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Friday, January 16, 2009
It’s that time on a Friday again…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
That golden hour again approaches, that moment when the factory whistle blows and we lay our tools on the workbench and head out the door to the company parking lot, climb into our pickups and head home to the family hearth.
As always, we’ll need a little travelin’ music to make the trip home even sweeter, and Miss Patsy Cline says she’s happy to help out.
But Patsy, if you go out walking after midnight tonight, you are gonna be COLD, girl!!
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Obama pledges entitlement reform too
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Well, this ought to be interesting:
“President-elect Barack Obama pledged yesterday to shape a new Social Security and Medicare ‘bargain’ with the American people, saying that the nation’s long-term economic recovery cannot be attained unless the government finally gets control over its most costly entitlement programs.
That discussion will begin next month, Obama said, when he convenes a ‘fiscal responsibility summit’ before delivering his first budget to Congress. He said his administration will begin confronting the issues of entitlement reform and long-term budget deficits soon after it jump-starts job growth and the stock market.
‘What we have done is kicked this can down the road. We are now at the end of the road and are not in a position to kick it any further,’ he said. ‘We have to signal seriousness in this by making sure some of the hard decisions are made under my watch, not someone else’s.’”
The Social Security trust fund is actually in pretty good shape as long as the federal government honors its pledge to pay back the many billions it borrowed from the fund to run the rest of government.
The real issue is Medicare, as Obama himself acknowledged.
“Social Security, we can solve,” he told the Post edit board. “The big problem is Medicare, which is unsustainable… . We can’t solve Medicare in isolation from the broader problems of the health-care system.”
Obama keeps pledging major efforts to address almost every big problem we face, from the Middle East to global warming to the budget and of course the economy. And he’s right — we can’t keep avoiding those problems. That’s in part how we got into this mess in the first place.
But the scope of the changes he claims to seek are mind-boggling nonetheless.
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Super Bowl vs. Obama inaugural
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Fox News snuck a funny question into its recent national poll: “Which do you think will be more interesting, the Super Bowl or the presidential inauguration?”
The clear winner? The answer’s in comments.
