posted by The Sailor @ 5:40 PM Permalink The Grand Obstructionist Party released their budget proposal today! All 18 pages! And once again the the party of 'no' lives up to their sobriquet: No numbers, no ideas, and nothing new.
What's the basis of their Grand Old Plan! TAX CUTS for the rich! Because that's worked so well for Reagan, (who posted the highest deficit in history ... until) Bush (who left the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan out of his budgets, just like the Boner et al did in theirs.)
And as always, they lied about it:
Lowers Taxes [Warning:PDF] Instead of raising taxes on all Americans in the midst of a recession, Republicans seek to reduce the tax burden on working families and small businesses, in order to create jobs and unlock private capital. [...] Republicans propose a simple and fair tax code with a marginal tax rate for income up to $100,000 of 10 percent and 25 percent for any income thereafter, with a generous standard deduction and personal exemption.
So the rich get their taxes cut by 10% and the rest of us either pay the same or get our taxes cut by 5%. That's not simple, it's simplistic. If my taxes were cut 5% I would pay about $250 less. A millionaire would pay $100,000 less.
And how do they propose to pay for these tax cuts? By cutting Medicare and Medicaid. Oh, and apparently magical ponies who $hit money:
"Are you going to have any further details on this today?" the first asked.
"On what?" asked Boehner.
"There's no detail in here," noted the reporter.
Answered Boehner: "This is a blueprint for where we're going. Are you asking about some other document?"
A second reporter followed up: "What about some numbers? What about the out-year deficit? What about balancing the budget? How are you going to do it?"
"We'll have the alternative budget details next week," promised Boehner. Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) had wisely departed the room after offering his opening remarks. ("Today's Republican road-to-recovery is the latest in a series of GOP initiatives, solutions and plans," he had offered.)
A third reporter asked Boehner about the Republican goal for deficit reduction, noting President Obama aimed to cut it in half in five years. "What's your goal?"
"To do better," said Boehner.
"How? How much?"
"You'll see next week."
"Wait. Why not today? Because he asked you to present a budget."
"Now, hold on," said Boehner. "The president came to Capitol Hill and laid out his blueprint for his budget during the State of the Union. He didn't offer his details until days later."
"In general, where do you see cuts coming?" the Huffington Post asked.
"We'll wait and see next week," he said.
Another reporter reminded Boehner that he has "criticized Democrats for throwing together a stimulus quickly and nobody knew what they were voting on. Are you saying that your budget will be unveiled on the same day that the House is expected to vote on it?"
"No, I expect it'll be out next week," he said, though the House is expected to vote on the budget next week. "But understand that a budget really is a one-page document. It's just a bunch of numbers."
Whaaa!? "But understand that a budget really is a one-page document. It's just a bunch of numbers."
Jeebus, the nation's budget is 'just one page and just a bunch of numbers'!? WTF!?
You stupid boner, a budget is wars and health care and highways and science and environment and food safety ... ... ... arggggh, the stupid, it burns!!!
BS! See, "United States National Debt (1938 to Present) An Analysis of the Presidents Who Are Responsible for the Borrowing," which contains an excellent chart, which I lack the know-how to post here, showing the steady increase in our debt, the deficit, and that points out the parties responsible for the increases in text which I can quote:
The chart below, Figure 1, shows the United States national debt (per Microsoft’s Encarta Encyclopedia[1] and US Government data[2]) with the various Presidents’ terms marked by vertical lines. Under President Clinton the growth in debt ceased, but note the radical change in direction since George W. Bush entered office. There is no question and a lot of mathematical proof that the steepest upward rises in debt since the end of World War II, started with President Reagan and continued with other so called Neo-Conservatives.[…]
Prior to the Neo-Conservative takeover of the Republican Party there was not much difference between the two parties’ debt philosophy. They both worked together to minimize it. However the debt has been on a steady incline ever since the Reagan presidency. The only exception to the steep increase over the last 25 years was during the Clinton presidency, when he brought spending under control and the debt growth down to almost zero.
Comparing the borrowing habits of the two parties since 1981, when the Neo-Conservative movement really took hold and government spending raced out of control, it is extremely obvious that the big spenders in Washington are Republicans and their party’s presidents. The only Democratic president since then, Mr. Clinton raised the national debt an average of 4.3% per year. The Republican presidents (Reagan, Bush, and Bush II) raised the debt an average of 10.8% per year. That is, for every dollar a Democratic President has raised the national debt in the past 25 years, Republican presidents have raised the debt by $2.53[6]. Any way you look at it Neo-Conservative Republican presidents cannot or will not control government spending.
It's not only clear that the headline is wrong, it is so wrong as to defy credulity and again demonstrates a media bias favorable to Rethug Neocons.
No wonder newspapers are suffering such dismal sales when it can be so hard to find any truth within them anymore.
INTERESTING NOTE: Somebody with some commonsense has changed that headline while I was composing this. It now reads:
Deficit to Grow to Record
Maybe the former headline was just a tad too dishonest for even the washingtonpost.com? Nope, when you link to the article it repeats the garbage headline and flushes it out with obviously bad information as the deficit has increased every single year bush has been in office.
When candidates lie with impunity no wonder there is no sense of community…
posted by Bill Arnett @ 12:46 PM Permalink
…and it is the consensus of the NYT Editorial Board that none of the presidential candidates are being the least bit honest when it comes to speaking of taxes.
