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I voted for Palin.
All of Obama's debt is to repair an economy and healthcare system savagely destroyed by the culmination of Reaganomics. All of the Republican debt went to enriching the wealthy and killing brown skinned people/American soldiers.
I voted for Palin.
It does.
Obama isn't spending any money to kill "brown skinned people"?
And even if its intended purpose is to repair an economy "savagely destroyed by the culmination of Reaganomics" does that make it right to spend more money than we will be able to pay back in years?
How, when I searched for posts for me, it only showed till 5-2009... Unless that was an arguement on Spurscorrall.com or SpursReport.com. Which in that case, its probably gone forever. I forget when I started posting in here actively.
If you posted here before then, use a keyword to narrow down the search. I believe there is a limit to the number of results shown.
Tried that. Probably what happened was that the discussion was on the now defunct SpursCorral.com.
Yes, because 8 summers after 2001, he's decided to clean up the Taliban. But he's certainly not going out of his way to drop a 'shock & awe' campaign on people who pose absolutely zero threat to us whatsoever.
I don't know. I don't even see a place for moral condemnation. We're creatures of cir stance. Any moral conclusions we draw are relative to 2.5 questions:And even if its intended purpose is to repair an economy "savagely destroyed by the culmination of Reaganomics" does that make it right to spend more money than we will be able to pay back in years?
Would the economic consequences of inaction equal or outweigh any that we're taking on by interventionist government spending? The answer is yes; rapidly, with a more human toll. In that same vein, could Obama be handling it better? Again the answer is yes, but that begs another question.
Could the only other viable opposition party in America (The GOP) do any better? ing no. Republicans can talk all they want about reigning in spending, but they're straight up selling snake oil. These people had their shot and proved to be utterly incompetent and/or evil/corrupt in just about every way imaginable. I mean seriously, the nerve of the GOP to get all chest out after the trainwreck that was the 2000's is just beyond me.
So yeah, could Obama be doing some things differently, sure, but right now he's BY FAR the best we got... and trying to vilify him morally, especially when it's coming from Bushies, is a joke.
Who gives a about morals. Spending money that you don't have is just stupid. Period ing dot.
Sure, it sucks to be fiscally responsible, but we've dug ourselves a hole as a nation by everyone, from the common man to the biggest corporation, to the government, spending more than they take in. So, the solution for the common man is to save rather than spend, but the solution for the government is to spend and then spend some more? Does that make any sense? This behavior is what got us to this place to start with, so we are just going to repeat it, but on a grander scale? 50 years down the road, when we are bajillions of dollars in debt, and no one will loan us anymore money, and we can't pay our bills as a nation, what is the solution then? Keep spending?
Then you shouldn't have ambiguously framed the question in terms of whether it's 'right' or not. A clearer question would have been does it make economic sense.
Either way, a lot of hypocrites are gunning for Obama as if he were conducting some master plan to destroy America. So whether or not that's what you meant... meh, plenty of other people morally condemn him.
Some of us have, not me, but mostly, as you well know, this situation was created by huge corporations banking (pun intended) on that bad debt.Sure, it sucks to be fiscally responsible, but we've dug ourselves a hole as a nation by everyone, from the common man to the biggest corporation, to the government, spending more than they take in.
According to the only working economic theory we've found (Keynesian), yes. For the time being. And why should the common man save? Now's the time to buy.So, the solution for the common man is to save rather than spend, but the solution for the government is to spend and then spend some more? Does that make any sense?
Last edited by balli; 07-28-2009 at 03:34 PM. Reason: typography
So you would argue that the government needs to spend far, far more than they currently are? If we are suggesting, as you did, that Keynesian economics are the only economics that works, that would make sense. I don't necessarily believe it to be true, but I'm way out of my field with economics. I just know that debt is bad for me, and IMO, its bad for the government, especially when there doesn't seem to be any effort to pay off that debt during the boom times. Also, after reading over Keynesian economics a little just now, I think that our government is spending far too much, far too soon for the scale of the recession we are in.
I'm more than a layman too, but to paraphrase the words of Larry David, a good compromise is when both parties are dissatisfied. That's Keynesian theory to a T, so IMO, it's the best we got.
Whether Obama's implementing it correctly or not I couldn't assert with any real factual knowledge. All I can say is that I voted for him, that I believe him to be a competent and good man and that I think he's trying the hardest he can to repair one of a mess. At some point, it becomes an issue of trust. And I trust him.
Like you and I both admitted, we're just trying to make sense of a world we don't understand, so I'm not going to pretend to know whether what Obama's doing is as efficient as it could be. Some of the things he's done have seemed smart to me, others not so. But according to what limited knowledge I have, I think he could be doing a whole lot worse. On an anecdotal level, I know my dad's small business is still turning a profit and that recent governement spending has helped my sister to buy a house. Those are good things IMO. And they wouldn't have happened if the major banks had started failing or if the wider economic conditions had further eroded.
And on a fundamental level, I disagree entirely with the notion that the fed didn't need to intervene in the economy at all. That would have been suicide.
Eh, phoenix and all that, from ashes, rebirth. I'm dissatisfied with the general pattern of the traditional business model, I think our nation is far to reliant on being a service nation, and not enough production of goods, so on an intellectual level, I wouldn't mind a refactoring of our economy. I do realize though that it isn't the best thing for the individual (yes, I believe in understatement).
