Wednesday, March 30, 2011

This is just the beginning...grab your ass's

I await the democratic rebuttal. It will probably include some inane reference to George Bush...

After two years of Obama ... here's your change!

January 2009

TODAY

% chg

Source

Avg.. Retail price/gallon gas in U.S.

$1.83

$3.104

69.6%

1

Crude oil, European Brent (barrel)

$43..48

$99..02

127.7%

2

Crude oil, West TX Inter. (barrel)

$38..74

$91..38

135.9%

2

Gold: London (per troy oz.)

$853.25

$1,369.50

60.5%

2

Corn, No.2 yellow, Central IL

$3.56

$6.33

78.1%

2

Soybeans, No. 1 yellow, IL

$9.66

$13..75

42.3%

2

Sugar, cane, raw, world, lb. Fob

$13..37

$35..39

164.7%

2

Unemployment rate, non-farm, overall

7.6%

9.4%

23.7%

3

Unemployment rate, blacks

12.6%

15.8%

25.4%

3

Number of unemployed

11,616,000

14,485,000

24.7%

3

Number of fed. Employees, ex. Military (curr = 12/10 prelim)

2,779,000

2,840,000

2.2%

3

Real median household income (2008 v 2009)

$50,112

$49,777

-0.7%

4

Number of food stamp recipients (curr = 10/10)

31,983,716

43,200,878

35.1%

5

Number of unemployment benefit recipients (curr = 12/10)

7,526,598

9,193,838

22.2%

6

Number of long-term unemployed

2,600,000

6,400,000

146.2%

3

Poverty rate, individuals (2008 v 2009)

13.2%

14.3%

8.3%

4

People in poverty in U.S. (2008 v 2009)

39,800,000

43,600,000

9.5%

4

U.S.. Rank in Economic Freedom World Rankings

5

9

n/a

10

Present Situation Index (curr = 12/10)

29.9

23.5

-21.4%

11

Failed banks (curr = 2010 + 2011 to date)

140

164

17.1%

12

U.S.. Dollar versus Japanese yen exchange rate

89.76

82.03

-8.6%

2

U.S.. Money supply, M1, in billions (curr = 12/10 prelim)

1,575.1

1,865.7

18.4%

13

U.S.. Money supply, M2, in billions (curr = 12/10 prelim)

8,310.9

8,852.3

6.5%

13

National debt, in trillions

$10..627

$14..052

32.2%

14

Just take this last item: In the last two years we have accumulated national debt at a rate more than 27 times as fast as during the rest of our entire nation's history. Over 27 times as fast. Metaphorically speaking, if you are driving in the right lane doing 65 MPH and a car rockets past you in the left lane. 27 times faster, it would be doing 1755 MPH!

Sources:

(1) U.S. Energy Information Administration; (2) Wall Street Journal; (3) Bureau of Labor Statistics; (4) Census Bureau; (5) USDA; (6) U.S. Dept. Of Labor; (7) FHFA; (8) Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller; (9) RealtyTrac; (10) Heritage Foundation and WSJ; (11) The Conference Board; (12) FDIC; (13) Federal Reserve; (14) U.S. Treasury


We have not discussed this much

I guess we are never going to agree that the solution for an ever growing federal budget is not to just increase taxes to cover the expenses.  We are never going to agree that even the small spending cuts proposed by the Conservative Republicans are reasonable and therefore if the Liberal Democrats will not agree to even such small cuts, they will never agree to fundamental spending reform.  And therefore, they must believe, and we will never agree, that the solution to the never ending upward spending spiral we now find ourselves in is to unconditionally increase taxes to match that spending, without some control on spending (remembering the Majority Leaders fondness for Cowboy Poetry).  Sell your bonds boys, we are heading for trouble.

So the Liberal domestic agenda has been to ineffectively overspend us into mediocrity.  Now let's look at foreign policy.

Here we have an administration swerving all over the place, with reckless abandon and really no strategy.

But the one thing the Libs can count on is his purity.  He would never be subversive!  He knows America must mind its place and apologize for all its past wrongs...right?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel forces seeking to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, government officials told Reuters on Wednesday.

Some know facts that should concern all of us

545 vs. 300,000,000 People
-By Charlie Reese

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?

Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don't propose a federal budget. The President does.

You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.

You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.

You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.

You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one President, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a President to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The President can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? John Boehner. He is the leader of the majority party. He and fellow House members, not the President, can approve any budget they want. If the President vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.

If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red.

If the Army & Marines are in Iraq and Afghanistan it's because they want them in Iraq and Afghanistan ...

If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.

There are no insoluble government problems.

Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.

They, and they alone, have the power.

They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses.

Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees...

We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!


Monday, March 28, 2011

A Sporting Answer to Ignorance

I have long written that federal revenues need to return to the 20%+ level obtained during the Clinton administration – an era of surpluses. The Good Doc has favored Bushes tax cuts and policies, which brought tax revenues to post-war record lows and an era of massive deficits. He has asked where it is written that revenues should be any number in particular? He says we simply need to spend less than we take in.

My retort, of course, is that such spending cuts are untenable to the American people, who widely favor Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Those three programs – along with Defense and Interest comprise roughly 70% of federal spending and 100% of revenues. As a matter of fact, non-Defense discretionary spending is at the lowest level since the early 1960’s as a percentage of GDP. There is not public support for the kind of spending cuts that would come anywhere near to balancing the budget.

I will use basketball – the NBA – to make my point. Jimmy is very familiar with the subject and enjoys season tickets where you can nearly touch the court. Jim’s theoretical team is losing badly – scoring only 80 points per game while giving up 120. I keep saying that they need to improve on both sides of the ball. They need to score more and improve their defense. He stubbornly replies that they merely need to hold opposing teams to less than 80 PPG and they will win.

I say, “Gosh, Doc, if you look at the history of the sport – at least the last sixty years - you won’t find a winning team that only averages 80 PPG. If you want to win, you need to get your scoring over 100 and keep your opponents under 100.” He answers, “Where is it written that teams have to score over 80 to win? It’s all about defense. Our offensive play is just fine!”

And so it goes…

Another on of those "Inconvenient truths"

And Baxter, please no babble about state vs federal taxes.

Terry, although apparently you defer your "thinking" to Baxter, a scary thought is that, how about you "think" for yourself just a little.  Those corporations, who just do things to make a profit, think they might look for countries with lower tax rates to make their profits?


As Brad Williams walked the halls of the California state capitol in Sacramento on a recent afternoon, he spotted a small crowd of protesters battling state spending cuts. They wore shiny white buttons that said "We Love Jobs!" and argued that looming budget reductions will hurt the Golden State's working class.  Mr. Williams shook his head. "They're missing the real problem," he said.


The working class may be taking a beating from spending cuts used to close a cavernous deficit, Mr. Williams said, but the root of California's woes is its reliance on taxing the wealthy.
Nearly half of California's income taxes before the recession came from the top 1% of earners: households that took in more than $490,000 a year. High earners, it turns out, have especially volatile incomes—their earnings fell by more than twice as much as the rest of the population's during the recession. When they crashed, they took California's finances down with them.

Mr. Williams, a former economic forecaster for the state, spent more than a decade warning state leaders about California's over-dependence on the rich. "We created a revenue cliff," he said. "We built a large part of our government on the state's most unstable income group."


New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Illinois—states that are the most heavily reliant on the taxes of the wealthy—are now among those with the biggest budget holes. A large population of rich residents was a blessing during the boom, showering states with billions in tax revenue. But it became a curse as their incomes collapsed with financial markets.

Arriving at a time of greatly increased public spending, this reversal highlights the dependence of the states on the outsize incomes of the wealthy. The result for state finances and budgets has been extreme volatility.

In New York before the recession, the top 1% of earners, who made more than $580,000 a year, paid 41% of the state's income taxes in 2007, up from 25% in 1994, according to state tax data. The top 1% of taxpayers paid 40% or more of state income taxes in New Jersey and Connecticut. In Illinois, which has a flat income-tax rate of 5%, the top 15% paid more than half the state's income taxes.

This growing dependence on wealthy taxpayers is being driven by soaring salaries at the top of the income ladder and by the nation's progressive income taxes, which levy the highest rates on the highest taxable incomes. The top federal income-tax rate has fallen dramatically over the past century, from more than 90% during World War II to 35% today. But the top tax rate—which applies to joint filers reporting $379,000 in taxable income—is still twice as high as the rate for joint filers reporting income of $69,000 or less.

The future of federal income taxes on the wealthy remains in flux. The top tax rate is 35%, following the Congressional tax battle last year. But in 2013, the rate is scheduled to go back to 39.6% unless Congress takes further action.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

WAR WITHOUT END

THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT IS HAPPY WITH A VOLUNTEER ARMY, SINCE THAT KEEPS THE REST OF THE COUNTRY DISCONNECTED FROM THE WARS. THERE MIGHT HAVE BEEN A VAGUE REASON FOR BEGINNING THESE WARS BUT AT SOME TIME MORALITY NEEDS TO KICK IN. IF NOT MORALITY AT LEAST NOW THE RIGHT WING NUT JOBS ARE TALKING ABOUT COST, WHICH OF COURSE WAS LEFT UNSAID BEFORE WHEN KING GEORGE WAS PRESIDENT. EXACTLY WHAT DID A MONTH OF "SCHOCK AND AWE" OVER BAGHDAD COST? THE LEFT'S SILENCE IS COWARDLY AND THE RIGHT'S INTELLECTUALLY DISHONEST. WE ARE PLAYING THE PUNCH DRUNK SAILOR IN A BAR BEING LAUGHED AT BY THE CROWD, I AM AFRAID.

