Who Spent More? Average Bush Vs. Average Obama Spending Per Day Proves Obama Most Reckless And Irresponsible EVER

From NPR via the Weekly Standard:

In his State of the Union address tonight, President Obama will reportedly issue a call for “responsible” efforts to reduce deficits (while simultaneously calling for new federal spending). In light of the President’s expected rhetorical nod to fiscal responsibility, it’s worth keeping in mind his record on deficits to date. When President Obama took office two years ago, the national debt stood at $10.626 trillion. It now stands at $14.071 trillion — a staggering increase of $3.445 trillion in just 735 days (about $5 billion a day).

To put that into perspective, when President George W. Bush took office, our national debt was $5.768 trillion. By the time Bush left office, it had nearly doubled, to $10.626 trillion. So Bush’s record on deficit spending was not good at all: During his presidency, the national debt rose by an average of $607 billion a year. How does that compare to Obama? During Obama’s presidency to date, the national debt has risen by an average of $1.723 trillion a year — or by a jaw-dropping $1.116 trillion more, per year, than it rose even under Bush.

How much in deficit spending did Bush spend on average per day during his presidency?  It’s pretty easy to figure out: $607 billion/365 days = $1.66 billion per day.  That’s a lot of spending, Georgie.  Shame on you!

But compared to Obama’s $5 BILLION of deficit spending per day?  Obama spent well over three times more per day every single day than did Bush.

If you want to argue that Bush looks bad, fine.  Bush looks bad.  But Obama looks positively vile.

The article proceeds to present another way to calculate deficit spending by going a little deeper into the weeds:

In fairness, however, Obama can’t rightly be held accountable for the 2009 budget, which he didn’t sign (although he did sign a $410 billion pork-laden omnibus spending bill for that year, which is nevertheless tallied in Bush’s column). Rather, Obama’s record to date should really be based on actual and projected spending in fiscal years 2010 and 2011 (plus the $265 billion portion of the economic “stimulus” package, which he initiated and signed, that was spent in 2009 (Table S-10), while Bush’s should be based on 2002-09 (with the exception of that same $265 billion, which was in no way part of the 2009 budgetary process).

How do Bush and Obama compare on closer inspection? Just about like they do on an initial glance. According to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, during his eight fiscal years, Bush ran up a total of $3.283 trillion in deficit spending (p. 22). In his first two fiscal years, Obama will run up a total of $2.826 trillion in deficit spending ($1.294 trillion in 2010, an estimated $1.267 trillion in 2011 (p. 23), and the $265 billion in “stimulus” money that was spent in 2009). Thus, Bush ran up an average of $410 billion in deficit spending per year, while Obama is running up an average of $1.413 trillion in deficit spending per year — or $1.003 trillion a year more than Bush.

Obama, of course, has said the economy made him do it. But the average inflation-adjusted deficits through Obama’s first two fiscal years will be more than ten times higher than the average inflation-adjusted deficit during the Great Depression. Even as a percentage of the gross domestic product, the average deficits in Obama’s first two fiscal years will more than three times higher the average deficit during the Great Depression. The fact that Obama’s deficits have, by any standard, more than tripled those of the Great Depression, cannot convincingly be blamed on the current recession.

And none of this even takes into account Obamacare, which the Congressional Budget Office says would increase spending by more than $2 trillion in its real first decade (2014 to 2023) — and which, even under very rosy projections, the CBO says would increase the national debt by $341 billion by the end of 2019.

It’s not often that one gets to hear a call for “responsible” fiscal stewardship from someone whose deficit spending is outpacing President Bush’s by more than $1 trillion a year — yet that’s apparently what we’ll get to hear tonight. But President Obama’s actions tell another, far clearer, story about his commitment to deficit reduction.

So let’s recalculate based on the deeper analysis.  Bush’s deficit spending was $410 billion a year divided by 365 days, which equals $1.1 billion per day.  Versus Obama’s deficit spending, which has been $1,413 billion a year divided by 365, which equals $3.87 billion per day.  That is 3.5 times more spending every single day from Obama.

Now, particularly dumbass liberals often try to argue that George Bush somehow made his war spending “off budget.”  That is such a pile of crap it is unreal.  Who controls the spending?  CONGRESS DOES.  Congress ALWAYS had the power to cut off funding for the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars any time it wanted.  And the simple fact of the matter is that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi – who controlled the Senate and House respectively – agreed on how to handle the funding of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.  It was DEMOCRATS who did not want to be in the position of having to either support war funding and enrage their base or vote against it and enrage the American people.  So it was NOT George Bush who took war funding “off budget,” it was Democrats who were afraid to be held accountable.  And every penny that Bush spent on the war and on everything else ultimately showed up in his spending and in his debt.

The problem is that there are truly stupid people who have no clue how government works and live in a world of lies.

The federal government is twice as large as it was ten years ago.  And Bush is partly responsible for this, no question about it.  But it is 30% larger than it was just two years ago, and therefore Obama’s share of this increase is huge in relation to Bush’s.

We can’t go on like this.  We will soon be going the way of the Dodo bird.

Democrats offered no plans – NONE.  ZERO. – to deal with the fact that Medicare will be bankrupt and collapse in 2016.  That is less than five years away.  But it’s actually much worse than that.  For example, as recently as December 2010, the estimate was that it would go bankrupt “as early as 2017,” according to CBS reporting.  Which is to say that it is going broke a lot faster than the experts have been anticipating; and it easily could go broke by 2014 instead of 2016.

And Obama has no plan.  He has completely abdicated any leadership whatsoever.  He offered a budget that was so ridiculous (it would have added $12 trillion to the debt) that not even ONE DEMOCRATS would vote for it.  It failed 97-0 in the Democrat-controlled SenateJust how massive a failure is Obama?  And since then he has offered NOTHING but fearmongering and demonization.

We desperately need leadership.  We desperately need a plan.  And Obama – who is supposed to be seeking to rally the nation behind a common cause – is instead merely offering demagogic partisan speeches.  When he is not spending American into bankruptcy and financial implosion.

Update: Before this article was published, I came across this angle on the same issue:

Obama: More than Twice the Debt in Half the Time as Bush
by House Committee on Ways and Means

A recent “infographic” released by the White House tries to assign the blame for our massive debt and deficits to former President Bush and Republican Congresses.  However, the graphic conveniently omits President Obama’s record and his plans for the fiscal future of our country.  If the President had his way and his Fiscal Year 2012 budget proposal was enacted, here is what a comparison of the increase in public debt would look like:

 

As the graph above shows, the debt held by the public increased $2.4 trillion between 2000 and 2008, from $3.4 trillion to $5.8 trillion.  Under President Obama’s budget proposal, the debt held by the public is projected to increase $6.1 trillion between 2008 and 2012, from $5.8 trillion to $11.9 trillion.

That means that President Obama will more than double the debt accumulated under President Bush in half the time.  Twice the debt in half the time: courtesy of the Obama Administration.

Pretty much no matter how you slice it, Obama is a big government socialist out to bankrupt America faster than anyone who ever came before him.

Update: here’s another, more recent article to put into perspective just how totally awful this deceitful hypocrite Obama has been for America.  “God damn America” will not remain solvent if he gets another four years.

Update, May 24, 2o12: here’s still another article with recent developments, given that Obama has actuallyhad the chutzpah to make spending an issue.

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466 Responses to “Who Spent More? Average Bush Vs. Average Obama Spending Per Day Proves Obama Most Reckless And Irresponsible EVER”

  1. Anonymous Says:

    Correction, Bush spent ~$8b per day based on $3t plus of annual spending in 2008. See chart in below link:

    http://usgovernmentspending.com/downchart_gs.php?year=1996_2016&view=1&expand=&units=b&log=linear&fy=fy12&chart=F0-fed&bar=1&stack=1&size=m&title=US Federal Spending&state=US&color=c&local=s

    You are misinterpreting the article which speaks to deficit spending. And given Obama has lowered tax rates (1/3 of the stimulus) and that we are in a recession, it only makes sense that we have less collectable tax revenue. Your #s if anything only point to the fact that we have a revenue problem as well as a spending problem. Under Bush, we were running deficits in boom times — this was boneheaded, and in my opinion, far worse than what Obama is doing.

  2. Carl Hubert Says:

    Even if you put facts in front of a Democrat he will change the subject and do another spin on another subject. It is not fair to them to enter comon sense into a discussion with the Left

  3. Michael Eden Says:

    Anonymous,

    I can understand why you would call yourself “anonymous.” If I were as ignorant as you I would go by “anonymous” too.

    Obama is spending over $10 billion a day, if you’re just talking about “spending.”

    This article deals with DEFICIT spending. How much spending did Bush vs. Obama contribute to the national debt. And it is a documented FACT that Obama is spending more than three times as much every day as Bush did. Obama is spending more while taking in less. REAL bad combo.

    Let’s not even bother to look at my words. Let’s consider the NPR article:

    In his State of the Union address tonight, President Obama will reportedly issue a call for “responsible” efforts to reduce deficits (while simultaneously calling for new federal spending). In light of the President’s expected rhetorical nod to fiscal responsibility, it’s worth keeping in mind his record on deficits to date. When President Obama took office two years ago, the national debt stood at $10.626 trillion. It now stands at $14.071 trillion — a staggering increase of $3.445 trillion in just 735 days (about $5 billion a day).

    To put that into perspective, when President George W. Bush took office, our national debt was $5.768 trillion. By the time Bush left office, it had nearly doubled, to $10.626 trillion. So Bush’s record on deficit spending was not good at all: During his presidency, the national debt rose by an average of $607 billion a year. How does that compare to Obama? During Obama’s presidency to date, the national debt has risen by an average of $1.723 trillion a year — or by a jaw-dropping $1.116 trillion more, per year, than it rose even under Bush.

    What was that, deficit and debt being mentioned 7 times in two short paragraphs??? It’s easy to understand why you are confused, given your obvious inability to reason as demonstrated by the next problem in your “thinking” below.

    Obama did NOT lower the tax rates. Obama continued the Bush tax cuts even as he demonized them and made sure everybody knew that he was going to increase taxes as soon as he could. So nobody better invest because Obama is going to come after you. People are looking for a little bit of certainty. Obama has made sure with his massive ObamaCare, his massive regulations and his constant shifting on taxes that people are as uncertain and fearful to invest as they possibly can be.

    A tax cut decrease the rate at which one is taxed. A tax credit is a benefit paid to an individual to increase one’s net income. You do not need to pay taxes at all to qualify for many tax credits.

    Here is a quote from a tax site documenting what I am saying:

    [Updated Jan 2011] President Obama and Congress have approved a two year extension to all the Bush-era tax cuts. This means that the 2011 federal IRS tax rates will be the same as 2010 rates

    Again, when you say, “Obama has lowered tax rates” that is simply a LIE. Obama gave TAX CREDITS to people who DON’T EVEN PAY FEDERAL INCOME TAXES. Half the country pays NO federal income taxes. HOW CAN YOU “CUT TAX RATES” FOR PEOPLE WHO ALREADY PAY ZERO PERCENT IN TAXES???

    You people are simply amazing. You demonize the rich who are paying almost all the damn taxes (did you know that the top 10% of the wage earners pay nearly 70% of the taxes?) while you literally want to GIVE the slackers money to not pay taxes. And then say that the people who are in fact paying all the taxes “aren’t paying their fair share.” That’s just dishonest.

    Please get your facts straight before you tell me I don’t have my facts straight.

  4. Michael Eden Says:

    Carl,

    You’ve noticed that too?

    In my experience, it’s not just that they change and spin; it’s that they get angry and start frothing at the mouth while their eyeballs spin around.

  5. Narender Says:

    This is very true and very right

  6. Steve Richardson Says:

    Elections have consequences. Is it possible that someone will ever point out that we , with the assistance of the left leaning media, did this to ourselves. The thought of the American people electing Obama, Reid and Pelosi at the same time to positions of authority is still shocking to me. We willbe living with these consequences for years to come.

  7. Idontcareifyoudontlikewhatisaid Says:

    That idiot BUSH made a lot of hellacious messes so of course it’s going to cost even more for Obama to clean up BUSH’s messes.

    The REAL issue for most folks is not how much the man is spending but the fact that he is HALF black. Since the day Obama won the presidency, ignorant people have tried to come up with any and all reasons to not re-elect him, even though dumbass BUSH was elected twice….

  8. Michael Eden Says:

    Besides being ignorant and racist, do you have any other problems we should know about, Idontcareifyoudontlikewhatisaid???

    I tell you what, my instinct is to block you as a fool – and I don’t waste my time arguing with fools – but I’m going to give you a chance to come back and explain in detail why this is Bush’s mess three years after Bush left office.

    And I’ll tell you what. Beyond the fact that Obama promised that his plan would save the day – and he would heal the planet and all those empty broken promises of a LIAR – you can even go back to the 2008 collapse and trace them to specific Bush policies. Just what was it that George Bush did that caused the 2008 collapse?

    Make your case a good one, because I’ll be coming back with a big can of whoopass to show that THE DEMOCRATS WHO CONTROLLED BOTH BRANCHES OF CONGRESS FROM 2006-2011 WERE ALL OVER OUR PRESENT TERRIBLE CIRCUMSTANCES.

    You see, Idontcareifyoudontlikewhatisaid, your sole argument really is that Bush was president when the 2008 collapse happened. But you are FAR too dishonest to apply that same standard to Barack Obama now.

    Your next post will likely be your last (again, I don’t argue with fools, but I WILL refute them before blocking them), SO MAKE YOUR NEXT POST A GOOD ONE OR JUST GET LOST YOU LOSER.

  9. Michael Eden Says:

    Steve,

    We’re both on the same page.

    In one recent article I wrote the following to set up my conclusion:

    At this point, it is really only a matter of time before this most selfish, depraved and vile of all generations that elected the most evil president in its nations history collapses on top of its children.

    Republicans most certainly did try – and will continue to try – to keep this nation from slitting its collectivist throat and collapsing. But the demonic Democrat Party demonized them at every turn, and the demonization takes its toll. The American people don’t support doing the right thing, the necessary thing. They have stage four soul cancer and they want cotton candy rather than chemotherapy.

    The Democrat Party is the party of destruction. We are less than five years away from Medicare going bankrupt. But what do they do? They demonize any attempt to save the system, and essentially demand that the system collapse so that it can help no one. And they do that because they know that the people are too stupid to know the truth and too depraved to have any desire of bothering to want to find out. Republicans propose solutions; democrats lie and fearmonger and demonize Republicans, and stupid and depraved people believe the poisonous propaganda.

    And then Republicans buckle and cave.

    And this has happened over and over again while America races along on the fast track to suicide and hell.

    Elections DO have consquences. And the American people voted for hell when they voted for Barack Obama. And you’re right; it should be no surprise that they’re starting to GET the hell they voted for.

    The book of Revelation is interesting. You’ve got God judging the world for its wickedness in following the Antichrist. All sorts of painful inflictions fall on them, and each time they actually curse God MORE.

    If we’ve got decent hearts, we’ll repent of our sin of electing Obama and the Party of 54 million abortions. If we’re like the people of the last days, we’ll hate God all the more and elect more Democrats.

    And I’m like you, Steve. I don’t know who the American people are any more.

  10. woody Rill Says:

    Michael Eden,

    Great post my friend! Glad to see their are still people out there with common sense!

  11. Michael Eden Says:

    Woody,

    I think it’s amazing how much “common sense” you can have when you try to see the world through God and through His Word.

    Versus the theories of people who are determined to live in a world without God, and who literally turn their educations into a sheer determination to become more and more profoundly stupid.

  12. Anonymous Says:

    After reading this article both of these guys should be ashamed. You are justifiying who spent the most ridiculous of the ridiculus amount the republican or the democrat. While you write, rich, porkly business crooks and corporations are laughing and not paying their fair share of taxes and convincing us to let them do it in the name of free market capitalism or be screwed on increased cost of goods. Folks who take advantage of the welfare system are wondering why we care so much instead of getting in on the corruption on the welfare state. You can’t win for losing…welcome to America.

  13. Anonymous Says:

    Most evil President….r u serious? Man, do you think for yourself? The republicans r saving the country from evil…get a clue!!! I am not trying to defend the Democrats for dumb things that they do. …but don’t go overboard. COME ON!

  14. Michael Eden Says:

    I saw this morning the market going right down the toilet today, and “THE MOST EVIL PRESIDENT” turned on his teleprompter and read a message that was basically “The buck stops anywhere but with me, and that this ship of state is going to keep ploughing ahead full speed.” Right into that iceberg that everybody with a damn clue can see.

