Tannishblog

The NY Times reports on the release of the White House midsession budget review, normally a obscure wonk-fest, which Mr. Bush is trying to turn into a coup:

 But President Bush plans to preside today, with members of Congress and invited guests in attendance. By all indications, including his own in his weekly radio address last Saturday, he plans to turn this into a celebration — just in time for the fall campaign.

This is proof, if anyone still needs it, that this administration is desperate for something to boast about. On Mr. Bush’s watch, triple-digit budget surpluses have turned into annual triple-digit budget deficits. There’s no information in the midsession report to alter that utterly dispiriting fact. Yes, the report is expected to project that this year’s deficit will be somewhat less gargantuan than last year’s — probably somewhere between $280 billion and $300 billion, versus a $318 billion shortfall in 2005. That’s not much to crow about.

But Mr. Bush is likely to gloat, anyway. Earlier this year, the administration conveniently projected a highly inflated deficit of $423 billion. With that as a starting point, the actual results can be spun to look as if they’re worth cheering.

The razzle-dazzle won’t end there. As he did in his remarks on Saturday, Mr. Bush is sure to use today’s event to credit tax cuts for a projected “surge” in tax revenue. The Treasury is expected to take in about $250 billion more in 2006 than in 2005, for a total take of $2.4 trillion. Devoid of context, the number looks impressive.

In fact, it is $100 billion less than the $2.5 trillion revenue estimate the administration touted when it set out in 2001 to sell its policy of never-ending tax cuts. Even with this year’s bigger haul, real revenue growth during the Bush years will be abysmal, averaging about 0.3 percent per capita, versus an average of nearly 10 percent in all previous post-World War II business cycles. That might be excusable if the recent revenue improvements could reasonably be expected to continue. They cannot. Much of the increase in tax receipts is from corporate profits, high-income investors and super high-earning executives, sources that are just as unpredictable as the financial markets to which they’re inevitably linked.

 A deficit of $280 Billion.  My wife and I, thoroughly middle-class and struggling, each make about $40K per year. For the sake of illustration, if we assume this to be an average salary for an average American worker, then our tax-cut-happy administration is loosing the combined salaries of 7 million people each year! To further the analogy, if we equate the nation's expected intake of $2.4 trillion with my family's $80,000, then we can also equate the nation's projected loss of $280 billion to a theoretic family loss of of over $6800 per year. How long would my creditors put up with that kind of budgeting? 

Since the projected shortfall is less than expected, we can expect pomp and fanfare. the reality is that the President's "surge" is  only a lessening of losses. Notwithstanding the views of Right Blogistan, the administration is grasping at straws to find something to crow about. In a dark room, even a lit match can seem bright.

At time one reads something that makes one want to tear down the blogger shingle and close up shop. Billmon at the Whiskey Bar just walloped my muse with a beer bottle. Read: An Inconvenient Al.

Out-blogged again. I should be used to this by now…

On Sundays’s post on Karmic convergence, I attempted a reasonable missive to conservative blogger of repute Jeff Goldstein, the recipient of a one-woman flame war gone overboard. I felt so good about myself that I left a link to my post on his message board. Unfortunately, my message was undermined by two hyper-liberal hyperbolic sentences I was fool enough not to delete. As result, I enjoyed some karmic backlash of my own. I deserved it.

One guy, calling him/herself Chaos, even left a message on a different post. It’s delicious:

And you wonder why progressives are stereotyped as immature, paranoid buffoons.

Hence the title of this posting.

Regarding the karma post, some interesting things were said in response. I’d like to thank the people who took the time and thought to leave their comments. I’ve been mulling them since Sunday night. Chaos piped in to inform me that "the vast majority of you clearly don’t know better." Thank you, but that is a ping pong ball. I can lob that at you and yours just as easily. No matter who says it, it is purely opinion and therefore improvable. Meanwhile, Pablo asked:

Why can’t it just be wrong? Why does condemnation have to go both ways regarding the clear wrongdoing of just one person? … Why isn’t it enough to note that one of yours is way off the rails?

This is why we never get anywhere.

He’s dead right: that is why we never get anywhere. He’s right to take me to task, I was foolish. I apologize. CosmicConservative also berated me calling me in my hypocritical stance.

But you had to put this sentence in there too: “No doubt her army of salivating lap-dog pit bulls are Googling the perp’s address…” and this: “To be sure, the right suffers from it’s share of whackjobs, but that’s their mystique. They benefit from that, feed on it as Ms. Malkin frequently demonstrates.”

And then you have this plea to Jeff Goldstein: “Please refrain from the very human tendency to generalize all progressives by her actions.”

Yeah. what you said. Please refrain from the very human tendency to generalize all conservatives by any one conservatives actions.

CC - I stand accused and I am guilty. He wasn’t finished, though:

Is it possible you don’t understand that when liberals get together to gush over the political hit-job movie “Fahrenheit 911″ that we view that as you “feeding on the mystique” of lies, exaggerations and intentional misrepresentations?

I am unaware of that happening. I’ve never seen the movie, and none of my friends have been known to "gush" over it (sounds dirty!) Lord of the Rings, maybe, but not F 9/11.

Cosmic also had another point to make, one I have noted before. (sic)

[I]t is amazaing how startingly similar the attitudes and condescenscion is on both sides. You could take a typical post on a right-wing website, replace “moonbat” with “wingnut”, replace “Kossack” with “Dittohead”, replace “traitor” with “baby-killer” and post that on a leftwing site and it would slide right into the thread as if it were born to be there.

It’s sad, really.

Quite.

Ahh, Zen and the Art of Paranoid Buffoonery… I learned something here: Stick my neck out, the hatchet will fall. All the faster when I deserve it.