Today I was accused of wanting to suppress the vote

Here in Texas early voting for the primary election runoffs is going on, and I voted today.  There was exactly one race on my ballot, for Supreme Court Place 3.  (I won't say who I voted for, but I voted against the candidate endorsed by Alberto Gonzales.)  When I asked for a Republican ballot, the sweet little old poll worker asked me if I had a baseball bat in my car.  I asked, "No, why?"  She answered, "To beat voters with."  Now she was joking, but the joke clearly represented some long-held bias.  Forget the fact that her side has been much worse with voter intimidation recently, and that the Democratic Machine in Jefferson County doesn't exactly have a spectacular record on voting integrity.  The truth is that this is why Conservatives have to have the utmost integrity.  When Liberals cheat, their voters rationalize it as what's necessary to "do the people's work".  When Conservatives cheat, it's part of a sinister plot.  We have to be honest, we have to be fair, and we have to be civil, as Senator Tom Coburn has urged for.

Predicting a $2,000,000,000,000 Budget - Update

On January 7, I made what I thought then was a bold prediction, that the budget deficit for Fiscal Year 2009 would be $2 Trillion. Today, the CBO projects a $1.9 Trillion budget deficit for Fiscal Year 2009. Odds are that many more stimulus packages are on the way. I'd like to revise my prediction up to an immoral $2.5 Trillion. The words of Senator Tom Coburn are worth repeating: “The greatest moral issue of our time isn’t abortion, it’s robbing our next generation of opportunity. You’re going to save a child from being aborted so they can be born into a debtor’s prison?” However, my response to the Good Doctor is that at the rate we are going, we may not be able to afford to finance debtor's prisons. Federal bankruptcy is looking more and more likely every day.

The Most Egregious Act of Generational Theft in History

Question: What's the difference between a Donkey and a RINO?

Answer: About $100,000,000,000 of future taxpayers' money. That's the amount of money that Democrats cut out of the $800+ Billion pork/welfare/state bailout/Medicaid/public art/maybe a little bit of infrastructure bill to get Arlen Specter, Susan Collins, and Olympia Snowe to jump in with both feet. The bill that Congresscritters are calling a stimulus bill, despite the fact that Congressional Budget Office calls it harmful to the economy over the long term. (I figure that John McCain was holding out for another $15).

You've seen them in action. 61% of the Senate, and 56% of the House will shackle an enormous national mortgage to the the feet of their children to grow their own power. It is taxation without representation.



(Thread title borrowed from Tom Coburn's excellent op-ed on the same topic.)

Predicting a $2,000,000,000,000 Deficit

You heard it here first: the United States Government's Federal Deficit for fiscal year 2009 (ending 9/30) will be much closer to $2 Trillion than $1 Trillion. As bad as Bush's budgets were, Obama's first year will be worse than any three of Bush's. He has already warned us of a greater than 1 trillion dollar deficit, which will Tom Coburn predicts will be $1.6 Trillion. Add to that $290 Billion for the first 9 months of Obama's stimulus bill, $100 Billion or so for Iraq and Afghanistan, and a conservative $100 Billion to bail out various industries that will come to Washington with their hands out (I expect GM and Chrysler to be back, builders, and God knows who else). That brings my estimate to a staggering $2.1 Trillion dollars. As Senator Coburn has said, “The greatest moral issue of our time isn’t abortion, it’s robbing our next generation of opportunity. You’re going to save a child from being aborted so they can be born into a debtor’s prison?” As I wrote Monday, the "Keynesian multiplier" is now 0.2. We are saddling our children with $2 Trillion more debt to grow (or more likely, slow the collapse of) the economy by $0.4 Trillion. That is immoral.

Two related side notes:
CNN will air I.O.U.S.A. this weekend. This is the most important documentary in years, and it's well done.

Proving that he is truly insane, Harry Reid is repeating his try to pass a Coburn Omnibus bill. Senator Coburn has a really simple litmus test for bills that he'll obstruct. If a bill spends money on a duplicated program, he will hold obstruct it by any means necessary. Reid is trying to combine a bunch of bills that have been held up by Dr. Coburn to pass. Call your Senators and ask them to stand with the honorable Dr. No and against Dirty Harry.