    Yes, you ARE trying to defend Democrats. You are trying to defend their incredibly reckless spending. You are trying to defend the fact that this nation is $200 TRILLION in debt due to Democrats’ utterly failed and disastrous Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security “entitlements.” You are trying to defend Democrats and their state-unions that have saddled every state with massive unfunded pension liabiities. You are trying to defend the Democrats in their abject refusal to do anything whatsoever to reign in their reckless, immoral and yes EVIL spending of money they don’t have. You are trying to defend the Democrats abject refusal to allow a balanced budget amendment that would have prevented this debt crisis from ever happening – even if they’d agreed to it just a couple of weeks ago.

    So YOU come on.

    We’ll ALL be going overboard when Obama crashes this economy. And it will be the blind support of fool puppets like YOU that created this mess.

  15. Michael Eden Says:

    I can understand why you go by “anonymous.”

    Somebody should tell you that the United States has the SECOND HIGHEST corporate tax rate in the entire world. Sombedoy should tell you that US corporations have something like $2 TRILLION in cash sitting overseas that they can’t bring back (to create jobs) because they know Obama will confiscate 35% of it if they do. And Marxist idiot MORONS like you want to send even MORE businesses and jobs and cash overseas with your stupid class warfare greed.

    And the damn corporations that are playing Obama’s game of “state capitalism” (i.e. corporatism, i.e. fascism) are the ones paying no damn taxes. Look at GE, the uberleftist company chaired by the uberleftist CEO Jeffrey Immelt who is on Obama’s economic advisory head.

    A lot of conservatives like me have been favoring a flat tax (with no loopholes) for years. And the ONLY reason we don’t have that is because of idiot LIBERALS who want to keep pushing the buttons and pulling the levers of government so they can retain their (fascist) control.

    I don’t doubt that you’re ONE of the folks who take advantage of the welfare system (i.e. sit on your worthless ass while stealing money from people who produce something) while demonizing the businesses that actually produce something.

  16. Dick Smerda Says:

    DO ES ANYONE COMPREHEND A TRILLION DOLLARS?

    FOR GOD’S SAKE RELATE YOUR MESSAGE IN TERMS WE UNDERSTAND

    THE NAT’L DEBT I CURRENTLY OVER $ 45,000 PER MAN, WOMAN & CHILD IN THE USA..

    I DONT THINK IT INCLUDES THE SOC SEC “LOK BOX” OWED.

  17. Michael Eden Says:

    It might be even worse than you say, Dick, because your $45k figure does NOT count the entitlements (which are NOT part of our $14.5 trillion debt).

    Our actual debt is more like $200 trillion.

    And that is like $645,000 per man, woman $ child in the USA.

    Kind of makes you want to curl up into the fetal position and suck your thumb.

  18. EMinOC Says:

    Deficit is not simply spending. Economic downturn means less revenue which increases deficit. Tax cuts under bush increased deficits. Obama cut taxes which increased deficits. Spending increased under Bush twice what Obama has proposed, but Obama has not benefitted from a bubble economy mirage like Bush did. Obama has not been great but to pin it all on him is ignorant, shamelessly partisan, or flat out dishonest. Take your pick but all this partisan BS is destroying the country.
    http://www.businessinsider.com/government-spending-2011-7

  19. Michael Eden Says:

    You’re what I like to call WRONG.

    I wrote a whole rather lengthy article that utterly refutes your contention: https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2010/09/08/tax-cuts-increase-revenues-they-have-always-increased-revenues/

    Every single president who has EVER cut the tax rates – Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, JOHN F. KENNEDY, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush – saw SUBSTANTIALLY INCREASED REVENUE after cutting the tax rates.

    A tiny part of that article:

    For the record, President George Bush’s 2003 tax cuts:

    raised federal tax receipts by $785 billion, the largest four-year revenue increase in U.S. history. In fiscal 2007, which ended last month, the government took in 6.7% more tax revenues than in 2006.

    These increases in tax revenue have substantially reduced the federal budget deficits. In 2004 the deficit was $413 billion, or 3.5% of gross domestic product. It narrowed to $318 billion in 2005, $248 billion in 2006 and $163 billion in 2007. That last figure is just 1.2% of GDP, which is half of the average of the past 50 years.

    Lower tax rates have be so successful in spurring growth that the percentage of federal income taxes paid by the very wealthy has increased. According to the Treasury Department, the top 1% of income tax filers paid just 19% of income taxes in 1980 (when the top tax rate was 70%), and 36% in 2003, the year the Bush tax cuts took effect (when the top rate became 35%). The top 5% of income taxpayers went from 37% of taxes paid to 56%, and the top 10% from 49% to 68% of taxes paid. And the amount of taxes paid by those earning more than $1 million a year rose to $236 billion in 2005 from $132 billion in 2003, a 78% increase.

    Budget deficits are not merely a matter of tax policy; it is a matter of tax policy AND spending policy. Imagine you have a minimum wage job, but live within your means. Then you get a job that pays a million dollars a year. And you go a little nuts, buy a mansion, a yacht, a fancy car, and other assorted big ticket items such that you go into debt. Are you really so asinine as to argue that you made more money when you earned minimum wage? But that’s literally the Democrats’ argument

    You also flat out LIE when you describe Bush’s “bubble economy.”

    At this point I’m going to just copy/paste my refutation of another liberal Kool-Aid drinker. Because your talking points are all the same, and arguing with one of you jackasses is pretty much like arguing with another:

    Notice how my response to Rich hits all of your talking points:

    Rich,

    Your two cents doesn’t seem to be worth very much. I guess it must be due to all the inflation Obama has given us with his trillions of dollars of debt and his policy of printing money (Obama spending $4.1 billion EVERY DAY vs. Bush’s $1.6 billion).

    I don’t know if anybody has ever told you this, but it just so happens that there were Democrats around the whole time Reagan was president, the whole time Bush I was president, and the whole time Bush II was president. What is asinine of you is how you say Repbublicans are to blame now for all the economic woes when they’ve only controlled the House for what? five months plus a few days? But the Democrats weren’t to blame when they had total control of both the House and the Senate for the two years prior to the economy imploding in 2008. And of course the Democrts have had absolute power over the House, the Senate and the presidency SINCE 2008.

    Obama had historic power and Democrats had historic control in 2009-10. Versus Bush, who had NO influence over a House and Senate that were BOTH heavily Democrat control the last two years of his presidency (you know, the period when everything went from pretty good to total crap). And what did we get from Democrats besides TRILLIONS in debt and a devastated economy that has been paralyzed with Obama’s failed leadership and reckless policies??? We didn’t even get a damn BUDGET from Democrats for two years. How is that not such a failure of responsibility that these people belong in jail???

    So your “We’ve only got problems because of Republican obstructionism” point runs into the snafu of the fact that we only had problems because of Democrat obstructionism THE REST OF THE TIME.

    Here’s just one of oh-so-many examples:

    The Left now acts as if this never happened. For instance, in a recent television appearance, liberal commentator Bill Press argued that–rather than noisy disagreement–”Americans want discussion” on health-care reform. Who could disagree with that sentiment–except, perhaps, the Obama administration, which pushed Congress to rush through legislation by early August? This timeline was clearly aimed at preempting discussion and presenting the public with a “done deal” on health reform. As one protester put it, the president spent more time choosing a dog than he did discussing health-care reform.

    Likewise, Mr. Press complained that opponents hadn’t put their own reform plans on the table. “The people who are there to protest–what are they for? Are they for the status quo? The Republicans haven’t put any other plan on the table.” But did congressional Democrats offer their own alternative to President Bush’s 2005 Social Security plan? When a fellow Democrat asked Rep. Nancy Pelosi when their party would offer its own Social Security plan, her answer was “Never. Is that soon enough for you?” Democrats would not even negotiate until personal retirement accounts were taken off the table. Why should Republicans act differently today, regarding the “public option”?

    So, if I’m supposed to feel boo-hoo-hoo and wah sorry for Democrats because of “Republican obstructionism,” allow me to simply politely suggest that you stick it in your ear or whatever orifice it fits into. Democrats were so obstructionist it was beyond unreal, and for you Democrats to whine about “obstructionism” now makes me realize that every single one of you is a pathological hypocrite. It’s really quite amazing. It’s really quite amazing, the unrelenting chutzpah you people have.

    Harry Reid just got through tabling TWO House-passed Republican bills without even bothering to have a vote. He actually said of the first bill (the cut, cap and balance bill) that it was the worst legislation in the history of the republic. Because apparently he liked the Fugitive Slave Act his party once passed.

    Now, you go on from one simply ridiculous point to another. You proceed to say, “You also neglect to mention the sorry state of the economy even at the point the Democrats took power.”
    Well, let’s look at that. I’ll mention it, but I don’t think you’ll like it. Because I’ve got something called “facts.” Like I said, the Democrats took power over both the House and the Senate in the 2006 election. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid were running things from January 2007 on. And to answer your question, the unemployment rate when they took over was 4.6%. I know, I know. Pretty bad. Good thing you Democrats were around to save us and send it to over 10% (and three years into Obama’s reign of terror it’s 9.2%). Good thing you Democrats were able to so successfully lead us to such incredibly pathetic ecomomic growth that we are likely to have a DOUBLE-DIP recession. And you know it’s that second scoop where all the fat, calories, misery and pain are, don’t you?

    It is funny how simply unrelentingly dumb you liberals are determined to be. Obama, Reid and Pelosi spend TRILLIONS of dollars, and it’s Bush’s fault??? Of course it is.

    In his State of the Union address tonight, President Obama will reportedly issue a call for “responsible” efforts to reduce deficits (while simultaneously calling for new federal spending). In light of the President’s expected rhetorical nod to fiscal responsibility, it’s worth keeping in mind his record on deficits to date. When President Obama took office two years ago, the national debt stood at $10.626 trillion. It now stands at $14.071 trillion — a staggering increase of $3.445 trillion in just 735 days (about $5 billion a day).

    To put that into perspective, when President George W. Bush took office, our national debt was $5.768 trillion. By the time Bush left office, it had nearly doubled, to $10.626 trillion. So Bush’s record on deficit spending was not good at all: During his presidency, the national debt rose by an average of $607 billion a year. How does that compare to Obama? During Obama’s presidency to date, the national debt has risen by an average of $1.723 trillion a year — or by a jaw-dropping $1.116 trillion more, per year, than it rose even under Bush.

    For the record, Obama is spending TEN TIMES MORE – adjusted for inflation – to get us out of the “Great Recession” than FDR spent to get us out of the GREAT DEPRESSION. And of course it doesn’t matter at all that both men spent massively and both men utterly FAILED (here’s the skinny on FDR making the Great Depression last SEVEN YEARS longer than it should have. And now of course Obama is failing with the same Keynesian failed policies that FDR failed with). So your assertion that Obama had to spend all these trillions of dollars is a rather idiotic joke.

    Your assertion, “… which necessitated a huge increase in spending the George Bush signed, because he knew that without that spending our economy was going down” is tantamount to your saying, “I am a rabid Keynesian ideologue. And no matter how many times this same stupid government spending idea fails, I’m going to cling to it like a rat clinging to a piece of wood on a sinking ship.” You won’t learn. You CAN’T learn.

    I just wish you people WEREN’T hypocrites for just once in your lives, but Iike I said, it’s pathological with you people.

    I can just quote myself refuting the same stupid argument from another liberal:

    That said, your argument that Obama isn’t to blame because he was just fxing Bush’s mess might not be the statement of a totally dishonest and depraved vermin, but you refuse to give the same benefit of the doubt to Bush, don’t you?

    Bill Clinton left George Bush with the massive Dotcom bubble collapse. That collapse that happened on Clinton’s watch wiped out 78% of the Nasdaq portfolio, and in fact vaporized more than 7.1 TRILLION DOLLARS in American wealth. And the ONLY reason we don’t talk about that – aside that too many in the media are just as biased and as stupid as you are, Smith – is that Clinton had also GUTTED the Pentegon and intelligence budget, leaving America both weak (Osama bin Laden called Clinton’s America “a paper tiger”) and blind. Clinton did to the CIA budget what he did to the Nasdaq – just wiped it out – and left us exposed to the 9/11 attack.

    Osama bin Laden’s words in 1998 following the Clinton fiasco in Somalia where the US pulled out with its tail between its legs: “Our boys no longer viewed America as a superpower. So, when they left Afghanistan, they went to Somalia and prepared themselves carefully for a long war. They had thought that the Americans were like the Russians, so they trained and prepared. They were stunned when they discovered how low was the morale of the American soldier. America had entered with 30,000 soldiers in addition to thousands of soldiers from different countries in the world. … As I said, our boys were shocked by the low morale of the American soldier and they realized that the American soldier was just a paper tiger. He was unable to endure the strikes that were dealt to his army, so he fled, and America had to stop all its bragging and all that noise it was making in the press…”

    Here’s a little more about how we have Bill Clinton to thank for the massive 9/11 attack to go on top of his massive DotCom bubble collapse:

    Author James Risen won the Pulitzer Prize on Tuesday for his much ballyhooed New York Times report last December that revealed President Bush’s previously secret terrorist surveillance program – a revelation he uncovered while researching his book “State of War.”

    In the same book, however, Risen makes an equally explosive claim about President Clinton’s relationship with the CIA – which his editors at the Times have so far declined to cover.

    Upon taking power in 1993, Risen reports, the Clinton administration “began slashing the intelligence budget in search of a peace dividend, and Bill Clinton showed almost no interest in intelligence matters.”

    The agency cutbacks combined with presidential disinterest took their toll almost immediately.

    “Over a three-or-four-year period in the early-to-mid 1990s,” reports Risen, “virtually an entire generation of CIA officers – the people who had won the Cold War – quit or retired. One CIA veteran compared the agency to an airline that had lost all of is senior pilots . . . “

    After Clinton CIA Director John Deutch cashiered several senior officers over a scandal in Guatamala, the situation got even worse.

    “Morale [at the CIA] plunged to new lows, and the agency became paralyzed by an aversion to high-risk espionage operations for fear they would lead to political flaps. Less willing to take big risks, the CIA was less able to recruit spies in dangerous places such as Iraq.”

    And there’s the blindness that led to the 9/11 attack, combined with the fact that Clinton demonstrated to Osama bin Laden with the “Blackhawk Down” fiasco in Somalia that the U.S. was just “a paper tiger,” and ripe for a massive attack. That attack was planned, funded – and all the terrrorist assets were in the USA and even trained to fly in American pilot schools- during the Clinton misrule.

    So if you want to blame Bush for Obama’s mess, the least you could do would be to have the decency to blame Clinton for Bush’s mess. But you’re not honest enough to do that. Neither you, or your corrupt Democrat Party, or your mainstream media propaganda networks, have any integrity at all. Republicans took responsibility and admitted fault for their overspending. Democrats are like Cain in the Book of Genesis; they refuse to accept responsibility for anything no matter how guilty they are.

    I also notice how you utterly fail to mention the gigantic role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the 2008 collapse:

    AEI Article: How Fannie And Freddie Blew Up The Economy

    Barney Frank And Democrat Party Most Responsible For 2008 Economic Collapse

    https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/2009/08/03/who-really-exploded-your-economy-liberals-or-conservatives/

    https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/2009/12/31/with-eyes-finally-wide-open-reconsider-why-the-economy-collapsed-in-the-first-place/

    https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/2009/07/08/biden-we-misread-the-economy-and-its-all-the-republicans-fault/

    Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created by Democrats. It was perennially staffed with Democrats. It had the sole power to bundle mortgages into the “mortgage backed securites” and then sell those securities to the private market under the guise that they were government and therefore AAA. It got massively into subprime loans to literally piss into those mortgage backed securities even as it made it impossible to tell a good security from a bad one. It forced banks to make utterly STUPID loans that went belly-up.

    Watch these videos to see that Fannie Mae was responsible, and Democrats were responsible for preventing ANY regulation at ALL on Fannie Mae: http://digitalartpress.wordpress.com/2009/03/22/video-proof-democrat-party-warned-responsible-for-fannie-mae-freddie-mac-economic-crisis-repost/

    Barney Frank Video Proves Democrats At CORE Of 2008 Economic Collapse

  20. JamesO Says:

    What do you think of this man’s evaluation?

    http://www.cafetax.com/2010/09/20/bush-vs-obama-spending-the-truth/

  21. Michael Eden Says:

    Just glancing over it, I saw a couple of things that should be corrected.

    The “biggie” was that he seems to assume that Obama was in no way, shape or form responsible for the tax revenues plunging. And I would disagree substantially with that.

    I wrote a couple of articles that ought to be illustrative of the bogus implicit assertion that Obama’s policies have nothing whatsoever to do with the decreased reveneus:

    Tax Cuts INCREASE Revenues; They Have ALWAYS Increased Revenues

    AP-Reported FACT: U.S. Economy The Worst Since The LAST Time We Let A Socialist Run It

    The first one points out that every single time we have cut our tax rates, not only have revenues soared, but the RICH ended up paying a much higher percentage of overall revenues as they were enouraged to invest by being rewarded for investing rather than being penalized.

