Yet Another Vindication of President Bush

Somehow we doubt we'll hear the same moral denunciations we once heard about Mr. Bush's policies. The Europeans are mute about Guantanamo, and Newsweek hasn't come up with any more pseudo-scoops about Gitmo guards desecrating the Quran. Mr. Holder made clear he's not about to apologize, much less thank his predecessors for their foresight, but we suppose his vindication of Guantanamo is enough.

 Vindicating Guantanamo

The editorial refers to the Obama Administration's decision to hold military tribunals at Guantanamo for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other alleged plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.  Plans to bring them to justice in NY's federal court were derailed by Independent (liberal) Mayor of NY Michael Bloomberg, Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer, and the Democratic Congress.  

Power Brokers of New York Undercut Trial

In summary, President Bush's critics shot their mouths off, with the nation at war, before factoring security and logistical concerns into their plans.  When Democrats had the power to do everything they shrieked that evil Republicans weren't doing, they balked, and used it to uphold the very policies they denounced.  Reality exposed their criticism for what it was: the self-serving prattle of pharisaical political opportunists.  It's a pity for the country, lovers of fair play, and the nation's moral fiber that this kind of skulduggery nearly always works for Democrats.  Moral hazard among politicians is killing American politics just as surely as moral hazard among bankers nearly killed the American economy.

U.S. Reverses on 9/11 Trials

Noman would only add one date to following timeline.  President Obama accepted the Nobal Peace Prize on December 10, 2009 for "creat[ing] a new climate in international politics."

Detainee U-Turn | How a Decision for U.S. Trials Was Undone

June 12, 2008

Then-Sen. Barack Obama praises Supreme Court ruling that Guantanamo detainees have a right to challenge their status in U.S. civilian courts

'Our courts have employed habeas corpus with rigor and fairness for more than two centuries, and we must continue to do so as we defend the freedom that violent extremists seek to destroy.'

Mr. Obama called the ruling 'a rejection of the Bush administration's attempt to create a legal black hole at Guantanamo.'

Jan. 22, 2009

President Obama signs executive order requiring Guantanamo to be closed within one year.

'Guantanamo will be closed no later than one year from now,' he said at the signing ceremony.

Nov. 13, 2009

Obama administration announces plans to prosecute self-described Sept. 11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in a Manhattan federal courtroom.

Jan. 27, 2010

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg says he opposes a Manhattan trial for Sept. 11 plotters, a reversal from his previous position.

Dec. 22, 2010

Congress passes $725 billion defense authorization bill that blocks transfer of Guantanamo detainees to U.S.

April 4, 2011

Justice Department announces Mohammed and four other alleged Sept. 11 plotters will be tried at Guantanamo, reversing previous plans for trials in New York.

Attorney General Eric Holder:

'As the indictment unsealed today reveals, we were prepared to bring a powerful case against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four co-conspirators… Now, unfortunately, since I made that decision, members of Congress have intervened and imposed restrictions blocking the administration from bringing any Guantanamo detainees to trial in the United States, regardless of the venue.'

Big News on the Budget Front

What's gotten into Wisconsin?  U. Wis. in Madison was reputed to be one of the whackiest campuses on the planet during the 1960's.  The state's reputation is solidly leftish--a place where ideological toxins from Illinois effervesce.  But Paul Ryan is the gutsiest, staunchest fiscal conservative Noman has seen since Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.  If this keeps up, Noman will be tempted to change his residence from the eviscerated state of Michigan to the cheese-head refuge on the other side of Lake Michigan.

The president's recent budget proposal would accelerate America's descent into a debt crisis. It doubles debt held by the public by the end of his first term and triples it by 2021. It imposes $1.5 trillion in new taxes, with spending that never falls below 23% of the economy. His budget permanently enlarges the size of government. It offers no reforms to save government health and retirement programs, and no leadership. 

What more needs to be said?  The proposed plan contemplates reducing spending, reforming Welfare (including corporate), restructuring Medicare and Social Security, reforming the budgeting process, and reforming the tax system.  His Op-Ed is worth a serious look, as is the plan.