Excerp of editorial titled, "Empty Talk on Taxes":
One of the toughest questions that will face the next president is what to do about taxes. There can be no real progress on health care, rebuilding the military or any other major issue without dealing with rising budget deficits and mounting debt from nearly eight years of profligate spending and tax breaks for the wealthy.
This is the reality:
To restore the health of the budget, let alone keep ambitious campaign pledges for spending more money, the next president, regardless of which party wins, will have to tax the American people more than any of the candidates has been willing to admit.
Senator John McCain’s tax talk is particularly divorced from reality
I absolutely agree and have known for some time now that this country is not long going to be able to maintain a viable government at the current rate of spending.
But it is also my opinion that the editorial board raises the answer within the first paragraph where they state: "…There can be no real progress on health care, rebuilding the military or any other major issue without dealing with rising budget deficits and mounting debt…." America has become so militaristic, aggressive, and war-like that unless we cease spending three quarters of our budget for 'future combat systems' that don't work, there is no way the U.S. can survive. So if you strike 'rebuilding the military' for future senseless wars, a solution for the rest of our financial problems becomes obvious: with the trillion dollars a year or more added back into our budget process the needs of the country could easily be cured, maybe without a tax increase at all.
I don't know where America went wrong, besides electing war pigs who would rather kill poor people instead of helping and enlightening them, but the America of old has died or is at least in a coma, and NONE of the presidential candidates offer any hope for a return to real values.
You remember: equal rights for all, habeas corpus, no draconian surveillance programs, no spy satellites aimed at Americans, no phone and internet eavesdropping operations, no compiling of unverified and therefore useless "Terrorist Lists", no torture, and a decent regard for the welfare of our fellow men.
Unless we stop our barbaric, but now accepted ways, and return to being Americans with a government that actively pursues peace and stop spending all OUR money being thrown into the black holes of bush's Iraqi Oil War and, soon, his Iranian Oil War, and the military in general, we are doomed as a society.
We are barreling down the road, downhill with the wind at our backs,and with virtually the entire world rooting for and awaiting our downfall (we are, after all, the most aggressive, cruel, war-like, and war-making nation on earth).
Unless we severely cap military spending, eliminate the 'future combat systems' that rely on horrifically expensive, unproven and, in many cases NOT YET INVENTED technologies, we are doomed to keep repeating the mistakes founded, funded, and perpetuated by the bush maladministration.
Government auditors issued a scathing review yesterday of dozens of the Pentagon's biggest weapons systems, saying ships, aircraft and satellites are billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule.
The Government Accountability Office found that 95 major systems have exceeded their original budgets by a total of $295 billion, bringing their total cost to $1.6 trillion, and are delivered almost two years late on average. In addition, none of the systems that the GAO looked at had met all of the standards for best management practices during their development stages.[…]
"Flagship acquisitions, as well as many other top priorities in each of the services, continue to cost significantly more, take longer to produce, and deliver less than was promised," Dodaro [ Gene L. Dodaro, acting comptroller general of the GAO. Bill] said. "This is likely to continue until the overall environment for weapon system acquisitions changes."
I have an absolutely smashing idea, why don't we just stop spending money at all on future combat systems and instead concentrate on educating our society and its people until we all have learned the futility of trying to make peace while you're spending the country into poverty - a major cause of war.
I wonder how many people could be housed, fed, given medical attention, and educated with that $1.6 TRILLION dollars? And why don't we do it?
Just because bush or McLame or anyone else says we need to make war for one stupid reason after another?
"This is likely to continue until the overall environment for weapon system acquisitions changes." So let's change from producing weapons and invest in our greatest asset, our people.
And yeah, I've been around long enough to realize a pipe dream rarely, if ever, comes to fruition.
There's coming a day when we all will have to pay…
posted by Bill Arnett @ 1:41 PM Permalink
…(as if we haven't already) a few hundred thousands, or millions, of boatloads of money for bush Oil War. Bob Herbert of the NYT Opinion Section has apparently discovered what we in the blog land have been saying for years, which is that this is the most expensive boondoggle in all of history, that the final tab for this misadventure is going to cost America at least $2.1 TRILLION, and that it may easily reach a total cost of over $3 TRILLION dollars.
But I do appreciate his efforts to document what we could have done with all that money without this ridiculous and illegal war of aggression. From the article, titled "The $2 Trillion Nightmare:
The war in Iraq will ultimately cost U.S. taxpayers not hundreds of billions of dollars, but an astonishing $2 trillion, and perhaps more. There has been very little in the way of public conversation, even in the presidential campaigns, about the consequences of these costs, which are like a cancer inside the American economy.
On Thursday, the Joint Economic Committee, chaired by Senator Chuck Schumer, conducted a public examination of the costs of the war. The witnesses included the Nobel Prize-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz (who believes the overall costs of the war — not just the cost to taxpayers — will reach $3 trillion), and Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International. […]
Mr. Hormats mentioned Social Security and Medicare, saying that both could have been put “on a more sustainable basis.” And he cited the committee’s own calculations from last fall that showed that the money spent on the war each day is enough to enroll an additional 58,000 children in Head Start for a year, or make a year of college affordable for 160,000 low-income students through Pell Grants, or pay the annual salaries of nearly 11,000 additional border patrol agents or 14,000 more police officers.
What we’re getting instead is the stuff of nightmares. […] These include the obligation to provide health care and disability benefits for returning veterans. Those costs will be with us for decades.
