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Good post from Roy Filly collecting the facts about our out-of-control federal spending problem.   "What stunned House Speaker John Boehner more than anything else during his prolonged closed-door budget negotiations with Barack Obama was this revelation: "At one point several weeks ago," Mr. Boehner says, "the president said to me, 'We don't have a spending problem.' " [...] The president's insistence that Washington doesn't have a spending problem, Mr. Boehner says, is predicated on the belief that massive federal deficits stem from what Mr. Obama called "a health-care problem." Mr. Boehner says that after he recovered from his astonishment-"They blame all of the fiscal woes on our health-care system"-he replied: "Clearly we have a health-care problem, which is about to get worse with ObamaCare. But, Mr. President, we have a very serious spending problem." He repeated this message so often, he says, that toward the end of the negotiations, the president became irritated and said: "I'm getting tired of hearing you say that." We had a spirited argument a few posts ago about who was at fault for our annual trillion dollar deficits. I stopped arguing because it became clear to me, at least, that it doesn't matter who is at fault. We are spending much more over the past 10 years (and my chart only goes to 2010). As of December, our federal government borrowed 46 cents of every dollar it has spent so far in fiscal 2013. Blame whomever you like. No nation can survive with a fiscal plan that calls for such massive spending. Blame Bush, if that makes you feel better, but our Chief Executive Officer is Barack Hussein Obama and it is his job to solve the problem, not kick the can down the road. We are out of road. When our CEO states that "we don't have a spending problem" as I look at the chart above it does not inspire confidence."

Blackmail! excerpt: "Ten days ago, I publicly stated my belief that the NSA had used its spy apparatus to gather dirt on Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, then used that leverage to force him to change his vote on Obamacare. See the original article here. Five days later, I also predicted the NSA was using its spy powers to surveil members of Congress and the U.S. Senate. In an article published on June 16, 2013, I wrote, "There could already be countless cases of the NSA using its god-like powers to blackmail people in key positions in the U.S. Senate (which is full of pedophiles and perverts), the House of Representatives, the State Department or even the US Supreme Court. There are virtually no limits to the abuses of this power." Suddenly, new revelations prove this to be true. Russ Tice, a Bush-era NSA analyst-turned-whistleblower has sounded the alarm on the true depth of the NSA's surveillance abuses. In an interview on the Boiling Frogs Podcast, Tice stated: They went after -- and I know this because I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things -- they went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and some of the -- and judicial... They went after lawyers and law firms. All kinds of -- heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges. They went after State Department officials. They went after people in the executive service that were part of the White House -- their own people.

Paul Craig Roberts hit the nail on the head once again, this time on the nation's health care system. 

The S-300 is not state of the art, like Russia's S-500, but it's still a formidable deterrent to attack by air, particularly by the nation most likely to do so, Israel. The U.S. might conceivably do a saturation missile strike that could overcome the S-300. But Iran is correct: it's a defensive weapon. And the Iranian Nukes Myth is still a myth.

"For the past eight years, Barack Obama has been using the power of the U.S. presidency to impose his vision of a progressive world order on the entire globe.  As a result, much of the planet will greatly celebrate once the Obama era officially ends on Friday.  The Obama years brought us the Arab Spring, Benghazi, ISIS, civil war in Syria, civil war in Ukraine and the Iran nuclear deal.  On the home front, we have had to deal with Obamacare, "Fast and Furious", IRS targeting of conservative groups, Solyndra, the VA scandal, NSA spying and the worst "economic recovery" since the end of World War II.  And right at the end of his presidency, Barack Obama has committed the greatest betrayal of Israel in U.S. history and has brought us dangerously close to war with Russia. So is the end of the Obama world order worth celebrating? You better believe it is. Of course Obama and his minions are in a great deal of distress that much of their hard work over the past eight years is about to be undone by Donald Trump.  On Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden warned the elitists gathered at the World Economic Forum in Davos that their "liberal world order" is in danger of collapsing…     Vice President Joe Biden delivered an epic final speech Wednesday to the elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.   The gist of his speech was simple: At a time of "uncertainty" we must double down on the values that made Western democracies great, and not allow the "liberal world order" to be torn apart by destructive forces. And without a doubt, we definitely want it to collapse. During his time in the White House, Barack Obama has used the full diplomatic power of the government to promote "abortion rights", "gay rights" and other "liberal values" to the farthest corners of the globe.  Here at home, the appointment of two new Supreme Court justices under Obama paved the way for the Supreme Court decision that forced all 50 state