The GOP Path to Prosperity

Mr. Ryan's budget rollout is an important political and policy moment because it is the most serious attempt to reform government in at least a generation. The plan offers what voters have been saying they want—a blueprint to address the roots of Washington's fiscal disorder. It does so not by the usual posturing ("paygo") and symbolism (balanced budget amendment) but by going to the heart of the spending problem, especially on the vast and rapidly growing health-care entitlements of Medicaid and Medicare. The Wisconsin Republican's plan is a generational choice, not the usual Beltway echo.

The Ryan Resolution

Noman notes that the GOP plan's treatment of Medicaid accords with the principle of subsidiarity, which holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization.  The federal government would let states run the program with a block grant, and decide what works best for their circumstances.

The DC follies have just gotten much more interesting.   Let the scare mongering begin.

Equality For Religious Believers, Barely, For Now

The Supreme Court thwarted the anti-christian left in its latest design to disadvantage religious believers, and to cut off the charter-school escape route from public-school indoctrination.  The Court voted 5-4 to deny a taxpayer standing to challenge an Arizona tax credit program for parents of children in private schools. The suit alleged that granting a tax credit to such parents is tantamount to subsidizing religious education, and therefore a violation of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.  Separation of Church and State, and all that.

Private-School Tax Break Is Upheld

It surprises non-Americans to learn that parents of children in US religious schools are denied government assistance, yet they are forced to subsidize the secular, often anti-religious, education of everyone else's children who attend school for free.  Lefties deny religious believers the kind of affirmatively-obligated benefits they demand of the government for themselves and anyone who will acquiesce to them.  And, the Supreme Court generally obliges them in their duplicity. With few exceptions, public schools in the US have become indoctrination centers where little children are taught politically correct bromides, and preached to about the mystical properties of condoms before they are physically capable of using them.   In this video, children are initiated into the cult of "Barack Hussein Obama, Mm, Mm, Mm," while imbibing liberal sound bites. 

Believe it or not, had the Arizona program entailed a government expenditure, it would have been ruled unconstitutional as an establishment of religion.  It's OK under post WW II jurisprudence for the government to "establish" irreligion, or anti-religion by making such expenditures.  It's only religion that the founding fathers presumably wanted to prejudice (which is undoubtedly why they enshrined the free exercise of religion as the person's first constitutional right, and protected it against the establishment of a federal church analogous to the Church of England;  Oh well, never mind the history.)  This program survived the censorial axe because it involved a tax credit--money that the government doesn't take from taxpayers--rather than an expenditure of money it's already taken.

Obama appointee, Elena Kagan, wasn't impressed with the distinction, which she referred to as one without a difference.  "Either way, government has financed the religious activity.  And so either way, taxpayers should be able to challenge the subsidy."  This quote reveals that Justice Kagan is not a very precise thinker.  Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, points out that Kagan's position "assumes that income should be treated as if it were government property even if it has not come into the tax collector's hands." The point is that the government is not financing the activity "either way"; it only extends a subsidy by giving the money out of its own accounts, not the taxpayers'.  What Kagan meant to say is that either way, government action, or inaction, has made it easier for citizens to engage in religious activity.  And, that is the state of affairs that seven decades of leftish legal sophistry has aimed at preventing.  The thrust of liberal Church-State jurisprudence is to discourage religious activity by making it comparatively, and actually, more costly to engage in than lefty approved activity, which is subsidized.  Economic realities are used to deter the religious upbringing of future Americans, analogously to the way that President Obama stated during the campaign he would deter coal mining: by making it so costly via legislative and regulatory burdens that no one could profitably engage in it.  The activity is not outlawed outright; it is merely handicapped out of existence.

With respect to President Obama's Supreme Court appointee, it's scary (but not surprising), and speaks poorly of her objectivity and ability to reason precisely, that Justice Kagan thinks government subsidizes an activity by merely refraining from taking away taxpayers' money that is spent on it.  The Journal queries whether Justice Kagan thinks the "government [is] also establishing religion by not imposing a 100% tax rate on churches, mosques and synagogues?"  Her "reasoning" would go further, it seems, to hold that anything less than 100% tax on individual incomes might be a government subsidy of religious activity, and therefore run afoul of the Establishment Clause.

