Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Here Is Something To Think About

Steve Benen adds this:
"During their reign, Republicans took an annual surplus of a quarter of a trillion dollars and, in just eight years, turned it into a $1.2 trillion deficit. The GOP added $5 trillion to the national debt, and inexplicably put two tax cuts, two wars, Medicare Part D, and No Child Left Behind on the national charge card, left for some future generation to worry about.

If fiscal responsibility is the new chief concern of voters, they literally couldn't find a less qualified, less credible bunch than the congressional Republican caucus.

But wait, our conservative friends remind us, that was the recent past. What about the ongoing deficit problems on the Dems' watch? The answer isn't complicated. As Michael Ettlinger and Michael Linden recently explained: "The policies of the Bush administration, which included tax cuts during a time of war and a floundering economy, are clearly the primary source of the current deficits."

And what of those recent reports about deficit projections rising from $7 trillion to $9 trillion? The bottom line, Kevin Drum recently noted, is simple: "[P]roperly accounted for, the deficit actually goes down when you compare Obama's budget proposals to current policy, not up."

If Americans want to prioritize deficit reduction, fine. But they should at least recognize who has credibility on the issue, and who doesn't."

Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Driftglass raises his hand to ask the President the right question

"When do we publicly stop pretending that the modern Right does not despise this country -- our country -- and can never be appeased and will never be satisfied until everything that we care about and everything this nation should be proud of is buried in an unmarked, mass grave beneath a single, White, Christian Conservative WalMart that stretches from sea to shining sea, and whose Electronics section shows nothing but acre after acre of teevees, all turned to FoxNews -- now just called The News -- featuring an endless loop of President Palin and Vice President Beck ranting and baiting about the next group of sinister, imaginary enemies at which they have decided to point their army of slack-jawed, single-digit-IQ "patriots".

That is the hard truth about what is breaking this nation's back, and your job above all else is to look the American people in the eye and tell us the hard truths that we don't want to hear, and that our media categorically will not discuss for fear of losing market share.

Your job is to lead.

To. Lead. Us.

And if you are not up for that hard job, then what in the world are you doing in our White House?"


bc

Friday, September 04, 2009

The "Success" Of The George W. Bush Administration

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We progressives look at the last administration and see nothing but failure. We are not looking at it with the right pair of glasses. Oh, no. It was anything but a failure.

You see, the republican party believes that government cannot be trusted. It cannot do anything right. But they were unsuccessful in getting large numbers of Americans to believe what they were saying. Then along came W.

W was successful in letting our guard down long enough for Al Qaeda to launch an attack on our country. W started a war with a country that had nothing to do with that attack.

Though he did not personally send hurricane Katrina to New Orleans, his administration's incompetence in it's aftermath certainly galvanized a lot of people's thinking about the limits of government competence.

His greatest success was by far the economy. His love for tax cuts for the wealthiest .1% of the nation and for deregulation created a tsunami of debt for almost every American with corporations "too big to fail" needing gigantic federal bailouts to keep us all out of a depression.

Now that they are out of power the republicans can sit on the sidelines, shout insults and throw rocks at the current administration who is trying to right the wrongs that were done.

So, the success of George W. Bush is the fact that the republican party can say to the American people, "You can't trust the government, it can't do anything right" and the American people believe them.

bc

Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Is There No End To The Stupid?

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GOP party head in Florida says it's "socialism" to have the president talk to school kids about working hard.


Good God, Gurty! My brain hurts.

bc

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Catch-22

My favorite book is Catch-22.

Here is the quote that describes the essence of the entire book:

"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle."
"That's some catch, that catch-22," he observed.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.


bc