Lucia Mutikani at Reuters:
The U.S. economy came perilously close to flat-lining in the first quarter and grew at a meager 1.3 percent annual rate in the April-June period as consumer spending barely rose.
His policies. He owns it.
James Taylor at Forbes:
NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth’s atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.
Well, isn’t this a rather inconvenient truth?
We can’t predict the weather accurately for a local geographic location ten days from now. Why is so much faith put in these computer models that attempt to predict global environmental metrics years from now? I hope Chris Christie sees this report. I really like him aside from his malformed viewpoints on “climate change”.
Kenneth Anderson at The Volokh Conspiracy:
Another way to put this, I suppose, is that Democrats are arguing about liquidity; Republicans about solvency.
…
The call to come together is illusory, because there is a genuinely deep fault line around fundamental economic policy.
Nailed it.
Fox News (with contributions from Chad Pergram):
Even if it passes, the Boehner bill is certain to be killed in the Democratic-controlled Senate but could still feature in any possible compromise. Boehner’s difficulties in securing votes weakens his bargaining position, Democrats said.
This is why I don’t understand what Boehner is doing. He got a fair amount of support with Cut, Cap and Balance. Even some democrats voted for it. Only nine Republicans voted against that. If he cut the debt ceiling increase out of that bill entirely, he would get those nine Republicans on board.
Sure it wouldn’t pass the Senate, but neither will the current bill. The difference is if he got all the Republicans on board, the ball would be in the opponent’s court. They would be forced to act. Instead everyone’s looking at the Republicans bicker with each other.
Josh Ong at Appleinsider:
New figures from the U.S. Treasury Department indicate that the government has a total operating cash balance of $73.768 billion, less than Apple’s own war chest of $75.876 billion.
I think the Federal Government could learn a thing or two from Apple. Lesson number one: produce something people want.