Mr. Stiglitz noted that nearly 40 percent of the 700,000 troops from the first gulf war, which lasted just a month, have become eligible for disability benefits. The current war is approaching five years in duration.
“Imagine then,” said Mr. Stiglitz, “what a war — that will almost surely involve more than 2 million troops and will almost surely last more than six or seven years — will cost. Already we are seeing large numbers of returning veterans showing up at V.A. hospitals for treatment, large numbers applying for disability and large numbers with severe psychological problems.”
The Bush administration has tried its best to conceal the horrendous costs of the war. It has bypassed the normal budgetary process, financing the war almost entirely through “emergency” appropriations that get far less scrutiny.
Mr. Stiglitz and Mr. Hormats both addressed the foolhardiness of waging war at the same time that the government is cutting taxes and sharply increasing non-war-related expenditures.
Mr. Hormats told the committee:
“Normally, when America goes to war, nonessential spending programs are reduced to make room in the budget for the higher costs of the war. Individual programs that benefit specific constituencies are sacrificed for the common good ... And taxes have never been cut during a major American war. For example, President Eisenhower adamantly resisted pressure from Senate Republicans for a tax cut during the Korean War.”
Said Mr. Stiglitz: “Because the administration actually cut taxes as we went to war, when we were already running huge deficits, this war has, effectively, been entirely financed by deficits. The national debt has increased by some $2.5 trillion since the beginning of the war, and of this, almost $1 trillion is due directly to the war itself ... By 2017, we estimate that the national debt will have increased, just because of the war, by some $2 trillion.”
Why it took so long for a senate committee to find out this information is beyond me, as I have been seeing these figures for several years now, based on much of the same information from these same world-renowned economic experts.
Americans suffer, Iraqis suffer, the world suffers as bush bankrupts the country. Only bush knows how completely he has screwed up this country and it will take years to unravel and extricate us from the damage he has done. And people are actually thinking of electing McCain the Insane, who would continue to carry out neocon instructions and bush policies that will further damage America?
Now bush is speaking of yet another engagement with Venezuela, which supplies about 25% of the oil we import everyday. If you think gas is high now, just wait until bush pisses off Hugo Chavez enough to cut our oil supplies from Venezuela.
Can you say (or pay) $10 a gallon for gas, or more ?
I guess bush feels some burning personal need to engage America in yet another war we can't win, so if not Iran, why not Venezuela? After all, there must be protection supplied for the Columbian Cocaine Cartels.
In the "no kidding department" CNN is polling people to ask if we are in a recession…
posted by Bill Arnett @ 12:30 PM Permalink
…when there are articles like this in the NYT ("All the News Republicans Tell Us to Print").
From the article:
Two worrisome trends for the economy — falling house prices and the rising cost of everything else — picked up speed in the latest data reported on Tuesday, putting policy makers in an increasingly tough position.[…]
“The Fed is now having to walk a very fine line,” said Jane Caron, chief economic strategist at Dwight Asset Management, an investment firm that specializes in bonds. “We have clearly seen an accelerating in inflation pressure in the last couple of months and the risk is that the markets are going to react negatively to aggressive easing going forward.”
Not surprisingly, a measure of consumer confidence fell to its lowest level in nearly five years. But the stock market was up slightly in late morning trading after falling modestly at the open. Treasuries moved slightly higher, indicating that bond investors were not overly fearful of inflation.
Maybe being on a fixed income makes me more sensitive to these things, but when people start making statements that the economy is worse than the after the dot.com bust, worse than after 9/11, record, no staggering numbers of home foreclosures, car repossessions, and the price of everything under the sun going up as one of the direct results of bush's Oil War Failure, I'd say it's, "…it's pr-r-r-e-t-t-y f*ckin' bad, Captain."
But I'm no economist, so I could be wrong, but when the best financial advice CNN's so-called economists can apparently give is, "…refinance your house now if you have good credit…," like it's the easiest thing in the world, it's a sure thing that these "professionals" are so out of touch with what's really happening out here in America that they are unaware that the average schmoe ain't gonna be "refinancing their homes" or "paying off their credit cards" or doing anything else but trying to conserve gas to get back and forth to the two or three jobs many families are required to work just to keep a roof over the head and food on the table and just hope that no one falls ill in the family.
Two years ago when I saw the sixty year-old houses in my neighborhood starting to sell for over $500,000.00 I knew this crash was coming and that it wouldn't be pretty. There's not a single house in this neighborhood worth half a mil or more and son-of-a-gun, wouldn't you know it? Suddenly NO HOUSES are selling at all here in the neighborhood and haven't been for the last two years.
What makes the wealthy think they are qualified to offer advice to the average American, whom all know how bad it is out here? Just how ignorant are these people, really?
posted by Bill Arnett @ 2:00 PM Permalink …or at least parts of it are going on sale soon.
With all the chutzpah, hubris, and arrogance bush can muster (and that's quite a bit), bush will now charge congressmen $200.00 per copy for a look at his proposed budget.
From Raw Story comes this ludicrous nonsense:
Lawmakers to be charged $200 for previously free paper copies
In a move it says is aimed at saving money and trees, the Bush administration plans to charge lawmakers $200 for copies of this year's federal budget.
Democrats and Republicans alike groaned about the decision, telling The Hill that the extra expenses will not be easy to find in already strained budgets.
