Lucid Links (082311, Morning)

Joe Biden pretends to be a Catholic. This statement Sunday in China (full transcript; related video) proves he is not:

Your policy has been one which I fully understand — I'm not second-guessing — of one child per family. The result being that you're in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable.

Objectively not moral, either.

John Boehner hopes Biden's meaning got lost in the translation. Uh, no. It's on tape.

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Disgraced former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has had the tables turned on him (internal link added by me):

Spitzer sued for libel over his Slate column

Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was hit with two libel lawsuits seeking $90 million by former Marsh & McLennan Cos executives over a column posted on Slate.com about an insurance bid-rigging scandal.

The lawsuits arose from Spitzer's August 22, 2010, column, “They Still Don't Get It,” advocating prosecution of corporate wrongdoers and defending his own enforcement activity against Marsh and insurer American International Group Inc.

William Gilman, a former Marsh executive marketing director, and Edward McNenney, a former Marsh global placement director, contended that they were defamed by the column, which appeared thee months after a judge threw out their convictions on felony antitrust charges. Neither is named in the column.

… Gilman also said Spitzer defamed him in writing by stating that “many employees of Marsh” have been “convicted and sentenced to jail terms,” when none had.

The exact passage from Spitzer's column is: “Unfortunately for the credibility of the Journal, the editorial fails to note the many employees of Marsh who have been convicted and sentenced to jail terms …” Well, that's either true of false. If it's false, I hope the plaintiffs clean him out — y'know, to “teach a lesson,” just like Spitzer claimed he was doing during his years of trial-avoiding corporate shakedowns (because when he tried to go to trial, he got his butt kicked).

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Priceless editorial opening at Investors Business Daily: “In his weekly radio address and elsewhere over the weekend, President Obama blamed Republicans for ‘holding back' the recovery by blocking his still-MIA jobs plan.”

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Fairness Doctrine, RIP, but hold the champagne.

As long as we have a president who “is seeking to impose his will on the Internet through the executive branch,” guided by a philosophy which wishes “to impose authoritarian controls on what has become the backbone of free speech and expression here and around the world, with the clear intent to change its very nature,” free speech and expression will not be truly safe.

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The Obama administration has added $4.247 trillion to the national debt in 945 days.

There's a lot more to that story.

Though exact early-year data isn't available, the “public debt” portion of the national debt (obtainable with the tool located here) — i.e., the money the government owes to outside parties instead of to government agencies — grew from roughly $3.4 trillion in January 2001 (it was at that level on both September 30, 2000 and 2001) to $6.307 trillion on Janaury 20, 2009, an increase of $2.9 trillion during the Bush 43 administration.

This past Friday, the public debt was $9.973 trillion. Since Barack Obama's inauguration, it has increased by over $3.6 trillion, going up far more in 945 days than public debt under Bush did in eight full years.

The the public debt-to-GDP ration, obtained by dividing public debt by nominal (i.e., not inflation-adjusted) Gross Domestic Product (GDP), went from roughly 34% to 45% during Bush's eight years. During Obama's two years and seven months, it has risen to 66%.

If the rate of increase seen thus far under Obama continues, we'll hit 90%, the “Maxed Out America” level which many economists consider the public debt-to-GDP wall — when lenders will either stop lending to us or will insist on high interest rates for doing so — in less than three years. Current economic policies continued during the next 17 months are likely to get us to 75% or even 80% by the time a hoped-for new president gets a chance to reverse the slide — if it's not already too late.