Through studious ignorance of Congress’ power of the purse?
Rekd, you do realize that using creative accounting and an “emergency” supplement, Bush was able to keep the cost of his wars out of the official budget, right?
There is a development lurking that I fear. Not just loathe, and despise, but actively fear. And that is a Republican theme designed to turn the middle class against the poor, the active theme being those bums and their lucky-ducky benefits are what is dragging down the middle class. Suggesting to the middle class that they could remain middle class if they elect people who will stop giving away their money.
Seems to me that a lot more people in this recession are down-grading, class wise, than in previous recessions. A lot more people who are used to middle and upper middle life styles are being deprived of that, and are angry. Angry in an unfocused way, angry at somebody, but they don’t know who yet.
And that genuinely scares me.
Meh. You’re a liberal, and liberals are always scared of something. If you weren’t scared of these largely erroneous perceptions you’d be scared of something else.
Uh, what? Conservatives are afraid of Muslims, Communists, Socalism, Kenyans, Death Panels, Re-Education Camps, Obama’s Private Army, Czars, Brown People, Gay Sex, and who knows what else?
Liberalism is about pie-in-the-sky hope and optimism. Conservatism is about being a hysterical mewling pussy afraid of change.
The same way it is Bush’s debt, or Reagan’s, or the Clinton surplus.
We blame the President, regardless of who controls the House or the Senate. Foolish really, but we are simply folk who like to give credit to Quarterbacks and Pitchers, and ignore the rest of the team and even the opposition.
Unless, of course, it fits into our personal flavor of blindered partisanship.
The downgrade wasn’t solely, or even a lot to do with the numbers. To be sure, S&P’s statement had a lot of numbers in it, but their analysis doesn’t make any sense based on numbers. Note the fact that after consulting with the Feds S&P modified the U.S. estimated future debt to the tune of, IIRC, 10% of GDP. No, the S&P couldn’t have been more clear on why the U.S. was downgraded:
That right there is your reason for a default. For the first time in the history of our country elected politicians seriously mooted the idea of defaulting on our debt. Several of them contested that defaulting on the debt wouldn’t be that bad, and preferable to giving in on their demands.
Really, the surprising thing here is that the other agencies didn’t downgrade as well. A AAA rating means that an investment is as safe as possible, and virtually risk free. Given the fact that defaulting was seriously considered by those in power, and it looked like a realistic possibility, how can you continue to call US debt risk free?
Nonsense. Conservatives are perfectly fine with change…if it doesn’t do more harm than good.
Which of course is where they butt heads with liberals.
Islamic terrorists are randomly murdering innocent people all over the globe. Communism is responsible for millions of deaths and hundreds of millions of lives lived out in abject misery and deprivation. Only an idiot would not be fearful of it. Conservatives don’t fear “brown people”, that is nonsense. “Death panels” is a euphemism for the decisions that get made when the government can’t (or won’t) pay for all the health care a person would have access to if privately insured, and again anyone with a brain should be fearful of them. I don’t know any conservatives who are afraid of re-education camps or Obama’s so-called private army. And while [del]they[/del] some aren’t really “fearful” of gay sex, they simply think it’s wrong and/or are turned off by the nature of it. You can be critical of that view if you want, but you cannot call it fear if you wish to be even remotely accurate in your use of words.
Further, Wiktionary defines “pie-in-the-sky” as: *“1.A fanciful notion; ludicrous concept; the illusory promise of a desired outcome that is unlikely to happen”. *While I agree with you that this term is almost a textbook definition of what liberalism is all about, I’m at a loss as to why you seem to think that’s a good thing.
Oh? I didn’t see that, thanks for correcting me (where does it state it on the page?). Then again, it probably should’ve been obvious; those amounts did seem ridiculously low. Still, even a few hundred thousand isn’t bank-breaking for Cali in such a situation.
I insult stupid people who make stupid posts because it’s fun. What’s your excuse for making stupid points? Also, am I just imagining things, or are you basically ignoring my points?
Yes; also, no other president has had to deal with such a horrid economy or keeping the banks alive. I love how people bring this up and then ignore:
-That we gave around $1T in one lump sum to the banks just to keep our entire financial system afloat
-That we spent around $700B on a stimulus to keep the economy running and stave off of one of the most brutal global crashes in history
-That we are still in two extremely expensive and deadly wars that Bush started
Sure, maybe Obama ran the deficit up a little more than Bush did of his own volition. But not that much more, and he certainly didn’t raise the debt by the record-breaking numbers you’re bringing up simply with social programs and welfare. He did it because it was either do that or watch America hit the Great Depression 2.0.
Actually, despite the fact that the crashes of the financial and industrial sectors can be blamed widely on deregulation that happened under Bush, Bush sr., Clinton, and Reagan, Obama has been very, very courteous about it, and hasn’t really blamed Bush (even though that would’ve been the easy way out). No, the people blaming Bush are exclusively Obama’s base, unless I’m missing something here.
Actually, we aren’t that bad, all things considered…
We’re at 37th place if we go by Eurostat’s estimate with around 59% GDP. That’s actually not that bad, especially when compared to other first-world countries like Japan (225%), Greece (144%), Iceland (123.8%), Italy (118.1%)… You get the point. 59% of GDP in debt is completely realistic to make back, but not if our country is in an economic slump.
