The Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee is breaking down President Obama's budget with this preliminary analysis:

The budget will be released next week "The figures regarding the President’s plan are based on numbers reported in the media today, the table posted on the White House (WH) website, and information regarding Senator Murray’s budget resolution," says the minority side of Senate Budget Committee.

"Senator Murray, in touting her budget, talks about $4 trillion in deficit reduction, but that figure uses baseline gimmicks to exclude the cost of turning off the sequester, and the assumptions that the annual doc fix and continuing the 2009 stimulus does not need to be paid for. The $1.3 trillion cost for those items are CBO estimates included in the Murray budget. Because the media also reports that the president plans to cancel the sequester, it is reasonable to conclude that the President will have the same costs buried in his baseline as well since Obama also talks about $4 trillion in deficit reduction.

"The taxes figure is the $600 billion in tax hikes admitted to by the President in today’s leaks, plus the $100 billion from the CPUI change noted on the WH website, and $100 billion for tobacco taxes to pay for universal pre-K. We don’t know what the President’s exact proposal will be, but we know those taxes can be set to hit whatever number the President needs to pay for his pre-K policy. The media today reports that the president will raise tobacco taxes to pay for universal pre-K. We know from earlier reporting that the President’s pre-K plan could cost between $10 and $25 billion, so $100 billion over 10 years is a reasonable number for the first 10 year cost of the program, and the new taxes needed to pay for it.

"The stimulus number comes from the WH table, as does the savings figures.

"Debt numbers must be lower than the president’s table because he is showing interest on the gross savings, but not the net savings. If interest savings are estimated to be $200 billion on $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction, they would be slightly below $30 billion on $250 billion in deficit reduction. The $30 billion rounds up to the President’s benefit."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obamas-budget-includes-800-billion-tax-hike-73-trillion-new-debt_714606.html
In his weekly radio address, President Obama explained the budget he'll rollout next week, and said, "the truth is, our deficits are already shrinking."

"My budget will reduce our deficits not with aimless, reckless spending cuts that hurt students and seniors and middle-class families – but through the balanced approach that the American people prefer, and the investments that a growing economy demands," said Obama.

"Now, the truth is, our deficits are already shrinking. That’s a fact. I’ve already signed more than $2.5 trillion in deficit reduction into law, and my budget will reduce our deficits by nearly $2 trillion more, without harming the recovery. That surpasses the goal of $4 trillion in deficit reduction that many economists believe will stabilize our finances."

Obama is here referring to our yearly deficits, not the sum total of our debt, which is growing at an astonishing pace.The truth is, our debt continues to grow.

When Obama became president, on Janaury 20, 2009, the debt was $10,626,877,048,913.08. The total outstanding public debt is now, according to the federal government, $16,798,051,589,934.68.

Since Obama became president, debt has increased by more than $6 trillion.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-truth-our-deficits-are-already-shrinking_714619.html

The week’s 10 worst layoffs (Apr. 1-5) Hope and Change Alright!!

Within hours of President Obama’s re-election, companies both large and small across the country began announcing major layoffs, along with store and plant closings.

All of the new taxes associated with Obamacare are forcing business owners to make a decision to either keep their workforce at current levels and surrender a third of their gross profits to the federal government, or reduce the number of full-time employees and stay in business.

Unfortunately, massive layoffs have become a weekly occurrence as companies begin to cope with the harsh realities of a second Obama term.

Despite the false, cheery rhetoric coming from both the Obama administration and their surrogates in the mainstream press, the labor pool is smaller today than it was 30 years ago and continues to shrink.

The following is a list of the companies that have announced the largest layoffs between Apr. 1-5:

-Bank of America Corp. (NY) (1,320 jobs)

-U.S. Cellular Corp. (600 jobs)

-Bank of America Corp. (NJ) (469 jobs)

-Caterpillar Inc. (460 jobs)

-Dairyland Buses (155 jobs)

-The Walt Disney Co. (150 jobs)

-Fisker Automotive (150 jobs)

-AAR Mobility Systems (130 jobs)

-Briljent LLC (130 jobs)

-Ansell Hawkeye (85 jobs)

http://www.examiner.com/article/the-week-s-10-worst-layoffs-apr-1-5

Decisions, Decisions: That Sequestration Thing Is So Pesky!

