My kingdom for some marginal-cost-benefit analysis!

President Obama will call for a three-year freeze in spending on many domestic programs, and for increases no greater than inflation after that, an initiative intended to signal his seriousness about cutting the budget deficit, administration officials said Monday.

The freeze would cover the agencies and programs for which Congress allocates specific budgets each year, including air traffic control, farm subsidies, education, nutrition and national parks.

But it would exempt security-related budgets for the Pentagon, foreign aid, the Veterans Administration and homeland security, as well as the entitlement programs that make up the biggest and fastest-growing part of the federal budget: Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

I completely understand the deficit-reduction focus. But reducing the deficit by freezing spending on education, Head Start, the food stamp program, the EPA, renewable energy research, and whatever else falls under the very broad ambit of "the agencies and programs for which Congress allocates specific budgets each year" is absolutely insane.

Check out TrueMajority's federal-budget pie chart:


Which of those things could most afford to give up a few billion dollars per year?

And which of those things are being frozen?

Altogether, the freezes Obama's talking about will result in a ten-year savings to the deficit of about $250 billion. Nothing to sneeze at, surely, but keep in mind that the overall deficit for that same ten-year period is projected at around $9 trillion, meaning that we're talking about a savings of just about three percent. And at what cost?

We're going to freeze spending on the programs that can actually make the most out of a moderate budget increase (imagine what Head Start could do with an extra few billion dollars), but not freeze spending on the programs that can afford to be frozen (programs that can literally afford to spend half a billion dollars on Jesus-themed gunsights).

That's going a full step beyond the ol' "treating a gaping head wound by putting a Band-Aid on your forehead" analogy; we're treating a gaping head wound by putting a Band-Aid on our elbow.

Update: I love it when Nobel laureates say the same thing that I said, only with better words and more righteous indignation ("It’s appalling on every level").

"Hey, Mike. Don't you have a ton of work to do?"
"I do indeed."
"So why'd you just spend 20 minutes Photoshopping an Obama-Signal?"
"Well because of this article, obviously."
"Ah."
"Also because I have very poor time-management skills."
"Right. And why is it projected over San Diego?"
"That was the nicest cloudy picture I could find."
"Doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?"
"Well it's an Obama-Signal. I'm not sure what you expected."
"Fair point. This conceit is fun, this 'imaginary-conversation-as-a-blog-post.'"
"I know, right?"
"We should try this again sometime."
"No doubt."

Jesus H. Christ:

Senate Majority Leader Reid apologized today for a comment during the presidential campaign in which he praised then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., as politically attractive because he was a “light-skinned” African American “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” The comment was reported in “Game Change,” a new book about the 2008 campaign by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. In a statement, the Nevada senator said, “I deeply regret such a poor choice of words. I sincerely apologize for offending any and all Americans, especially African Americans for my improper comments.” After Reid's statement, Obama said he accepted Reid's apology and praised his “passionate leadership" on issues of social justice.

Added Obama, "Plus, I like him because he doesn't sound too Mormony."

(Quoting CongressDaily, which is behind a paywall.)

I love it when op-ed writers write things that I've been saying for years.

The Obama administration is spending $2.4 billion from the stimulus package on carbon capture and storage projects -- a mere down payment. Imagine what that money could do if it were spent on solar, wind and other renewable energy sources. Imagine if we actually tried to solve the problem rather than bury it.

From a few weeks ago: a neat op-ed by linguist Steven Pinker on the oath of office mix-up.

How could a famous stickler for grammar have bungled that 35-word passage, among the best-known words in the Constitution? Conspiracy theorists and connoisseurs of Freudian slips have surmised that it was unconscious retaliation for Senator Obama’s vote against the chief justice’s confirmation in 2005. But a simpler explanation is that the wayward adverb in the passage is blowback from Chief Justice Roberts’s habit of grammatical niggling. ...

In his legal opinions, Chief Justice Roberts has altered quotations to conform to his notions of grammaticality, as when he excised the “ain’t” from Bob Dylan’s line “When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose.” On Tuesday his inner copy editor overrode any instincts toward strict constructionism and unilaterally amended the Constitution by moving the adverb "faithfully" away from the verb.

The essay is headlined "Oaf of Office," so I was hoping it'd hew a bit more closely to my own read on the situation (that Roberts simply forgot his lines, and scrambled) than it actually did. But it's an interesting read all the same.

Two other recent Wonkette highlights:

• Their discovery of these clips from the audiobook of Dreams from My Father.
• And this bizarre commercial from an upstate-New York leather store:
  
  

Nice column from Nick Kristof.

We can’t solve our educational challenges when, according to polls, Americans are approximately as likely to believe in flying saucers as in evolution, and when one-fifth of Americans believe that the sun orbits the Earth.

...

