News of Note:
- Apparently the Senate has nothing better to do
- Bottled water can't prevent dehydration? Ask the EU
- A list of successful companies ... if "success" is defined as "doing better than Solyndra"
- UNoccupy Wall Street
- Occupy Black Friday? Seriously?
- More fake climate data
- Danielscare: Indiana's health care reform that actually works
Tonight's Crazy Story:
'As Slow As Possible': World's Longest Running Concert At St. Burchard Church Turns 10
If you go to this concert, plan to stay a while. A performance of John Cage's "As Slow as Possible" has just passed the ten-year mark, and there's only 629 years to go!
The Final Five: Number 5
Supercommittee Success
Emily Miller argues that the supercommitee's failure to reach an agreement is actually a good outcome. "This happens to be the best outcome given Democratic intransigence on spending. Republicans refused to strike a sham deal that would have given political cover to an unpopular Congress without addressing entitlements, which are the central cause of the debt crisis. ... The supercommitee’s end without any real spending cuts is a loss for the country, but that’s better than cooking up business-as-usual and pretending it is anything else but a turkey."
There's Always Time for a Laugh:
"I like putting marshmallows on the sweet potato. I don't see why we don't put them on all our vegetables all the time."
-Jimmy Kimmel, 11/21/11
The Final Five: Number 4
The Lesson that California Can Teach the Nation
Jonathan Jeffrey found something coming from California to compliment, and surprisingly, I agree with him. "On November 5, students from throughout the state, as the Student Advisory Board on Education, gathered in Sacramento to begin discussions about the ways that their education system could be bettered. After five days, the students presented their proposals for change to the California State Board of Education. These proposals ranged from improving the standardized testing system to developing career awareness standards in frameworks. For the two hours that I sat in the boardroom listening to the presentation of these proposals, I could not help but feel excited about what this meant. Our education system should be based around students, the individuals who have the most to both gain and lose in our education system. Yet, instead, the system has been built around adults. Adults run the government. Adults run the classrooms. Adults run the unions. But this November, I saw that this was fortunately not always the case."
Debt Watch:
On Monday, the government spent an additional $80,294,823.10 of money it does not have, bringing the national debt to:
$15,042,288,403,018.43
The Final Five: Number 3
Alice in Liberal Land
Thomas Sowell compares liberal ideology to Alice in Wonderland. "In the world of Liberal Land, you can just take for granted all the benefits of the existing society, and then simply tack on your new, wonderful ideas that will make things better. For example, if the economy is going along well and you happen to take a notion that there ought to be more home ownership, especially among the poor and minorities, then you simply have the government decree that lenders have to lend to more low-income people and minorities who want mortgages, ending finicky mortgage standards about down payments, income and credit histories. That sounds like a fine idea in the world of Liberal Land. Unfortunately, in the ugly world of reality, it turned out to be a financial disaster, from which the economy has still not yet recovered."
Tweet of the Day:
Donald Trump:
Yesterday @BarackObama actually spent a full day in Washington. He didn't campaign, fund raise or play golf. Shocking.
The Final Five: Number 2
Our Spending Problem
Jeffrey Anderson provides a snapshot of our government's out-of-control spending problem. "Despite this previously demonstrated commitment to cutting spending on the part of one-half of the deficit committee members, the committee failed to do something that should have been very easy to do. It couldn’t find a way to cut $1.2 trillion, or just 2.6 percent, from the $45.77 trillion in projected federal spending over the next decade — or to trim just 12 cents out of every dollar of projected spending increases."
Food for Thought - A Quote from our Founders
"But with respect to future debt; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years."
-Thomas Jefferson
The Final Five: Number 1
Obama Got 2.1 Trillion and All We Got Was this Stupid Supercommittee
Tom Rowan analyzes the failure of the supercommittee: Obama got what he wanted; Republicans got defense cuts. "Obama got his money to blow and all we got was a stupid committee. Conservatives rightly complained at the time that the taxpayer had seen this dog and pony show before. The government's deal with itself was phony from the get go. The government's bogus promise was to let them blow money now and government will stop blowing money latter. This would be comical except that it will take generations for taxpayers to bail out our bankrupt government. We simply don't have 2.1 trillion dollars to blow under any circumstance anymore."
Tomorrow in History
November 23, 1963
- The first episode of Doctor Who is broadcast on BBC. The show would become the world's longest-running science fiction drama.
Would you like to receive The Final Five in your inbox each night. Simply send an e-mail to finalfive@defenseoffreedomblog.com with "Subscribe" in the subject line.
