Pun Salad

… take a look at yourself:

• Reason gives us Obama's Doublethink Doubletalk. Or as Pun Salad likes to call it, Barackrobatics:

• I've never been a fan of "It's the X, stupid" construction. So I'll instead summarize Steve Landsburg's illuminating blog post this way: It's the spending, you attractive, intelligent, and amusing person, you.

  This is why it's so frustrating to hear talk of blue ribbon commissions assigned to the task of "debt reduction". "Debt reduction" can mean less spending, or more taxes, or some combination thereof. But to raise taxes solely for the purpose of debt reduction is to mask the problem, not to solve it. Debt is not the problem; spending is. Hysteria about the debt is misdirection.

• Read the above link before you go to Keith Hennessey's analysis of President Obama's proposed budget. Keith has produced excellent graphs (both more revealing and prettier than mine), but the point is the same: Obama proposes a massive and permanent increase in Federal spending as a share of the total economy. No shock, unless you were actually taking his rhetoric seriously.

• Also with great graphics is the New York Times: a historical look at how projections compared with reality when it comes to the deficit, and a sobering look at where the money goes.