a narrow victory,” said Donny Ferguson, Libertarian National Committee Communications Director. “But now that the real Barack Obama has revealed himself, they’re not following his bootlegger turn toward...

Yes, it was a narrow victory for Obama: 365 to 173 electoral votes. Oooh...just barely won.