    The second one points out that every time we have a socialist president, things go to hell pretty much on cue.

    That second article contains the following chart during FDR’s presidency. What you see is that FDR’s policies DECREASED income tax revenues even as he INCREASED excise tax revenues which are primarily paid by the poor (e.g. alcohol taxes, cigarette taxes);

    FDR's tax policy hurt

    All this is to say that the author is wrong in his primary point because he is wrong in his underlying assertion: Obama’s polices ARE responsible for discouraging investment and growth. Via ObamaCare, via Dodd-Frank, via EPA regulations and executive orders, via the NLRB, Obama has punished and frightened businesses and investors into not taking actions that would expand our tax revenues. Regulations are a HUGE hidden tax; in fact regulations accounted for $2 trillion in compliance cost in 2008 – and they have since skyrocketed under Obama. The hidden tax of regulatory compliance in fact FAR exceeds the income taxes.

    ObamaCare has hundreds of regulations that will cost businesses HUGE compliance cost. And many of them haven’t even been written yet, such that it’s a huge dark unkown cloud. And Dodd-Frank is the same way. They are adding to the cost and to the climate of fear that shut down businesses. No one knows what Dodd-Frank will do to the financial industry or what the Health-Care Act will do to health-care. And that is terrible given the fact that businesses need to know the cost structure for five years in advance of any major moves.

    Another thing before moving on to the second thing is that Obama routinely blames the hole Bush left him as being to blame; but people forget that Bush could have constantly harped on the hole that CLINTON left him if he wasn’t a “the buck stops here” kind of president. First of all, there was the DotCom bubble collapse that created a severe recession as Bush took office. That bubble vaporized more than $7.1 TRILLION in American wealth, and it wiped out 78% of the Nasdaq portfolio.

    Then consider the 9/11 attacks. That attack was nearly COMPLETELY Clinton’s fault. Why do I say that? Because Bill Clinton gutted both the military and the intelligence budgets (claiming a “peace dividend” after Reagan-Bush I won the Cold War). Because Bill Clinton’s disgraceful exit from Somalia prompted one Osama bin Laden to conclude that the United States was a weak “paper tiger,” ready to be cowed by an attack. And because it was Bill Clinton who let every single one of the terrorists who hit us on 9/11 into the country on HIS watch. Bush – and of course the American people – paid a terrible price as the DotCom recession turned into a REAL toxic recession.

    I say that so that you keep in mind that Bush had every bit as much to blame his predecessor for as Obama.

    The second thing is that we’ve got more data now:

    2001 127.3 Billion Dollar Surplus 152.76 Billion Surplus R D R
    2002 157.8 Billion Dollar Deficit 186.204 Billion Deficit R D R
    2003 374 Billion Dollar Deficit 430.1 Billion Deficit R R R
    2004 413 Billion Dollar Deficit 462.56 Billion Deficit R R R
    2005 319 Billion Dollar Deficit 347.71 Billion Deficit R R R
    2006 248 Billion Dollar Deficit 260.4 Billion Deficit R R R
    2007 162 Billion Dollar Deficit 165.24 Billion Deficit R D D
    2008 455 Billion Dollar Deficit 455 Billion Deficit R D D
    2009 1416 Billion Dollar Deficit 1416 Billion Deficit D D D
    2010 1294 Billion Dollar Deficit 1294 Billion Deficit D D D
    2011 1650 Billion Dollar Deficit 1650 Billion Deficit D D R

    And one of the things you can rather clearly see is that Obama has added a trillion dollars MORE than Bush to the deficit – and that compared to Bush’s WORST SINGLE YEAR – each year of his presidency. And in fact his deficits project out to trillion-plus dollar deficits as far as we can project.

    One last thing: most Republicans – especially the conservative Republicans – openly admit that Republicans spent too much, and that they learned their lesson and want to slash our unsustainable spending. Barack Obama and the Democrats have NEVER and apparently WILL never make such an acknowledgment. Obama is blaming everybody and everything but himself and the Democrats for the terrible budget deficits he is singularly responsible for.

    Republicans admit they were wrong for adding billions to the deficit that they should not have; Democrats refuse to admit anything even though they turned billions into TRILLIONS.

  22. Alexo Says:

    I read until dumb ass liberal and lost interest.

  23. Michael Eden Says:

    Alexo,

    That’s because you’re a dumb ass liberal, and you’ve got a filter that prevents you from entertaining truth or reality.

    Out of curiousity I scrolled down the article to see where the “dumbass liberal” thing came along, and by then I’d already established the FACT of my premise. Oh, but reality doesn’t matter; you can disregard it because I said liberals were dumbasses.

    Sadly, that is a completely dumb ass thing to do, which merely serves to illustrate my contention that LIBERALS ARE DUMBASSES.

    I can just imagine Adolf Hitler reading something and throwing it down, saying, “I read until it said Nazis are evil and lost interest.”

  24. Anonymous Says:

    Phil Buster – where is the overspending (beside everywhere and always) exactly beside paying more interest on the debt – can anyone tell me what we a speically spending more on than we did before Obama?

  25. Alexo Says:

    Actually I’m a moderate Libertarian =P I however only read professional Blogs which use unbiased and professionalism.

  26. Alexo Says:

    And yes I disregard because that shows rather than an Unbiased look or even an attempt at professionalism you started with the name calling I’m sick of from both sides of the aisle.

  27. Michael Eden Says:

    Alexo,

    You must have a VERY highly exalted opinion of yourself.

    Tell you what, given your rather pathetic use of grammar, the only “professional blogs which use unbiased and professionalism [sic]” you can even understand are probably intended to be drawn over with crayon.

    Apart from that issue, I wonder just who you think is “professional” and “unbiased.” Paul Krugman, perhaps? He believes the U.S. government should openly lie to the American people and fearmonger them into a massive government expansion using the bogus threat of space aliens. But what the hell, they gave the man a Nobel Prize, you know. Maybe Chris Matthews? Or CNN? It’s not like they’re not just as “unbiased” as can be.

    If you were in any way, shape or form an actual “libertarian,” you wouldn’t be bitching at my thesis. So I know you’re just one more of those liberals who doesn’t have the courage or integrity to acknowledge what he is. In reality, though, you’re just a troll trolling around trying to convince the naive that you’re really not a troll.

    And thank you for openly acknowledging that you openly denounce and reject even what is obviously true simply because some part of the package offends you in some trivial way. For all your hoity-toityness, that qualifies you as being beneath contempt.

    Go back and crawl under your stupid little rock where nobody will ever do any name crawling but the cockroaches and spiders who share it with you. Either that or grow up and get yourself a clue.

  28. Michael Eden Says:

    I would try to answer your question, Anonymous, but I’m frankly not sure what you’re asking. You have to be more specific.

  29. the bullsh*t Says:

    you’re a f-ing [edited by moderator – the whole word was there ]idiot you hate-spewing piece of shit. go eat some sewer slime and f**k [edited by moderator] yourself

  30. Michael Eden Says:

    A couple of points:

    1) you call me a “hate spewing” blankety blank? Really? A guy as obviously loving and tolerant as YOU? You are the worst thing in the world – you are a hypocrite without shame or honor. You would be ashamed of yourself if you had the capacity for such a virtue.

    I point out – with FACTS – that Obama spent more than Bush every came close to spending, and that is “hateful” when your vile language directetd at me is somehow not???

    2) why is it that you damn liberals hate truth so much that you are incapable of mounting a single argument to “prove” me wrong? All you offer is hateful violent spews that claim I’m “hateful.” Without every bothering to even try to show why I’m wrong and you’re right.

    You have both a mental and a moral condition.

    Now please go away.

  31. Mr. S Says:

    You blame the Democratic Congress for the debt accumulated under Bush, and the off-budget war spending. But now that Obama’s in office, its his fault? Convenient.

    Did Bush sign those funding bills or did he veto them?

    Nobody is saying that democrats are blameless.
    But when you want to talk about spending, you can’t ignore the enormous spending that was done under the watch of George W Bush.
    If he didnt like it, then he could have not ordered troops into Iraq and saved that money.

    Obama put the $2 trillion in war money back on the books when he got into office. So immediately he assumed a ton of Bush’s spending.

  32. Michael Eden Says:

    Mr. S,

    I don’t know if you’re a liar or if you’re simply not that bright. But what you say is a complete factual misrepresentation of what I say in this article.

    The closest I come to “blaming the Democrat Congress for the debt accumulated under Bush” is this paragraph:

    Now, particularly dumbass liberals often try to argue that George Bush somehow made his war spending “off budget.” That is such a pile of crap it is unreal. Who controls the spending? CONGRESS DOES. Congress ALWAYS had the power to cut off funding for the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars any time it wanted. And the simple fact of the matter is that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi – who controlled the Senate and House respectively – agreed on how to handle the funding of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It was DEMOCRATS who did not want to be in the position of having to either support war funding and enrage their base or vote against it and enrage the American people. So it was NOT George Bush who took war funding “off budget,” it was Democrats who were afraid to be held accountable. And every penny that Bush spent on the war and on everything else ultimately showed up in his spending and in his debt.

    The problem (for you) is that that has absolultey nothing to do with “blaming the Democrat Congress for debt accumulated under Bush.” Rather, it is a refutation of a typically-heard Democrat claim that somehow the actual debt was worse than the official government record says it is. I accurately point out the clear FACT that Congress alone has the authority to spend, and I point out the FACT that Democrats were in control of the Congress when Bush was spending for “the surge” and that it was ELECTED DEMOCRATS who funded the war the way they did.

    So the only “blame” I’m handing out is to point out that Democrats have been fasely blaming Bush for taking the war spending “off budget” when in fact it was Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid THEMSELVES who did that. That way they could be “opposed to the war” and thereby appease their liberal base without actually cutting off the funding for the troops and incurring the wrath of the independents. But then they turned around and lied about what they did like the lying roaches that Democrats are. And tried to make it sound like Bush did it.

    All the rest of the article merely examines – again the FACTS – of Bush’s spending versus Obama’s spending to document that Obama is spending FAR MORE than Bush spent.

    Now, all that said, the last REPUBLICAN-passed budget in Congress (FY-2007) had a deficit of $161 billion. That’s bad. But then think of the first Democrat budget (FY-2008 BEFORE the economic crisis) was $459 billion – or nearly three times the Republicans last budget the year before. Bush was the same Bush; the ONLY difference was that Democrats had seized the House and the Senate. And it is simply a documented FACT that spending tripled as a result. Then Obama got elected president to go with the Democrat ownership of both the House and the Senate, and now we’ve got deficits of more than $1.3 TRILLION. WHICH IS EIGHT TIMES MORE THAN THE REPUBLICAN DEFICIT.

    I document the facts of the paragraph above in this article: https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2010/07/17/obama-turns-to-clinton-to-advance-the-democrats-as-party-of-success-myth-as-his-economy-turns-to-crap/

    And while I’m mentioning documenting facts, I also have plenty of documenting facts linked to in the article that you denounce; versus you, who have a bunch of ridiculous conspiracy theorist claims.

    So you make false statements and whine all you want, Mr. S, but you are simply factually wrong and your spend-crazy Democrat party is as dishonest as you are.

    If you’re going to try to make the asinine claim that Bush stole trillions of dollars and the GAO and the CBO and the Democrat leadership just lost the money and couldn’t account for it and now Bush stole trillions of dollars that are just gone because that money couldn’t be accounted for, you DOCUMENT it. And for the record, when I say “document it” I don’t mean some slimebag liberal blogger; I mean you produce the official government figures that prove that the money that Bush spent on the war was never officially accounted for. And I’ll be one of the guys screaming to arrest George Bush and get back the nation’s trillions of dollars that he stole as he fooled the entire multi-layered independent government accounting apparatus. Otherwise get lost. Because I block liars. And you are telling lies whether it be through dishonesty or simply stupidity.

  33. Anonymous Says:

    Let’s just remember that the little people like us are going to do nothing to make this all better… If we re-elect Obama, or bring in one of the other douches trying to get in the prized seat of biggest liar in the word. Us and our children will be SOL no matter what.

  34. Michael Eden Says:

    Quite the cynic you are.

    I agree that the Republican field does not contain “the best possible” candidate for the presidency. That hasn’t happened since Reagan, and it hadn’t happend for a long time before Reagan.

    But while any of the Republican presidents wouldn’t be “the best,” to suggest that they would be anywhere NEAR as utterly terrible as Obama is simply ridiculous. The most dumbass Republican is still a far superior president to the “brilliant” Barack Obama.

  35. David Anfinrud Says:

    http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy12/hist.html Here is where you can see the real numbers that are available. Often times the estimate of Receipts are high for historical information.
    WHen Bush Became President He had a recession and we had 9/11 which caused a sharp decrease in Receitps Things improved in 2003. Recepts increased every year. and the deficit was getting smaller every year until the Democrats took both the House and Senate. in 2007 we had the lowest Deficit since 2002 at only 160.7 Billion dollars. Though the crash took place in 2008 tax receipts were only slightly lower than 2007 levels. 43 billion in less revenues but the deficit grew by nearly 300 Billion dollars. Again remember Democrats controlled the purse strings. The first year of Obama nearly a Trillion dollars added that year alone by Obama to the deficit. You may say it is due to the jobs bill but overall a trillion dollars increase would not be bad if it was a one time expenditure. YEt we have Trillion plus deficits every year. So the Stimulus though a factor did not stop the spending that took place. I love the Estimates in tax revenues through 2016 They expect 1.6 Trillion dollars a year in Receipts. We are still in a recession and though 2010 added another 11 Billion dollars in increase if you raise taxes you will see a bigger drop in revenue. And remember Medicare/SSN are off budget items. And every congress includes their revenues as part of the spending budget. Just give IOU’s to both Medicare and SSN. That will have to be paid back. or those social programs will not have funding to keep making payments. Please look at the Budget 2012 Table 1-1 to look at the historical information on the budget.
    People can use numbers to play to make a point thier way. Ignore the facts of the final numbers for the year of BOth On-Budget and Off-Budget numbers the bottom line is Democrat Congress and Obama which never passed a budget increased spending by 1 Trillion dollars of which the shortfall of revenue between 2008 which was 2.5 Trillion dollars and 2009 the Revenue was 2.1 Trillion dollars. Blocking drilling is another big factor in lower revenue. The money the Goverment gets from the oil and the lost jobs to those who work in the industry could make up a little bit of that revenue loss.

  36. Michael Eden Says:

    David,

    Agreed with every single word of your VERY informative comment.

    Statistics can be made to lie all over the place. But the actual raw numbers don’t. And when you look at the actual raw numbers (the total revenue collected by the federal government – particularly as it increased following the Bush tax cuts – and the total deficit and how it massively increased under congressional Democrat control), the actual numbers are a powerful indictment of the Democrat Party.

  37. Anonymous Says:

    Your “facts” are wrong. There is about 2.5 trillion dollars you’ve given to Obama that belongs to Bush, from 2008. The 2009 budget is Bush’s not Obama’s. The bank bailouts happened under Bush, not Obama. The day Bush came into office, the debt stood at 5 trillion dollars. The day Bush left, the debt stood at 10.5 trillion dollars. Your “facts” are missing almost 2.5 trillion dollars from Bush’s debt and adding 2.5 trillion to Obama’s.

  38. Michael Eden Says:

    You are wrong on a number of different levels.

    First of all it isn’t “my facts” that are “wrong”; these are official statistics that are widely available.

    Second, while you are correct that it was Bush who instituted TARP, Bush in fact left fully HALF of the $700 billion of TARP to Obama:

    Step Right Up Obama – Get your TARP Funds here by William Patalon III, Executive Editor, Money Morning

    Editor’s Note: Yesterday, Money Morning took another look at the TARP controversy and some of the newest developments. As Obama has asked President Bush to prompt Congress to release the second part of these funds, we feel it’s something investors need to keep an eye on. The impact of the original stimulus has helped stabilize our banks, but it also rewrote the playing field. And its these kinds of fundamental shifts that all investors need to be aware of.

    Obama Requests Release of Second Half of TARP

    On Monday, President-elect Barack Obama asked Congress to release the remaining $350 billion in bank bailout money that’s part of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

    In a letter addressed to the leadership of both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives, top Obama economic aide Lawrence H. “Larry” Summers highlighted five key reasons the incoming president is seeking use of what remains of the U.S. Treasury Department’s $700 billion TARP.

    I understand your project, fool. You literally want to “blame Bush” even for Obama’s massive $862 billion stimulus of Feb 2009 which Obama and Democrats rammed through on party-line Democrat votes. Fortunately, there are people who are smarter than you who know how to separate Bush’s spending from Obama’s spending.

    Now go away.

