Miscellaneous 154

1) Not to pick on Mr. Obama, but I was watching some of the debt testimony yesterday and even the Democrat's own hand-picked witness, Mark Zandi (an economist from Moody's), said that the President hasn't gone anywhere near far enough in terms of budget cutting (he advocates at least an additional $600 billion)....I mean, the dude was basically saying that President needs to get serious.............2) And then, of course, we have the hard left (which up to this point I hadn't considered Obama a part of - and still don't in terms of military matters). For these folks to continue to characterize Mr. Obama's proposal as serious at this point (as many at MSNBC are pantingly attempting to) is absurd - even more so than their ratings.............3) According to M.I.T. economist, William Wheaton, if the federal government a) capped the mortgage interest deduction at $500,000 AND b) did away with the deduction for second houses completely, those two changes alone would increase revenues to the federal government by $30 billion. THIRTY BILLION DOLLARS. I mean, I know that that's only about 3% of the current deficit and all but when you snap up 3% here and 3% there and you combine that with a burgeoning economy, we could probably get out of this thing. But you gotta start somewhere.