In fact, it ranks 18th on a list of issues that the Pew Research Center asked about. Say, that’s just a little above global warming, which was in last place. Seems lots of folks are concerned about the economy and our ever-burgeoning deficit (Not Obama, though, his work is “just about done“). Funny how much press the sycophant media is giving the gun issue, while the economy is “poised for growth,” according to Obama.

When Barack Obama took office four years ago, reducing the budget deficit was a middle-tier item on the public’s agenda. Only about half of Americans (53%) viewed it as a top policy priority in January 2009, placing it ninth on a list of 20 policy goals.

But as Obama begins his second term, only the economy and jobs are viewed as more important priorities for the coming year. Currently, 72% say that reducing the budget deficit should be a top priority, up 19 points from four years ago. (Click here for a graphic of the public’s 2013 priorities).

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Jan. 9-13, 2013 among 1,502 adults, finds that Americans continue to view other domestic initiatives as important priorities as well, despite their focus on the deficit. Growing numbers give high priority to dealing with education, the problems of the poor, crime and the environment.

Fully 70% say that improving the educational system should be a top priority, up from 61% in January 2009. And 57% rate dealing with the problems of the poor and needy as a top priority; four years ago, 50% viewed this as a top priority.

via Deficit Reduction Rises on Public’s Agenda for Obama’s Second Term | Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

Really? Obama Will Say in SOTU that Job of Debt Reduction “Nearly Done”

February 11, 2013

Economics & Politics

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English: This is just like File:US Federal Out...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This would be laughable if it weren’t so sad. I would think, just maybe, that our $16.5 TRILLION debt would keep a rational man from making a statement like that, but then there isn’t much rational about Wile E. Obama and the ACME Economic Destruction Co.’s economic agenda. Bring on the job-crushing environmental mandates! Increase those corporate taxes! Hire more IRS agents to make sure Obamacare penalties get collected! We’re “Poised for Growth!”

One thing you won’t hear when President Obama delivers his State of the Union address Tuesday: An ambitious new plan to rein in the debt.

In recent days, the White House has pressed the message that, if policymakers can agree on a strategy for replacing across-the-board spending cuts set to hit next month, the president will pretty much have achieved his debt-reduction goals.

“Over the last few years, Democrats and Republicans have come together and cut our deficit [over the next decade] by more than $2.5 trillion through a balanced mix of spending cuts and higher tax rates for the wealthiest Americans. That’s more than halfway towards the $4 trillion in deficit reduction that economists and elected officials from both parties say we need to stabilize our debt,” Obama said during his weekend radio address.

By the administration’s math, Washington needs to enact only another $1.5 trillion in 10-year savings to hit the $4 trillion target, White House economic adviser Jason Furman told reporters last week. At $1.2 trillion, the automatic cuts, known as the sequester, quite nearly fit the bill.

The problem with this scenario? It would indeed stabilize the national debt, compared with the broader economy, for the next 10 years. But the debt would fluctuate between 73 percent and 77 percent of gross domestic product, according to new projections by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office — the highest level in U.S. history except for the period after World War II.

It’s also much higher than the 62 percent target policymakers were aiming for just 3 years ago when Obama appointed the Bowles-Simpson debt-reduction commission. And because policymakers have avoided reforms to the big health and retirement programs, the debt would start rising again after 2023, as the baby boom generation retires.

“While the deficit reduction enacted to date represents notable progress, our debt problems remain far from solved,” analysts for the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget wrote last month. “By our estimates, lawmakers have achieved only slightly more than half of the minimum necessary deficit reduction to achieve sustainability over the next decade (and less than 40 percent of the savings in the Simpson-Bowles plan), only one third of the deficit reduction needed through 2040, and only one sixth of the deficit reduction needed through 2080.”

Despite the enacted savings, “debt remains on an upward path — on course to exceed 100 percent in the early 2030s, 200 percent in the 2050s, and 300 percent in the 2070s,” the report says. “These levels are clearly unsustainable.”

via Obama: Job of debt reduction nearly done – The Washington Post.