Supreme School Choice

Sadly, but again not surprisingly, it was only a 5-4 victory.  The left never gives up, and won't until the last religious believer is harassed, marginalized and driven "into the closet" (underground).  That's what lefties mean by high sounding words such as liberty, tolerance, pluralism and equality.  To it's credit, Eric Holder's Justice Department finally took the average American's side of a dispute.  Noman's guess is  that the Obama Administration must be very worried about the 2012 elections, and used this case to partially establish its Bubba bona fides.

Hope We Change

President Obama formally announced his re-election campaign yesterday, and Presidential comparisons are in order.  Judging from the list above, his chances are pretty good.  His approval rating is higher than President Clinton's, Reagan's and Nixon's, all of who won re-election handily.  Presidents Carter and Ford had lower numbers and lost.  President Bush II had a much higher number and also won.  President Bush I had the highest rating of them all, and lost.  Go figure.  The following article discusses the President's strategy to woo his party's liberal grass roots.   Given all that he's given them, that shouldn't be too hard.

Obama Kicks Off Re-Election Drive With Appeal to Grass-Roots Backers

Tell My Rival That I'm Here

Roberto Roena and his orchestra were not Noman's favorite Salseros, but they were good.  These guys look like they're having fun, sort of the way the Pips did behind Gladys Knight.  And, Noman hopes you enjoy watching their performance as much as he does.  It's a silly song, like many if not most: "Tell my rival that I'm here, because I don't want him to say later that I threw a Rumba and didn't invite him."  (If you've got a better translation, feel free to comment.)  Try the Tito Rodriguez version if this song is to your liking.

A Watchdog's Final Assessment

Neil Barofsky was until yesterday the special inspector general for TARP, President Bush and Treasury Secretary Paulson's $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.  Barofsky's comments about the overall efficacy of the bank rescue program before the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee were less than a ringing endorsement.

"TARP's most significant legacy may be the exacerbation of the problems posed by 'too big to fail,' particularly given the manner in which Treasury executed the bailout, largely sparing executives, shareholder, creditors and counterparties, reinforcing that not only would the government bail out the largest institutions, but would do so in a manner that would do little harm to the responsible stakeholders," Mr. Barofsky said.

TARP Watchdog Spars Over 'Too Big to Fail'

Treasury's acting assistant secretary for financial stability, Timothy Massad, saw it differently.

"TARP was necessary to respond to the worst financial crisis we faced in decades," he said in his remarks. "Its most significant legacy is that it, combined with a variety of other government actions, helped save our economy from a catastrophic collapse and may have helped prevent a second Great Depression."

TARP was signed into law on October 3rd, 2008 after a calamitous month for financial institutions.  In the preceding 30 days, the federal government had taken over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (Government Sponsored Entities/public companies), which between them owned or guaranteed $5 trillion worth of mortgages; allowed legendary investment bank, Lehman Brothers, to fail; bailed out AIG, the world's largest insurer, and counter-party on the short end of tens-of-billions of dollars worth of credit default swaps; engineered the sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America; engineered the takeover of Wachovia Bank by Wells Fargo; seized Washington Mutual, which was then sold to J.P. Morgan; guaranteed the $3.5 trillion of savings in the nation's money-market funds; converted investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley into bank holding companies; and more.

Secretary Paulson, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke and President of the NY Federal Reserve Bank Tim Geithner conceived of the fund as way of getting ahead of the crisis instead of scrambling to keep up with it.  The idea was to convince credit markets, which had frozen with fear, that the federal government would spend whatever it took ($700 billion) to protect creditors and financial companies.  In selling the program to Congress, Secretary Paulson said that he needed the money to buy toxic assets from banks.  Upon approval, he immediately changed direction and (forcibly) purchased bank shares in order to infuse financial institutions with capital.  TARP money was used shortly thereafter to bail out automobile manufacturers General Motors and Chrysler.  When all was said and done, the program likely cost taxpayers less than $19 billion.

