On Wednesday, President Obama addressed the nation to talk about the deficit problem. Theannual deficit is the amount of money our government spends in a year that is not covered by the taxes we pay. That is opposed to the national debt, which is the accumulation of these deficits.

Currently, our deficit is $1.65 trillion. To put that in perspective, if one dollar equaled one second, it would take over 52,000 years to equal this year’s deficit. I don’t think my poor little calculator could do the math on our over $14 trillion of accumulated debt.

Obviously something needs to be done. We either need more money coming in, or less money going out. As pointed out on IowaHawk’s blog, not enough money realistically exists to cover our expenditures. Therefore, we must reduce our spending to balance the budget and begin to pay down our tremendous debt.

According to Reuters, 59% of Americans would cut programs to reduce deficit spending, while 30% would raise taxes to cover the cost. President Obama agreed in Wednesday’s speech that cutting some spending might be necessary … right before he slammed Republicans for trying to lead us to a fundamentally different America than the one he’s known.

Read the rest at The Stir

I didn’t get a chance to post about this yesterday. I was busy. Writing a new article for CafeMom The Stir, recording The Smart Girl Report, and it’s Easter break for Thing 1, so I had twice as many children to parent yesterday as I normally do. Plus I got my Master Card bill and had a stroke. Right after I hid the offensive document in the bottom of the toy box. Maybe Barbie will pay it for me. That chick has a dream house and a Corvette. She can afford it.

Or maybe bad guys will blow us up and it won’t matter whether or not I actually paid my credit card bill.

From Yahoo News:

Kicking off a hectic week for Obama’s nuclear agenda, his administration rolled out a strategy review that renounced U.S. development of new atomic weapons and could herald further cuts in America’s stockpile.

“We are taking specific and concrete steps to reduce the role of nuclear weapons while preserving our military superiority, deterring aggression and safeguarding the security of the American people,” Obama said in remarks issued by the White House.

The United States for the first time is forswearing use of atomic weapons against non-nuclear countries, a break with a Bush-era threat of nuclear retaliation in the event of a biological or chemical attack.

But this comes with a major condition. Those countries would be spared a U.S. nuclear response only if they are in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran and North Korea would thus not be protected.

So the only regimes we’ll actually consider nuking are ones that have or are developing nuclear weapons themselves? Ugh. Maybe President Obama should take a clue from President Teddy Roosevelt: Walk softly and carry a big stick. Ever since we developed nuclear weapons, we’ve had the biggest and the baddest. As it should be. We should always be a step ahead of everyone else.

Why is that a bad thing?

We don’t have to use them, but it’s good to know we could if we needed to. And guess what? It’s good for the bad guys to know that too. It sends a message to them: Don’t mess with us. You’ll regret it. We need a big stick so that we can wallop anyone that tries to knock us down.

It’s a difficult concept, I know. Almost as challenging as trying to understand that when you charge something, you eventually get the bill. Geez this administration is having a hard time adding two and two together. Must be that new math.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go fold six loads of laundry. That or nuke it. I haven’t decided yet.