Thoughts While Shaving: The Trouble with Harry…Helluva Note When Commies Are More Conservative Than Obama...Catholic Bishops a Political Clubhouse for the Dems?

The Trouble is He Lies.

In the classic 1955 Alfred Hitchcock black comedy “The Trouble with Harry” the trouble with Harry is that he’s dead. This year, the trouble with Harry—Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.)—is that he is a chronic, indefatigable liar. He has announced great things in his Senate version of ObamaCare which has received a CBO good housekeeping stamp of approval as being “reducing the deficit.” The mystery is where he got the three-quarters-of-a-trillion dollars that he claims will be saved as result of this.

The trouble is it doesn’t include the famed “doctor fix”—a separate bill that calls for $215 billion to be borrowed to keep doctors who treat Medicare patients from experiencing severe cuts on their patients’ reimbursements. Which over the long haul will add nearly $2 trillion to Medicare’s long-term liabilities, now estimated at almost $40 trillion. So it totals savings of $127 billion over ten years which is more than counterbalanced by expenditures for the doctor fix.

At least the original Harry in the film was dead: the current Harry is alive and lying, not willing to admit that with the doctor fix everybody is going to have to pay higher premiums.

Helluva Note.

The other day, speaking to us from Asia, President Obama admitted that “people” are warning us about a loss of confidence. What he means is that the Chinese are the people who’re doing the warning and what he didn’t say is that the people who buy our bonds are extremely jittery about the total costs on healthcare and other items of the Obama wish-list. The usual number that is placed on U.S. debt to China is about $1.3 trillion, most in U. S. treasuries. China knows that the U. S. won’t default: it’ll be via inflation. It knows we’ll inflate the currency once again. And as an interesting side-note: the super-ambitious social program Obama wants perhaps $9 trillion will be added to the debt in the next decade. And as they’re holding the notes, they’re worried they could be holding the bag in an inflation that could easily wipe out their holdings.

Bishops’ Dem Clubhouse?

I’ve talked to some Democratic congressmen who tell me that there is no doubt the USCCB will lobby for total ObamaCare if the anti-abortion Stupak amendment is contained. If so, that’s plain and simple wrong. The bishops don’t have any special expertise on health care…or the economy…or trade. They are right to have lobbied for the Stupak amendment banning abortion which is a moral issue-- but are wrong to lobby for ObamaCare because health care is not. How do we know whether they will or not? Well, don’t pay attention to what the president of the USCCB says because it will be parsed-parsed-parsed into meaningless ambiguity. The answer will be to see what various congressmen say as they are lobbied by the USCCB.