Noman revisits this painful history merely to comment upon what he thinks the program's true legacy was: the election of Barack Obama and overwhelming Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress.  It's historical significance was mostly political, and ironically worked wholly in the favor of the Democratic party, which had provoked the sub-prime crisis by insisting for decades that banks lower their lending standards.  When Hank Paulson told the American people in late September 2008 that unless Congress appropriated close to a trillion dollars along with nearly unlimited authority to do whatever he wanted with it, the world's financial system would collapse, he sealed the nation's fate.  The result has been a $1 trillion dollar slush fund for transfer payments to Democratic constituencies and blue states; ObamaCare; Dodd-Frank; an end to the institution of marriage as we've known it throughout human history; Cap-and-Trade via stealth regulation; a massive increase in estate tax rates; the erosion, if not demise, of American influence in world affairs; and more.  Should liberals ever construct a pantheon in America for useful idiots who paved the way for government hegemony over the American spirit, the statues of Hank Paulson et al. should enjoy pride of place.

In Case You've Wondered

Numbers are never definitive.  But, they are always important.  The Following is an excerpt from the federal government's Historical Summary of Receipts, Outlays, and Surpluses or Deficits (1789-2016).  Noman found the White House Office of Management and Budget's website very interesting.  The full budget can be accessed by clicking the following link.  Try to imagine what the Founding Fathers would make of the information on this table, and of what has happened (and is estimated to happen) since 2009.

Office of Management and Budget

Be sure to listen to the Chicago Public Radio interview at the end of this post with then-Illinois State Senator Barack Obama.  He candidly discusses redistributive change, the role of the courts and legislatures in achieving it, and the defectiveness of the traditional view of the US Constitution as a document establishing negative liberties--that it, as a document giving broad scope to state's rights and personal freedom by limiting what the federal government is empowered to do to its constituent states, and citizens.  He laments that the Founders didn't go further, to prescribe what the government must do on people's behalf.  This would naturally entail the government's doing things to people who stood in the way of its perceived affirmative duties.  Despite the exaltedness of this vision of government as provider, protector and leveler of all inequalities, some people would view Senator (President) Obama's view as an invitation to tyranny.