Joerg Sprave’s Totally Awesome “Full Auto” Slingshot Minigun

February 11, 2013

Me gusta, Stuff I Like

This thing shoots crossbow bolts -in pretty tight groups- with the help of a battery-powered drill. Or, as he says: a “weaponized Black & Decker.”

Households On Foodstamps Rise To New Record

February 11, 2013

Economics & Politics

This is a dismal report, and it’s not going to be getting better any time soon, so long as Wile E. Obama and the ACME Economic Destruction Co. are busy raising taxes and implementing new business-crushing regulations.

While hardly presented by the mainstream media with the same panache dedicated to the monthly ARIMA-X-12 seasonally-adjusted, climate-affected, goal-seek devised non-farm payroll data, the three month delayed Foodstamp number is according to many a far greater attestation to the “effectiveness” of the Obama administration to turn the economy around. And far greater it is: since his inauguration, the US has generated just 841,000 jobs through November 2012, a number is more than dwarfed by the 17.3 million new foodstamps and disability recipients added to the rolls in the past 4 years.

And since the start of the depression in December 2007, America has seen those on foodstamps and disability increase by 21.8 million, while losing 3.6 million jobs. End result: total number of foodstamp recipients as of November: 47.7 million, an increase of 141,000 from the prior month, and reversing the brief downturn in October, while total US households on foodstamps just hit an all time record of 23,017,768, an increase of 73,952 from the prior month. The cost to the government to keep these 23 million households content and not rising up? $281.21 per month per household.

Go there and see the depressing charts: Households On Foodstamps Rise To New Record | Zero Hedge.

Pad Thai: The Noodle Most Thai, and Least

February 11, 2013

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Here’s an interesting article about a Thai dish that didn’t exist before the 1940’s, but is known the world over today, and one I like a lot. Pitchaya Subandthad explores the dish co-opted from Chinese, Vietnamese, and Malaysian cooking. There’s also a recipe, if you care to make your own.

Pad Thai is the most misunderstood noodle. Its best incarnations are difficult to find outside of Thailand, even as the basic ingredients are now readily available abroad. I think back to the Pad Thais of my childhood, freshly made at a Bangkok street stall and packaged to go in banana leaves and a newspaper outer layer. A good Pad Thai slowly reveals itself: sweetness with bursts of salty and tart, depending on what is being bitten—preserved radishes, dried prawns, and bits of peanut or omelet. Here in the U.S., Pad Thai usually arrives a pile of noodles plated in a puddle of oil. Many taste as sweet as a lollipop and come stained red by ketchup.

Yet it’s not entirely fair to complain about the authenticity of Pad Thai. It’s the noodle that’s the most Thai, and at the same time, the least. Before the 1940s, Pad Thai didn’t exist as a common dish. Its birth and popularity came out of the nationalist campaign of Field Marshal Plaek Pibulsongkram, one of the revolutionary figures who in 1932 pushed Thailand out of an absolute monarchy and into a Game of Thrones-style democracy, where coups and counter-coups have become the norm.

In between surviving multiple point-blank-range assassination attempts and a failed kidnapping in which he emerged alive from the burning wreckage of a battleship his own air force had just bombed, Pibulsongkram decided that Thailand needed noodles that would advance the country’s industry and economy. After all, he had already changed the name of country from Siam to Thailand as part of a series of mandates meant to shroud its people under a modernized Thai identity. Forks and spoons would be used instead of hands. More European-style clothing must be worn. Thai products should be preferred above all others. Pibulsongkram wanted to create a new Thai diet while making more rice products available for export. According to his son’s suppositions in the 2009 Gastronomica article “Finding Pad Thai,” the codified modern variant of Pad Thai may have originated in Pibulsongkram’s household, perhaps the devising of the family’s cook. Its recipe was disseminated throughout the country, and push carts were sent into the streets to make this newfangled on-the-go meal available to the masses. To eat Pad Thai would be a patriotic act. Thus was born the Volksnoodle for an emerging Thai nation-state.

Read the whole thing: Pad Thai – The Morning News.