“It’s pennywise and pound-foolish,” Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-NC), a member of the House Budget Committee, told the newspaper. “I don’t think as a member of Congress that I should have to take money out of my account [for the president’s budget request].”[…]
Even some Republicans scoffed at the idea of squinting at a computer screen to read through 2,000-plus pages of fine print on federal spending proposals.
“I think people who request a copy of the budget should be given it gratis,” Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.), another Budget panel member, told The Hill. “You want something in your hand so you can thumb through it and mark it up and reference it.”
First of all, bush is now suddenly a conservationist wanting to save trees after ok'ing the clear-cutting of forests and the destruction of much more forest by allowing many thousands of new mines in, on, and around the Rocky Mountains that is certain to kill millions more trees than necessary to supply everyone in America with a copy of his budget?
Here's a good idea for the congress: refuse to consider any budget offered by the president until they receive a written version that my be scoured and marked up for corrections, modifications, or different opinions. If he will not provide it, don't even calendar it for any consideration by committees or the bodies of congress.
Haven't we had a fifth grader running this country long enough? Don't talk to anyone you don't like; promise to break any laws that you choose; charge people for documents the government is obliged to provide; refuse to listen to the grownups in your own party; trying to peek up Nancy Pelosi's skirt…uh…okay, I made that last one up, but I think my point is obvious.
Thank the spirits that be, if any, that the petulant little boy running the White House will be gone soon and forever irrelevant after that.
The only things people will remember bush for is illegal wars badly fought and lost, the bankruptcy of America, and that he is the worst world leader any country has ever had including, sadly enough, America right now.
A bad stock market doesn't necessarily predict a recession…
posted by Bill Arnett @ 10:56 AM Permalink
…so says CNNs financial reporter this morning (paraphrasing). She went on to recount some examples of when an awful market didn't result in a recession, and then examples of when a downturn in the market did precede a recession.
How duplicitous of her to not point out that during other severe stock market downturns America wasn't $9 TRILLION dollars in debt, taxes for the rich so low that the middle class is bearing way more than their share of the heavy load of financing the country, gas prices that have more than doubled on bush's watch, the subprime market crash, a plummeting dollar, banks having to borrow billions from overseas investors to keep afloat, entire industries and companies that have moved from the U.S. to overseas to avoid paying taxes altogether (taking millions of good jobs with them), unemployment at record highs, 1 out of 4 homeowners delinquent on their home loans, record numbers of foreclosures and bankruptcies, a war acting as a black hole sucking up $15 billion a month, foreign debt that is slowly selling off America (cheap!), and a president so lacking influence, honesty, integrity, and commonsense that America is the laughingstock of the world.
I'm sure she just "forgot" to mention those things while not just one, not two, but THREE so-called financial experts denied we were in a recession, citing various inane statistics to justify their financial oracle credentials. Really disgusting dishonesty.
Well, they can all talk and talk and talk until they're blue in the face and done talking, but it won't change the fact that we are in a recession that is probably a precursor to a full blown second Great Depression. The Republicans have wanted to bankrupt the country for at least the last forty years, and it looks as if they have finally succeeded with their surrogate economic witch doctor, bush, circling the world begging for lower oil prices to at least try to make the next election cycle better for the GOP candidates.
CNN also reports that bipartisan efforts are being made to help out, which is as it should be, 'cause the democrats are as guilty and responsible as the GOP for the dire straits in which we find ourselves.
But rest easy. The ass who got us into all this serious trouble, bush, is going to give another another lame and lying speech about how strong all the fundamentals of our solid economy remain. SSDD
Oh well, bush just called for an economic stimulus package that, "…must include tax breaks, definitely no new taxes…" and the usual call for extending the tax breaks for the uber wealthy that is mostly responsibly for how broke we are from the lack of sufficient tax income to the Treasury. And, of course, lowering the tax rate of the mega-rich corporations, which will use the extra money to hasten their exodus from America.
So all the rich can relax and keep ever more of their under-taxed income.
If you are middle to lower class, financially speaking, bend over, grab your ankles, and, just like at a fraternity hazing beg, "Please, sir, screw me again, and this time make sure it's longer and deeper and bigger than ever. We love getting f*cked over and over again by the Republicans, sir!"
And who is the idiot that made the definition of a recession, "… as having two quarters in a row with no growth in the GDP?"
How convenient, a definition that ignores several hundred thousand homeless, millions without health insurance, more children going to bed hungry and without needed medicines than ever, more people who have exhausted their unemployment benefits, more people who have given up trying to find jobs that no longer exist because of the exodus overseas, families with two or more members working two or more jobs and still not being able to make ends meet, but one that, by grace of their christian god preserves millions of dollars for millionaires that don't need relief from this piss poor economy to keep enjoying the luxurious lifestyles to which they are accustomed.
My taxes, being just barely in the middle class, have gone UP every year bush has been in office, increasing about two hundred dollars a year, so as far as I am concerned "tax relief" is a myth perpetuated by those million and billionaires who need my money for illegal wars and to pay their share of taxes for them.
CNN just announced that the stock market sell off has increased in just the few minutes since bush gave his speech!
The world watches and waits. Waits for the great American fire sale so they can buy all our monuments, parks, land, remaining industries, and Wall Street (which is on sale now). They already own the White House, but it's not too late to buy the Senate and House of Representatives, CHEAP. Maybe we can sell Washington, D.C. to the highest bidder…oh sh*t… we've already done that.