Year	Total
	Receipts	Outlays	Surplus or Deficit (−)
1789–1849	1,160	1,090	70
1850–1900	14,462	15,453	-991
1901	588	525	63
1902	562	485	77
1903	562	517	45
1904	541	584	-43
1905	544	567	-23
1906	595	570	25
1907	666	579	87
1908	602	659	-57
1909	604	694	-89
1910	676	694	-18
1911	702	691	11
1912	693	690	3
1913	714	715	−*
1914	725	726	−*
1915	683	746	-63
1916	761	713	48
1917	1,101	1,954	-853
1918	3,645	12,677	-9,032
1919	5,130	18,493	-13,363
1920	6,649	6,358	291
1921	5,571	5,062	509
1922	4,026	3,289	736
1923	3,853	3,140	713
1924	3,871	2,908	963
1925	3,641	2,924	717
1926	3,795	2,930	865
1927	4,013	2,857	1,155
1928	3,900	2,961	939
1929	3,862	3,127	734
1930	4,058	3,320	738
1931	3,116	3,577	-462
1932	1,924	4,659	-2,735
1933	1,997	4,598	-2,602
1934	2,955	6,541	-3,586
1935	3,609	6,412	-2,803
1936	3,923	8,228	-4,304
1937	5,387	7,580	-2,193
1938	6,751	6,840	-89
1939	6,295	9,141	-2,846
1940	6,548	9,468	-2,920
1941	8,712	13,653	-4,941
1942	14,634	35,137	-20,503
1943	24,001	78,555	-54,554
1944	43,747	91,304	-47,557
1945	45,159	92,712	-47,553
1946	39,296	55,232	-15,936
1947	38,514	34,496	4,018
1948	41,560	29,764	11,796
1949	39,415	38,835	580
1950	39,443	42,562	-3,119
1951	51,616	45,514	6,102
1952	66,167	67,686	-1,519
1953	69,608	76,101	-6,493
1954	69,701	70,855	-1,154
1955	65,451	68,444	-2,993
1956	74,587	70,640	3,947
1957	79,990	76,578	3,412
1958	79,636	82,405	-2,769
1959	79,249	92,098	-12,849
1960	92,492	92,191	301
1961	94,388	97,723	-3,335
1962	99,676	106,821	-7,146
1963	106,560	111,316	-4,756
1964	112,613	118,528	-5,915
1965	116,817	118,228	-1,411
1966	130,835	134,532	-3,698
1967	148,822	157,464	-8,643
1968	152,973	178,134	-25,161
1969	186,882	183,640	3,242
1970	192,807	195,649	-2,842
1971	187,139	210,172	-23,033
1972	207,309	230,681	-23,373
1973	230,799	245,707	-14,908
1974	263,224	269,359	-6,135
1975	279,090	332,332	-53,242
1976	298,060	371,792	-73,732
TQ	81,232	95,975	-14,744
1977	355,559	409,218	-53,659
1978	399,561	458,746	-59,185
1979	463,302	504,028	-40,726
1980	517,112	590,941	-73,830
1981	599,272	678,241	-78,968
1982	617,766	745,743	-127,977
1983	600,562	808,364	-207,802
1984	666,438	851,805	-185,367
1985	734,037	946,344	-212,308
1986	769,155	990,382	-221,227
1987	854,288	1,004,017	-149,730
1988	909,238	1,064,416	-155,178
1989	991,105	1,143,744	-152,639
1990	1,031,958	1,252,994	-221,036
1991	1,054,988	1,324,226	-269,238
1992	1,091,208	1,381,529	-290,321
1993	1,154,335	1,409,386	-255,051
1994	1,258,566	1,461,753	-203,186
1995	1,351,790	1,515,742	-163,952
1996	1,453,053	1,560,484	-107,431
1997	1,579,232	1,601,116	-21,884
1998	1,721,728	1,652,458	69,270
1999	1,827,452	1,701,842	125,610
2000	2,025,191	1,788,950	236,241
2001	1,991,082	1,862,846	128,236
2002	1,853,136	2,010,894	-157,758
2003	1,782,314	2,159,899	-377,585
2004	1,880,114	2,292,841	-412,727
2005	2,153,611	2,471,957	-318,346
2006	2,406,869	2,655,050	-248,181
2007	2,567,985	2,728,686	-160,701
2008	2,523,991	2,982,544	-458,553
2009	2,104,989	3,517,677	-1,412,688
2010	2,162,724	3,456,213	-1,293,489
2011 estimate	2,173,700	3,818,819	-1,645,119
2012 estimate	2,627,449	3,728,686	-1,101,237
2013 estimate	3,003,345	3,770,876	-767,531
2014 estimate	3,332,588	3,977,141	-644,553
2015 estimate	3,583,043	4,189,773	-606,730
2016 estimate	3,819,103	4,467,806	-648,703

Meanwhile, Back On The Personal-Responsibility Front

Republican Governor Jan Brewer has proposed charging a $50 Fee to people with unhealthy habits in order to help shore up Arizona's cash-starved Medicaid Program.

If you want to smoke, go for it," said Monica Coury, spokeswoman for Arizona's Medicaid program. "But understand you're going to have to contribute something for the cost of the care of your smoking."  She said the proposal is a way to reward good behavior and raise awareness that certain conditions, including obesity, raise costs throughout the system.  Ms. Brewer's surcharge would apply only to only certain childless adults: Those who are obese or chronically ill, and those who smoke. They would need to work with a primary-care physician to develop a plan to help them lose weight and otherwise improve their health. Patients who don't meet specified goals would be required to pay the $50, under terms of the proposal.

Naturally, this provokes a compassionate reaction from the other side of the isle, because the proposal isn't "fair."

State Sen. Krysten Sinema, a Democrat, said such a fee would unfairly penalize those who can't control their weight.  "If someone is obese because they're severely disabled or can't exercise, we shouldn't be punishing them," she said.  "I mean, it's not their fault."  Ms. Sinema said she would vote against the plan...

At least she didn't use the word "discriminates." Noman notes that while such conditions would be a burden for anyone to bear, Sen. Sinema is perfectly willing to punish everyone rather than the party with the problem, despite the fact that it would not be the taxpayers' fault either that someone "couldn't help" being fat (probably a very small minority).

