Perhaps they got their confusion from there. I dunno. But until both parties are willing to be honest and confront reality, the electorate will naturally swing to the good news charlies who tell them they can have their cake, ice cream, and caviar and stick it to their kids.
Sigh
2. We're Not Greek, We Just Think Like Them At Hot Air, Allahpundit returns to his usual depression, this time perhaps well-justified as he examines a new poll indicating the public really doesn't understand how bad the deficit is and how deep the cuts must be to seriously alleviate it: Fully 72 percent think reducing foreign aid would produce some sort of "large" savings whereas 51 percent think reducing Medicare benefits would produce savings that are small-ish. To jog your memory about this, we could disband the U.S. military for a year -- no funding for defense of any sort -- and we would still be only about halfway towards eliminating the annual deficit. Which makes me wonder: Is there any meaningful distinction for most of the public between spending they want to cut and spending that must be cut? Defense is a big chunk of the budget relative to, say, earmarks, and tales of Pentagon waste and the oft-touted stat about how we spend more on our military than the next umpteen nations do on theirs surely resonate when the public's thinking about trimming budgetary fat. But where, oh where, does the idea come from that foreign aid is some huge fountain of red ink instead of Medicare? It's chump change. The only explanation I have for that distorted view is that foreign aid is something the public's willing to cut whereas Medicare, emphatically, is not. Am I missing something here or are we really that deep in denial? |