  39. Eugene Says:

    Michael Eden, I look at ur work and ideology and see a reflection of myself. I agree with u 100%. You are a breath of fresh air. Your arguments and comments are exactly my arguments and comments elsewhere. The funny thing is that the arguments and comments are applied to the same exact liberal talking points verbatim. This is my 1st time here. I never knew you existed, yet if you saw my discussions elsewhere, you would see the same exact conversations and your words being said by me in a different setting. This is encouraging and creepy at the same time.

  40. Michael Eden Says:

    Eugene,

    Well, we could be twins that were separated at birth.

    I’m pretty sure you’re not just reading my mind, because I ALWAYS wear my tinfoil hat to prevent that very thing from happening… :)

    Keep thinking the good thoughts and arguing the good arguments!

  41. Amy Says:

    How can you compare the two? Wait until Obama leaves office and THEN compare! Bush was in office for EIGHT years! This is an incredibly biased and ignorant article, written only to push the Tea Party agenda. Shame on you! Sometimes, I really wish people would actually think before they type (or speak…).

  42. Derwood Says:

    “that LIBERALS ARE DUMBASSES.”

    “I don’t know if you’re a liar or if you’re simply not that bright.”

    “The “biggie” was that he seems to assume that Obama was in no way, shape or form responsible for the tax revenues plunging. And I would disagree substantially with that.

    I wrote a couple of articles that ought to be illustrative of the bogus implicit assertion that Obama’s policies have nothing whatsoever to do with the decreased reveneus:”

    “Alexo,

    You must have a VERY highly exalted opinion of yourself.”

    The irony and hypocrisy is lost on the conservative.

  43. Michael Eden Says:

    Derwood,

    There’s a word that you might want to brush up on; it’s called “context.” You seem to have gone through 40 comments just to take tiny little snippets and pretend that you actually made some kind of point.

    Apparently irony really is lost on conservatives. Because I read your comment and all I could think was your very first quote, and yes, “liberals truly ARE dumbasses.”

  44. Michael Eden Says:

    Amy,

    You are an incredibly biased and ignorant wretch.

    Obama has spent more damn money in less than three years than Bush spent in EIGHT. But how DARE I consider any facts that make your messiah look bad.

    You then demonize the Tea Party in the very same breath you claim I’m “biased.” You really are a piece of work.

    Fwiw, Amy, EVERY SINGLE TIME one of you idiot libs demonized Bush, he or she was making an implicit comparison. The notion was, “Bush did X, but we’ll do y.” And on your very own idiot view, every single Democrat who did that (and name the one that DIDN’T) is to be condemned for making such a terrible comparison.

    I’d say shame on you, too. But we both know you lack the capacity for that virtue.

  45. Greg Says:

    You are completely retarded. Like Bush, you think the same way. Obama has been trying to fix the economy that was broken by former president bush. Obama’s watch includes – ridding Mubarek, Osama and Ghadaffi……Bush? – One might argue that he “got hussein, however – there was not cause, no rhyme no reason and certainly no WMD’s…….

  46. Michael Eden Says:

    You call me a “retard” for presenting facts, whereas you apparently are a genius for living in a universe of stupid assertions. Bush broke the economy? How? You don’t care; the assertion is enough for your “intellect,” no matter how fact-free it is. “Obama has been trying to fix the economy”? How? In what way has he done so? Not that the details matter to “geniuses” such as yourself; facts and reality are for “retards” like me.

    You actually think Mubarak being driven out was a good thing? You must be the Muslim Brotherhood’s useful idiot, because thanks to your Obama, they own Egypt now. You must be very pleased with Obama’s work in sealing off the Suez Canal to America; who needs oil? Surely we don’t – WE’VE got Obama, after all. Gaddafi gone? Great. So what if al Qaeda is taking over there? So what if Libya after Obama is a human rights disaster with a bloody civil war on the way?

    Obama got Osama bin Laden? Who cares if he got him almost entirely due to the results of the waterboarding that Obama outlawed? Even MSNBC has been forced to report that fact. Who cares if Bush’s work came up with the vital link of the courier and the city in Pakistan that Obama was hiding in – you know, without which Obama would have gone on hiding forever? Virtually everything we knew about the structure of al Qaeda came out of waterboarding. You know, the thing Obama criminalized.

    Interrogation notes from waterboarding led to bin Laden’s courier IN Abbattabad:

    waterboarding led to bin Laden

    [See also here]

    And the evidence is that BUSH got the clues that led to bin Lden in 2008. That according to Wikileaks.

    The only place Obama has “won” his war on terror is in Iraq – the war that victorious Bush handed him on a silver platter because Bush used the surge strategy that Obama demonized.

    Iraq was such a success when Obama took over that Obama’s VP Biden said this:

    I am very optimistic about — about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You’re going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government.

    If Obama is such a damn great president, why is it that you’re mocking the Iraq victory that is one of Obama’s “greatest achievements” according to his own Vice President?

    The interesting thing about Iraq is that key generals are calling it a “disaster” now – and it is a disaster ENTIRELY due to the same useless disgrace of a president who demonized the successful strategy that won the war there in the first place.

    You’re done here, Greg. When someone like you comes along and throws out an insult and then proceeds to provide assertion after assertion utterly divorced from fact or evidence or even rational argument, I know there not worth doing anything other than refuting them and then banning them. So get lost.

  47. John Q America Says:

    Great article, I will probably reference this in the future. I know it is old news now, but I still enjoyed reading it.

    I wanted to share this with you.

    http://ezkool.com/2011/07/two-potus-spending-2/

    I personally think both W and Obama are inept, and party lines only act as a way for the country to remain divided.

    Anyway, I hope you keep up the good work.

  48. Michael Eden Says:

    John,

    I looked at your link. I saw a lot of disingenuousness.

    As the first example there was this one: “The Bush wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with Defense — $1.5 Tril­lion added to the deficit.” Which is to say, let’s not only blame Bush for the spending on the two wars (when even DEMOCRATS said they supported Afghanistan, and when Obama MASSIVELY expanded Afghanistan FAR beyond anything that Bush ever did there), but let’s also “throw in” all the money for the entire Defense budget, too. Because apparently Democrats wouldn’t spend any money at all on the military, and just do away with it entirely, and so the entire Defense budget is therefore Bush’s fault.

    That is just dishonest. Pure and simple.

    Here are a couple of basic facts:

    Obama racked up more than twice the debt in less than half the time of Bush.

    Barack Obama is spending $1.003 trillion a year more than Bush.

    Obama’s programs have been so far-reaching and fundamental that any compromise would leave the nation far to the left of where it’s always been and wants to be. When he took office, government (federal, state and local combined) controlled 35 percent of the US economy — 15th among the two-dozen advanced countries. Now, it controls 44.7 percent, ranking us 7th, ahead of Germany and Britain. So where’s the compromise — leave government in control of, say, 40 percent?

    You have a right to say that you didn’t think Bush did a good job as president. But to try to establish some kind of moral equivlance between the two – making one as “bad” or as “irresponsible” as the other – is a demented joke. Obama is so much worse than Bush – especially in terms of spending – that it is quite simply unreal.

    Elections are often a matter of picking the lesser of two evils. That is just the way it is in a fallen world. And the Republicans – as bad as they may be – are far better than Democrats.

  49. informed citizen Says:

    Its time for the right wing nuts to get a new talking point. They keep parrotting the” tax and spend democrats” mantra. However, the repubs, recent history shows anyone who actually follows it, love to borrow and spend. Just go back to dubya and see how much he/we borrowed for two wars that were kept off budget.

    Also, Mission Accomplished! “Fox News Viewers Know Less Than People Who Don’t Watch Any News: Study Shows”

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/21/fox-news-viewers-less-informed-people-fairleigh-dickinson_n_1106305.html?ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false

  50. Michael Eden Says:

    Misinformed citizen,

    You, sir, are the very idealogue dumbass that you so pathetically accuse the right of being.

    First of all, there’s this FACT:

    Obama to outspend 8 years of Bush… by March
    Posted on August 25, 2011 at 11:23am by Meredith Jessup

    Sobering news from NRO’s Jim Geraghty:

    In 946 days, Obama has increased the national debt by $4,022,412,621,434.77 or $4.02 trillion.

    That amounts to $4,252,021,798.56 per day ($4.25 billion).

    When the debt increases another $877,587,378,565.23 ($877.58 billion), the debt accumulated under Obama’s presidency will equal the debt accumulated under Bush’s two terms.

    Obviously, this can change, but barring some sudden shift in the federal government’s borrowing and spending habits, this milestone will be reached in 206 days from August 23, 2011. That would be March 15, 2012.

    But yeah, clearly Bush was the problem.

    If spending continues at the normal pace through Inauguration Day 2013, it would add an additional $1,326,630,801,150.72 ($1.32 trillion) to the debt total.

    Obama will have, in one term, raised the national debt by $6.22 trillion, 22 percent more than George W. Bush did in two terms.

    Imagine how much time Obama’s successor will spend explaining how they inherited this mess…

    Now, you can demonize Fox News all the hell you want, moron, but the FACT is still a FACT. And YOU ARE WRONG.

    Nothing pisses me off more than when somebody demonizes somebody else and the guy who is demonizing is the one who has the demon.

    But there’s more than just Obama’s spending to consider.

    There’s also the fact that the Democrats haven’t even BOTHERED to pass a budget in 941 days. That is another FACT, no matter how much you want to say that Fox News isn’t your cup of tea.

    And on the subject of passing budgets, we get to see what is really going on here:

    The last Republican passed budget before the Democrats took over was the FY-2007 budget. Let’s consider their spending deficit relative to the Democrats’:

    For the record, the last budget from a Republican President AND a Republican Congress – FY-2007 (passed in 2006) – resulted in a $161 billion deficit at a time when unemployment was 4.6%. That’s what happened the last time the GOP was in control.

    What happened when the Democrats took control in January 2007? Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi passed a FY-2008 budget that had a $459 billion deficit – nearly three times the deficit in the immediately previous Republican-passed budget. Three times. And this before the financial crisis that somehow “necessitated” all this massive spending.

    Now, that’s a pretty crazy increase under Democrat control. But you aint seen nothin’ yet.

    The Democrats passed a FY-2009 budget with a staggering, mind-boggling, totally reckless $1.42 TRILLION deficit.

    The FY-2010 budget approved by Reid and Pelosi and signed by Obama had an estimated $1.6 TRILLION deficit.

    The deficit has increased from $161 billion in the last budget before Democrats took control of the Congress (FY 2007) to $1.42 trillion in the most recent fiscal year (FY 2009)—an increase of $1.26 trillion or 782%.

    With three months remaining in the fiscal 2009 budget, the federal deficit just officially passed the $1 trillion mark. Worse yet, Obama borrowed more than forty cents for every single dollar he spent.

    We also suffered a budget shortfall of $94 billion in the month of June, which marks the first June in more than ten years (read, “encompassing the entire Bush presidency”). Bush’s success in raising revenues is bookended by two Democrat presidents who failed.

    And now the Democrats aren’t even bothering to pass a budget for the next fiscal year, so they can simply spend without any accountability whatsoever.

    You, “informed citizen,” are the very dumbass and nutjob you falsely accuse the conservatives of being.

    And NOTHING has been kept “off budget,” you misinformed moron. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and the Democrats agreed to how the spending was accounted for. Again, you stupid moron, ONLY CONGRESS HAS THE POWER TO SPEND MONEY. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid did not want to be in a position to vote against funding the soldiers in time of war; they also didn’t want to piss off their base by spending money to keep our troops fighting. So they punted, not Bush. And every single penny has since been accounted for.

    which is to say that you are the leftwing nutjub believing every lie your leftwing media propaganda tells you.

    Now go away.

  51. Anonymous Says:

    It’s no wonder we can’t get anything done in our country, everybody wants to blame instead of really trying to work together and do something that helps everyone not just a few. I hear people blaming Obama but I don’t see any alternatives being proposed by Republicans that would help in any way. It’s easy to say that we are spending too much but what is the alternative? If you lose your job and you need to pay your bills what is the Republican solution? Too bad your down buddy, you just have to suffer the circumstances. Just hope that you don’t fall into that category. Give alternative solutions…let’s here them!

  52. Michael Eden Says:

    Your very statement, “but I don’t see any alternatives being proposed by Republicans that would help in any way,” is the very damn thing you self-righteously assert is so wrong, you hypocrite dumbass.

    People like you make me want to puke, Anonymous.

    You sit there and self righteously criticize Republicans even as you do the very damn thing that you blame them for doing. You have no capacity whatsoever for self-reflection, do you?

    Democrats demonized Bush and Republicans for eight unrelenting years. And then Obama came on the scene and massively escalated the demonization.

    Here’s just one for you, you weasel:

    The Republicans plan, Obama says, boils down to this: ‘Dirtier air, dirtier water, less people with health insurance.'”

    You show me President Bush ever saying anything that hateful about Democrats, punk. I will ban you if you come back here without proof that Bush spread blame and hate the way Obama has.

    That said, you are a liar. The Republicans have passed fifteen different jobs bills. Versus Democrats who have passed ZERO.

    Republicans have plenty of solutions. You have dishonest propaganda and lies, just like your messiah Obama.

  53. Anonymous Says:

    Hey Michael Eden, someone needs to punch you in your racist face. Looks like you have way too much time on your hands, and probably lack common sense. You probably have never served your country a single day. For sure, your political studies far outweigh your world history prowess. For, if you and your good buddy Bush Jr had studied, you would know that we can’t go over and change people in the middle east. Those stupid wars based on so many lies is what has our country in the mess that it’s in. Yes, the democrats followed dumb ass Bush Jr and deserve the blame as well. All you have to do is elect someone else to do the job. One president can’t change our country into a socialist state in 4 years. It’s one thing to complain about him, but you’re way over the top. I’m so sure your biggest hero is Reagan. Very sure of it. Look at his spending, look at the percentages. Just be a man and say you don’t enjoy a president of partial African-American descent. Evil? Evil is some white guy with a couple of prisoners in his basement. Not an incredibly intelligent person who you disagree with. You won’t see me calling Bush Jr evil.

  54. Trustybush Says:

    If any of you think your party is less guilty than the other, you are extremely ignorant. Both sides spin facts. Thats the name of the game in politics. However, it is my own observation that most ignorant people I know happen to listen to Rush Radio and watch faux news. I know some brilliant Republicans, in fact I work with a few AMAZINGlY briliant republicans who I love to have political conversations with who have amazing ideas and views, but it seems that the people who actually arent for sensationalizing hate and ignorance arent representing the party. The Republican party of today vs 20 years ago is not the same party and its pretty shameful. Nasty language and name calling, and just spreading hate on either side of politics is just stupid. Because no matter where you stand, your party has done equally shady crap as the party you are bashing.

  55. Michael Eden Says:

    Anonymous,

    Hey, guess what? People who physically threaten people in writing can go to jail even though they are too cowardly to say who they are (law enforcement can still track you). And as arrogant as you are about my puny intellect, you document in your very first sentence that you are a profoundly stupid imbecile, indeed.

    Without any question, I’m blocking you. People who immediately resort to personal attacks on the intelligence and character of their opponents rather than bothering to actually deal with the ARGUMENTS and the FACTS are not worth talking to.

    That said, I’ll tear apart your argument before sending you on your way.

    First of all, you call me a racist because I say Obama spent more money? Seriously? What ISN’T racist to racist slime like you who dredge race into everything??? Martin Luther King said he dreamed of a day when people would be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin; when will racist slime like you finally go away and let that happen???

    Second, after calling me a racist, you proceed to say, “if you and your good buddy Bush Jr had studied, you would know that we can’t go over and change people in the middle east.” And I would respond, “Okay, you stupid dumbass; why don’t you tell that to Barack Obama, who massively increased our troop presence in Afghanistan before getting us involved in first Egypt, then Libya and then Yemen – culminated with his murdering 24 Pakistani troops IN PAKISTAN and enraging that nation??? Just how is it that your skull doesn’t explode from all the contradictions other than the fact that it is so thick that there isn’t any room for a brain inside???

    “One president can’t change our country into a socialist state in 4 years”???? As full of arrogant dismissal as you are, you are one damned arrogant fool regarding history. We’ve seen leaders change their countries into socialist states all over the damn planet a whole lot faster than four years, jackass. And when you add the fact that we were ALREADY well on the way to socialism before Obama even got here, all it took Obama was a nudge.

    Third, you idiotically assert that “You probably have never served your country a single day.” That’s a lie, just like everything else you said. I served my country in the United States Army. I have a campaign ribbon and a combat infrantryman badge denoting my service in combat. People like you who viciously slander others while lecturing them on “It’s one thing to complain about him, but you’re way over the top” make me want to puke. You are the poster boy for “over the top,” you hypocrite dumbass. But that doesn’t stop you from spewing garbage.

    Fwiw, most of that military service and the CIB took place under Ronald Reagan.