I have repeatedly said I understand deficit spending for wars and for recessions. Not bailouts and social programs.
I just burned your strawman.[/QUOTE]
If you understand deficit spending for wars and recessions as you clearly stated above, then are you saying that you DID approve of the Bush tax cuts that contributed 1.35 TRILLION to the national deficit? And if you did approve of Bush's policies, which resulted in the doubling of the national debt during his tenure, then why do you oppose the deficit spending for the same wars (Iraq and Afghanistan) that we had during the Bush Administration, and the stimulus spending for the recession, which was manifestly in place for the last four quarters of the Bush Administration, and has continued into the first two quarters of the Obama Administration?
It seems to me that the 'born again' fiscal conservatives that declaim the current stimulus package show themselves to be willing to take tax cuts for themselves from my grandchildren, but claim that a stimulus package that was smaller than the Bush tax cuts and that included more tax cuts ( but for different people) than during the Bush years along with some jobs programs ( horrrors!) are fiscally irresponsible are just exhibiting an internal inhcoherence.
The bottom line here is not..."if it is for war or recession it is ok". The bottom line is "if a Democrat supports it, even if it is for a war or a recession, it is not ok".
Personally, I don't agree with the tax cuts under Bush OR Obama because we can't afford them, and I don't believe that road construction projects have much to do with the overall economy. I just can't stand listening to hypocrisy from people who don't mind spending my grandchildren's money if it is going into their own pockets, but don't want to spend any to provide jobs for the folks who really want to work and support their families.
Wow... Your assumptions are so idiotic, I almost ignoted you.It wasn't the tax cuts that attributed to the deficits. They kept the deficits from being larger. The economy was already falling, indicators started in 1998 or 1999 that it would happen. President Bush inherited a recession. Deficit spending was already going to be reality without the financial impact of 9/121 and the war that followed. I would argue that the money we spent on our military actions prevented farther catastrophes. Of course, that is not a certainty.
It was not president Bush's policies alone that almost doubled the debt. Now keep in mind, it only increased by about 50% inflation adjusted.
If you have follow any of my remarks, you know you are making false assumptions. I do not support everything president Bush has done. I was fully against the bailout he signed.
You clearly don't understanf that the economy is dynamic, and that the tax cuts actually increased economic growth and federal revenues. Tax collections would have been lower without the tax cuts.
Are you done talking out your ignorant-anus yet?
Go buy a clue.
I know more about macroeconomics than you can ever learn in several lifetimes. The empirical evidence that shows that the tax cuts (which were a stimulus plan, of course) DIRECTLY contributed to the deficits is compelling, if one accepts empiricism rather than right wing babble. Supply side economics, the theory underpinning the tax cuts, has been shown by repeated Nobel-winning economists to be a failure, but right wing politicos reassert it as gospel, most frequently accompanied by sop ric references to bodily parts and functions. It is as pathetic as the ill-conceived assertions.
Amen
Wait until he starts babbling about the successes of trickle down economics, THEN you heard it all.
That's as idiotic as those in the past believing that the Earth was flat and that CO2 causes Global Warming. First off, empirical evidence is bull until it is tried and tested. You also have to remove the other factors that affect the results, or you have no valid data.
History has repeatedly shown that tax cuts work. You stop short at only looking at the evidence you want to see.
Bush Bad! Bush Bad! Bush Bad! Bush Bad! Bush Bad! Bush Bad! Bush Bad! Bush Bad!
Bush never met a federal spending increase he didn't like. Medicare Part D should have been the end of any thought whatsoever that he was a fiscal conservative. Lest we forget the other philosophical diversions from conservativism, such as "No Child Left Behind."
Naturally Cobra Commander and Yanni think conservatism is about spending a lot on the military to shoot up brown folk in the Middle East to prove that the US has a large male appendage.
Again and again and again we find "conservatives" excusing some action of the Bush administration, even when it's painfully obvious that there was nothing traditionally conservative about that administration, and much which flew right in the face of the Cons ution, a do ent of which Our Lord, Our Savior, George W. Christ was not a fan.
Are we saying he's a fiscal conservative? What fantasy land do you live in?Idiot. You are flat out an idiot. You obviously cannot defend your point of view against the facts, so you lie about our point of view.
I find it offensive that people actually try to pin deficit spending on one political party.
Newsflash: nearly every contemporary president has expanded government power and spent money that they don't have.
Also, conservatives are only called conservatives relative to the other party platform. It has nothing to do with actually being conservative on anything other than biblical social issues. The GOP and the dems will both rack up debt in the name of unnecessary war/social programs/fixing the economy/$50,000 toilets/self-pay raises or whatever else comes their way.
It isn't their money and their cons uents apparently could care less. People love big government. How else do we allow income tax to be amended to the cons ution and fight wars of aggression?
It must be tough for you reading through the threads in this forum. They often consist of little else. That and personal insults
How insolent of you to take the long, historical view, and emphasize that we've been headed down this road for about a hundred years with the continuous approval/participation of both parties and the people who elected them to office.
Real Americans prefer patriotic cant to history lessons. How dare you bring American history into this, Sir. I consider it shameless, un-American, and unforgivable.
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