Delicious irony. excerpt: Obama just may have lost the election. The president signed off on a Health and Human Services ruling that says that under ObamaCare, Catholic institutions-including charities, hospitals and schools-will be required by law, for the first time ever, to provide and pay for insurance coverage that includes contraceptives, abortion-inducing drugs and sterilization procedures. If they do not, they will face ruinous fines in the millions of dollars. Or they can always go out of business. In other words, the Catholic Church was told this week that its institutions can't be Catholic anymore. This is in fact a potentially unifying moment for American Catholics, long split left, right and center. Catholic conservatives will immediately and fully oppose the administration's decision. But Catholic liberals, who feel embarrassed and undercut, have also come out in opposition. The church is split on many things. But do Catholics in the pews want the government telling their church to contravene its beliefs? A president affronting the leadership of the church, and blithely threatening its great institutions? No, they don't want that. They will unite against that. The smallest part of this story is political. There are 77.7 million Catholics in the United States. In 2008 they made up 27% of the electorate, about 35 million people. Mr. Obama carried the Catholic vote, 54% to 45%. They helped him win. They won't this year. And guess where a lot of Catholics live? In the battleground states. There was no reason to pick this fight. It reflects political incompetence on a scale so great as to make Mitt Romney's gaffes a little bitty thing. There was nothing for the president to gain, except, perhaps, the pleasure of making a great church bow to him. Enjoy it while you can. You have awakened a sleeping giant.

Ahh, those medical machines and advanced technologies only benefit the rich anyway. And you thought Obama million man math was just for the unemployment ruse! Ha!

Link to the original Paul McGuire article.

"The media may or may not report on these individual occurrences, but what they will never do is provide the American people with the full context and scope of Obama's shrill pettiness. Below is a list of illogical, unnecessary, and shockingly spiteful moves our government is making in the name of essential and non-essential. This list will be regularly updated, and if you have something you feel should be added, please email me at jnolte@breitbart.com or tweet me @NolteNC.Please include a link to the news source. -- 1. Treatments for Children Suffering From Cancer - The GOP have agreed to a compromise by funding part of the government, including the National Institutes of Health, which offers children with cancer last-chance experimental treatment. Obama has threatened to veto this funding. 2. The World War II Memorial - The WWII memorial on the DC Mall is a 24/7 open-air memorial that is not regularly staffed. Although the White House must have known that WWII veterans in their eighties and nineties had already booked flights to visit this memorial, the White House still found the resources to spitefully barricade the attraction.  The Republican National Committee has offered to cover any costs required to keep the memorial open. The White House refused. Moreover, like the NIH, the GOP will pass a compromise bill that would fund America's national parks. Obama has threatened to veto that bill. 3. Furloughed Military Chaplains Not Allowed to Work for Free - Furloughed military chaplains willing to celebrate Mass and baptisms for free have been told they will be punished for doing so. 4. Business Stops In Florida Keys - Although the GOP have agreed to compromise in the ongoing budget stalemate and fund the parks, Obama has threatened to veto that funding. As a result, small businesses, hunters, and commercial fisherman can't practice their trade. While the feds have deemed the personnel necessary to keep this area open "non-essential," the "enforcement office

Excellent thinking and a great presentation from "Utah". A must read if ever there was one. Conclussion: "This is where we are in government. Our Republican leadership is failing, even as the Democrats fail at almost everything, especially their big "achievements". Obama and his team are failing because they have refused to change after their ideas didn't work - the Obamacare rollout is a perfect example. Now they are telling America that the solution is more taxes, more borrowing and more intervention - in essence, they want us to paddle harder. Just trust them, they ask - they just aren't quite through fixing things yet. As many observers have pointed out, there are no rational people who think that the current levels of borrowing and taxation can cure our ills. There are only those, many exposed in these most recent government shutdowns, who simply want to delay Obamageddon until someone else's term. The fact is that we simply have enough fatal structural defects in our approach to our governance model that just working harder and spending more cannot fix it. You can't beat structural defects with performance. I've seen it all before in companies who were burning themselves out and wasting their resources by paddling harder against a current that was too powerful…and never recognizing that rescue was only a course change away. Simply paddling harder won't do it, especially when government has been taking paddles away from some through taxation and regulation and pulling some 47% of tax filers completely out of the canoe. This will not get fixed without pain. We need to get ready for it. No amount of avoidance will forestall the inevitable crash - we have to make sure that it is only a hard landing. Something will have to be sacrificed to save the whole; I have little doubt about that. Everything can't be given to everybody - there never was going to be a unicorn in every garage and Peggy Joseph never was going to get Obama to pay

See also the graph on the linked page.