    Let’s go back over the Carter years and their fruit:

    When Ronald Reagan took office from Jimmy Carter, inflation was at a meteoric 13.3% and the country was in the throes of a fierce recession. There was a real question as to whether workers’ wages would keep up with the costs of living, which made people afraid to either spend or save. And nobody knew how to control inflation – which had risen from 1.4% in 1960 to the aforementioned 13.3% in 1980 – causing a real erosion of confidence in the future. Jimmy Carter answered a reporter’s question as to what he would do about the problem of inflation by answering, “It would be misleading for me to tell any of you that there is a solution to it.”

    Oh, and by the way, the interest rate was over 21%, and the misery index was 20.5% – which I believe was the highest EVER RECORDED.

    These were just terrible, godawful numbers. In many ways, Reagan inherited a far worse situation than did Obama.

    And, starting from this terrible place, Reagan not only proved that he HAD an answer for the inflation that neither Carter nor any Democrat had an answer for, but he turned our economy around from a “malaise” and “a crisis in confidence” to the most successful and confident economy in the world; a powerhouse economy that contined to grow for the next twenty years after he left office after he completely changed the trajectory from terrible to powerful.

    Look back at that chart. By the time Reagan left office in 1988, he had created growth of nearly 21% above what he had inherited. And by 1990, when the chart ends, Reagan had set the trajectory for 28% growth above the Carter baseline. And unlike you the American people overwhelmingly recognize Reagan’s greatness, given their pick of Ronald Wilson Reagan as THE greatest president IN AMERICAN HISTORY according to Gallup.

    But that’s not all that Reagan did. He won the Cold War – which of course was a world war against the most powerful enemy in human history – at the same time he was winning the economic war for the American people.

    The Soviet Union had become the mightiest military power in the history of the world while Jimmy Carter was confusing peanuts with the presidency. The USSR had committed acts of genocide that utterly dwarfed anything the Nazis did. They had expanded their influence all over the world. We had to commit vast military resources to Vietnam because of Soviet aid to N. Vietnam. The USSR had expanded into the Middle East, Africa, all of Asia, and were threatening to take over much of Central America right next door to us (to go along with Cuba).

    Reagan saw the handwriting on the wall and understood it. And he made it the major point of his presidency to defeat the mighty Soviet Union. And, amazingly, he succeeded.

    So let’s compare Reagan to another wartime president, FDR. Because that was what Reagan was: he was THE president who won the Cold War, the longest and most expensive war in American history.

    People like you love to say that Reagan tripled the national debt. That sounds bad. Until you consider FDR – the last president before Reagan who actually WON A WAR.

    Franklin Delanor Roosevelt raised the debt from $22,538,672,560.15 to $258,682,187,409.93.

    That is an increase of 1,048%.

    “Triple the National Debt”? FDR didn’t triple the national debt – he multiplied it by 11.5 TIMES. Which is to say that he nearly QUADRUPLED his TRIPLING of the national debt.

    I mean, OMG. If only FDR had only tripled the national debt!!!

    You want to blame someone for all the debt accumulated during the Reagan years, why not blame the Democrat Congress? Why not blame Tip O’Neal? He was the Democrat Speaker of the Democrat House Majority from 1977 until he retired near the very end of the Reagan era. He controlled the purse-strings FAR more than Reagan did. You know, because of that Constitution-thingy. The Constitution gives Congress, and Congress alone, the authority to write the budget and spend money. Remember, Reagan was the guy who wanted to just eliminate the Departments of Energy and Education (and one or two others as well). Reagan had to negotiate with Democrats and compromise with them to spend on THEIR projects – something neither FDR or Obama had to do.

    And it continues to strike me as just hilarious that you damnfool liberals still lecture us about deficits.

    When YOUR guy has THIS on his hands:

    “In the first 19 months of the Obama administration, the federal debt held by the public increased by $2.5260 trillion, which is more than the cumulative total of the national debt held by the public that was amassed by all U.S. presidents from George Washington through Ronald Reagan.”

    Notice that’s “THROUGH” Ronald Reagan, you miserable dubmass. Because Obama’s spending includes Reagan’s plus EVERY SINGLE PRESIDENT PRIOR TO REAGAN.

    And if we want to make comparisons to George Bush’s deficits:

    “…from the day Mr. Obama took office last year to the end of the current fiscal year, according to the Office of Management and Budget, the debt held by the public will grow by $3.3 trillion. In 20 months, Mr. Obama will add as much debt as Mr. Bush ran up in eight years.”

    Now you are done here, moron. When I get a comment from a fool, I make it a point to thoroughly interact with that fool’s miserable argument – and then I block him so I never have to waste my time with that particular fool again.

  56. Michael Eden Says:

    Your “both parties are the same” is about as full of fecal matter as it gets.

    We talk about ObamaCare, about global warming, about interpreting the Constitution in a literal-historical manner rather than simply pissing on it, about a lot of issues, and the two parties are night and day apart.

    But let’s look at deficit spending in particular. The last Republican Congress left us a budget of $162 billion. That was their FY-2007 budget before Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid took over responsibility for the country in January 2007.

    Here’s the chart to document the facts:

    2001 127.3 Billion Dollar Surplus 152.76 Billion Surplus R D R
    2002 157.8 Billion Dollar Deficit 186.204 Billion Deficit R D R
    2003 374 Billion Dollar Deficit 430.1 Billion Deficit R R R
    2004 413 Billion Dollar Deficit 462.56 Billion Deficit R R R
    2005 319 Billion Dollar Deficit 347.71 Billion Deficit R R R
    2006 248 Billion Dollar Deficit 260.4 Billion Deficit R R R
    2007 162 Billion Dollar Deficit 165.24 Billion Deficit R D D
    2008 455 Billion Dollar Deficit 455 Billion Deficit R D D
    2009 1416 Billion Dollar Deficit 1416 Billion Deficit D D D
    2010 1294 Billion Dollar Deficit 1294 Billion Deficit D D D
    2011 1650 Billion Dollar Deficit 1650 Billion Deficit D D R

    Now, I want you to notice that the VERY FIRST YEAR of Democrat control, they TRIPLED spending.

    Then we got Obama to join Pelosi and Reid for total Democrat control, and things got REALLY evil. A $1.6 trillion deficit under Democrats, compared with a $162 billion one under Republicans. And the parties are just the same. My foot they are.

    You see the spending and how it got absolutely out of control. And you want to compare Republicans’ $162 billion deficit with what the Democrats have done???

    There’s another point hidden when I talk about Republicans and “budgets.” Republicans are the ONLY party responsible enough to even BOTHER to produce a budget.

    It has now officially been 946 days since the Democrats have even bothered to pass a budget.

    Don’t you DARE compare the two parties as being morally equivalent, you shameless liar. Unless you can document a government under Republican control not bothering to pass a budget for three years.

    Having said that, I need to point out your personal hypocrisy: you go from calling the Republicans “pretty shameful” to proceeding to bitch about “name calling.” You make me so sick I could puke.

    I see your blogspot site address, and I see the “clever” little name you gave it – which demonizes George Bush – and it is hard to believe that you would actually have the chutzpah to lecture me on nasty language or calling names. I see that your entire blog is dedicated to attacking Bush and then I read your “how dare you say bad things about the other party” garbage and I know as a documented fact that I am dealing with a hypocrite without shame or honor.

    I click on your site to verify my reasonable suspicion, and no kidding, the very first words I read are, “Bushies and haters!!” You have no problem associating Bush and his party with hate, but fascist that you are, it infuriates you that a conservative has the same rights that you do to fight back. You just can’t handle my doing unto Obama what you liberals did unto Bush.

    Self-righteous hypocrite vermin like you piss me off more than ANYTHING. Oh, you tore into Bush like a rabid pitbull tearing into a chunk of bloody meat, but all of a sudden when you have the worst president in the history of this nation to explain, suddenly you’re too above name calling. And the people who do what you spent eight years doing are somehow wrong all of a sudden – at least until the next Republican president when you’ll start up the attack again. So you just get lost.

    It’s for that hypocrisy and dishonesty that I’m booting you as a troll.

  57. Phil Says:

    Mr. Eden,

    I am not sure where you are getting your math.

    When Bush left office the total U.S. debt stood at $5.6 trillion. When he left in January 2009 the debt was at just over $10 trillion. That was almost a $5 trillion increase over the 8 years of Bush.

    Second, the fiscal year 2009 and its $1.549 trillion budget deficit was all Bush, as the 2009 federal budget deficit was Bush’s last budget year. The 2009 budget was put in place before Obama even won the election and the CBO prediced a +$1.2 trillion 2009 budget deficit before Obama even took office and certainly before any of Obama’s policies could take effect.

    So if you add the $1.549 trillion of the 2009 deficit to the +$10 trillion debt that Bush left in 2008, then Bush was directly responsible for taking the debt to about $12 trillion, which was a net increase of almost $7 trillion during Bush term.

    Now lets take the Bush recession into consideration. Almost all of the current deficit (2010, 2011) is the result of the massive decline in tax revenues from the recession. Total tax collection as a percentage of GDP was 14.8% in 2010, the lowest level since 1950 and it has averaged about 19% of GDP over the last 60 years). Most of this is the result of the Bush recession and corresponding lower economic incomes, and from the Bush tax cuts.

    Pretty much the only reason the Obama is running big deficits today is because of this massive decline in tax revenues which is mostly the result of the Bush recession.

    http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3036

    If you look at total government spending, it has actually not increased that much. It is currently running at about 21-23% of GDP, which is only slightly above the historic 50 year average of about 20%. Most of this increase in the ratio of spending to GDP is because of the relative decline in the equations denomiator because of the fall in GDP from the recession. And if you factor out the emergency spending related to fighting the recession and recession related increases in spending on things like increased welfare and unemployment spending, government spending is only moderately up.

    The current debt level and deficits can almost entirely be blamed on Bush. He left this country in a fiscal whole, which happens every time under Republican presidents. He left Obama with a huge recession, which resulted in Bush deficits growing and continuing into Obama term.

    Click to access HistoricalTables%5B1%5D.pdf

  58. Michael Eden Says:

    Phil,

    First of all, your “I am not sure where you are getting your math” rhetorical non-question is in point of fact pretty damn stupid, given the fact that I cite documenting articles and provide links to them.

    Second of all, given the idiocy of your initial remark, I’m not going to waste much time with further research. I’ll just take your own figures.

    You claim – rightly – that the national debt was $10 trillion when Bush left office, and $5.6 trillion when Bush began his term. That means that Bush spent $4.4 trillion during his presidency.

    It is now over $15 trillion.

    Bush was president for EIGHT YEARS. Obama has been president for THREE YEARS. Obama spent FIVE TRILLION IN THREE YEARS, versus Bush who spent $4.4 trillion in EIGHT. And that according to your own numbers.

    Furthermore, you do not understand the process by which presidents are held accountable for debt. Bush left a budget that he was accountable for which Obama proceeded to completely ignore. Bush was accountable for his budget; not for what Obama passed under a Democrat-controlled Congress after Bush was out of office. That money beyond the Bush budget is all on Barry Hussein. George Bush did not spend one penny of Obama’s $862 billion stimulus (which will actually cost the American people $3.27 TRILLION over time). Bush had nothing to do with Obama’s $447 billion Omnibus bill, and so on. And those who keep track of the cost compiled by presidents understand that and – over time – take that into account.

    For the record, even with TARP, that cost $700 billion and which was passed under Bush, fully HALF of that money – $350 billion – was left over for Obama to spend and in fact directly requested by Obama so that he could spend it, and SHOULD count under Obama’s spending. And why shouldn’t it????

    Another btw is the fact that our real debt is NOT a pitiful $15 trillion that it has soared to under Obama; it is actually more like about $200 trillion, according to the IMF.

    Obama is spending so recklessly it is utterly unreal. As just one example, Obama really didn’t spend a mere $350 billion in TARP money; he leveraged it in such a way that the fool spent more like $24 TRILLION.

    Which underscores the fact that Obama is spending in ways that we cannot even imagine.

    You are right; tax revenues are way down. But not because of the “Bush recession” (please remember that Bush himself had to get through a rather terrible recession created by Bill Clinton; it was called the Dotcom bust and it cost America more than $7.1 trillion in American wealth and wiped out 78% of the Nasdaq portfolio). And let’s not forget the 9/11 attack – all of the principle events (such as ALL the hijackers coming into America) occurring as they did under Clinton’s watch. If you want to blame Bush for Obama’s problems, you could have at least been honest enough to have blamed Clinton for Bush’s problems). Rather, Obama is having low tax receipts because he has demonized both business and the wealthy; and both are sheltering their money until this demonic fool is out of office. Obama has threatened and threatened and threatened and bullied and bullied and bullied. And to quote his reverend, his chickens are coming home to roost.

  59. Chad Says:

    I’ve skimmed all of the article and comments, but have not yet read your links out. I do have two questions for you, Michael:

    What is your opinion on the tax HIKES instituted under Reagan (the highest since WW2 if I’m not mistaken) with their relationship to the recession you mentioned?

    Also, what is your opinion on the wealth inequality that seems to have shot up since 1980, when Greenspan was put into the Fed Chairman position? I don’t know all the details about his tenure, but I do know his ideology was to de-regulate and let the ‘free-market’ take care of itself.

  60. Michael Eden Says:

    Chad,

    Ronald Reagan cut taxes from 70% to 28% between 1981 and 1986. There is no question that Reagan was a tax CUTTER.

    However, Reagan – who frequently had to deal with both a Democrat House AND a Democrat Senate during his eight years in office, had to make compromises to get other things he wanted done. They screamed for more revenues. They didn’t believe that Reaganomics would work (which it clearly did, in marked contrast to Jimmy Carter’s failed economic program). So Reagan closed a lot of loopholes, which you can argue amounted to a “tax hike” (although Republicans today are willing to close loopholes in exhange for lower overall tax rates, just as Reagan did). Reagan also increased corporate taxes and capital gains.

    Not that he wanted to; he had to to get anything done given a Tip O’Neil controlled Democrat House.

    On the whole, however, Reagan succeeded in cutting taxes massively.

    I write about the success of Reagans, John F. Kennedy’s, George Bush’s, and Harding’s tax cuts here in raising MORE federal revenue.

    Regarding wealth inequality…

    Liberals blame it on capitalism, which is interesting, given that it is actually a much bigger problem in COMMUNIST CHINA. It has little to do with capitalism. Rather, according to our founding fathers, it has everything to do with the central banking system we wickedly instituted during the regime of Woodrow Wilson while Congress was away for Christmas recess.

    After the Federal Reserve Act was passed in 1913, Congressman Charles Lindbergh, Sr. predicted, “This Act established the most gigantic trust on earth… when the President signs this Act, the invisible government by the money power, proven to exist by the Money Trust Investigation, will be legalized… The new law will create inflation whenever the trusts want inflation.”

    Just a couple of quotes:

    “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation then by deflation, the banks and the corporations will grow up around them, will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.” -Thomas Jefferson, The Debate Over The Recharter Of The Bank Bill, (1809).

    The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. The banking powers are more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. They denounce as public enemies all who question their methods or throw light upon their crimes. I have two great enemies, the southern army in front of me and the financial institutions, in the rear. Of the two, the one in the rear is the greatest enemy….. I see in the future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of the war.” – Abraham Lincoln

    People who try to save in today’s financial system are screwed; they get NOTHING. Because the federal reserve – trying to accomodate Obama’s reckless fiscal policies – have so devalued our money it is unreal. Saving is penalized; they are trying to force us to spend even if we don’t have the money to buy anything. Because our money is worth less and less each day. And thus make us poorer.

    And DEMOCRATS who started our federal reserve system are FAR more involved in it and responsible for it than Republicans.

  61. Kirk Says:

    “Who controls the spending? CONGRESS DOES.”

    OK. So why are you blaming the increased spending on Obama (or Bush, for that matter)?

  62. Chad Says:

    The 70 to 28% you’re referring to is only the top bracket Federal Income Tax numbers.

    I was referring to his gasoline tax (was that called the highway revenue act? I don’t remember), the TEFRA tax, Social Security Amendments, Deficit Reduction in 1984, etc.

    He shifted tax burden from what I see, and maintained Jimmy Carter’s level of spending from what I’ve seen as well in my quick glances. You seem to have a more vested knowledge in this than I, so I was hoping you’d point me in a direction to find more info on it. Data does not lie, but often times data is shaped/omitted to gain favor to one’s own ends, which is painfully obvious in many modern political campaigns. Currently I’m closely monitoring WI.

    I agree on the central banking system, and am familiar with many of the quotes and references you posted. President Wilson, the man who signed it, said this as well (from Senate Document 23, 1916): “A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the Nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men… We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world—no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men.”

    Almost makes it seem like arguing between Democrat and Republican ideology is pointless for the time-being, no?

