I dunno what’s wrong with me, but at first glance I saw this as
OMG, he’s got a big boner!
You might see a recession but the results would be far better than continuing this out of control spending.
Interest payments on the growing national debt will eventually force spending to be cut.
I’m sure that outrages them too.
It would be just as accurate to refer to debt held by the public or 11,253,532,918,838.73, thereby ignoring money that the government owes to itself. Depending upon the context.
So no, it would be silly for Obama to enter into that pretty much wholly irrelevant conversation.
There’s no policy misrepresentation here. No substance. But it does give us insight into the modern conservative mentality, which leads them to get their panties in a twist over pretty much everything.
For those with a passing interest in reality:
http://www.cepr.net/calculators/calc_deficit.html
http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/06/chart-of-the-day-reminder-the-deficit-youre-freaking-out-about-is-bushs-fault.php?ref=fpblg
Thanks for the link, pkbites ! I watched until the 2:02 mark. What struck me most was how Obama, in just two minutes, expressed more wisdom about the deficit than the combined GOP can muster in a 5-hour rant-a-thon.
BTW, I only skimmed the thread. Has anyone yet explained why knowledge of the precise debt figure is key to the President’s doing his job?
But to be fair, try keeping your panties untwisted when you take a “wide stance”.
No one said anything about knowing the precise debt, since any figure given at any point in time would be wrong, given how fast the debt grows. But you would think Obama would know how big the debt was, given how he criticized Bush for adding trillions to it. If Bush was unpatriotic, then Obama must be a traitor.
(Oh, wait. Obama can do no wrong.)
Uh, no, YOU would think it, maybe, since you think “Gotchas” are so important. We want our President to remember figures that matter, figures that he can control any time soon. The real issue is why the GOP refuses to work with him in a meaningful way on the issues we elected him to act upon. If they want some deficit-reduction, that’s so important to them, let them try to show the President that, in exchange for real work on that issue, they’re eager to give him some of what HE thinks is important. Instead, it’s gridlock, foot-dragging, filibuster, spiteful, pointless demagogery all the way down the line.
This can only be resolved one way (unless you change your entire way of dealing with a democratically elected President): by grinding you into the dust and getting legislation through the Congress his vision with a Democratic supermajority. I hope you enjoy being ignored, because we won’t feel all that bad when it happens.
One thing OMG and I agree on, I think, is that there just might be a little too much hyperbole, from time to time. I normally don’t respond to OMG, since we have nothing to teach each other, but this couldn’t be passed up:
Wow. Or, rather, Wow! Please do display the syllogism that reaches this conclusion.
(But if it’s just going to be the usual right-wing rant that “That’s what you liberals would say”, do please give a cite. When I search for your pet themes like “Rich == Evil” the only Doper hits I get are on Dopers like you, pretending liberal Dopers say that.)
That’s very likely true. I’m trying to pick up your angle here, are you picking up the sword of truth and conceding that Bush also was a giant dickhole, or are you rejoicing in wallowing in the same pig shit of dumb dishonest arguments as liberal apologists?
After considering the odds of a conservative making an honest argument, I’ll take pig shit for $100, Alex.
It’s duck season!
— Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), 16 March 2006
Let’s end all this politicking and bickering right now.
We send Obama and Romney with identical shopping lists to a typical Kroger supermarket. The first one to figure out how to find the stuff and pay for it is a Man of the People, and wins the election.
(cue anguished complaints from Republicans)
I think it’s pretty clear (and should be more apparent given the arguments from the conservative posters in this thread). They’re trying to portray Obama as a Keynsian unconcerned with the national debt. Hypocritically, as Sanders points out, given two unfunded wars coupled with a tax cut from the previous administration.
It bears repeating that one remedy would be adopting a universal healthcare system in order to reduce costs to European levels.
The argument is certainly familiar, though it wasn’t made by a liberal last I heard it.
Dawkins referred to a hypothesis that humans in general are familiar with certain numbers and that at very large or small scales our intuition breaks down (though some people, especially those with autism, are adept at handling them). I can’t find a source for that though.
I understand the Republican desperation. Your candidate would fuck up a two car parade. He’s making Dukakis look positively charismatic. He makes Marie Antoinette look like Mother Teresa. You’ve got a loser with a capital L. The buzzards are just waiting for him to stop walking. It’s going so bad for Mittens right now, he’d actually benefit by the release of a sex tape. So you want to reach out and try to find something, anything at all, to say about Obama. I know. It hurts. But it’s not working. It isn’t going to work. If Obama walked on water, you’d start shouting “OMG! Obama can’t swim!” But nobody would listen. We’re all too busy listening to Mitt tell us he can’t make the 47% learn self reliance, like they’re some savage tribe unused to the ways of civilization. Maybe they need Ann to teach them how to use Tupperware for those holiday leftovers. Maybe the great unwashed need to watch dancing horses to learn some culture. It doesn’t matter. Mitt’s campaign coffin has been nailed securely shut. You’re going to live with Obama for four more years. Harry Reid is going to remain Senate Majority Leader. The way it’s going now, Nancy Pelosi is going to be Speaker. It’s over. Time to stop trying to belittle Obama and find your loser for 2016 to run against Hillary.
Man, imaginary me is such a jerk.
He also stole my wallet and claimed he was going to “redistribute” it to some local hookers as part of a “stimulus package”. He then prayed to a picture of Obama, burned a flag and took “In God We Trust” off the currency.
Can we include the discussion of Obama creating his own American flag for fund-raising in this thread to keep the Obama outrage contained?
One thing Obama knows is we had a* surplus *until Bush took over. But, in those days, “Deficits didn’t matter.” I don’t care if the president knows the precise amount of the debt, as long as he continues advancing policies to improve our financial situation.
The fact that some guy on SDMB doesn’t think it is a problem gives me no grief. The fact that the likely winner of November’s election doesn’t think it is a problem disturbs, but does not surprise.
What does Mr. Obama consider the short run? 2 years? 4 years? What happens when interest rates rise? I believe Mr. Obama will be awakened to the mistaken assumptions of his economic advisors in his second term. The question is, will he double down, or will he look at the “empirical” evidence and listen to the folks who predicted it this time. The former makes him an ideologue, the latter a pragmatist. In any case it’s likely his response will be irrelevent. Default is an inevitibility at this point.