This is a watershed moment for the GOP, a party that can point to this disaster and proudly proclaim, "We did that!" while finally realizing the irony of the Democratic Party asking old Ronnie Raygun's question, "Are you better of today than you were four years ago?"
But even with a chorus of millions of agonizing taxpayers simultaneously screaming, "NO!", we will still not be heard in Washington.
posted by Bill Arnett @ 11:35 AM Permalink Wasn't that a feature of Reaganomics, too?
Yes,sir, print up a few billion, borrow a few more billions, and then spend a trillion dollars or more every year bush has been in office.
Now if they could just find the 1.5 trillion dollars that has disappeared just in the last year, with no way to account for how it was used according to the GAO, maybe we could do something good for Americans for a change.
Meantime the Chinese are laughing their collective asses off (and that's a lot of asses!) while they buy America right out from underneath us.
Will they have to give us thirty days notice to leave the country or can they just start to immediately EVICT us?
posted by Bill Arnett @ 11:52 AM Permalink
Like many Americans, and almost like a person of affluence, I am lucky enough to live in an area of the country that has pretty good broadband and a device without which I'm not sure I'd ever watch TV again, a Digital Video Recorder.
I record lots of stuff my wife and I like so we can time-shift it for viewing when my wife gets home from work, and for some reason, as I scrolled through the menu I realized we had not yet viewed Bill Maher's Real Time program on HBO. Wanting to correct this ASAP I started the program and was disappointed that Tony "Blow Me" Snow, former chief presidential town crier/liar for Bushco who did (and here I'm serious - really) suffer through the ravages of cancer. Looked fairly well, he did, and I hope he never has a recurrence. I know if I ever have a relapse from the Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, one of the two cancers I had caused by Agent Orange, I'm certain to become dead meat, a status I wouldn't wish on anyone, so I wish him the best in that regard. Genuinely. Nothing funny about cancer say I.
But what killed me about his appearance was that when the conversation turned to the country's finances, right there in front of god (if there is one) and everybody, with his bare face hanging out, Tony actually attempted to repeat the Republican mantra of, "The economy is good. The economy is strong," and then to top it off and prove to the rest of the panel his rightness, "Look at the record numbers of homeowners we have now." As I gagged the rest of the guests and Bill erupted, with Catherine Crier immediately telling Tony to look at the record numbers of foreclosures and note the record numbers of people who will be losing those homes - soon.
I mention this only as a yet another example of Republicans who lie just for the sake of lying without regard to anything that proves them to be lying liars.
Why can't we Democrats get on board with a similar strategy except make it telling the truth so often that the truth might become the "conventional wisdom" and keep repeating the truth until everyone with half a brain knows what the truth is? Those GOPers are always on message and repeat lies until they are accepted as truth despite empirical evidence that almost every word they speak is a propagandist lie told to keep power at any cost and get you to buy their garbage.
Why don't we have our candidates out there everyday telling the world that America has suffered the governance of a madman for the last eight years, the economy is a collapse happening in slow motion, and get on message to the 75-79% of Americans who already want a Democrat elected and want anybody but a Bush-lite Republican in the White House?
Why does every speech have to be about 10-point plans, incentive packages, more money for schools and education, expanded insurance coverage that still will leave millions uninsured, continuing the Iraq War (and the Iranian War), if bushco gets its way, and crushing deficits it'll take us half a century or more to pay off? A deficit that will prevent implementation of all the goody-goody ideas being propagated with no recognition of how dire our financial status really is, and how dangerous.
In my opinion that would not be going "negative" and continuing the "politics of personal destruction," but would instead be leveling with the public. Point out every bad arms sale, preemptive war, the GOP march to eternal war to steal oil instead of spending our money to provide an alternative fuel, point out the deficit and hammer into the heads of voters who is responsible for the mess in which we find ourselves, and name the names, times, dates, and manner in which they raped and pillaged this country.
And lordy, it is plain to our citizens that bush is the worst president ever in American history, and I believe they would appreciate a candidate that stops listening to Democrats and Republicans bash the other party's stand on amorphous messages that depend on a suspension of belief to keep from regurgitating after every speech or debate.
But not enough has been done to identify all the actors in this tragicomedy by name, rank, and serial number to expose them for who they are and just what role they have played in our impending demise.
IT'S NOT NEGATIVE CAMPAIGNING TO TELL THE COUNTRY THE TRUTH, and keep repeating it until it finally displaces this phony conventional wisdom with the real truth as to the dangers facing our country, not from terrorists, but from domestic thieves who spout platitudes and deliver nothing. This includes democrats whom are afraid to undertake such a course of action for fear of being "labeled" this or that by a party that has undeniably proven that it cannot govern their own corrupt party, much less America.
That is the very trap into which our Democratic candidates have fallen and can't get up, and while they make their rounds NOT telling the truth that America is dying and on life-support, they are all accomplices in this great thing called a "democracy" that is being strangled in the crib, and all their mutual admiration societies seeking "comity" with one another, and standing side-by-side while our country dies or suffers years of another Great Depression.
For when all is said and done, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is not a vice." Let's get the good extremism going now before the bad extremism rules forever."
posted by Bill Arnett @ 2:47 PM Permalink I recognized long ago that the Republican Party, the party of fiscal responsibility, was going to bankrupt this country come hell or high water. They are succeeding beyond their wildest dreams and to the detriment of every person living in America today or in the years ahead.
