The budget deficit was predicted (by the administration) to be $1.752 trillion for the current fiscal year. How much money is that? It's $1,752,000,000,000. That's too large a number to really understand. If you took $1 bills and laid them end to end around the earth, you would wrap around the earth 6,477,130,690 times! That's about 6.5 billion times. That's still too large a number to really understand. Using the same end-to-end laying of $1 bills, you could travel to the sun and back 865,700.554 times! What that means is that using $1 bills, we could travel 1,731,401.11 AU (astronomical units). That's 27.38 light years! These are astronomical amounts.

Of course, my use of the length of the U.S. $1 bill was arbitrary, I could have made any number of other comparisons but the point remains the same; that is a lot of money. And that's just the projected 1 year budget deficit! Of course, that deficit includes additional bailout money Congress might not approve but even so, we'll have at least a $1.5 trillion budget deficit with another large one next year (and so on for the forseeable future). I'm not even going to broach the subject of the actual national debt.

I appreciate that Pres. Obama and Congress are trying to address the weak economy and the budget shortfalls but right now Pres. Obama seems too much like Pres. Lyndon Johnson trying to escalate the Vietnam War while pushing for his Great Society; it was more than he could handle so he wasn't particularly successful at either. I'm not saying all of the Great Society programs were bad - many were good - but he was not able to focus on both social and military programs at the same time. He should have done one or the other, not both. Pres. Obama, like LBJ, is trying to do everything. I think he's more capable than LBJ was but Pres. Obama is not only trying to "fix" the economy, he is trying to create his own Great Society while fighting the War on Terrorism (including two ongoing campaigns - Iraq and Afghanistan). I recognize that Pres. Obama was thrown some flaming torches and asked to juggle them but instead of letting some fall and go out, he decided to keep juggling them all while asking for more.

I applaude that Pres. Obama did not implement his original plan to start taking troops out of Iraq immediately, at least he listened to his military leaders and implemented what is essentially Pres. Bush's withdrawal plan (although Pres. Bush did not like that word). I think some bailouts were probably necessary, although they should have been much smaller than were approved, but much of Pres. Obama's "stimulus" or other budgetary monies are going towards social programs at a time when we cannot afford them. Increaing Pell Grants is a nice idea (I know many other conservatives disagree) and as a researcher, I always appreciate having more money available for reserach grants, but this money is borrowed money. It's not real; we are borrowing against the future for things we cannot afford now. Fix the budget first, then try to work on social programs. We need to cut spending, not increase it.

Related posts:

1. Obama’s Budget “Cuts”
2. A Plea for a Return of Fiscal Responsibility
3. Obama’s Health Agenda – What’s the Hurry?

Whenever I feel like punishing myself I read comments on CNN.com political stories. They are seriously that bad. I don't mind intelligent commentary from liberals or conservatives or whomever but there are so few logical, balanced, and intelligent comments that it is painful for me to read, which is why I rarely do. On this particular story, not more than 10% of the comments are from conservative posters. That is the norm for CNN.com stories. Why are only about 10% of comments from conservatives?

I posted a comment a number of hours ago, well before some of the most recent comments. Is my comment on the site? Nope. Hmm, maybe I didn't submit it correctly. Maybe my 15 year experience with the world wide web does not give me enough skills to successfully interact with websites and successfully submit my comments. That's probably why my comment went missing.

Or, maybe my comment was too inflammatory. I guess when I set up a straw man and ad hominem attack like the following it is to be expected that my comment would not be posted: "Isn't it funny that so many liberals comment so frequently on CNN.com stories. Maybe it's because they are all living off welfare and aren't doing anything more useful than comment on online news stories while conservatives are out working or at church (since it is Sunday) or otherwise being productive." Okay, I really did not post that. I didn't even think of it until just now as I was trying to come up with some completely off-the-wall, ridiculous, and stupid comment for my somewhat sarcastic post.

So what terrible comment did I really post? I replied to the many people who said things like, "This just goes to show that this Dying Old Party has not got a clue" or " It was because of the Bush Economics [sic] that the economy fell apart". Mainly I replied to the people who posted scathing, hateful comments that insulted Mitt Romney (and Republicans in general) as well as who said that he was just trying to deny any Republican responsibility (e.g., "The arrogance of this party [Republicans] is revolting. Still not willing to own up to any thing, truly pathetic [sic]").

This is roughly what I said (I'm expanding on my comment here on my blog). Romney was not denying Republican responsibility. He said, "Republicans and Democrats have been playing this game, passing the hot the [sic] potato, spending money like there was no tomorrow." All he did was include Democrats in his criticism yet so many people think he's trying to push the blame onto anybody but Republicans or Pres. Bush ("speaking" of Pres. Bush, here's a wonderful, hateful ad hominem comment on the story: "The Republicans still don't get it…They picked a drunk sot, hooker chasing, coke sniffing, moron, loud mouth, scum bag, out of Texas in 2000..."; I guess it could have been worse!).

