Republicans Aren't Doing Better--Democrats Are Doing Worse
Reader Comments
Legitimate Necons needed!
"They who ran up our national debt by a factor of eleven, have a lot of gall to complain about deficit proposals designed to serve our needs at home, & undo Republican damage. " Now it's the Dims turn. It was"spend baby! spend!" with Bush and dillsional BO thinks he can follow suite. Get off your high, horse. For decades, Republitards and their pals the Dimocrats have been on a drunken spending spree. In six weeks, BO has proven to be a far worse spender than Bush ever was. Yeh, right, BO will save the economy by buttressing useless programs that should've died 30 years ago to keep Federal workers employed. I guess it'll take a few more months before your buyer's remorse set's in. In the meantime, we'll see how spending our way out of debt works out.
Michael Barone, neocon blindness.
We just departed a quarter century of neocon ideology marked by the deification of greed & deregulation. Early fruits were the savings & loan debacle of the 1980s, & the collapse of ENRON, Worldcom, Tyco, Global Crossing, etc., in the late ‘90s & early 2000s.
Today we are trying to escape an economic collapse wrought by sub prime mortgages sold aggressively, & the bundling of those questionable assets into vaporous securities sold to gullible investors worldwide. The fraudulent bubble burst, damaging the world economy & our own as well, while the perpetrators skimmed commissions & bonuses, leaving investors & the public holding the bag.
With the “Republican Revolution,” in 1981, we applied Reaganomics. It pandered to us with tax cuts, & indeed they cut taxes, but on the flip side they never cut spending, they increased it, & then borrowed to pay the bills.
Any 7th grader with an allowance understands you can’t borrow your way to financial security. Most of us have awakened to that fact now, but for all those years the only thing we listened to was “tax cuts.”
As a result, since 1981 our national debt increased 11 times from about $900 billion, to nearly $11 trillion. As a proportion of our national income, it went up from less than a third in 1981 to about 80% today.
The debt was spent on war-making & foreign adventures; Grenada, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Lebanon, Panama, the first Gulf War, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. Domestic needs for bridges, roads, the electrical grid, the health & welfare of our citizens, etc., were neglected.
While government debt increased exponentially, the economic well-being of many of us declined, & our stature in the world sank. Today we’re faced with a collapse of the private sector with massive unemployment, a deteriorating infrastructure, the economic costs of energy dependence, & the human costs of a dysfunctional health care system.
A rational individual viewing this wreckage would conclude we’ve been following a failed ideology & failed economic policies, but apologists like Barone, Limbaugh, Hannity, et al, continue to snow us.
We need a paradigm shift from the failed policies of the past quarter-century, & that is what Obama is attempting. He wants to keep the jobless & their families from starving, to rebuild our failing infrastructure, to reduce our foreign energy dependence, & to repair our costly, dysfunctional health care system.
For decades our Republican legislators never saw a deficit they didn’t like as long as it went for wars & foreign adventures. They fostered uncontrolled greed & fiscal irresponsibility while neglecting our infrastructure & the human needs of our citizens. They who ran up our national debt by a factor of eleven, have a lot of gall to complain about deficit proposals designed to serve our needs at home, & undo Republican damage.
Republicans vs Liberty
The Republican Party needs to realize this isn't the 50's any more. Social more's have changed- back to the early days of our nation, i.e. when the government governs the country and not our personal behavior.
AIG
The media continues to report biased news, not only biased, but lies. People should be ready to hang the Democrats, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. For those of you, plus the media, who continue to quote lies, be apprised that the truth is on Youtube - showing Republicans attempting to do SOMETHING about AIG and the rest, but Barney Frank, Maxine Waters would have nothing to do with regulating - and even skewered the people who actually requested a look into regulation. Congress is the failure, both Republicans and Democrats. The people in the US will wake up one day and their little acre of ground will be taken over, taxed, and given away to some more deserving person. Work hard, do right, sacrifice, is so 1950's - the US is headed toward revolution at the hands of the people in Washington and the people in this once wonderful country of ours who don't give a rap. A hold over from the 1960's when dope pervaded the country and ethics became subject to whatever prevailing smoke littered brains THAT day. So sad, so bad, but the revolution will come - people are sick of lies.
Too bad you don't love your grandkids apparently
To Phoenician Lady of AZ: I am so glad you love the great one, do you love your grandkids? If you do you might want to think about how the ONE is about to drop a couple trillion in debt all over them. I am 27 with 2 kids, I don't want to saddle them with your mistakes. Your generation is possibly the worst our country has produced. From the hippies to now all you have cared about is instant gratification. Well the chickens are coming home to roost, but you will be dead before long and me and my family are the ones who are going to end up being sh*t on. So vote democrat, make yourself happy, f*ck the kids right? Used to be "don't trust anyone over 30 or the government" now it is "screw over everyone under the age of 30 and give all the money to the government". I thought HE WHO KISSES IRANS A** WITH A GIANT SUCKING SOUND was going to usher in an era of personal responsibility. What is responsible about spending money we don't have on sh*t we don't need? What is responsible about screwing over your grandkids? Pull your head out of your old a** and think longterm.
Let's See How Those Polls Look Like in 18 Months!
Dream on, dittoheads!
Misc
Science Man and Frank
I suspect you are among the large number of political newbies who had not paid attention to politics before the arrival of the rock star candidate. Here are a few things for your consideration –
Both of you - Those polls you are so surprised and upset about – they have been running continuously for decades. Since you apparently missed it, Science Man, they have already polled the public on various potential 2012 match ups. I might agree with you on any number of criticisms of this process (I think incessant polling allows too many officials to avoid having to pick a position based on their own thinking and philosophy, instead opting for whatever will get them re-elected) but this is no recent development designed to take advantage of Obama’s bad start. Every President since FDR has had to deal with them.
Science Man – speaking of polls, I’d sure like to see one that backs up your claims about what Republicans believe. You might also want to be careful about what you assume about your colleagues on the left – those without HS degrees vote overwhelmingly Democratic and they hold lots of unscientific opinions.
Frank – Rasmussen was identified by Fordham University as the most accurate polling service for the 2008 election cycle and the other poll cited by Barrone was NPR. Surely you do not claim they have a conservative bias?
Feel free to question the validity of polls if you have data to support your position (I do on a regular basis). However, when your party has control over the White House and the legislature, do not be surprised when the polls tell you things you don’t want to hear. It comes with the job.
PS to Phoenician Lady – your reference to John Birchers demonstrates that there are gray faced old windbags, railing against everything, and for nothing but their own narrow minded agendas on the political left. When was the last time they had any significance and what relevance do they have to this (or any current) conversation?
Dream On ,John Birchers
Science Man of Md: I couldn't agreee with you more. Here in Arizona, which is hardly a bastion of liberal thought, the Dems are gaining ground because the Republican philosophy is a dry well of puritanical and stingy conservative dogma. People are sick of it! We have had it with gray faced old windbags, railing against everything, and for nothing but wars and their own narrow minded religious agendas.
Yes, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are liberal pains in the neck, but Obama is a different story. I am a sixty year old white, upper middle class grandmother. I absolutely love him, and so do all of my friends. I will continue to vote a Democratic ticket just to help him out if I can.
and this is how democracy dies....
if only we'd remember that we are supposed to be a republic...i hope and pray that the next four years are a defining time for this country, if nothing else, to remind the g'ment that it is BY the people For the people. why do we continually elect elitists and then wonder where we went wrong? we, the people, are truly at fault. we have, through our laziness, not DEMANDED accountability from our "leaders", such as they are. wake up, my fellow free americans, while we still are FREE.