Now, the IMF? They have us at 11th, with 92.9% GDP. That’s a good bit worse… But still better than Japan, Greece, Italy, Iceland, and Belgium, and not much worse than France or Canada. Again, debt of 92.9% GDP? Not a huge issue. An issue, to be sure, and something to deal with, but not the end of the world.
I’m going to quote Paul Krugman here…
Yes, I recall. When liberals invented blowjobs in the '60s it was downhill from there.
Randomly?
Sure.
I’m not afraid of Communism. Do you think China or Cuba is going to start a war here?
No, it’s true. Tea Partiers especially.
It doesn’t exist. You’re afraid because of a lie told to you by conservative media.
Go to the freepers. They’re out there. Some conservatives are even more stupid than you are.
They fear a world where gays have all the rights of straights. Is that closer to the truth?
Because if you don’t shoot for the moon, you stay huddled in your cave.
The failure of conservatism is to assume that what we have is good enough. It isn’t. Our society has advanced because of liberals. Conservatives are just a brake to slow change down. The trouble is, they want to stop us completely or like you, want to move us backward.
Sadly, for you, we have the mighty power of the itrarweb and can find the actual origins of the original use and meaning of the phrase*.
- Now it is true that after Betsy McCaughey got her ass handed to her on The Daily Show of all places the phrase was recycled into something else that also was a lie.
CMC fnord!
That is factually incorrect for pitchers. When a relief pitcher comes in, any existing base runners are the previous pitchers responsibility and count toward the previous pitchers ERA.
Bush left us with the bases loaded, no outs, and a pitch count of 3-0.
It might be factually incorrect, but it is how amateurs view the game. This is the same with politics. You want to give Bush all of the blame, ignoring any impact the Democrats might have had on some of the policies that got us here. That is fine - this is the pit. But it is pathetic, and shows an infantile understanding of the world.
You’re not imagining things. I’ll be checking back to see if Rekd ignores your new points, too.
Thank god we have mature people like you, because name calling and other juvenile behavior would suck.
And what of me?
Yep, same old story. It’s Death Panels if the government defines the health benefits, but when insurance companies do it, it’s just good business sense.
If I have to choose between a government bureaucrat making a decision about health benefits and an insurance company employee that is paid to avoid paying out benefits, I’ll take the poorly motivated government worker every single time. It’s kind of funny when conservatives lose confidence in capitalism.
For bonus points, which President’s budget was in effect when Obama took office? And whose 10 year tax cut program was in effect? And whose wars were in effect?
You’re doing the math wrong.
When someone hands you the wheel of a car headed downhill, you’re not responsible for the increased braking distance required. And most folks would give you credit for not hitting bottom.
Most of the Tea Party would probably think you’re* one of the good ones*.
[
](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/17/opinion/crashing-the-tea-party.html)
Like… what? It’s not like there are two separate entities independently contributing to a disaster where the actions of one do not intersect with the other. Legislation goes through a stream with the President effectively at the top.
Your statement might have some merit if the Democrats did something like attach a few stipulations that forced the GOP to compromise in such a way to get the wider project through. See debt ceiling negotiations. That would be something at least. If this is what you’re arguing, I’d A) love to hear what they were. and B) how this was worse than what the GOP counterparts wanted.
If that’s too abstract, imagine you have two countries, Atlantis and Mu, who are allied and trying to put their resources together so that they can have a credible national defense against the invading forces of Lemuria, who have an army stronger than either of them but not as much as both. Military experts calculate that they need 20,000 gold pieces from the treasury to buy the equipment / mercenaries / food to win the needed battle and neither country has anything in the treasury right now. And this is the bare minimum needed to have a Pyrrhic Victory, not some curb stomping victory lap amount; meaning that if you go any lower than this no matter how close to the tipping point you may as well not spend any money, you’ll outright lose. After some Ubu Rui-style tragicomedic hilarity involving emergency taxes each country raises 15,000 gold.
Atlantis immediately puts up 10k of the needed 15k for a credible national defense, the rest going towards things like, I dunno, trimmings on the king’s curtains. Mu however only puts up 3000 gold pieces towards national defense with the rest being buried in a field. Atlantis badgers the hell out of its ally to put up more of the money but Mu replies that if they really want national defense they should put up the whole amount. For whatever reason this doesn’t happen, not enough money is spend and both countries are ruthlessly underneath the heels of their Lemurian enemies and have to sign unequal treaties.
Even if the calculus shifted so that Mu offered 6000 gold pieces of the 15k and Atlantis ‘only’ offered 13k (let’s call this Scenario B) the fall of the countries still aren’t equally their fault. Even though Atlantis could have put up the rest of the cash the fact remains that Mu has to take a greater share of the responsibility because Atlantis went a lot further than their buddy. Yes, even though in Scenario A Atlantis has no share of the responsibility (even if they paid the full amount it wouldn’t have been enough) the result is still not ‘equal shares of blame’ even though Atlantis could covered the gap in the financial burden. Hell, if Mu flat out said that there’s no way in hell they’re going to put up more than 3000 gold pieces (dumping the rest into the ocean to hold to the threat) Lemuria may as well have not spent anything on national defense and have spent the money however they pleased; it’d be ridiculous to say that Lemuria should’ve magically put up the 15k gold pieces anyway because it still wouldn’t have done any good.
Savvy?