And it's far worse than anyone could have imagined.
From the Times Online comes this article titled, "Top economist says America could plunge into recession," which I can only suppose is dry English wit for, "America is in such deep in sh*t that auctions of individual states may ensue."
Losses arising from America’s housing recession could triple over the next few years and they represent the greatest threat to growth in the United States, one of the world’s leading economists has told The Times.
Robert Shiller, Professor of Economics at Yale University, predicted that there was a very real possibility that the US would be plunged into a Japan-style slump, with house prices declining for years.
Professor Shiller, co-founder of the respected S&P Case/Shiller house-price index, said: “American real estate values have already lost around $1 trillion [£503 billion]. That could easily increase threefold over the next few years. This is a much bigger issue than sub-prime. We are talking trillions of dollars’ worth of losses.” […]
“Over the next five years, the futures contracts are pointing to losses of around 35 per cent in some areas, such as Florida, California and Las Vegas. There is a good chance that this housing recession will go on for years,” he said.
Professor Shiller, author of Irrational Exuberance, a phrase later used by Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, said: “This is a classic bubble scenario. A few years ago house prices got very high, pushed up because of investor expectations. Americans have fuelled the myth that prices would never fall, that values could only go up. People believed the story. Now there is a very real chance of a big recession.” […]
Last week, new numbers from the S&P/Case Shiller index showed that house prices had declined in October at their fastest rate for more than six years, with homes in Miami losing 12 per cent of their value.
How long would it take to count three trillion dollars?
I'm fairly sure that Everett Dirksen once famously stated, "You take a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you're talking real money."
I do not recall his political affiliation, but I'll bet he's spinning in his grave at what these Republicans have done and the harm they have wrought and will wreak on the populace of, "The richest and most powerful country in the world."
It is inarguable that the Rethugs did not do this all alone, so there is plenty of blame to be shared by all politicians of any ilk, but bush alone has spent more money than all preceding presidents, as well as borrowing more foreign money.
If there are any math wizards reading this maybe you could tell me how long it would take to count three trillion dollars. I'm sure the time necessary to count that much money would exceed my life span and the life span of every American alive today and their children and grandchildren and, oh, you get my point.
I have long maintained that we will never really discover just how badly our country has been damaged until bush is gone and our new president finds where all the bodies are buried.
It's okay to veto children's health care when you are the biggest murderer of children, isn't it?
posted by Bill Arnett @ 11:13 AM Permalink I don't know why there is all this outrage about bush vetoing health care for an additional 10-million American children.
Is it any wonder that the greatest mass-murderers and child-killers of the 21st century would do such a thing? Especially with the help of GOP child-killers Roy Blunt and Trent Lott who will submit to bush's will no matter what he does?
Evil men doing evil deeds, who woulda thunk it?
If the Democratic congress does not "shelve" bush's war funding bills until they get that child care money, are they not even more worthless and cowardly than we could ever have imagined?
posted by Bill Arnett @ 11:32 AM Permalink Showing once again that the country would be better off if Republicans just took up turning tricks on street corners rather than pulling stupid tricks in the Senate with Democratic complicity, Senator Coleman (R-Fiscally Insane) proposed, and got passed, a $100-million amendment to the pending Military Construction bill.
The amendment does nothing for military or any other kind of construction, but by golly it provides $100,000,000.00 to provide security for the two parties during the 2008 conventions.
WTF? Multi-billion dollar businesses (and yes, they are businesses with the aim of getting their candidate in office) shouldn't need a dime from the taxpayer when these jerk-offs want to party, drop balloons, tie up traffic and city resources, etc., etc., etc., while more kids than ever are going to bed hungry, millions more having lost their jobs and/or health insurance, and bush threatening to veto anything that doesn't cut off more and more people from needed services.
Oh, yeah, Congress is really "fiscally responsible" to cut public services and programs while adding pure pork to a totally unrelated bill to make sure they can spend every penny possible just for their own self-aggrandizement. They already spend more money than a crack wh0re vacationing in Bolivia.
If they can't design and pay for their own convention security, what business do they have claiming to be "experts" in the security needs of the country?
bush Will be Long Gone Before U.S. Figures Out Just How Much Damage He Has Done
posted by Bill Arnett @ 11:59 AM Permalink I have maintained for years now that America and Americans won't realize just how much damage bush and cronies have done to the country until bush is out of office and playing pinochle, drinking shots, and reminiscing about "the good ol' days" with his contingent of 103 Secret Service agents assigned to protect him.
I am not an economist, but a blind fool can see that spending exponentially more dollars than are coming into the Treasury is the path to fiscal insanity from the alleged "party of fiscal responsibility."
I may have been wrong, not because bush hasn't done everything in his power to spend every dollar he can beg, borrow, or steal, but because people are beginning to realize that GOP "fuzzy math" is destroying any financial security they may have expected in the future from Medicare and Social Security.
The federal government recorded a $1.3 trillion loss last year -- far more than the official $248 billion deficit -- when corporate-style accounting standards are used, a USA TODAY analysis shows.
The loss reflects a continued deterioration in the finances of Social Security and government retirement programs for civil servants and military personnel. The loss -- equal to $11,434 per household -- is more than Americans paid in income taxes in 2006.