Arizona Proposes Medicaid Fat Fee

If money weren't tight, Noman would probably be willing to go along with giving fatsos (like himself) a free ride.  But, given the economic realities facing taxpayers and the states, as well as the nation's biggest problem--flabby character--he says that $50 sounds reasonable for using tens-of-thousands of dollars worth of medical services.

Medicaid's rising cost has become one of the biggest problems for states struggling to balance their budgets. It is one of states' top two expenditures, along with education, and has ballooned in recent years as more people lose jobs and otherwise fall on hard times. 

Noman bets that this Arizona citizen votes Democrat.

Making An Offer They Can't Refuse

Things are getting ugly in Wisconsin.  The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees is taking names, and notes.  Local businesses are to put up signs supporting the public unions in their battle against Wisconsin taxpayers and voters, or else.

Dated March 28, 2011, the letter is addressed to "DEAR UNION GROVE AREA BUSINESS OWNER/MANAGER," in Racine County. And it begins with this warm greeting: "It is unfortunate that you have chosen 'not' to support public workers rights in Wisconsin. In recent past weeks you have been offered a sign(s) by a public employee(s) who works in one of the state facilities in the Union Grove area. These signs simply said 'This Business Supports Workers Rights,' a simple, subtle and we feel non-controversial statement given the facts at this time."... The missive concludes by noting that, "With that we'd ask that you reconsider taking a sign and stance to support public employees in this community.  Failure to do so will leave us no choice but do [sic] a public boycott of your business.  And sorry, neutral means 'no' to those who work for the largest employer in the area and are union members.

Noman is surprised at the union's willingness to divulge that government is the largest employer in the area.  That doesn't sound like any way to grow an economy, or encourage a businessman to particpate.

Wisconsin Unions Get Ugly

The Journal closes by discussing the recertification provision of the reforms passed by the Wisconsin Legislature and signed by Governor Walker.

The Walker reform that union leaders hate the most would require unions to be recertified annually by a majority of their members and let those members opt out of paying union dues....  Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels used an executive order to end collective bargaining for public workers... The number of state public employees has since fallen to 28,700 from 35,000 [and] the vast majority of those employees stopped paying union dues [from 16, 408 when Governor Daniels took office in 2005, to 1,490 today]... Similar declines have played out in Washington State and Utah, when those states gave members the freedom to choose.  This is the prospect that has Wisconsin labor leaders so furious these days...

The Fight of the Century, This Month

See how the WSJ Review & Outlook Editors handicap the budget battle.  They think that Republicans are winning, and should pocket their gains--presumably before they slip away.

The Spending Fight

This has accomplished two valuable goals. First, Republicans have succeeded in preventing the stimulus funding in 2009 and 2010 for discretionary programs from becoming a permanent part of the federal baseline of spending, which was a major goal of unions and liberal Democrats.  Second, because this budget permanently reduces the spending baseline for all future agency expenditures, over the next decade $33 billion savings will grow to about $400 billion. Now we're talking real money.

The Editors counsel that Republicans cut up Congress's credit card.  How, you ask, might the Republicans do that? 

This ought to mean reforming the current budget process that Democrats rigged in 1974 to make it easier to raise spending and taxes. The "current services" baseline builds in inflated spending levels each year. The absence of a cap on entitlement spending puts double-digit increases on cruise control. Tax cuts to grow the economy are scored as budget busters. Republicans should insist on a rewrite of the budget process, including annual spending caps enforced by automatic cuts, in return for raising the debt limit.

Meanwhile, readers chime in with a few comments on point of their own about an earlier op-ed piece by Fred Barnes.

The GOP Has Not Shown It Is Serious About the Deficit

Noman's favorite letter is the one that best illustrates Republican's quandary.  Should they drink the DC Kool-Aid, and play ball with the Washington press corp and congressional Democrats?  Or, should they pay attention to the fed-up voters that sent them there?