Friday, March 25, 2011

Well GE no taxes? What do you Know??

About a year ago I wrote on the blog that corporations in this country don't pay 28% taxes because they have floors of accounts finding ways to avoid them by loop holes.
I forgot which lunkhead attacked me with that is not true terry, do you just make this stuff up? I am an accountent and I KNOW.
Well now the truth! Ge has 975 employees in their Tax department. What are they doing making sure they pay their fair share? Oh oh No.
They paid ZERO taxes on 14.2 Billion. I guess I am not such an idiot afterall. What say you?
Let me repeat they paid ZERO. What a system. While the now unemployed drywaller, pays his taxes every year, and the Big Boys keep on taking and crying for more tax breaks. SHUT-UP

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Change with courage

PENNY (a state employee), "I would like to know why you want to take at least 13% out of state employees' pay for health care. Between what my husband and I make, you're talking about $600 a month out of our money which is gonna cut into our food and our other bills. How do you expect us to live, governor?"


CHRISTIE: How I expect you to live, Penny, is you're gonna have to pick a different health plan that's not nearly as rich as the one you're getting now. That's how.

PENNY: Either that or you're force us to not have any health care.

CHRISTIE: No, I'm not gonna force you to not have any health care. I don't think that means forcing you to go without health care. But what it means is we can no longer afford to pay 90 plus percent of the cost of your health care. Public workers are getting their health insurance paid for out of your property taxes, and state workers are getting their health insurance paid for out of your income taxes. If I'm $67 billion in debt and you don't want me to take any more money out of your paycheck, how am I supposed to pay for it? Am I supposed to just raise taxes? Because if I raise taxes you're gonna pay more taxes, and if your property taxes go up, you're going to pay more taxes. I mean the money's gotta come from somewhere. We can't print it.

Penny, the top 1% of taxpayers in this state pay 41% of the total income tax. So to say that the rich don't pay is just not true. How much do you want them to pay? There comes a point where you cannot have everything that you want. And as much as I would like to be able to say to you, "You know what, Penny, you're right, I don't want you to have to pay another nickel for your health insurance," I can't pay for it, and we already have the highest taxes in America. I gotta tell you the truth, your neighbor who works in the private sector pays a heck of a lot more for his or her health insurance than you do. And on the top of it they're paying the taxes to pay for your health insurance. And so I've got a problem to fix here. We're broke and I gotta fix this problem.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Really, this messed up.

Now remember you Liberal pinheads, you hated old Bushie because he did everything wrong.  Just DID NOT consider the consequences, didn't get other nations involved, WAS A COWBOY!

Lots of criticism for President resolve, was stubborn and not smart enough.  Mr. Baxter frequently...bitched about N. Korea, how President resolve did not have the "right" plan and now we were all messed up.

OK, but President Bracket, he led, for once, but without thinking and proclaimed that "Gadafy must go", or something like that, (now before you go into hyper denial mode, he said that last week, said that we needed regime change), but because he spoke before he thought (and spoke with Hilary), he did not realize that the "community" of nations would not back regime change, they just wanted to prevent an atrocity. 

OK, so it is a good thing to prevent an atrocity, in Libya (but apparently not in Iraq), but...now we are nation building and taking military action and....we need to talk about this...so let's talk and get authorization, so we go to...THE UN!  See we always said you Libs wanted to turn our government over to the Trilateral commission!  Just joking, but actually not because an underpinning of this is that the left wants a weakened America (heck even Time says we are in decline).

Shouldn't President Bracket have thought through the "Gadafy must go" BEFORE he said it and locked himself into a corner and shouldn't President Golf have at least asked the Congress for authority while he asked the UN?

What a dip.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Adult? Ghost?

Obama advisers are spinning their excuses for the president's absence (he needs to stay above the fray, he believes in international agreement). Conservatives, for their part, are beginning to argue the "incompetence" line. A combination of all is probably at work, along with an even greater impulse: political safety. Mr. Obama got a taste of falling approval ratings last year. The White House has worked hard to get those numbers back up and wants to keep them there until Mr. Obama has a GOP opponent and can go into campaign mode—where he's at his best.