"We're on an unsustainable path and doing a great disservice to future generations," says Chris Chocola, a former Republican member of Congress from Indiana and corporate chief executive who is pushing for more accurate federal accounting. […] Bottom line: Taxpayers are now on the hook for a record $59.1 trillion in liabilities, a 2.3% increase from 2006. That amount is equal to $516,348 for every U.S. household. By comparison, U.S. households owe an average of $112,043 for mortgages, car loans, credit cards and all other debt combined.
An unreported loss of $1.3 trillion last year alone. $516,348 for every U.S. household, five times more than all other debt held by Americans combined.
And logically, when the budget figures change from billions in surpluses in 2000 to almost $9 trillion in debt by 2007, it's a sure thing that the bush maladministration has been suffering losses such as this during every year of his tenure in the White House.
This represents a "strong economy" according to bush/cheney, as if losing over a trillion dollars a year is something of which to be proud, and something Americans should and must endure so the "Forever War" or the "Long War" or the "GWOT" can be conducted while hiding from the country the true cost of those efforts.
And one last thing: I'm sick of hearing that bush/cheney and their Republican sycophants "spend money like a drunken sailor." I have had the privilege of getting drunk with many sailors and they never spent money like a congressman or president.
I maintain the better expression would be that, "Congress, the Republicans, and the president spend money like a crack wh0re on vacation in Columbia."
On second thought, that would unnecessarily impugn the reputation of crack wh0res.
posted by Bill Arnett @ 12:57 PM Permalink Remember when bush was pushing for Social Security Reform and the more people listened to him harping it, the more support he lost?
Remember the lie that if people could invest a portion of their income themselves, that a 3.5% annual growth in GDP, supposedly an easy feat, would give them more money for retirement?
Remember how virtually every statistic released by bush's sycophants citing growth, employment, job creation, etc., has to be revised downward a couple of months later?
Remember the just revised figure of less than 1% growth (0.6% to be exact) in GDP for the first quarter right in the midst of bush's supposedly "strong" economy?
As Ronnie Raygun would have said, "Well, there they go again." See this article from Raw Story/AFP:
The White House on Wednesday trimmed its US economic growth forecast for 2007 to 2.3 percent, while saying the slow pace of activity early this year would pick up as the year progresses.…The semiannual forecast was cut from 2.9 percent six months ago, and is roughly in line with the outlook of most private economists in light of a sharp slowdown in the first quarter of the year.…The White House forecast, used for federal revenue and budget projections, indicated that the slowdown to a 0.6 percent growth pace in the January-March quarter was likely to be transitory and that activity was showing signs of accelerating.
I am no economist and not a great mathematician (as I have proven here before!), but it seems to me that anyone who would have bought into that "investment account" would be hurting badly now, and figures like these would virtually guarantee more senior citizens living in poverty at retirement time.
So every time you hear how "strong" the economy is, remember to check the facts for yourself because this government lies shamelessly.
I Just Can't Let the Liars Lie with Impunity Anymore
posted by Bill Arnett @ 11:50 AM Permalink Of all the posts I am likely to write now or in the future, this may be the one that gets me in trouble the most, but I don't care. I spend much time listening to C-Span and C-Span 2 and hear the most outrageous lies repeated endlessly:
I am sick unto death with Republican Liars standing up in the House and Senate to spout Lie after Lie after Lie, endlessly, in a format that does not allow another member to call the speaker an outright Liar as, of course, comity and good manners must be maintained at all times.
I am not a member of the Senate or the House so I am not bound to honor a rule that acts to speciously force politeness and respect where none is deserved or has been earned. I am therefore, from time to time, going to repeat, with accreditation, the most egregious lies made by the biggest group of professional Liars in America today, the GOP, the Republicans, the Conservatives, the Compassionate Conservatives or whatever other name by which they may be known.
Today's member of the senate shaming himself with his mendacities and who regularly spouts meaningless tripe as if he were delivering a sermon:
Senator Judd Gregg (R-SameOldLies) is standing on the floor speaking a lie about every other word, but he started his rant with the biggest lie ever sold to Americans; "We Republicans are the party of fiscal responsibility and Democrats are the tax and spend party…
This is so untrue as to be one of the more ludicrous and well known Lies bouncing around the face of the planet.
Republicans have overseen the greatest expansion of government in history, turning a $5.5 trillion surplus into a $9 trillion deficit along the way. Republicans have us bogged down in a war we cannot win and are spending over a billion dollars a week to support their failed effort. More children are living in poverty and going to bed hungry than ever before. More are without health insurance than ever before.
Gregg actually bragged that there had been 22 months of the greatest economic expansion in our country's history. He brags that Rethugs have created over 7 million jobs. He neglects to mention that bush 43, aided by the rubberstamping 109th Congress, has spent more money than ALL PREVIOUS PRESIDENTS COMBINED.
Last month's growth in the GDP was a miserable 1.5% after readjusting the number down from 2.5, which is what the Rethugs alleged that was also untrue. This is the type of growth that, if the Rethugs had managed to change Social Security, would have wiped out any "personal savings accounts" and would be leaving our seniors destitute.
I guess it isn't convenient for the Rethug Liars to acknowledge that on Clinton's watch the country prospered as never before, 22.5 million jobs were created, the Dow Jones increased in value 180%, and the Rethugs want to claim the greatest expansion of the economy ever? BS!
Senator Kent Conrad (D-North Dakota) is now correcting the record and actually said, "Mr. President their claim of fiscal responsible is unfortunately contradicted by the facts." He went on to say that Republicans have proven to be the "borrow and spend" party of the country.