Cut spending now. All spending bills originate in the House, and Republicans control the House. So cut spending now. Going only for the little baby cuts which can easily be had, as Mr. Barnes advocates, is the strategy of a loser.  Unlike Mr. Barnes, I am not interested in the well-being of the Republican party. Republicans are politicians driven by self-interest and thus no different than Democrats. I am concerned with the financial survival of my country. So Republicans, you had better cut spending now or you will see me in November 2012.

Noman doesn't remember President Obama settling for small gains.  Rather, Democrats threw bomb after bomb downfield after Republicans fumbled to them, giving them the opportunity to be avariciously opportunistic.  We know that President Obama and Senate Democrats are rattling the government-shutdown saber.  Republicans payed dearly for the government "shutdown" (slowdown) of 1995.  But, President Clinton had merely tried to socialize medicine.  President Obama succeeded, despite overwhelming public opposition.  Voters are surly, and scared of the Obama debt and deficits, which are nothing like anything Americans have ever seen.  2011 is not 1995.  The fed-up voter/taxpayer/citizen in Noman likes what the crowds are saying about government: "Cut it, or shut it!"

Republicans In Danger Of Winning

In an article about the budget "negotiations" (or, would "farce" be a better word?), House Speaker John Boehner (R, OH) was quoted as saying:

We control one-half of one-third of the government.  We can't impose our will on the Senate.

Two things strike Noman about this.  First, Speaker Boehner doesn't realize how strong a hand the electorate dealt him last November.  That's a pity.  Noman agonizes watching neophytes play poker.  It should be President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Reid sweating these negotiations, not Speaker Boehner.  Secondly, it's not the majority party in the House of Representatives against the rest of government.  It's the shrinking Democratic presence in government, aided by an alarmed media, against the will of people they hoodwinked in 2006 and 2008 by shrieking "George Bush!, Jack Abramoff!, Tom Foley!, Iraq! and Guantanamo!--hate, hate, hate," but who wised up after experiencing the return of tax-and-spend government ON STEROIDS (spend and tax, in this case) in President Obama's first two years.

Congress Spending Talks Stir Unease

The fight seems to be winding down to a number around $33 billion in cuts (to a budget with a $1.65 trillion DEFICIT).  Conversely, the combatants are gearing up to take on the issues of riders blocking EPA rulemaking, funding for Obamacare, and for Planned Parenthood.  All three are liberal sacred cows.  Good luck cashing in on this hand, with Boehner afraid to raise with a Kings over Queens full house.

Meanwhile, dependable lefties in the Senate are lamenting any cuts at all to the budget.

While Republicans faced the prospect of an agreement that cut less than they wanted, Democrats grappled with the notion of cutting more. Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.), the fourth-ranking Senate Democrat, said she was concerned that the administration gave away too much too quickly.  "It's tough," Ms. Murray said of the magnitude of cuts Democrats are preparing to accept. "It's really hard, and not without a whole lot of trepidation."

Noman figures that Patty and the Dems (Benny and the Jets?) will just have to be consoled by the $3.8 trillion in outlays that they get to spend, constituting 25.3% of GDP.

The Returned Appetite for Risk

The WSJ reports that investor's appetite for risk is once again increasing.  In a passage that chilled Noman's blood, the article described how one public company sold stock in order to raise cash to leverage their purchases of "alt-a" bonds with bank loans.  You remember those from the crisis that nearly collapsed the global economy just three years ago.

MFA Financial Inc., a publicly listed company that invests in mortgage bonds, has been buying since the market stabilized, doubling its holdings in 2010.  Last year, MFA was buying $100 million worth of the bonds a month. Recently it boosted its buying to $300 million a month. Early in March, it raised $500 million by selling stock so it could buy so-called "prime" and "alt-a" bonds, which are bonds backed by mortgages taken out by borrowers with generally better credit than subprime borrowers. MFA is buying more now because it's easier to get funding from lenders who, they say, are less worried about the risks.

Banks are less worried about risks?  It's good news that credit is becoming more available.  But, Noman thinks it's bad news that credit is once again becoming readily available for speculative purposes.  What that tells him is that investors believe that the government will once again have taxpayers pay lenders 100% on the dollar for their bad loans, under the too-big-to-fail rationale.  Wasn't Dodd-Frank supposed to fix that?

Subprime Bonds Are Back