First, White House tours had to be canceled because of sequestration. Now the cancelations have selectively spread:

To celebrate Saint Patrick's Day, there was enough money to dye green the water in the fountain on the White House south lawn, and to host (at the White House) a reception.

But the White House will not hold a Jewish History Month event in 2013.

Washington Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper met at the White House with the Obamas to view the movie 42, about Jackie Robinson.

Obama hosted a reception at the White House for the Stanley Cup Champion Los Angeles Kings and Major League Soccer Champion Los Angeles Galaxy.

Obama somehow found the money needed to play golf two weekends in a row, so his activities have not been/will not be canceled.

Obama somehow found the money needed to attend an NCAA "March Madness" basketball game.

A White House reception and performance in honor of "Memphis Soul Sound" as part of "In Performance at the White House" is scheduled for April 9.

Will the Cinco de Mayo celebration be canceled? Don't holds your breath -- Obama plays politics with sequestration cancelations, and there is currently a battle for the Hispanic vote.

Deciding what events to cancel could become quite problematic for Obama and the White House. Obama is, indeed, picking what is and what is not to be canceled because of the sequester.

Bottom Line: The Executive Branch (that's Dear Leader Barack Hussein Obama), not the Legislative Branch (that's Congress), decides what cancelations get made.

: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/04/decisions_decisions_that_sequestration_thing_is_so_pesky.html#ixzz2Po1nq5j2

Biden: ‘Affirmative Task’ Before Us Is to ‘Create a New World Order’

Vice President Joe Biden called the U.S. economic figures for March “disappointing” on Friday but said America “remains better positioned than any country in the world to be the leading economy” of the 21st century.

“The economy has now added private sector jobs every month, disappointing this month, but they nonetheless added jobs,” said Biden at the Export-Import Bank conference in Washington
.
“Even so we’ve still found that at the time there’s a need for an ambitious affirmative agenda. We strengthened and signed three free trade agreements.”

Biden said he’s not optimistic out of “naivety” but because he knows the history of America.

“I know I’m referred to in the White House as the White House optimist. I read that all of the time like I’m the new guy. As my grandfather would say, ‘like I just fell off the turnip truck yesterday,’” Biden said.

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been there longer than any of them and I hope you all haven’t noticed.”
The private sector added 95,000 jobs and payrolls rose by 88,000 workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In response to the jobs numbers, the White House said the economy is “continuing to recover” from the financial crisis.

In Biden’s view, the “affirmative task we have now is to actually create a new world order because the global order is changing again and the institutions of the world that worked so well in the post-World War II era for decades, they need to be strengthened and some have to be changed. So we have to do what we do best. We have to lead.”

He added, “This is not a zero sum game. It’s overwhelmingly in our interest that China prosper, that Mongolia prosper.”

Biden said the global “playing field” needs to be “leveled” so competition is fair and healthy.

With a level playing field, Biden said American ingenuity would compete with anyone in the world.

“I have overwhelming confidence in the competitive capacity of the American worker,” he said
.
In the speech, Biden stressed that he makes “no apology” for America when he travels abroad to make sure American companies get an “even shot” in the global economy.

The former Delaware senator also urged Congress to reform the immigration system since many foreign students educated in the U.S. are sent home after graduating.

“Instead of sending them home, we should be stamping a green card to their diploma as they walk across the stage. Literally. I mean this literally,” Biden said.

“If they have a job here, they should be able to stay here. We should want them here.”

http://pjmedia.com/blog/biden-affirmative-task-before-us-is-to-create-a-new-world-order/?singlepage=true

MSNBC Spokeswomen Says Kids Belong To The Government

College professor and MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry says your children are not yours – they are owned by the community. She says public education has failed because we have not allowed the state to confiscate more of our money.

