The repository of one hard-boiled egg from the south suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (and the occassional guest-blogger). The ramblings within may or may not offend, shock and awe you, but they are what I (or my guest-bloggers) think.
Good news – out of the 6 games I had an interest in today, my teams won all 6. Yes, Gonzaga, Duke and Purdue (yes, I did take a couple of Big Ten teams to be Sweet) were too close, but as the title says, I had no further damage.
Now, the bad news – because North Carolina and Villanova both won, I can do no better than 3rd in the AoSHQ bracket. At least I have more teams locked into the Sweet 16 than locked out.
That’s the stuff that President Obama’s budget appears to have been made of.
The Congressional Budget Office took a “preliminary analysis” of Obama’s budget and found some, let’s just say, “challenges.”
Largely as a result of the enactment of recent legislation and the continuing turmoil in financial markets, CBO’s baseline projections of the deficit have risen by more than $400 billion in both 2009 and 2010 and by smaller amounts thereafter. Those projections assume that current laws and policies remain in place. Under that assumption, CBO now estimates that the deficit will total almost $1.7 trillion (12 percent of GDP) this year and $1.1 trillion (8 percent of GDP) next year—the largest deficits as a share of GDP since 1945. Deficits would shrink to about 2 percent of GDP by 2012 and remain in that vicinity through 2019.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg:
As estimated by CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation, the President’s proposals would add $4.8 trillion to the baseline deficits over the 2010–2019 period.
The cumulative deficit from 2010 to 2019 under the President’s proposals would total $9.3 trillion, compared with a cumulative deficit of $4.4 trillion projected under the current-law assumptions embodied in CBO’s baseline. Debt held by the public would rise, from 41 percent of GDP in 2008 to 57 percent in 2009 and then to 82 percent of GDP by 2019 (compared with 56 percent of GDP in that year under baseline assumptions).
Oh, if you’re buying the “we’ll raise the tax rate and it will bring in more revenue” canard:
Proposed changes in tax policy would reduce revenues by an estimated $2.1 trillion over the next 10 years.
Every time Obama asks for confirmation of another appointee we hear that his administration hires the “best and brightest.” If that’s so, they must be coming from the public school systems because the CBO says they aren’t able to do some simple math:
Our estimates of deficits under the President’s budget exceed those anticipated by the Administration by $2.3 trillion over the 2010-2019 period.
Oops!
And that whole “inflation capping at 8.1%” because of the stimulus pixie dust; um, nope!
In this forecast, the unemployment rate peaks at 9.4 percent in late 2009 and early 2010 and remains above 7.0 percent through the end of 2011.
For those of you who learn visually, here is the graph that says it all. According to the CBO, if we would leave the horrible, awful policies of George Bush in place, we would see the deficit run at about 1/4 to 1/3 the rate compared to enacting the policies of the oh so enlightened Barack Obama:
Yes, President Obama and staff appear to have as much understanding of what it takes to manage long term economics as Lesley Gore did about maintaining long term relationships.
Well, we’re through the first round, and it’s time to review the damage so far. First, let’s take the shredded predictions:
The Marquette Care Bear…er, Golden Chickens will be able to beat the rush out of Boise tomorrow.Oops; they somehow survived Utah State.Unfortunately, because they’re the nightcap, the Wisconsin Bagders can’t say the same.Actually, the Badgers managed to come back to force OT and ultimately win.
– Once again, no #16 seed will win. Louisville did have a 1st-half scare, and East Tennessee State almost closed the deal on Pitt. However, the #16s are now a perfect 0-100 in the actual tourney (not counting the play-in game between #64 and #65).
–This year’s Cindy is Butler, with Mississippi State being the lowest-seeded 1st-round winner.Picked the wrong Horizon team; Cleveland State was the lowest-seed 1st-round winner.
–Call me crazy, but I see three Big Ten teams making it out of the first round.Off by 1.
– For those of you participating in the third annual “Which #1 will be knocked out first” poll, I am not calling for a repeat of last year’s all-#1 Final Four. In fact, Pitt and UNC will not make the Sweet 16. Yet to be determined.
Only the safest of predictions came in, and then only because Pitt finally got the choke out of their throats. So, what did that do to the bracket?
– 11 first-round losses
– 5 games completely meaningless to me this weekend
– A quarter of my Elite Eight dead and buried
– My Southern regional champ packed up and back in class
I could look on the bright side and point out my national championship game is intact. However, I tend to say, “I positively hate this fucking place,” when asked for a positive attitude check. Instead, I’ll apply some statistical analysis:
Current-round loss rate – 11/32
Next-round loss rate – 5/16
3rd-round-out loss rate – 1/4 (call it a bit higher)
4th-round-out loss rate – 1/4 (call it a bit lower)
Projected number of missing Sweet 16 teams after 2nd round = 5 + (11 * 11/32) = 9 missing Sweet 16 teams
Projected number of missing Elite 8 teams after 2nd round = 2 + (6 * 5/16) = 4 missing Elite 8 teams
Projected number of missing Final 4 teams after 2nd round = 1 + (3 * 1/4) = 2 missing Final 4 teams
Estimated probability of missing at least one of the National Championship Game teams after the 2nd round = 50%
I could extrapolate further, but it’s too depressing.
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