  63. Michael Eden Says:

    When you say that “Reagan maintained Jimmy Carter’s level of spending,” you make a fundamental error.

    Presidents don’t spend; CONGRESS DOES. Another thing is also important to remember: Presidents don’t tax; CONGRESS DOES.

    When you say, “Reagan raised the gas tax,” it is simply false. Only Congress has the power to levy taxes.

    Reagan wanted to cut taxes; the Democrats who ran Congress wanted to raise taxes. Reagan did not sit helplessly like Obama and demonize the other party; he negotiated with them.

    The press keeps referring to the Bush this and the Obama that, just as you are now referring to Reagan this and Carter that. Actually the president cannot spend or appropriate one thin dime without the Congress approving or voting for it. Nor can the president tax without Congress approving it. Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution is very clear on that. And fwiw, the Democrats had total control of both branches of the Congress between 2006 and 2010 when our spendign soared so dramatically. The last Republican budget, passed in 2006 for FY-2007, had a deficit of $162 billion. The very first budget passed by the Democrat controlled Congress had a deficit of $459 billion – nearly three times larger. And it has now been 951 days since Democrats have bothered to pass ANY budget whatsoever following several budgets that ran deficits as high as $1.6 TRILLION. The Republicans immediately passed a budget earlier this year because they are the only party that has ANY fiscal responsibility at all. Harry Reid has sat on it w/o bothering to pass any budget of his own.

    Again, Ronald Reagan had to deal with Democrats who blocked everything he did unless Reagan made compromises. That is simply a fact.

    Reagan wanted to defeat the Soviet Union, because he saw that we had a unique opportunity. Jimmy Carter had gutted the military budget, and Reagan wanted increased military spending. He had to negotiate and compromise with Democrats who wanted THEIR spending. Reagan cut taxes and revenues began to soar; but our spending increased.

    It is also simply a fact that, on the whole, Reagan massively cut taxes. I don’t have every stat on which taxes got raised (usually by closing LOOPHOLES), but there is a back story on every single one of these – namely that Reagan was comoprosing with Democrats who controlled either the House, the Senate or both in order to get something DONE.

    It is also simply a fact that, following Reagan’s tax cuts, our economy surged – and in fact surged so powerfully that it set a trajectory of economic power that lasted the next twenty years.

    It is also a fact that Carter’s policies failed, and that Carter said, “It would be misleading for me to tell any of you that there is a solution to it.” But Reagan had a solution.

    One thing that is funny is how lefties blame Reagan for rasing taxes. You don’t see me blaming Obama for keeping the Bush tax cuts; I’m GLAD he did that so why would I blame him? What I blame Obama for is saying that “You don’t raise taxes during a recession” and then almost immediately demanding we raise taxes. While constantly demonizing one group of people and pitting one group against another in pure MARXIST fashion.

  64. Michael Eden Says:

    Kirk,

    Two things.

    Number one, DEMOCRATS controlled the House AND the Senate between Jan 2007 and Jan 2011. The last Republican budget, as I stated, had a deficit of $162 billion. Democrats nearly TRIPLED that deficit the very next year, and proceeded to send deficits through the roof. We actually saw budget deficits of $1.6 TRILLION under total Democrat control. Until they quit even bothering to pass a budget at all (951 days since Dems bothered to pass a budget). Which party should get the blame for that????

    Second, Barack Obama has demanded more and more and more spending at every single turn. While he himself is not authorized to spend without the approval the Democrat-controlled Congress gave him, HE WANTED THE SPENDING. He sought the most massive spending in the history of the entire human race (the stimulus) under false promises, and then passed the biggest omnibus spending bill in the history of the human race ($1.1 TRILLION) even as a DEMOCRAT called on him to veto the Democrat-passed bill. And now Obama has demanded ANOTHER massive stimulus that he’s calling his “jobs bill” which even Senate Democrats refused to pass. There is simply no end.

    After demonizing George Bush for asking for a debt ceiling increase, calling it “a failure of leadership,” Obama has demanded not one but TWO of the largest debt ceiling increases in the history of the human race. Because he is a shameless liar without shame or honor.

    It’s kind of like this: if I keep asking you to kill my wife, and I’m offering you every incentive I can to kill my wife, am I not responsible (along with you) if you kill my wife???

    So I blame reckless Democrats who bankrupted America and I blame Obama.

  65. Curious George Says:

    So who are you recommending in the GOP to fix the problems you have (apparently) spent hours analyzing?

  66. Michael Eden Says:

    Between the two front runners (by now it is looking like Romney vs. Gingrich), I prefer Newt Gingrich, with Romney as his VP.

    I’m not real happy about Gingrich. But you have to bet on the horses that are in the race.

    To his credit, Gingrich is a) brilliant and b) full of out-of-the-box ideas. And this country will desperately need out of the box ideas if we’re going to pull out of the crisis we have been plunged into. Gingrich has also wisely decided c) to follow Reagan’s 11th commandment and not attack his fellow Republicans while d) keeping his attacks focused on Obama like ALL of the candidates ought to be doing. I also like the fact that e) Gingrich is a man who has a lifetime of experience, versus Obama who had never done anything prior to running for the Senate and then immediately running for the presidency.

  67. Chad Says:

    Did Jimmy Carter ‘gut’ the military budget, or did CONGRESS?

    Please tell me you didn’t just implicate me on my ‘mistake’, then do it yourself.

    If you don’t have every stat, then I find it hard to believe you on this. Everything I’ve seen shows that, on the whole, taxes went up during his tenure as President. I don’t have an issue with taxes going up in many cases, just seems like if you don’t have the numbers, you shouldn’t call it a fact.

    The economic surge was for whom? The wealth disparity that I mentioned surged during the 80s, and continued on for twenty years, and is higher than it has ever been. Centralized banking does have the potential to create disparity, but what allows bankers the opportunity to do so is a lack of efficient regulation. Lack of regulation caused our banking ‘crisis’ that boiled over in 2008. Banks bought CDS’s because it allowed them to leverage more based on regulation requirements. Then, when AIG folded and the banks weren’t solvent, our government allowed private debt to become public obligation, and the rich got richer. Same thing happened to Iceland, and in Europe.

    I’m not sure which tax loopholes you’re referring to, but several of the largest corporations in the US avoid most if not all of their taxes to this day. I wouldn’t even refer to them as loopholes, that’s like saying the IRS’s lawyers are incompetent. I believe they know exactly what they are doing.

    As far as pitting people against one another, you do the same thing every time you use the word liberal. Please don’t use it on me because I disagree with some of your points; I’ll resent it.

  68. Chad Says:

    If you can hold yourself back from making comments on the channel owner of this video, and just take from it that your boy Newt is opposed to closing ‘loopholes’, and follows my logic that they are planned incentives, you should probably take away that he has little interest in the average working man.

    I take issue with that, and unless you’re in the top tax bracket, you should, too.

  69. Michael Eden Says:

    Did Jimmy Carter ‘gut’ the military budget, or did CONGRESS?

    Please tell me you didn’t just implicate me on my ‘mistake’, then do it yourself.

    Okay, Chad, you got me.

    Jimmy Carter’s CONGRESS gutted the military budget.

    But riddle me this, smart alec: did you know that during the godawful rule of Jimmy Carter that we had the highest representation of abject Democrat domination that we’d seen since FDR (which coincidentally happened to be the last time everything truly went to hell)???

    There were 292 Democrats in the House compared to 143 Republicans. There were 61 Democrats in the Senate (filibuster-proof majority alert) to 39 Republicans.

    So now your entire argument boils down to WHICH FREAKING DEMOCRATS ARE THE WORST COCKROACHES.

    If you want to argue that the Democrats dominating Congress were bigger piles of slime than the Democrat pile of slime in the White House, fine. Without even know which side you come down on, I am willing to agree to stipulate that you are right: Democrats are cockroaches who have destroyed America.

    Before you quibble, you ought to have a clue what the implications of your quibbling are, Chad. Whereas I was making the very legitimate point that Reagan (like Bush II after 2006) had to deal with the other party running Congress. And that it was actually Democrats doing the things you deceitfully acccuse Republicans of doing.

    And just to make it official, it was Bill Clinton’s DEMOCRAT-controlled Congress that gutted the military budget in 1992, when Democrats likewise controlled both the House and the Senate (Senate: 55 Democrats to 45 Republicans; House: 270 Democrats to 164 Republicans). You can argue that Bill Clinton was the bigger cockroach, or that the Democrats that ran Congress were bigger cockroaches. I really don’t care. Now that we have an understanding that Democrats are cockroaches.

    Next you say this:

    If you don’t have every stat, then I find it hard to believe you on this. Everything I’ve seen shows that, on the whole, taxes went up during his tenure as President. I don’t have an issue with taxes going up in many cases, just seems like if you don’t have the numbers, you shouldn’t call it a fact.

    Now I’m going to put the same onus on YOU that you are trying to dump onto me: if you cannot document that taxes on the whole went UP during the Reagan presidency, by which I mean that you will proceed to document that the sum of every tax that Reagan “cut” was less than the sum that he “raised,” I will block you. BECAUSE IN THIS CASE THERE IS NO QUESTION WHATSOEVER THAT YOU ARE MAKING STATEMENTS WITHOUT HAVING PROVIDED ANY PROOF WHATSOEVER. Which is the very thing you just got through accusing me of doing. And you have the chutzpah to declare that I don’t have the right to say Reagan cut taxes without a ten thousand page analysis, when YOU have just made sweeping statements with ZERO-point-ZERO evidence. I’ve already provided a lot more evidence than you have. So I shall now hold YOU to YOUR OWN standard. Or else you’re gone. Because hypocrites piss me off, and that is what you are being here.

    while you’re at it, given that you specifically mentioned “gas taxes,” you can document how it was actually Republicans who have actually been the driving force behind increasing gasoline taxes rather than Democrats who have said things like “this liberal will be all about socializing – uh, um (long pause) – will be about basically taking over and the government running your [oil] companies” (Democrat Maxine Waters); like “I’m trying to save the planet [from oil]!” (Nancy Pelosi); like “Oil makes us sick… it’s ruining our country, it’s ruining our world” (Harry Reid).

    And compare that to Ronald Reagan’s famous dictum: “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

    Because you blamed Reagan for raising gas taxes. And that is pathologically dishonest of you, because DEMOCRATS did that. Just like they’ve been doing it ever since.

    I have already pointed out that Tip O’Neal and Democrats dominated the House every single year that Reagan was president. I have already pointed out that – unlike Obama – Reagan was willing to compromise to keep the ball rolling as opposed to using all sorts of legislation knowing the other party can’t and won’t be able to pass (and in the case of Obama’s jobs bill even his OWN party couldn’t pass) simply to demonize them.

    I really don’t CARE if you resent the word “liberal,” Chad, because the shoe fits you like Cinderella’s glass slipper.

    You’re talking about “the wealth disparity” – which we never seemed to have had until a conservative Republican came to the White House on your assertion – and I’m not supposed to be able to compare you to THE political ideology that constantly harps on that topic.

    There’s a joke that sums you up. It goes like this:

    A typical center-right leaning American riding on the bus sees a man get into an expensive sports car and says, “Somebody I’ll be able to afford a car like that.” Versus the typical leftist European socialist who riding the bus who sees a man get into an expensive sports car and says, “Somebody that son of a bitch will be riding the bus just like me.”

    Unlike you Chad, conservatives don’t look at rich people and get angry because we resent others having what we don’t have. All we want is the opportunity to be able to work hard AND KEEP WHAT WE EARN. Versus liberals who are filled with envy and the angry demand that what people work hard to earn should be taken away from them and “redistributed.” Which by the way is Marxism.

    And I quote Karl Marx’s central economic thesis:

    “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

    So here’s another thing I’m going to demand of you, Chad. Explain to me – after providing the documentation proving that overall taxes under Reagan went up rather than down – exactly and precisely HOW your view (and Obama’s view) differs from Karl Marx’s view. Explain to me – thinking as you do – how you do NOT want wealth to be redistributed “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” And how not only the label of “liberal” but “communist” ought to be applied to you.

    You say,

    Lack of regulation caused our banking ‘crisis’ that boiled over in 2008

    Lack of reglation cause the mortgage market meltdown that tanked our economy in 2008? Seriously? How about the regulation from Democrats forcing banks to give mortgages to people who could not afford to repay them? How about Barack Obama suing Citibank representing the vile organization ACORN to force it (and to serve as a warning to others) to make such loans???

    I began an article (ABOUT LIBERALS LIKE YOU) that began:

    Over the past several days, the airwaves have been flooded with statements by Democrats and by the media “intelligentsia” that the financial crisis was created due to the atmosphere of deregulation that dominated during the last 8 years of the Bush administration and Republican rule.

    I proceed to document that that is utterly false. Do you want to know who tried to regulate, and who blocked regulation? Republcians tried to regulate Fannie and Freddie – and Democrats thwarted them at every single turn.

    George Bush tried to regulate Fannie and Freddie SEVENTEEN TIMES.

    I documented that Fannie and Freddie – GOVERNMENT AGENCIES known as “GSEs” – were completely out of control. I pointed out that Democrat Barney Frank was saying “”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

    I pointed out how John McCain – DEMANDING REGULATION – warned, “For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac–known as Government-sponsored entities or GSEs–and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market.” I pointed out how Democrat-appointed Fannie CEO Franklin Raines whined that “that Fannie was being victimized by an overzealous regulator.”

    I pointed out how Alan Greenspan warned BEFORE the collapse that:

    “If [Fannie and Freddie] continue to grow, continue to have the low capital that they have, continue to engage in the dynamic hedging of their portfolios, which they need to do for interest rate risk aversion, they potentially create ever-growing potential systemic risk down the road.” He added, “Enabling these institutions to increase in size–and they will, once the crisis, in their judgment, passes–we are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk.”

    I pointed out how Peter Wallison warned:

    Under these circumstances, allowing Fannie and Freddie to continue on their present course is simply to create risks for the taxpayers, and to the economy generally, in order to improve the profits of their shareholders and the compensation of their managements. It is a classic case of socializing the risk while privatizing the profit.

    In another article, I pointed out how Peter Wallison warned in 1999:

    ”From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,” said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ”If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.”

    And that is exactly what happened. BECAUSE OF GOVERNMENT REGULATION, and because Democrats stood in the way of reform of Fannie and Freddie. And for the factual record, it was Fannie’s and Freddie’s bankruptcy which started the whole snowball-avalanche that wrecked our economy. As I document here.

    There is a moment in Gretchen Morgenson’s book “Reckless Endangerment” where she describes a reporter going up to Barney Frank after a speech in March of 2005 and asking the questions, you know, what about the possibility that you could be pushing people into mortgages that they can’t afford and what would the consequences be? And he said rather flippantly, as he was wont to do, “We’ll deal with that problem if it happens.”

    Barney Frank is on the Congressional record saying of a Fannie and Freddie that WENT BANKRUPT and which WAS BAILED OUT BY THE GOVERNMENT TO THE TUNE OF HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS:

    “The more people, in my judgment, exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness, the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury, which I do not see. I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially and withstand some of the disastrous scenarios. And even if there were a problem, the Federal Government doesn’t bail them out. But the more pressure there is there, then the less I think we see in terms of affordable housing.”

    Or think of Barney Frank saying, “I do think I do not want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness that we have in OCC [Office of the Comptroller of the Currency] and OTS [Office of Thrift Supervision]. I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing. . . .”

    But wait, there’s more. Let’s also consider the case of Jon Corzine. He’s the economic whiz that Obama and Biden praised as the guy who was getting America out of the ditch that Republicans put the country into, and one of the best partners Obama had in the White House. He’s the guy Obama and Biden called to fix the economy. But he’s ALSO the guy that came out of ubercorrupt Goldman Sachs. He was the CEO of Goldman Sachs, in fact, this career liberal Democrat. Goldman Sachs, btw, was also Obama’s TOP CAMPAIGN DONOR. You know, along with Fannie and Freddie. This dishonest weasel testified today that he had absolutely no idea what happened to his investor’s $1.2 billion.

    The interesting thing about that is that MF Global’s financial reports dramatically understate the European debt that wiped them out. And the even more interesting thing is that Jon Corzine as Democrat Senator was the very guy who wrote the regulation that a CEO be required to sign financial statements stating that they are accurate.

    Now you’ve got this liberal cockroach parsing his words, saying, “I never INTENDED to break any rules.”

    So what the hell good is regulation when you have cockroach liberal slime running things??? Pleae tell me, because I want to know how you liberals are going to fix it so you liberals won’t steal our money???

    So don’t you DARE come to my blog with your full-of-crap LIBERAL analysis and demand that I don’t call you a “liberal” anymore.

    And prove that Reagan raised taxes more than he cut them, and show me how Karl Marx’s central economic statement has nothing whatsoever to do with your own economic philosophy, or don’t bother coming back.

