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Last week Fox reported that the president was going to cut defense 10%.
Today Congressional quarterly says that instead he will be increasing defense 8%.
Somebody has it wrong unless we are talking about cutting the rate of growth. Economic problems or no I wouldn’t be too fired up to cut war spending. Economic cycles come and go, but you can’t unlose a war.
UPDATE: Max Boot sees the -10
Joe is back and hitting with all cylinders on the bill.
6:40 a.m. Mika reads Frank Rich strip saying that the Republicans are as clueless as Bush on Katrina. Bad timing for that example Frank.
6:44 a.m. Out comes the Obamameter and a promise broken rating on sunlight before signing, no word on rendition yet.
6:46 a.m. Mika face when asking how birth control fits on stimulus really is funny
7:07 a.m. Joe & Mika are agreeing on tax credits for people who don’t pay taxes. They’re again’em.
7:14 a.m. It’s up to Max Baucus on Tommy the tax boy. If he decides to let it go God help the democrats in 2010.
7:45 a.m. Mika is going through the list with Crammer they are really hitting this.
7:48 a.m. Aren’t lower house prices good for people to buy houses?
7:58 a.m. Podesta says Daschle will and should survive. Americans should hope it isn’t true, Parisian republicans hope it is.
7:59 a.m. Question we are giving tax breaks to people who don’t pay taxes: Podesta: “They pay other taxes. The Earned Income Credit was a Reagan creation.” This is the new talking point apparently.
8:02 a.m. Is the president willing to change the bill to attract Republicans? He is willing to talk but won’t make changes in fundamentals of the bill.
8:07 a.m. Crammer: Anything you do on energy is a joke without a Gas tax, Mika agrees. The very suggestion gives me gas.
8:15 a.m. It hits me that this is likely one of the only challenging interviews that Podesta is going to see outside of Fox.
8:41 a.m. Erin Burnett is pointing out that Japan did this stuff and it didn’t work
8:56 a.m. Mika promises more on the bill on the radio, I’ll be listening.
….so busy that in Massachusetts they have extended the hours for telefile.
…to that paragon of the left George Soros. I want to quote something from Jay Nordlinger’s Davos Journal part 2:
Lunch is with George Soros. He speaks to a group of journalists in a Davos hotel. His subject is the financial crisis, and he is very good on it: sober and analytical. I must say, I like him better on economics and finance than I do on politics and foreign policy. Obviously, in this field—finance—he knows what he’s talking about. His authority is real.
He makes the observation that, last September, “the real economy fell off a cliff”—not just a paper economy (if I have interpreted him correctly). He also says that nationalization is “politically unacceptable at the moment”—words that strike me as ominous. (Soros sounds rueful.)
Something interesting, and entertaining, happens in the Q&A. A journo asks him, “Did you see this crisis coming, and have you profited from it?” Soros answers that he did not quite predict the crisis, but he came close to doing so—he predicted aspects of it. Certainly the “super-bubble,” as he termed it, had to burst. As to the second part of the journo’s question, Soros says, “I was able to protect my capital.”
I love that sentence: “I was able to protect my capital.” Wish all of us could say that!
Now it is the job of a capitalist to protest his capital and Soros shouldn’t be blamed for it, but shouldn’t it strike people on the left a bid odd that their patron took steps to protect himself while not alerting his friends on the left to help save their fortunes? Isn’t this what the left is all about? Note the outcry as the oil companies report record profits. No outcry from those guys about Soros protecting his capital.
Of course the fact that is capital is protected and others are not makes them more dependent on his funds and more receptive to his opinions. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
Oh BTW Nordlinger reports from Davos every year. Part 3 of his series is here.
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