Today may be the last chance we have to save our country.  Congress and Obama must come up with $4 Trillion in short term spending cuts to save the dollar.  I don't see it happening.  Boehner and the Republican establishment traded away the Cut, Cap & Balance Bill before it was even passed.  And it was passed only to be immediately put in the dirt by Boehner, Reid and McConnell.  Instead they came up with the largest increase in borrowing power the US Treasury has ever seen, $2.4 Trillion, near immediately.  Then they baked in the end of the Bush tax cuts, the $1 Trillion porkulous addition to the budget, and, ObamaCare to guarantee the largest tax increase in US history. This is indeed the End of America. excerpt: Yes, it's for real. We've been wondering when the markets would wake up to the reality of the sovereign debt crisis. Today is the day… The action in the fixed-income markets this morning verged on collapse. Yields on the world's benchmark sovereign debt - the U.S. 10-year Treasury bond - plummeted. Investors panicked and moved into the market, which is the world's most liquid market. Meanwhile, just about everything else in fixed income got killed. Mortgage REITs were briefly "no bid," for example. Annaly - the blue-chip mortgage REIT - was down more than 15% at the open. (I'll explain why in a moment.) It was as if the world's fixed-income investors finally woke up and realized the world's economy has serious problems… which our politicians seem unable to address, let alone repair.

The US Government will continue to borrow over $100 Billion per month.  Thanks to the grand borrowing plan, the ruling class assures us that spending cuts for 2012 will total $7 Billion (for the year).  2013 is whopping $2 Billion.  What a deal!!!  It's convert to GOLD or kiss it goodbye time my friends. excerpt:  The prospect of having S&P downgrading US debt has politicians scrambling to prevent such a Bonfire of The Keynesians. To forestall the coming horror, they worked tirelessly to pass a Balanced Budget Amendment, means test entitlement programs, close unnecessary military bases which were doled out as Congressional Pork, and repealed ObamaCare to the ringing cheers of small businesses all over America. Pysch! No they didn't. They immediately mounted a rhetorical assault against S&P for having the temerity to question the creditworthiness of an organization that has borrowed $5Tr dollars in the past five years, seen a precipitous and enduring decline in its corporate revenues, and has failed to fashion an acceptable long-term budget in the last 800 days. If a broker told me to buy lots of stock in some private corporation that tried that crap I'd hang up the phone on that individual without any further comment. S&P put it more politely when they said the following. "We view an inability to timely agree and credibly implement medium-term fiscal consolidation policy as inconsistent with a 'AAA' sovereign rating." So the United States government has failed to pass a budget for 800 days. We have increased our national debt from $9Tr to $14Tr in the very recent near-term. Our President has recommended a budget that would have raised this indebtedness to $25Tr over the next ten. It's a genuine shame we aren't giving these people more revenues. They manage what we do give them so well.

Good collection of links!  excerpt:  According to an editorial in today's Wall Street Journal (behind its pay firewall), Speaker Boehner asked the administration for a list of rules it had in the works with potential costs exceeding one billion dollars per year.  The administration responded providing a list of seven rulemakings - four from EPA and three from the Department of Transportation. Speaker Boehner's overarching point was that the "economy cannot withstand the barrage of major new federal regulations planned by the administration."  Of course, the Obamacare and financial industry regulations are also on the drawing board somewhere. Mark Levin had an excellent commentary on our state affairs at the beginning of his 8/30 broadcast.  He believes that we no longer have a "representative republic."  This condition exists in large measure, Levin argues, due to unchecked regulation.  He also thinks that we now have an "Imperial Presidency." That said, Levin later gave a boldface example. Listen to the absolutely chilling interview Levin conducts with the CEO of Gibson Guitar who was raided on 8/24/11 by federal agents. (Start at minute 92:00.)  Here is John Hayward's Human Events background article.  The federal government claims that Gibson is illegally importing wood to make its guitars from India and Madagascar.  Gibson claims that officials from those countries have certified the legality of these exports from their nations.  Additionally, Gibson's competitors apparently use the same woods from the same sources and have not been raided.  Only time will tell how this will turn out, but this iconic company may not be able to survive the legal costs of fighting a criminal investigation while its productive activities are interrupted.