Right Pundits

It was posited on this site (by me) that Mary Landrieu would be ‘encouraged’ to vote with the rest of the Dems against a filibuster because the party would provide some pork for Louisiana.

Today, ABC reported that the Senate added a provision to the bill that gives Louisiana $100 million. It’s sort of an interesting addition to the bill; any state in which EVERY county (parish) has been declared a major disaster area by the President within the last 7 years is eligible for increased medicaid subsidies. Well, in an astounding coincidence, only Louisiana qualifies.

Yesterday Sen. Reid leaked the news that the CBO had scored the Senate’s bill and that claimed that it would be basically revenue neutral, maybe even saving a few billion dollars after the first 10 years. Today the CBO debunked that fantasy stating that with the so-called “doctor’s fix“, which Reid neglected to include in his scoring, the deficits will increase by $89 billion in the first 10 years:

CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation estimate that enacting H.R. 3962, by itself, would reduce federal budget deficits by $109 billion over the 2010–2019 period through its effects on direct spending and revenues.

CBO estimates that enacting both H.R. 3961 and H.R. 3962 would add $89 billion to budget deficits over the 2010–2019 period. That amount is about $12 billion less than the sum of the effects of enacting the bills separately. The $12 billion difference results from two types of interactions. The higher payment rates for physicians’ services under H.R. 3961 would increase the net cost of provisions in H.R. 3962 by about $3 billion. However, that difference would be more than offset by the effect of a change under H.R. 3962 in how payment rates for Medicare Advantage plans are set. That change would reduce the effect of the changes made by H.R. 3961 to Medicare’s payments for physicians’ services in the fee-for-service sector on payment rates for Medicare Advantage plans. As a result, the estimated increase in payments to Medicare Advantage plans would be $15 billion smaller if both bills were enacted than under H.R. 3961 alone.

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A district court judge has just made the Federal Government vulnerable to massive lawsuits and damages; according to the judge, Hurricane Katrina flooding is the Army Corp of Engineers fault. Shoddy oversight of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet let to the flooding in 2005, says the judge.

Five plaintiffs were awarded about $170,000 dollars each in the case; the Wall Street Journal reports that about 100,000 individuals are now clear to pursue damages from the government. This could essentially end up costing the government billions of dollars.

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Timothy Geithner, appointed Secretary of the Treasury this year by Barack Obama, is skating on incredibly thin ice as now even some Democrats are calling for him to be fired. He was part of the Clinton administration, where he was an assistant to both Rubin and Summers. Geithner then went to the IMF and CFR,; in 2003, he was chosen to be President of the Federal Reserve for New York. In this position, he engineered the bailouts of Bear Sterns, AIG, and Lehman.
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The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) computer systems are experiencing problems retrieving flight plans, the FAA’s spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said in a prepared statement.

“We are having a problem processing flight plan information. We are investigating the cause of the problem. We are processing flight plans manually and expect some delays.”

The technical difficulties weren’t affecting air traffic control’s systems, Bergen said.
Controllers “have radio coverage and communications with planes.

The problems were first reported Thursday morning out of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta. It is the world’s busiest airport by passenger traffic, serving 90 million passengers per year, as well as by number of landings and take-offs.
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The ship Maersk Alabama sailing under the American-flag was under attack to be hijacked by pirates on Tuesday morning off the coast of Somalia for a second time in a year. Four pirates, carrying automatic weapons and traveling in a skiff, ignored the crew’s warning shots and launched an attack toward the ship. This time around Maersk Alalbama escaped the hijacking. Private contractor is currently providing on-board security. Guards on the ship responded with small arms fire and acoustical weapons. The so-called spokesman for the pirates claimed that shots were fired and one of his colleagues was injured.
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Is Fidel Castro dead? Certainly the rumors have been around for over a year, although more recent photographs with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela put some of those to rest a few months ago.

Is Fidel Castro Dead or Just Pretending?

November 2009 Update: Recycling this story to the top because once again the question of “is Fidel Castro dead” are inundating the internet. But like Freddie he keeps coming back. For better or for worse Fidel Castro is not dead. At least not yet.

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I’ve been reading a lot lately that the Obama Administration plans to put forward another stimulus package. OMG. Let’s look at the inherent flaws in this year’s package, since one definition of rational is to avoid doing things that we know, from past experience, results in failure.

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