Romney was simply criticizing the constant fiscal irresponsibility of Washington. Democrats are to blame as well as Republicans. Democrats have had control of Congress since 2006. Congress have the authority to actually pass budgets; they have to work with the executive branch but Congress "pays the bills" (technically, we pay the bills, or actually the Chinese and the rest of the world who loan us the money, but that's beside the point).

Further, the causes of the economic crisis started in the 1990s (actually, they started a long time ago when we as a people started individually being more fiscally irresponsible, which I believe started en masse some time after WWII). Some people decry the Republicans for not providing enough oversight of Wall Street (hindsight is 20/20, isn't it? Not that more regulations are the best idea.) while forgetting that many Republicans (including Pres. Bush) pushed for oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2004 and Democrats refused to vote for that oversight (to be fair - so did some Republicans). Further, in general, Democrats weren't exactly clamoring for any sort of financial markets oversight. In fact, it was mainly Democrats (including Clinton) in the 90s who pushed (successfully) to force lenders to carry more risky debt by offering mortgages to historically unqualified borrowers (again, Republicans are partially to blame for this too). If you want a cause of the financial crisis, that's certainly a big part of it.

Romney did criticize Republicans but he also criticized Democrats. He criticized all wasteful spending, regardless of who authorized it. Pres. Bush was a big spender (actually, Congress was the big spender, Pres. Bush just asked them to spend a lot of money; however, Pres. Bush's spending is "small potatoes" to Pres. Obama's spending). Unlike what many people believe, Pres. Obama is not spending money (again, it's really Congress spending the money) to clean up Pres. Bush's mess - that's a naive and ludicrous argument; it's like saying Pres. Bush physically caused Hurricane Katrina (there are people who believe that!) and Pres. Obama has to clean up New Orleans because of Pres. Bush's hurricane. Republicans in general did not even cause the financial crisis. We (citizens of the United States) all did - all of us who were irresponsible with our money, from the top down and the bottom up! We speculated on speculations of real estate or oil or whatever else we could. We let the government's size grow out of control and few even tried to stop it; certainly most Democrats didn't.

That's basically what I posted (it was much briefer on CNN.com). Yet, my comment did not make it through moderation; however, hateful anti-Mormon comments (e.g., "Romney still does not get it! No one will vote for him a cult member aka MORMON." [note: that is a direct quote]) and otherwise inane or bigoted comments did. Like I said, I only read CNN.com political comments when I want to punish myself.

Related posts:

1. House Republicans roll out alternative budget – CNN.com
2. Basking in Obama’s Reflected Glory
3. National Committees, Money, and Socioeconomic Status

McCain
If they vote for McCain they will be voting for the candidate which polls show has the best chance of beating Hillary or Obama in November. Voting for McCain will also add momentum to his nomination which is at the verge of critical mass already. Both these options should deter Democrats from voting for McCain assuming they want the Democrats to have the best chance of winning in November and they want to prevent the GOP from identifying their candidate quickly. Nonetheless, McCain is leading the GOP for support from Independent and Democrats in opinion polls. Perhaps many Democrats in Michigan are trying to setup a win-win situation for November: If their candidate loses, at least McCain is more liberal (i.e., moderate) than most of the GOP candidates and will be more palatable as president for them.

Romney
If they vote for Romney they will vote for the main candidate that has one of the least chance of beating Hillary and Obama in November according to current opinion polls. Voting for Romney will also create a three man race which will draw-out the GOP contest, increase tension within GOP party lines and decrease the odds of a strong unified GOP to contest with in November. A few Democrat strategists have advocated this tactic; I would expect at least some Democrats to make this move and vote Romney.

Huckabee
The only reason that a Democrat in Michigan would vote for Huckabee is because Huckabee, like Democrats, is a populist and perhaps they think Huckabee would be a palatable consolation prize if their Democratic candidate loses in November. I find this unlikely as most realize that a populist GOP president is much less likely to have the ability (due to GOP opposition and greater difficulty working across the isles) to fulfill his populist promises as a Democratic president who has most populists on his/her side of the isle.

Thompson/Giuliani/Paul/Hunter
Will these guys ever quit? The writing is on the wall, but I guess they need to spend the money they raised. Regardless, there is no reason for Democrats to vote for them in Michigan there aren’t enough Democrats that will vote in the GOP race to raise them from single digits to compete with the front-runners.

Romney has never had a better chance to win a big contest. Michigan is his birth state, he leads McCain 2-1 among GOP voters there and the questionable politics of the Democrats should be on his side.

Related posts:

1. Media Manipulations
2. Huckabee’s One Hit Wonder
3. Romney: Michigan Primary Winner