And if Bush & Co. had listened to warnings, we might not have had the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil under his watch.
Clinton has nothing to do with Reagan being a horrible president. Reagan did more to fuck the middle and lower class in this country than anyone else I can think of. And I was there, too.
Maybe but it was worth the risk.
Well, thank goodness we’ve gotten rid of witch burning and human sacrifice then.
NO HE DID NOT.
I won’t even bother asking for a cite. I’ll just give you the real numbers, seen in this graph, which is sourced to the White House’s 2011 budget document:
As a percentage of GDP, Reagan increased the debt from 33.4% to 51.9% over 8 years.
In nominal dollars, he increased the debt by 1.7 Trillion dollars, from a starting point of about 1 trillion.
In constant 1981 dollars (calculated here), he raised the debt by about 1.25 trillion, from a starting point of just under a trillion - increasing the debt by slightly more than a factor of two over eight years.
In four years, Obama will increase the debt by an estimated 6.35 trillion dollars, and as a percentage of GDP it will increase from 69.2% to 100.8%. That’s using the Administration’s own forcecast, mind you. Experience tells us it will be significantly higher.
In constant 1981 dollars, Obama’s increase is 2.68 trillion.
Looked at annually, in constant 1981 dollars, Reagan increased the debt by 156 billion dollars per year. Obama’s increase of the debt in 1981 dollars is $670 billion per year - a rate of increase a little over four times greater.
Reagan doesn’t hold a candle to Obama in terms of piling on the debt, and his increase was nowhere near the four times you claim it was.
There was plenty of it. I suggest you google “Bush Deficits”, and restrict the search to pre-2009 results. You’ll find more than you can read.
But speaking of Bush: using the same source above, he increased the deficit by a total of 11.9% of GDP over 8 years. Obama is predicting an increase of 36.4% in half that time.
So if there is a lot more concern about the debt today than there was in the past, it might just be because the debt is now being increased at a rate that makes Bush look like a miser.
“Would have been” instead of “was” makes it a correct sentence. A crazy, stupid sentiment, but grammatically correct.
I might have prevented a termite infestation by farting into my crawlspace.
Are you serious? How many excess civilian deaths as a result of “preemptive strikes” in the Middle East would have been acceptable to save 5,000 American lives? Ignoring altogether the fact you couldn’t be sure you prevented what never happens.
Says the person who wasn’t in any danger. If you come across this post in 10 years, you will be ashamed of the sentiment you just expressed.
Not to return to the OP or anything, but here’s a nice contemporary take on Reagan in the pages of Captain America Vol 1 344; 1988:
:dubious: No, you did not write that.
It’s certain that Al-Qaeda was behind Cole so a short surgical strike with minimal civilian casualties (certainly fewer than 3,000) was possible and that at least is better than nothing.
Is there something he didn’t tell Nancy about?
Not until Clinton was out of office.
Holy shit, 3000 innoncent people is “minimal?” That’s how many died in 9/11. That’s a fucking major massacre, and a major outrage to the world, to maybe get two or three kooks? That’s insane.
But be that as it may, it was Bush’s decision, not Clinton’s.
Funny how when it’s 3000 of “them,” we’re fine with it, but when it’s 3000 of us, we go collectively insane and demand apocalyptic justice.
Were you a military strategist in 2000? On what do you base your assertion that a “short surgical strike” could have prevented 9/11? Or is that even what you are saying?
Wishful thinking is one thing, but actively advocating the deaths of innocent civilians for uncertain outcomes is completely illogical. Would you mind if I killed you, and your family, and your neighborhood, and the 10 surrounding neighborhoods, because I “knew” that one or two of the inhabitants would be suicide bombers? What evidence would you require before you’d consider it acceptable for me to kill you and your family?
Judging from some of the threads that you’ve started, Curtis, I would say that you’re a religious, God fearing Christian; as such, how can you possibly advocate mass murder?
But it was even back than more or less probable that Al-Qaeda was behind it.
I’m not killing about 3,000 people-obviously a surgical strike/commando operation would kill far fewer-not a single bombing campaign of the War on Terror has killed that many.