I would have said, "Sirrah, you are naught but a Liar and a Fraud." (Maybe not that politely)
posted by Bill Arnett @ 1:51 PM Permalink I want to touch upon two unrelated articles that are related in more ways than one.
The first concerns the fact that America is broke; we got zip, zilch, zero, nada, nothing by way of having any money left. bush and his minions have overseen the greatest transfer of money from the poor to the wealthy than the most despotic despots in the history of despots and despotism.
Congress's auditor warned in a monthly update released last Friday that the latest data on America's fiscal outlook shows "a federal debt burden that ultimately spirals out of control."
The January update was based on new data supplied to the Government Accountability Office by the Congressional Budget Office, and identified spiraling national health care costs as the main culprit for the country's budgetary woes. The report also challenged a key assumption about the nation's fiscal future made by President George W. Bush in his release of the 2008 budget. [Of course it has nothing, nothing to do with the hundreds and hundreds of billions spent in Iraq that could have cured all of America's ills (pun intended). Bill]…
…The "bleak" outlook seen by the government's chief auditor results from "primarily spending on the large federal entitlement programs (i.e., Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid)." Growing expenditures on health care are expected to account for the largest share of deficit-raising spending that will present a challenge "not just to the federal budget but to American business and our society as a whole."
While there are other discretionary expenditures, like those on national defense and homeland security, GAO warns that "the growth in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on debt held by the public dwarfs the growth in all other types of spending."
This article reads like something straight out of the "Armstrong William's School of Journalism" and smacks so badly of pure propaganda it just makes me want to regurgitate. I am not in any way, shape, form, or manner either known or unknown to man saying, hinting, or alleging that the author of this article, Michael Roston, is a government propagandist; he seems to be a fine writer working with the bogus info bush loves to have the CBO [which recently admitted that the gov't bookkeeping is so bad it is impossible to audit the government!. Bill] put out on Friday afternoons, and any mendacities would have arisen from those reports, not Mr. Roston.
Everyone know the Republic mantra of shrinking government to the size where you could drown it in the bathtub. Now their plan seems to be to bankrupt the country so that it can't pay for social programs, only the eternal GWOT, which, while bush has been in office for just six years, he has spent more money than all the previous presidents combined and increased our total debt from $20-trillion to $50-trillion dollars.
Since the "on the books" debt has gone from about $6-trillion to a little under $9-trillion dollars it begs the question: "Where did all the money go?"
Off the books spending, of course, black budgets, top secret, very hush-hush, and possibly even something like this: It would appear that bush, in order to now reduce Iran's influence in the M.E. has been, with the apparent cooperation of the Saudis, financing both sides of the civil war in Iraq and al-Qaede sympathizers.
See the latest article by Sy Hersh in the New Yorker where he reports:
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most of the insurgent violence directed at the American military has come from Sunni forces, and not from Shiites. But, from the Administration’s perspective, the most profound—and unintended—strategic consequence of the Iraq war is the empowerment of Iran.…
…The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and former officials close to the Administration said.
A senior member of the House Appropriations Committee told me that he had heard about the new strategy, but felt that he and his colleagues had not been adequately briefed. “We haven’t got any of this,” he said. “We ask for anything going on, and they say there’s nothing. And when we ask specific questions they say, ‘We’re going to get back to you.’ It’s so frustrating.”
So, here we are. Buried up to the tukus in Iraq, spending, ultimately, several trillion dollars we will have to borrow from the Communist Chinese to fight the GWOT, only to find that bush's unreasoned hatred of Iran has him surreptitiously financing both sides of Iraq's civil war, fronting through the Saudis, and indirectly providing funding to al-Qaeda sympathizers.
Well, I reckon that if our own president is ostensibly going to sell out the country, he might as well just start auctioning it off in pieces to the highest bidders, right? Do I hear $60, 60, 60…I've got $65 for Wyoming, going once, going twice…
1.(sometimes capital letters 'V' and 'S' with no space) a style of writing or saying something using emotion and/or logic and snark, esp. in order to elucidate the obvious while pretending to be objective.
2. anything written by The Vidiot, The Sailor, Mr. Vidiot and anyone else they allow to post on the blog “vidiotspeak”
[Origin: loosely based on new + speak, coined by George Orwell in his novel, 1984 (1949)]
And for godsakes, stay away from FOX, MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC.
It's ALL CRAP!!!
Watch the BBC news or ITN news instead.
"POSSE COMITATUS ACT" (18 USC 1385)
A Reconstruction Era criminal law proscribing use of Army (later, Air Force) to "execute the laws" except where expressly authorized by Constitution or Congress. Limit on use of military for civilian law enforcement also applies to Navy by regulation. Dec '81 additional laws were enacted (codified 10 USC 371-78) clarifying permissible military assistance to civilian law enforcement agencies--including the Coast Guard--especially in combating drug smuggling into the United States. Posse Comitatus clarifications emphasize supportive and technical assistance (e.g., use of facilities, vessels, aircraft, intelligence, tech aid, surveillance, etc.) while generally prohibiting direct participation of DoD personnel in law enforcement (e.g., search, seizure, and arrests). For example, Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachments (LEDETS) serve aboard Navy vessels and perform the actual boardings of interdicted suspect drug smuggling vessels and, if needed, arrest their crews). Positive results have been realized especially from Navy ship/aircraft involvement.