And so as Moammar Gadhafi has visited a bloodbath on opposition forces, the White House has for weeks spun its wheels at the United Nations, waiting for someone else to go first. The White House has argued intervention might provoke an Arab backlash against the U.S., and it could be it actually believes such crazy talk. Yet it seems equally concerned that any U.S.-led military action in Libya—no matter how minor—will invite comparisons to the dreaded Bush warmongers and prove unpopular. And as Congress lurches from one budget crisis to the next, President Obama leaves negotiations to Vice President Joe Biden. It has been clear for weeks the only way this gets settled is for Mr. Obama and House Speaker John Boehner to find a fiscal 2011 spending-cut number that gets bipartisan support. But Mr. Obama worries that number will be too much for the left, and not enough for the right, and that means . . . controversy.

Today he instead leaves for a five-day Latin American tour. On that trip he will not be visiting Colombia or Panama, whose trade deals he's squelched since he took office. Trade deals, after all, don't always sit well with the public (and rarely with unions).


It took until yesterday for Mr. Obama to address Japan's nuclear problem, and only then to clarify that Americans should and should not be worried about radiation, while also knowing that U.S. power plants are and aren't safe. The president had been touting a new love for nuclear energy (to coax Republicans into a "clean-energy" deal), but the White House is now worried Japan is the hydrogen version of the BP oil spill, and thinking the safest short-term policy is incoherence.   Entitlement reform? Are you people nuts? Who ever won an election on entitlement reform?

The White House's greater interest right now seems to be throwing little bones to its left. A quip here about the Wisconsin labor dispute, a gun-control op-ed there. A promise to quit defending the Defense Against Marriage Act. Yet even these are tiny bones, designed not to hugely upset the broader public.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Are You Smarter Than a Fox News Viewer?

American voters were quizzed on their knowledge of issues and facts raised in the 2010 midterm elections, in a survey by World Public Opinion, a project managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland.

Respondents were also asked where they get their news from: Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, newspapers, network TV news, public broadcasting.

The survey found that "substantial levels of misinformation were present in the daily consumers of all news sources." But Fox News viewers were significantly more likely to be misinformed than those who get their news from other sources. And, greater exposure to Fox News increased the degree to which viewers were misinformed.

This is not simply a matter of partisan bias. People who vote Democratic and watched Fox News were also more likely to be misinformed than those who did not watch it – though by a lesser margin than those who vote Republican. Those who got their news from NPR, CNN, or MSNBC were better informed on most – but not all – of the issues in the survey.

We've presented the 11 questions just as the survey asked them. How well informed are you?

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/1221/Are-you-smarter-than-a-Fox-News-viewer-How-about-a-CNN-viewer-Take-our-quiz-to-find-out/Are-you-smarter-than-a-Fox-News-viewer-How-about-a-CNN-viewer-Take-our-quiz-to-find-out
The nation was left reeling yesterday by the revelation that the presidential election of 2008 was a hoax. The shocking announcement came when White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters that Barack Obama has been working in secret with conservative provocateur James O'Keefe since 2007.   The long-running hoax is the most elaborate yet in a series of recent sting operations by primarily right-of-center gadflies that have embarrassed organizations including ACORN, Planned Parenthood and National Public Radio.

Those stunts, as well as the prank call to Republican Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin that was captured on tape last month, proved to be sources of personal or institutional embarrassment. Historians warned yesterday that the latest caper may inspire a sense of national shame.
Origins of a hoax

Carney said the scam entailed pulling together demographic, social, cultural and policy characteristics to create the most exaggerated Democratic candidate possible without stepping over the line into caricature.

"By combining empty, touchy-feely slogans like 'hope' and 'change' with far-left-wing policy planks and presenting them in the person of a racial minority from a major Midwest city with an Ivy League background, we thought we might be able to make a good showing in Iowa and New Hampshire, maybe even capture the Democratic nomination," Carney told reporters. "But the entire country? No. We never, ever for even a second imagined the American people would elect someone who had served only half a term in the U.S. Senate to be the leader of the entire free world."


Obama won the presidency with 52.9 percent of the popular vote, defeating Republican nominee John McCain, who received 45.7 percent.   "All you guys in the press were so giddy about it," Carney continued, "we couldn't really just announce that the whole thing was a big fat joke, you know? I mean, how would that look?"


Contacted by phone, O'Keefe said he, too, was surprised the hoax had lasted as long as it did.