    The reason I wrote this out is that I don’t block people without first dealing with the crap they’re arguing at length.

  70. Michael Eden Says:

    I take issue with that, and unless you’re in the top tax bracket, you should, too

    To your thing with Newt Gingrich, I say:

    Then why don’t you demand that Obama fire his uberliberal Jobs Commission head Jeffrey Immelt, whose uberlib company GE paid ZERO taxes even as it played the crony capitalist game of sucking off the teats of liberal government regulations???

    Then why don’t you demand that liberals quit giving tax breaks to “green energy” companies???

    Then why aren’t you frothing mad at Obama for giving away billions of dollars to companies like Solyndra and – even WORSE – outfits like this????

    This crap goes on and on when damned liberals are in power. Here’s another one for you:

    A series of e-mail exchanges between officials at the Department of Health and Human Services shows growing alarm at the amount of projected profit from a government contract for a drug company whose controlling shareholder is a longtime Democratic Party activist.

    You take issue with Newt, do you????

    FOR THE RECORD, YOU ARE AN ABJECT HYPOCRITE CAPABLE ONLY OF HIGHLY SELECTIVE OUTRAGE, Chad.

    We could go into Newt Gingrich’s actual point about the fact that corporations create the jobs this nation needs to exist; we could point out the fact that the United States taxes its corporations at the SECOND HIGHEST RATE on the planet, which is why we’re losing so many jobs, etc. But I frankly don’t see you at this point as capable of having such a conversation.

    Please don’t forget as per my last comment to you to prove that Reagan increased taxes rather than cutting them and answering how Karl Marx’s central economic thesis of communism –

    “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”

    – does not in any way, shape or form apply to you or to your pal Barry Hussein.

    Because otherwise I’m through wasting time with you.

  71. Chad Says:

    Thank you for that far-too-long response. Looks like I got you a little worked up. I assumed that a person your age would be able to hold himself back from the pitiful and constant belittling you attempt to project onto me. If it helps you feel good about yourself, then so be it.

    I’ll try to address everything you’ve said. I know you will anyway, but please let me know if I’ve left anything out.

    No, I did not know about your opinion about abject Democratic blah blah blah during Carter’s tenure. Thank you for sharing it with me.

    You’re giving yourself too much credit, Michael. My argument has nothing to do with which Democrat is the biggest cockroach, it has to do with which Politician is. I serve my interests only, as do you. Our differences only stem from our differing priorities. Your concern with keeping what you earn is fine, but it isn’t my biggest concern. That doesn’t make me a liberal. If I called you ignorant, even if you didn’t think you were, and even if you showed proof otherwise, and my response was ‘if the shoe fits’, wouldn’t that make me ignorant? Because that’s what you did.

    I don’t think Democrats ‘destroyed’ or ‘bankrupted’ America. I don’t think Republicans ‘destroyed’ or ‘bankrupted’ America. I think they did it together.

    Saying that your points are legitimate is very subjective, Michael. But, I defer to you, as this IS your blog, after all. I truly don’t care about ‘gutting’ the military budget. In many ways, I’m for it. We should not be in ANY of the wars we are in right now, in my opinion. These wars have only served to cost taxpayers money, make money for businesses (military defense contractors, oil companies, etc.), and of course, serve to take away rights of Americans through marketing of fear through the guise of terrorism (see FISA, Patriot Act, SOPA, 2012 Defense Appropriations Bill). None of those things serve the American populace.

    I’m not sure if you’re challenging me because you don’t think I can find anything, or if you are deflecting to me because you don’t want to back up what you’re calling ‘fact’ with proof, but I did about 5 minutes of Google searching and found these links for you: This one shows Federal spending went up, top tax bracket cut substantially. http://money.cnn.com/2010/09/08/news/economy/reagan_years_taxes/index.htm . Here’s a little table showing a quick smattering of the tax situation. http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/bruce-bartlett/1632/reagans-tax-increases Here’s one that corroborates much of what you’re attempting to say http://www.house.gov/jec/fiscal/tx-grwth/reagtxct/reagtxct.htm

    I see your point on the hypocrisy of what I said, but you told me that what you said was ‘fact’. I said ‘From what I’ve seen’, before sharing my opinion. These are distinctly different. When you claim a fact, the burden of proof is on you. Calling me a hypocrite despite admitting your own hypocrisy at the start of your post is…confusing.

    The last link shows what we both know: lowering taxes leaves more money to be spent. What it also shows, is that businesses and/or highly fiscally-endowed people will use tools given to them to avoid taxes if they deem they are too high. This, to me, means the table is tilted. Get rid of the tax havens by legislating them, not by lowering taxes and hoping people use them less. I don’t follow the logic. I’m all ears if you have a better explanation.

    Congress voted to raise taxes, but Reagan signed them into law. I see your point there, and I can certainly imagine some concessions had to be made to get things done. That’s called collaboration, and I welcome it as long as it is benefiting the American public, and more specifically, myself at the current time of the vote. I find it difficult, however, to gauge the intentions of a person without knowing them, regardless of what they are marketing to the voting public. You drank Reagan’s kool-aid, and whether he was genuine or not about his intentions is just semantics. I entered this ‘conversation’, if you’d like to call it that, to see if you put your taxes being low before everything else. My current hypothesis is that you do, but I’ll allow you to answer that for yourself instead of telling you what you are, and what you believe. I feel like we all owe each other that courtesy.

    On that topic, you seem to think I like Obama. I don’t. I didn’t vote for him. I’ve never voted for a Democrat for any Federal office in my entire life. But you know me better than me, right? And you’re assuming that I’m not in the top tax bracket, which is fair. You’re also assuming I envy those who make a lot of money, which is fair, but wrong. I like capitalism because opportunists, like myself, are able to take advantage of what is available to them. I can play to my strengths and advance. I can use my intellect (I’m giving you bait to belittle me again) and advance. I have no problem with capitalism. I have an issue when the Government doesn’t keep it under wraps. There needs to be balance in everything. That’s how nature works, how civilized culture should work. The greed and corruption of the government will happen, and does, from both sides. But there needs to be a counter-balance to that. I take issue with campaign-funding policies. No one, and no institution, should be able to buy an election. You say you want to ‘keep what you earn’, but there is a great imbalance right now, and keeping what you earn is no longer the issue at hand. Getting more and more and more is the ticket of the day, and the expense is too great on others. I’m all for getting what you earn through fair deals, but tilting the table to your benefit is a problem, unless you’re on the winning side. Are you on the winning side, Michael? (Hint: I’m not asking if R’s are better than D’s)

    You really went to some length about my regulation comment. Notice I said “efficient” before the word regulation. You get very worked up, I’ll give you that much, and I admire how much you care about these topics.

  72. Chad Says:

    One more to your first response. Both sides knew what was happening, as this video shows: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2RzRv8yQXQ

    To your second response:

    Once again, you’ve assumed I am pro-Obama. For shame.

    For the record, I honestly, truly, and vehemently do not care what your opinion of me is, because with every attack you make on me, your words carry less weight. I’m fully willing to have an objective discussion with you, if you can handle that.

    It doesn’t matter how high the corporate tax rate is if the corporations are so easily able to avoid paying taxes. I do NOT like the GE situation. They basically set up GE Capital to fail (post a loss) on purpose, by making investments, and hold their profits overseas and follow foreign tax code. Yes, businesses create jobs. But what type of businesses create the MOST jobs? The large corporations avoiding their taxes account for roughly half the jobs, whilst the other half are small businesses that I’d think in most cases have less capital to throw around and pay in taxes based on the utility of money.

    I believe we’re losing manufacturing jobs for a bigger reason than just taxation. The economy is becoming more and more global by the day. People in America should realize we are growing beyond manufacturing jobs. The entire ‘create jobs’ mantra from either side is disingenuous. There should be incentives for people to go and get technical training at higher paying jobs. http://career-resources.dice.com/job-technology/strong_it_job_growth_seen_through_2016.shtml This isn’t rocket science, and anyone who wants the government to create a job (BOTH VOTING REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS SEEM TO ECHO THAT MESSAGE!) for them doesn’t understand how capitalism works. You take advantage of what is available, or fill a niche yourself if there is a market for something. Simple as that.

    Your Marx quote is a bit off. You have a very digital view of the world don’t you? All or nothing. I promote balance. I’m not on a ‘side’. Everyone needs to do what makes sense to them, but choosing one side, or a team for that matter, doesn’t make sense to me.

    And for the record, the only outrageous thing I’ve experienced while conversing with you across all of these topics, is you. As I said before, I’m completely open to a civil discussion, if that in any way interests you.

  73. Michael Eden Says:

    Chad,

    My “far too long” response had one and only one purpose; and I do it every single time before I block somebody. If you got under my skin, so also does everybody I block.

    I gave you a fair hearing. I responded at length to you. And I offered you two challenges – neither of which you even bothered to take up.

    So now I’m saying hasta la vista to you.

    Again, to repeat for the record, your assertion was that Ronald Regan raised certain taxes also, and that he actually raised taxes far more than he cut them. Your “point” if I can call it that, was that if I didn’t exhaustively analyze Reagan’s involvement with taxes, that I had no right to make statements about Reagan being a tax cutter. And then you immediately proceeded to violate your own rule, stating that “on the whole, taxes went up during his tenure as President.” And I put the shoe on your foot, and demanded that you document that.

    I knew you wouldn’t bother, because there really is no such documentation. You didn’t even mention so much as a single tax that Reagan raised in your response, let alone demonstrate how Reagan raised taxes more than he cut taxes, as you asserted.

    When I challenge somebody on something they are claiming as a fact, and they won’t back it up, that person is gone.

    I also challenged you, based on your statements about wealth inequality, that you refute the statement by Karl Marx – “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” – and demonstrate that this central statement of Marxist economic philosophy had nothing to do with your own view. Given that you were so appalled that I would call you a “liberal,” it seemed like a very good litmus test to reveal where you really were economically-politically.

    Again, crickets chirping.

    I get this crap all the damn time. Liberals write on this blog denying they are liberals while all the while pretending to be these “objective, fair-minded, unbiased” thinkers. Meanshile every single thing they write – other than their denials of being liberal – are pure liberal ideology and pure liberal talking points. That is exactly what you have done. And you’re “I didn’t vote for Obama” means exactly squat given the fact that you have reliably attacked Republicans and defended Democrats in virtually every single word you wrote. The truth of the matter is that you start off in your very first post bashing Reagan – who for the record Gallup polling holds as THE greatest American president – and you never give him credit for anything. If that’s your understanding of “balanced,” you are a seriously disturbed individual.

    And your economic/political philosophy is far closer to Karl Marx’s than you understand. It would be very self-revealing for you to investigate what you think compared to what Karl Marx thought. But you seem to lack that power of personal self-introspection. You state, “Your Marx quote is off a bit.” In what possible way? Never mind, the answer to that question is clearly irrelevant to you. Marx wrote those words, and did so quite famously. It is the essence of Marxist philosophy in a nutshell. And the extent of your moral courage is to wave a dismissive hand at it as though history (particularly the history of Marxism) simply never existed.

    There’s a guy who is out there who just did what you and liberals like you do. His name is Michael Moore. This guy just came out and said,

    “I would never question a Republican of whether or not they loved America or whether they were patriotic or whatever”

    And that sounded really nice and open minded and “balanced.” It also had absolutely no correspondence to reality, as was easily proven by previous statements from Moore, such as:

    in 2001, Moore insinuated on his website that President Bush was guilty of “fund[ing] mass murder,” and later asserted in his 2004 documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 that the War on Terror “is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous.”

    In 2007, Moore expressed his desire to see a “perp walk” coming out of the White House for President Bush and Vice President Cheney. He slammed both as guilty of war crimes and added “I think we need a trial, in this country, where Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush would be brought up on charges for causing the deaths of so many people.”

    So they could both be found “patriotic” in a court of law, right, Chad???

    So I get this protestation from you about how you are really the universe’s most open-minded and impartial mind, and I laugh the laugh of someone who has seen this cowardly and – yes, HYPOCRITICAL tactic played again and again. You wouldn’t know what “balanced” was if it bit you right in the butt. You spent two posts essentially claiming ontological superiority on the basis of you lofty, transcendent, above-it-all “balance” that the rest of puny humanity such as myself simply do not have. Why don’t you just gag me.

    For the record, if my political views had been so thoroughly refuted by the last three years as yours have been, I would be “Mr. Balanced” too. Obama had two years of total Democrat domination over all three political branches – including a filibuster-proof Senate. He was able to do everything he wanted. And he DID everything he wanted. And liberalism as an economic and political system failed utterly. He spent $862 billion – no, make that $3.27 TRILLION – on a Keynesian experiment and came up goose eggs. If that had happened to my conservative philosophy, I would be saying the same sort of idiotic crap that you are saying when you talk about how wonderfully “open-minded” you are.

    But it’s all a lie, Chad.

    You didn’t show a video clip of Obama; he is the PRESIDENT of this country, the ONE IN POWER, and none of the crap he is doing gets a rise out of you.

    No, you had to show me NEWT. NEWT IS THE MAN WHO RUINED AMERICA, RIGHT??? NEWT IS THE ONE WORTHY OF OUTRAGE. LET’S JUST PRETEND OBAMA WASN’T EVEN THERE.

    But, oh, you’re really all about “balance,” you say.

    You liar.

    Now go away.

  74. Anthony Rastelli Says:

    i think its time for conservatives to really start showing our differences between what we stand for and what the real democratic party ( european socialist party) stand for. Its time to start showing how we are the modern souls of our founding fathers. It really pisses me off how the media hates on conservatives and has no idea of how conservative our founders were. they would be considered ultra conservatives today. Also tired of how the liberals bullshit the 1st amendment of what it really means. Fun fact, socialists need capitalistic conserv. to front the bills but we dnt need not 1 dam socialist for capitalism to prosper. If havnt already u should check out wallbuilders, david bartons forum very inciteful. In all truth michael, on another topic we have been losing for years, the progressive movement has destroyed, deceived our beautiful country down the liberal sewers. Republicans have lost a hell of lot more of what our country was than it has gained. Our founders used to preach the word as presidents, now the near sight of the bible in govt. or the name of Jesus in schools is like commiting murder. Its sad to see how far the libs have brought the country i will always defend and cherish down.

    have u noticed everytime u destroy liberal lies w facts and they know it they proceed to the race card outa nowhere. And how we show our love on our sleeves for our coutry and how much libs always belittle it. The heart of the matter for liberals hate is and always will be is there hatred of christianity and all who represent it. they know that its the foundation of this country and u can clearly see how its been the main focus of demonizing since their beginnings. I guess if i served myself and believed i had no purpose i wood b a lib to.

    conservatives need to take control of the rep. party and never look back. Repubs. have been to soft and have lost to much ground. we need to show our alignment with our founders and show how the libs hate our founders on every turn. take a page outa the libs playbook, repitition even when its bullshit will start to stick at some point.

    Keep up with the facts and truth,
    very inciteful info.

  75. Michael Eden Says:

    Anthony,

    Good points, all.

    Too many conservatives lack the courage to stand up for their convictions. And that is a plague both on our politicians in Washington and the citizens who don’t bother to show up for conservative politicians in droves and vote for them and then hold them accountable.

    At the same time, too many of us are simply ignorant out of our apathy.

    The more we learn about what Democrats are doing to implode America, the more pissed off and outraged we would get. But “don’t worry, be happy” is easier.

    Your statement about the founding fathers reminds me of two posts I just came out with. I hope you read both of these:

    What’s So Terribly Wrong About Obama’s And Democrat Party’s Socialism, In Words Of Many Great Thinkers (Well, And Two Not So Great Ones)

    Read Up On USSR And Decide What You Think About It – Because Obama Is Trying To Bring It To America

    As for the charge of racism, I get it all the time on this blog. And I invariably shine the charge right back at the people who label me. Because my “racism” is the same as Martin Luther King’s “racism” in calling for a world where people are held accountable to the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. Liberals want that creed turned backwards, where blacks and Hispanics (their group doesn’t include Asians or other minorities, you see) are elevated on account of the color of their skins to the abandonment of the content of their character.

  76. Anthony Rastelli Says:

    1st- i cant believe obama said that about the constitution, that our founders had limited insite that its flawed. i luv it when liberals try to twist and deceive the public into believing there on the founders side and are just adding to there work and how the Lord is on there socialist side. i retract that, it doesnt shock me that he said that about the constitution. in truth liberals are everything our founders wanted to keep out of our blessed country. There on Gods side to, cause the Lord wanted his word out of the schools and hidden from our childrens minds, out of govt, christmas ( whoops i meant winter holiday). in truth public school was created so children could learn how to read and absorb the Word.