“We have to break through our private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families,” says the professor of political science at Tulane University, where she is founding director of the Anna Julia Cooper Project on Gender, Race, and Politics in the South. Kids belong to whole communities, she insists, and once we realize this we’ll make “better investments” in government indoctrination of children.

Melissa Harris-Perry is regurgitating the Obama “you didn’t build that” meme. “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that,” Obama said during a campaign stop in Roanoke, Virginia. “Somebody else made that happen,” it was not the result of individual initiative. “The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”

“Like most people of his ideological bent, Obama either cannot or will not distinguish between society — which is created through peaceful commerce and other forms of private cooperation — and the state — an anti-social artifact built on conquest, coercion, and confiscation of wealth,” writes William Grigg.

“Government produces nothing; it is an exercise in pure consumption and, usually, the destruction of capital. As Nietzsche famously said, everything the State has is stolen.”

Stephan Kinsella argues that the primary social evil today is a lack of respect for the fundamental right of self-ownership. Obama and Harris-Perry represent the other side of this argument. They believe, as do all Marxists and socialists, that the state, what Harris-Perry calls the “community,” owns the individual.
Harris-Perry urges us to “break through” the “private idea” that individuals own themselves. Like Marx, she believes the individual is a “communal being” and all human worth is intractably linked to the community, the collective, and the state is the ultimate manifestation of the collective will.

Harris-Perry’s homage to the state was part of a two-year long, multi-million dollar advertising campaign by MSNBC. The network, created through a merger between Microsoft and the death merchant General Electric, has long provided ideological fodder for president Obama, the proud Marxist (as Yuri Maltsev, former advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev, characterized him). “We can go backward, or we can keep moving forward,” he said during a speech at Carnegie Mellon University. “And I don’t know about you, but I want to move forward.”

It’s no mistake Obama’s handlers and MSNBC adopted the slogan. The word “forward” has a special meaning in socialist political terminology. It was frequently used as a name for socialist and communist newspapers and periodicals in the 20th century. “The slogan ‘Forward!’ reflected the conviction of European Marxists and radicals that their movements reflected the march of history, which would move forward past capitalism and into socialism and communism,” writes Victor Morton.

It seems incomprehensible that a multinational corporation like MSNBC would embrace communism. In fact, as Gary Allen noted, it is quite natural.

“If one understands that socialism is not a share-the-wealth program, but is in reality a method to consolidate and control the wealth, then the seeming paradox of superrich men promoting socialism becomes no paradox at all,” he wrote. “Instead it becomes the logical, even the perfect tool of power-seeking megalomaniacs. Communism, or more accurately, socialism, is not a movement of the downtrodden masses, but of the economic elite.”

http://www.infowars.com/your-kids-belong-to-the-collective/

U.S. Army Lists Christianity, Catholicism, Judaism and “Islamophobia” as forms of “Religious Extremism”

How nice of them to include the Ku Klux Klan on the list of Religious Extremism. Who knew political ideologies were a religion.

JihadWatch reports:

This is the politically manipulative and ridiculous nonsense that has replaced truthful information about Islam and jihad. And the implications of it are quite ominous. Evangelical Christianity, Catholicism and “Islamophobia” are forms of “Religion Extremism” on par with al-Qaeda and Hamas? Then how long will it be before the Obama Administration goes to war against them, as it has repeatedly declared that it is at war with al-Qaeda?

Note also: Obama has repeated many, many times that we are not at war with Islam, and the mainstream media line is that to suggest otherwise would be evidence of “hatred” and “bigotry.” But apparently it is not “hatred” and “bigotry” for the U.S. to declare that Catholicism is the same sort of thing as al-Qaeda. Now, the list does include “Sunni Muslims,” but specifies those in Iraq — we already know that there is no possible way that the Obama Administrations means to classify all Sunni Muslims as “extremists.” And the list also apparently specifies that only Catholicism in the U.S. is a form of “religious extremism.” But that’s bad enough: where are the Catholics flying planes into buildings, bombing Baptist churches, and threatening to conquer the nation and subjugate non-Catholics under the rule of church law?