Perhaps John Kennedy was the last president who was unapologetic about his intellect and about luring the best minds to his cabinet. More recently, we’ve had some smart and well-educated presidents who scrambled to hide it. Richard Nixon was a self-loathing intellectual, and Bill Clinton camouflaged a fulgent brain behind folksy Arkansas aphorisms about hogs.

Now that's some fine editing.



(Via Wonkette.)

Man, and I thought the VBBE's Character and Fitness Questionnaire was tough.

Update: 23/6 has discovered an eighth page, with eight new questions that the New York Times apparently missed. For example:

If you maintain a "blog," please provide hard copies of all entries ever posted, along with personal recommendations from at least three commenters who are not relatives of yours. If your blog title contains the phrase "daily musings," thank you for your interest, but the Obama administration will not require your services.

Paul Reiser, on Obama's first press conference.

So, when someone in the room snickered at "You know, I mean, the living ones," President Elect Obama, the comic-who-was-doing-fine-but-thought-he-was-losing-them had to now explain that one too. "You know, I didn't want to get all Nancy Reagan-y séance on you." ("Oh, no - now they're going to jump on that! 'Wet-Behind-The Ears Democrat Ridicules Republican Icon! Pictures at Eleven!')

Then it just keeps snowballing. Like the comic who accidentally swears on stage and then can't stop. ("Oh fuck, I just said shit.")

Somewhere in his brilliant performer mind, Obama must've known it was time to go to a new bit. ("C'mon, someone give me another question. Something easy. Oh good... something about the dog.")

Of course, two seconds later, the mind was back in red alert. ("Oh, shit... I just called myself a 'mutt.' Oh, fuck, I just said shit again!")

He was trying to put out a fire that wasn't really there, and in the process, made a silly joke. Clearly, there's some sort of transition time needed between campaigning (" I really want to convince you why I'd be good at this job.") and having won. ("Wow - I actually have the job?") I'm not sure how long it takes to make that adjustment, but knowing what we know of Barack Obama, I'm pretty sure he's already made it. Let's cut the guy some slack. And don't forget folks: please - tip your waitress.

I thought it might be interesting to keep track of FiveThirtyEight.com's projections during the last week of the campaign, in order to compare the progression to the eventual result. I'm sure that kind of historical data is available somewhere on the site, but I wasn't able to find it, so I'll make a note of it here. To be updated daily if I actually remember this between now and the election.

	Popular Vote		Electoral College
	Obama	McCain	Obama	McCain
October 28, 2008	52.1	46.5	348.2	189.8
October 29, 2008	52.0	46.6	344.1	193.9
October 30, 2008	52.0	46.4	346.5	191.5
October 31, 2008	52.2	46.4	349.7	188.3
November 1, 2008	52.2	46.6	344.0	194.0
November 2, 2008	51.9	47.2	332.9	205.1
November 3, 2008	52.0	46.1	346.5	191.5
November 4, 2008	52.3	46.2	348.6	189.4
Actual	52.9	45.7	365	173

Update: They say races traditionally tighten up in the last week or so. I'm chalking up the November 2 numbers to that phenomenon.

Second update: Exact numbers aren't in yet, but we're getting close, and things are looking awfully good for Nate Silver (if anything, he may have been on the low end). The jury's still out on Missouri (McCain up by about 6,000), North Carolina (Obama up by about 14,000), and Omaha, Nebraska (which has one electoral vote that could go either way). Once those are in, I'll update this table to reflect the actual election results.

Post-election update: Not too shabby.

Funny quote.

The Palin fires, however, show signs of banking. Over at Sheffield Lanes, mention of her name summons no glint from older bowlers, or from Jeremy and Joe Long, in their 20s, tipping Buds. They liked Mrs. Clinton but pass on Ms. Palin.

"She’s always talking about the ‘Average Joe,’" Jeremy Long said. "Average me! I don’t want myself in the Oval Office. I want someone smarter."

Elitist!

So that's why Obama hasn't mentioned the Keating Five much.

This made me laugh.

Deep Thought (in the manner of Atrios)

If Sarah Palin is an expert on foreign affairs by dint of Alaska's proximity to Russia... does Barack Obama (who lives just across the lake from Canada!) pass that same absurd not-at-all-absurd test? Not to mention Joe Biden -- there's nothing but the Atlantic Ocean between him and half of Europe.

This is pretty gosh darn well done:



(Via Kos.)

This is pretty old, but I just stumbled across it in my bookmarks, and it's awesome enough that it's worth posting now.

I'm not sure what's worse about this: that it's on Obama's own website, or that it's in a section that refers to Michael Smerconish as an "expert."


(Via Wonkette.)

Thank you, New York Times:

Mr. McCain has been a champion of public financing of campaign [sic] throughout his career.

Except for sometimes, of course.

You tell 'im, Ernie.



(Via Wonkette.)