Cut Spending or Raise Taxes: Veronique de Rugy weighs in with some FACTS: What a concept!

 This is a breath of fresh air.  Listening to the Debt Ceiling debates has been like sitting in a steam room at the Y with a bunch of guys that went to Wurstfest last night.

The Facts About Spending Cuts, the Debt, and the GDP

Separating economic myths from economic truths

Veronique de Rugy | July 29, 2011

An excerpt from the article:

Raising the debt limit might put off a downgrade disaster in August, but that still isn’t enough—as Standard & Poor’s recent warning made clear. Perhaps the most important shot not heard around the world was S&P’s other admonition: Namely, that the U.S. bond rating will be downgraded in three months, if not sooner, unless we do something about government spending. Beyond raising the debt limit, S&P laid out clear criteria for avoiding a downgrade: 1) reduce the debt by about $4 trillion; 2) agree to a credible plan within three months; and 3) guarantee that this newfound fiscal discipline will actually stick.

The Real Difference between Democrats and Republicans

A friend posted this joke on his Facebook page.  I routinely fact check jokes because if one is accustomed to using relaxed (sub-par) intellectual standards it will be particularly apparent in a joke where they expect no critical reading of the facts.

In this case I read the joke carefully to gain the full benefit of the humor (which I enjoyed) and to glean the information contained therein.   I check the facts, and if required by the facts, rewrite the joke to reflect the facts discovered.  In this case the facts represented in the joke are wrong, and indicate another conclusion than that represented by the punch line, so I rewrote the joke to reflect the actual facts.

What follows is both the original joke and the rewrite.

 The most important fact was that at least the woman knew she was lost.