"I thought people would catch on in the early days, like with the clinging-to-guns stuff," said O'Keefe, referring to an incident at a San Francisco fundraiser in which candidate Obama said small-town Americans "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them."

O'Keefe said he also expected the ruse would be unmasked when Obama said that "under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket," and again when Obama claimed, "I've now been in 57 (U.S.) states," with "one left to go."

"We modeled the 57-states gaffe on Dan Quayle's 'potatoe' mistake," said O'Keefe, referring to a 1992 incident at a Trenton, N.J., elementary school in which then-Vice President Dan Quayle added an "e" to "potato." "We figured Obama would become a national laughingstock like Quayle, (but we) underestimated the tendency of the press and the public to forgive mistakes by people they like."

Worldwide deceit

Victims of the fabrication stretch around the globe. "President" Obama has held numerous meetings with foreign heads of state, among them Chinese President Hu Jintao, leaders of NATO and the G8, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee also was taken in, awarding Obama the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2009 — only months after he had taken office and just weeks before he announced an escalation of the war in Afghanistan.

Reaction from abroad yesterday was swift.

"I'm not surprised," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel.   "Well, that explains everything, doesn't it?" said British Prime Minister David Cameron. "I mean, really now."

A prank gone too far

As the 2008 campaign wore on, O'Keefe said, insiders grew worried Obama might actually win. They began dropping hints that the candidate was just a parody. They had him complain about the price of arugula to Iowa farmers. When that didn't work, Obama went bowling, scored a 37, and then joked that the almost impossibly poor performance "was like the Special Olympics or something."   "A few right-wing bloggers made a big deal out of it," O'Keefe said. "Nobody else seemed to notice."

The hint-dropping campaign intensified after Obama took office. Justin Whittemore, a former White House staffer who was part of the elaborate plot, said advisers began copying policy positions straight from The New York Times and the liberal Center for American Progress in an increasingly transparent attempt to provoke suspicion.

"We've tried everything," O'Keefe said. "Nationalizing health care, the stimulus, a $4 trillion budget, insane levels of debt, even high-speed rail. No matter how ridiculous a proposal we come up with, people take it seriously."

Asked why he is pulling the plug now, O'Keefe replied that the good of the country was at stake. "Things have gotten way out of hand," he said. "People are talking about a second term now. It's just gone way too far — even for me."

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Obama is a Lightweight When it comes to Leader of the Free World

President Obama’s Trivial Pursuits

by KEITH KOFFLER on MARCH 15, 2011, 12:10 PM

The Middle East is afire with rebellion, Japan is imploding from an earthquake, and the battle of the budget is on in the United States, but none of this seems to be deterring President Obama from a heavy schedule of childish distractions.

The newly installed tandem of White House Chief of Staff William Daley and Senior Adviser David Plouffe were supposed to impart a new sense of discipline and purpose to the White House. Instead, they are permitting him to showcase himself as a poorly focused leader who has his priorities backward.

This morning, as Japan’s nuclear crisis enters a potentially catastrophic phase, we are told that Obama is videotaping his NCAA tournament picks and that we’ll be able to tune into ESPN Wednesday to find out who he likes.

Saturday, he made his 61st outing to the golf course as president, and got back to the White House with just enough time for a quick shower before heading out to party with Washington’s elite journalists at the annual Gridiron Dinner.

With various urgencies swirling about him, Saturday’s weekly videotaped presidential address focusing on “Women’s History Month” seemed bizarrely out of touch.

Obama Friday took time out to honor the 2009-10 Stanley Cup Champion Chicago Blackhawks. Thursday was a White House conference on bullying – not a bad idea perhaps, but not quite Leader of the Free World stuff either.

Obama appeared a little sleepy as he weighed in against the bullies, perhaps because he’d spent the night before partying with lawmakers as they took in a Chicago Bulls vs. Charlotte Bobcats game.

Meanwhile, the president has been studying for weeks whether to establish a No Fly Zone over Libya, delaying action while the point becomes increasingly moot as Qaddafi begins to defeat and slaughter his opponents. And lawmakers from both Parties are wondering why he seems to be AWOL in the deficit reduction debate.

The Libya indecision follows an inconsistent response to the protests that ousted former Egyptian President Mubarak and seemed to catch the White House off guard. The perfunctory response from the White House Monday to Saudi Arabia’s dispatch of troops to Bahrain suggested the administration wasn’t prepared for that one either.

But the fun stuff won’t end anytime soon. On Thursday, the Taoiseach of Ireland will be in town to help the president celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. And then Friday it’s off to Brazil for the start of a three-country Latin American tour.

Oddly, he’ll be missing Carnival, which went down last week.