About 10 days ago, the Treasury Department reported that the federal deficit reached $1 trillion for the first time and is expected to grow to nearly $2 trillion by the fall.  (In other words, as of mid July, the USA will have spent over $1 trillion more than it has taken in.)  

The Treasury Department said Monday that the deficit in June totaled $94.3 billion, pushing the total since the budget year started in October to $1.09 trillion. The administration forecasts that the deficit for the entire year will hit $1.84 trillion in October.

Trillion is a mind-boggling number.  Just how much is a trillion anyway — this video explains it.

But wait - it gets worse.

In the meantime, the U.S. debt now stands at $11.5 trillion. Interest payments on the debt cost $452 billion last year — the largest federal spending category after Medicare-Medicaid, Social Security and defense.

The overall debt is now slightly more than 80 percent of the annual output of the entire U.S. economy, as measured by the gross domestic product. During World War II, it briefly rose to 120 percent of GDP.”

The total debt — also called the public debt or the national debt — is the amount owed by the government to its creditors, whether they are nationals or foreigners (but does not include intragovernmental debt obligations or debt held in the Social Security Trust Fund.) And the total debt is growing….fast.

Throw in the cost of President Obama’s health care reform bill which the Congressional Budget Office says would actually increase, not decrease the total cost of health care and which is expected to cost $1.6 trillion over the next 10 years (in a best case scenario).  

Of course, it’s hard to be sure, since the bill is 1,000 pages long, and we absolutely MUST pass IMMEDIATELY without ample time to read and understand it.

Look, I am actually for health care reform — but not this way.  If we are already dealing with the dual problems of runaway health care costs and huge budget deficits, I’m not sure that passing a proposal to increase the size of both is a good step to take. We are talking about spending huge amounts of money which we arguably do not have and we are talking about programs that impact millions of people.  A little time to read, assess and understand the impact of said legislation is a good thing.

Memo to  the President and Congress — spending money that is not yours and that you have not earned is not hard. Ask any teenager at the local mall.  And they don’t need a degree from Harvard.

Al Franken (D-Saturday Night Live), in what is one of his first duties as senator, asks the Supreme Court nominee about Perry Mason.  (Yeah, I get that he’s trying to be funny/lighten up the atmosphere, but dude…..it’s a judicial nomination hearing, not a circus!)

Actually, I’m happy Franken got this information out there! I don’t think I could have slept at night wondering if this woman had seen Perry Mason. I find it pathetic she didn’t know the name of his “guilty” client, but then since she seems to have trouble remembering much of anything she’s said in the past, I guess we gotta cut her some slack. It’s hard work thinking up plausible lies … er … explanations as to why she’s smarter than non-Latinas. 

Do you ever get the feeling we’re all living in the Twilight Zone?

Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ, the Senate minority whip) suggested that not only should Congress refuse to consider a second stimulus package, they should cancel the current one before it wastes even more money. Rather than point out reasons to support their stimulus package, however, the White House threatened to cut off Arizona’s federal funds in retaliation:

On This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said of the $787 billion stimulus package, “the reality is it hasn’t helped yet. Only about 6.8 percent of the money has actually been spent. What I proposed is, after you complete the contracts that are already committed, the things that are in the pipeline, stop it.”

A day later, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer received letters from Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar all pointing out the billions headed to Arizona.

Kyl “publicly questioned whether the stimulus is working and stated that he wants to cancel projects that aren’t presently underway,” LaHood wrote to Brewer, a Republican. “I believe the stimulus has been very effective in creating job opportunities throughout the country. However, if you prefer to forfeit the money we are making available to your state, as Senator Kyl suggests, please let me know.”

Actually, I prefer you stick it where the sun don’t shine.

It’s our money. Not yours. TaxPAYER money. And we want taxes CUT to stimulate J-O-B-S  (remember them?) from that entity that made the U.S. the top dog economic force in the world — private business.

And don’t Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Department of Housing & Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar have anything better to do?  If all their jobs entail is responding to criticism, then let’s eliminate those jobs, and they can join the 9.5% of Americans who are unemployed.

Over the course of my life, I’ve said thousands of prayers. The emergencies and non-emergencies that seem to need God’s attention at that moment.

But …. I’ve been dealing with some very difficult family situations recently. And I have found myself not praying about those situations. Sometimes, it seems, prayer takes so much faith that we are afraid to ask. Am I afraid to pray because I don’t think God can handle this difficulty?

I know I need more faith and I believe — but don’t believe — that God can rescue us every day because I’m not sure if I deserve his help or that He can love me that much. I am ashamed of the prayers I should have uttered and yet - are still unspoken.

The Obama administration is convinced that Swiss financial company UBS has clients who are tax cheats and wants the company to hand over their client data.  The Swiss government says that such a disclosure would violate the nation’s famed banking privacy laws and is threatening to seize the data from the company before it can be turned over.

A judge ordered the U.S. government to say whether it was prepared to shut Swiss bank UBS AG in the United States as part of a battle to learn the identity of 52,000 secret accounts suspected of being used by Americans to avoid taxes.

Switzerland has vowed to prevent UBS from handing over client information to U.S authorities, in an attempt to defend bank secrecy, and says the tax case targeting its biggest bank is souring diplomatic ties.Washington has accused UBS of hiding nearly $15 billion in assets in secret accounts but the tax litigation is also crucial for the future of the multibillion-dollar wealth management industry and is pushing several offshore banks to force clients to come clean.

The Swiss Justice Ministry said earlier on Wednesday that Swiss law prevents UBS from handing over client information and the government would seize UBS client data, if necessary, to stop that happening.

What I don’t understand is why the administration even wants to pursue this.  Swiss bank accounts, and all the secrecy that go with them, have been around longer than the United States.  And now Obama expects to trample that tradition into the dust in a desperate scramble to reduce deficits by getting at tax evaders?  For what — maybe $15 billion? Waxman-Markey a/k/a Cap & Trade will cost us more than 10 times that per year. Compared to our nearly $2 trillion deficit, $15 billion is like finding 50 cents in the sofa cushions and trying to pay off the mortgage.

Look, there are more productive ways to minimize tax cheating.  How about lowering taxes to the point where people don’t feel justified in fleeing to overseas bank accounts to avoid them.

Or maybe simplifying the tax code so that it’s easier to comply with.  And they can always change the tax code so that it doesn’t give the government access to our entire financial lives whenever they want it on the off chance that one of us might be evading taxes.

But I guess that might make too much sense.  Much better to get into an international showdown with Switzerland.

I’ve been trying to avoid the MJ news as much as possible. It’s already been a circus, and it will probably get even worse in upcoming months as the cause of his death becomes known, and more aspects of his bizarre lifestyle come out. But THIS is why we need to more strictly regulate the whole industry of sperm donors, egg donors, surrogate mothers, whom eggs and babies are given (sold) to, etc. Evidently, one surrogate mother had no idea that the child she was carrying (biologically hers? or somebody else’s?) would ultimately be absorbed into Michael Jackson’s freak show. Shouldn’t she have?

My sympathies are with these children. Regardless of whose they may be biologically, Michael Jackson was they only dad they ever knew: now, they’ve lost a father, and they are in danger of becoming victims of those who will spend the next 20 years preying on Michael’s legacy. Weep for the children.