This is not going to end well.

More is reported at FoxNews as follows:

The U.S. Army listed Evangelical Christianity and Catholicism as examples of religious extremism along with Al Qaeda and Hamas during a briefing with an Army Reserve unit based in Pennsylvania, Fox News has learned.

“We find this offensive to have Evangelical Christians and the Catholic Church to be listed among known terrorist groups,” said Ron Crews, executive director of the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty. “It is dishonorable for any U.S. military entity to allow this type of wrongheaded characterization.”

The incident occurred during an Army Reserve Equal Opportunity training brief on extremism. Topping the list is Evangelical Christianity. Other organizations listed included Catholicism, Al Qaeda, Hamas, the Ku Klux Klan, Sunni Muslims, and Nation of Islam.

The military also listed “Islamophobia” as a form of religious extremism.

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/04/u-s-army-lists-christianity-catholicism-judiasm-and-islamophobia-as-forms-of-religious-extremism/

The Perversity of Liberal "Rules"

It's been not at all troubling to me to watch President Obama be pilloried for having the temerity to comment on California Attorney General Kamala Harris' looks -- mostly because of the different standards to which Democrats and Republicans are routinely held on such "women's" topics by Democrats and the press.

Here's a news flash for worshippers in the Cult of Obama: The President is just a normal man. Normal men notice women's looks. And normal men reason -- not inaccurately -- that most women like to hear that they're attractive. Only in elite lefty circles in this post-feminist era have there been attempts to codify an etiquette governing when it is politically correct to compliment a woman's appearance.

The whole episode was silly to the rational mind. But note that President Obama called Harris to apologize for having complimented her (and we all know that the President doesn't apologize for anything but America with any frequency!). It's not because Jonathan Chait or other lefties were incensed at his behavior. It's because he recognized the danger to his political brand among the wider public in allowing this story to keep circulating.

First, as the Washington Free Beacon points out, it plays into a dangerous image of Obama that already exists -- as Sexist-in-Chief -- based on the dearth of powerful women on his staff, the lower pay his female employees receive, the alleged "hostile environment" of the Obama White House, and more. Obviously, had he been a Republican, the tension between these facts and the oft-invoked "war on women" supposedly waged by Obama's political opponents would be more widely circulated by the press and known by the public. But the longer the story drags on, the greater the chance such stories would appear, and so Obama nipped it in the bud.

Second, a great part of Obama's likability stems from his image as a good family man. Compared to Bill Clinton (and a host of other politicians!), he undoubtedly is one. And there is no reason to believe that the President has ever been unfaithful to his wife. But it's also worth acknowledging the particular dangers to President Obama that stem from any erosion of his image of being devoted to Michelle. They both know that they represent an ideal to many of their supporters. And no doubt they are aware of the unfair, ugly, racist, invidious old stereotype of "oversexed" black men.

But ultimately, the whole kerfuffle leaves me with a weary sense of how exhausting it must be to be a liberal. The rules are so hard to follow! It's sexist to compliment AG Harris, but it's racist to criticize the President. The President deserves scorn for praising a woman's looks, but an "actor" need suffer no repercussions as a result of crudely misogynistic, sexual tweets about Ann Romney and Jenna Ryan. It's okay to compare voting to losing one's virginity, and to comment on the appearance of the presidential rear end, but commenting on the First Lady's bottom will get you criticized -- or even suspended. You can call Chris Christie "fat," "mean tweets" about Ann Romney's looks will get non-judgmental publicity, and insulting similes (some crude) about Paul Ryan's looks are run without criticism on Gawker.

Mentally . . . exhausting. In the end, liberal thought seems easily reducible to nothing more than a hierarchy of victimhood, with a series of shifting "rules" selectively enforced by a self-appointed secular priesthood of liberal elites.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/carolplattliebau/2013/04/06/the-perversity-of-liberal-rules-n1559975