    Oh and Obama or Carter incarnate, wants manufacturing back bullshit, if he really wanted manufacturing back he would relax regulation strangleholds and cut business with china, and make a good business atmosphere.
    It friggin puzzles the crap outa me how hard is this simple policy to understand. poor people do not create jobs (never got a job from a poor person have u.) U give tax breaks and other incentives to job creators so that they will spend there money on expanding business or making new ones. The more people u have working= a bigger base of taxpayers. allow business makers to succeed, worry about what in your own pockets no evryone else. Is this rocket science, or liberals are either to dum or arrogant to think they can make an economic policy (socialism) that has bankrupted evry nation in history to work for them. It has never worked ever.

    socialism= lazy mindset, y work wen sumone else can pay my way.
    capitalism= hard work pays off, if u want sumthin u gotta earn it
    which produces a hard working country set up to succeed.

    liberals are the spoilled brat children whose parents gave them evrything they wanted without earning it so they wouldnt have to put in the real parenting work. this produces useless adults who cant hack it in the real world.

    we raise our children with luv but also dicipline to teach right from wrong, hard work, humility and also who r real founders were.

    So tired of this weak republican party losing cause they dnt have the balls to stand up for us and fight, we have ALL THE HISTORY AND FOUNDERS on our side. theres no excuse.

    if u sit back and really think about it, isnt it amazing how lost and blind liberals really are, and how smart they think they are. i can really see how they will believe evrything Antichrist will tell them.

    seriously only a liberal could be on the wrong side of everything in history and still think they are enlightened, lol friggin amazing. Go socialism, maybe we achieve the wonderful society of nazi germany.
    Also how astounding is it that any people in there right mind could look at the mid east and support muslum arabs over the jews, especially europe. I solved my own riddle i said in there right mind.

  77. Anthony Rastelli Says:

    also on Healthcare;

    Im in medical school, have not met one person in industry who supports obamas unconstitutional communistic overhaul. ANYONE WHO IS IN HEALTHCARE AND SUPPORTS IT, UNDERSTAND THIS.

    To pay for this plan Obama wants to lower medicaid payments from 70 % (what the govt pays now for medicaid recipients) to around
    33 %. half of the nations doctors said they will close up or retire. if he gets this doctors will be taking a forced payment and out another 40%, if u think they will absorb all that loss ur nuts, everybodys pay will drop to afford it. what do u call it when a govt. tells a private business what it will accept for its services. Its communism and unconstitutional, and u know if doctors refuse medicaid pts Obama will slap a nice sized fine on them. I dnt see how we can recover or ever reverse the falling of our country if this passes. remember, and u gota giv libs credit for how they operate, they never try to jam their unAmerican garbage through all at once. they flood the airways with it first and try to play on emotion, they get small pieces thru at a time and build on them with anything they can tie into it even if its a topic that has no reference.

  78. Michael Eden Says:

    Anthony,

    ObamaCare took any and all incentive for doctors to practice. I know it’s evil of them, but after going through medical school and residency – which takes as many as 16 years and cost an average of more than $150,000 – doctors want to make a little bit of MONEY.

    Of course, wanting to earn a profit and be able to keep your own money is evil, so we seriously need to purge these evil doctors. So Obama is taking their pay away.

    ObamaCare is doing that and will continue to do so more and more successfully.

    Obama promised that under his ObamaCare you could get access to medical care. Like Satan and the proverbial Faustian bargain, he never promised you would actually be able to find a doctor who would see you for the chicken feed pay that ObamaCare wants to pay doctors. There just won’t be enough doctors who are willing to practice under these conditions.

    ObamaCare wasn’t about increasing access to or improving health care; quite the opposite. What ObamaCare was really about was Democrats taking dictatorial control over the health care system, so they could have more power and more control and hence be able to decide who wins and who loses.

  79. Anthony Rastelli Says:

    well said Eden.

    those dam evil doctors or any one else trying to make an honest buck. why dnt we all just praise the mighty Obama and all work for the govt. its funny how liberals always repeat history with their special liberal educationalized tunnel visioned spectacles. you cant teach someone who doesnt know how to learn, especially with history, theyll reinvent it everytime. how are u not tired of the same lib arguments that u dismiss over and over.

    its been a pleasure my well informed friend, good luck teaching the deaf, mute dogs how to bark. got studying to do catch ya later.

  80. Michael Eden Says:

    Anthony,

    Thank you. Feel the same way.

    I’ve had a couple of insights on the nature of “intelligence.”

    1) is that real “intelligence” is the ability to perceive and understand the nature of the actual world. Ultimately, that is the world as God sees it. But liberals do not want to see the world as God sees it; and in fact they hate the world as God sees it. We can begin to see the world as God sees it by reading His Word and believing it; but liberals refuse to do that. Rather, they live in a world of theories, such as Marxism, or existentialism. They cannot see the world as it actually is, and they literally end up willing themselves to be stupid by sheer brute force of will regardless of their intelligence quotient.

    2) Evil is the ultimate form of stupidity. And again, it is irrelevant how “intelligent” one is. Take Lucifer/Satan: he is a super-intelligent being, but in his evil self-will he is determined to try to supplant God (His creator). His wisdom is far greater than any human being’s, on the measure of intellect. But in the end, and in the measure of ultimate reality, he is truly stupid. His perverted will and desire made him stupid.

    That’s why a dumb Forest Gump is a hell of a lot smarter than a brilliant liberal.

    Liberals love to sneeringly think of themselves as “smart.” Atheists started calling themselves “brights” as a means of letting us know how intellectually superior they are to everyone else.

    The reality is quite the opposite; simply because liberals have inoculated themselves against ever being able to perceive reality.

  81. Anthony Rastelli Says:

    what is intelligence, retainment ability to recall info at anytime, critical thinking on the go, problem solving, educational background, book smarts.
    U can have all these things but if u have no common sense and cant make proper real life decisions such as budgeting your money, staying off drugs or other damaging substances, staying out of trouble situations, how smart can you really be.
    The problem with liberals is they simply cannot think for themselves, I cant tell u how many stupid college kids iv met that think communism is a good thing cause there professor said so. Conservatives like me who go to school (even b4 i followed politics) knew not to believe evrything i was told and could see bias. My 1st day in addictions class my teacher said im a liberal and i hate republicans, i said what the hell does that have to do with addictions. I guess when your god is ur liberal professors u will be blind.
    you are exactly right on satan and libs, if u have no spiritual eyes or truth u will be deceived, especially by the lib media.
    ITS SO amazing today, iv never seen this blindness in my life, when Antichrist starts his political machine the left will fumble all over him, tell me its not shockingly clear.

    1)Biggest beef with Rep. party, how come noone takes on the libs lying ass backward view of 1st amendment, what ur take. All the Repub. party (conservatives) has to do is show how we represent our founders and how libs are opposite, and hammer it nonstop, Americans are traditional people at heart and prideful of our country’s heritage.

    2)Finally someone (Newt) said the truth about the palestinians( a name given to mock the jews by a roman emperor) they stayed in Israel purposly to keep the jews from reclaiming there homeland outa an undying hatred for them. palestinians are Jordanian, Egyptian, Syrian, Iranian, etc. arabs. You think with libs being so BLEEDING HEART COMPASSIONISTS that they wouldnt have forgotten the holocaust when theyre not denying it.

  82. joe Says:

    You Republicans kill me. Lets just give the “job creators” a 0 % tax rate, abolish all regulations, repeal the Civil Rights Act, bring religion into our every phase of our lives including government, and fire all them damn Revenuers and get our country back with Rick Perry as our Reverend President. The same idiots that gave us GW twice! They want to do it again.

  83. Michael Eden Says:

    Joe,

    I wish we could, you twisted piece of moral idiocy. You vile cockroaches just love your racist racebaiting, don’t you? It doesn’t matter that it was YOUR party that put black people into slavery, and then fought a brutal Civil War against Abraham Lincoln’s REPUBLICANS to keep slavery. It doesn’t matter that it was REPUBLICANS who ended slavery only by killing enough Democrats to pull it off. It doesn’t matter that it was YOUR party that started the Ku Klux Klan as the terrorist wing of the Democrat Party to kill and intimidate blacks and REPUBLICANS. It doesn’t matter that it was YOUR party that was so dominated by the Ku Klux Klan in 1924 that the Democratic National Convention was called “Klanbake.” You want to talk Civil Rights, you moral idiot? Until very recently the Democrat Party featured an actual former Grand Kleagle and Exalted Cyclops of the Klu Klux Klan. During the height of WWII, Byrd wrote a letter to Sen. Theodore Bilbo stating his refusal to join the military because he might have to serve alongside “race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.” And only his recent death prevented Byrd from continuing to be one of the Democrat Party’s most honored and revered members.

    How about this bit of history, you wicked, depraved, demonic liar? In the 26 major civil rights votes after 1933, a majority of Democrats opposed civil rights legislation in over 80 percent of the votes. By contrast, the Republican majority favored civil rights in over 96 percent of the votes.

    How DARE you try to pass off lies about the Republicans and Civil Rights?

    How about the fact that Bill Clinton, most loved Democrat, shocked Ted Kennedy by saying against Obama, “A few years ago this guy would have been getting coffee.” How about liberals hating on black Clarence Thomas saying, “String him up” and “Send him back to the fields.” How about those Democrats of yours? Is that a short enough “historic observation” for you??? To the extent that white people are racist, how about the SEIU openly ackowledging that it’s white liberal Democrat members were “f-ing rabidly racist”???

    And thank you for doing your part to document the FACT that the Democrat Party today is the official state atheist party in America, just like your communist brethren.

    George Washington calls you a traitor and so do I. In his Farewell Address, Washington said:

    “Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens.”

    That’s right, the father of our country was talking about what a traitor YOU are, you slimebag.

    You know, it’s interesting: If you look at the monthly unemployment numbers, Obama’s BEST month of unemployment is far worse than Bush’s WORST month of unemployment:

    Obama's best month of employment worse than Bush's WORST month

    But you like living in your momma’s basement, don’t you, you worthless turd? You don’t want to go back to that time when we had somebody who created actual jobs, do you?

    The truth is that Obama has lost 2.5 million jobs since he took office. These jobs have simply ceased to exist under Obama, as measured by the labor participation rate. The truth is that if Obama were measured by the same labor participation rate that Bush was measured by when he left office, unemployment would be at over 11.3% (according to an analysis by Reuters), rather than the 8.6% Obama is being lauded for by media propaganda. I mean, dang, even liberal Ezra Klein affirms that the real unemployment rate ought to be 11 percent.

    Yeah, you don’t mind Obama’s unemployment. I bet momma brings your dinner to you in your bedroom.

    Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal points out the holocaust of jobs just plain murdered by Obama and his rabid EPA death machine, beginning with the Keystone pipeline that Obama and many Democrats want killed:

    Which gets us to his blues, or rather the 20,000 blue-collar construction jobs that would come with the pipeline, and the further 118,000 spin-off jobs. The unions—from the Teamsters, to the Plumbers and Pipefitters, to the Laborers—are out in force pushing for this giant job creator. “We can’t wait to get America building again,” blares a union-sponsored website in support of Keystone, poking at the president’s latest political rhetoric.
    Keystone is more than just the administration’s latest headache. It’s the clear culmination of an Obama governing philosophy that has consistently put green priorities ahead of blue-collar workers, and that is now one of the biggest threats to his re-election. […]

    The EPA has labored over an ozone rule (estimated job losses: 7.3 million), power plant rules (1.4 million), a boiler rule (789,000), a coal-ash rule (316,00), a cement rule (23,000), and greenhouse gas rules (even Joe Biden can’t count that high). The administration blew up Louisiana’s offshore deepwater drilling industry, insisted Detroit make cars nobody wants to buy and, just to stay consistent, is moving to clamp down on the country’s one booming industry: natural gas.

    Those going the way of the dodo are utility workers, pipefitters, construction guys, coal miners, factory workers, truck drivers, electrical workers and machinists. Many of these are union Democrats who don’t care if their union bosses are publicly sticking with the president. They are pessimistic about the future and increasingly angry over the president’s attack on their work.

    That Keystone pipeline ALONE directly created 22,000 jobs and indirectly would have created another 118,000 spinoff jobs. And

    Take a look at what Obama has done for young workers. Another Holocaust. The misery index is the highest it has EVER been. We are at Great Depression levels in our housing situation.

    You mentioned regulations, so I will too:

    A new report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) titled “Ten Thousand Commandments” reveals the vast amount of private-sector capital drowned in the sea of government regulations.

    The report’s conclusion is mind-boggling. The cost of complying with federal regulations has hit the $1.7 trillion dollar mark.

    That’s trillion, with a T.

    To put that number in perspective, it’s larger than the President’s own anticipated 2011 budget deficit of $1.6 trillion. In fact, the current regulatory burden imposed on businesses across America now amounts to 50% of total government spending in one year alone.

    That’s nuts!

    But guess what? We can top it.

    As the CEI report underscores, the compliance cost of regulation is larger than all corporate pretax profits in 2008 and dwarfs the estimated 2010 individual income tax receipts by nearly 50%.

    That last point is worth repeating: The cost of abiding by all the government regulations tallies up to $1.7 trillion, which towers over the revenue brought in by all income taxes, in every bracket.

    We can also add that the compliance costs amount to more than $8,000 per American employee, but we’ll have to stop the comparisons there or else this editorial would rival Atlas Shrugged? in length—but with statistics. Yikes!

    So every time you hear some Democrat bemoan the ill-informed view that America is an underregulated society, tell them to put the above numbers in a pipe and smoke them.

    So you go back and smoke your crackpipe some more, you ideologue lunatic.

    So you just take your filth and your lies out of my face, Joe.

  84. Seth Philips Says:

    The bible passage quoted at the top is totally misunderstood and misapplied. When you have God on your side, do you need to misrepresent his words to get ahead? If you don’t, why quote scripture? That is shameless, and the true meaning is obvious: The heart of the wise is nearing to his right hand (strongest, uses it first and most often and for more difficult things), while the heart of the foolish is nearer to his left (uses it when he is forced to, and when it is convenient). Thus, the wise takes care to have a good heart, whereas the fool doesn’t bother to value things in a balanced and accurate way unless he has no other choice or just when its easy to see what’s important.

  85. Michael Eden Says:

    Seth,

    I’m supposing that you are referring to the Bible passage from Ecclesiastes that appears on my site. Not having anything to complain about in the article itself, I guess you found something anyway.

    Tell you what, I’ll go with your version of it. Fine.

    And guess what, “the foolish” (i.e., “the left”) works quite well for the party that has murdered 54 million innocent human beings through the holocaust of abortion.

    You see, Seth, “the wise” DON’T MURDER THEIR BABIES. “The wise” also don’t impose the radical homosexual agenda on society or further implode marriage by defining the institution as a mere convention that really has no rules (after said same left/fools already damaged it so terribly with no fault easy divorce.

    I understand that King Solomon wasn’t thinking of the Democratic Party when he wrote Ecclesistes, okay? But it also so happens that a) the Democrat Party is a true party of fools; and b) the “left” part just so happens to fit like a glove.

    Please get over it.

  86. jimbohara Says:

    You are way off base with your analysis – spending did NOT explode, “income” (tax receipts) collapsed. Please looking at tax receipts and government spending and show me where Obama’s spending exploded:

    http://www.bea.gov/national/nipaweb/TableView.asp?SelectedTable=86&ViewSeries=NO&Java=no&Request3Place=N&3Place=N&FromView=YES&Freq=Year&FirstYear=1999&LastYear=2011&3Place=N&Update=Update&JavaBox=no

    The problem is Dubya massively deficit spent even while the economy was exploding with growth because of the housing bubble. Then when the bubble burst in 2008, and tax receipts went in the toilet, Obama was left with a bloated government (and no, not just war costs – the biggest US government EVER!) to pay for. Plus lots of unfunded government spending (spending cuts to offset additional spending) that so called “fiscal conservative” Republicans could get more votes from the elderly.

    And save your “lib-tard” ad hominem attacks on me; I’m a libertarian and Austrian school self taught economist who was complaining about government spending years ago. I just think it’s criminal for you to try and pin this economic absurdity all on Obama, while quietly brushing Dubya’s grave economic errors under the carpet.

  87. Michael Eden Says:

    You are way off base with your analysis – spending did NOT explode, “income” (tax receipts) collapsed

    You should have read your own chart there, jimbohara.

    (I’ve got to put up with idiots in order to blog. It’s the cost of doing business).

    Just picking out some representative numbers, receipts went from $3,995.2 (trillion) in 2006 to $3,962.8 (trillion) in 2010. I mean, wow, what a devastating decline. A whole .81 percent!!!

    Versus spedning, which soared from $4,147.9 (trillion) in 2006 to $5,261.8 (trillion) in 2010.

    That’s a 26.85 percent increase in spending versus a .81 percent decrease in revenue there, jimBozo.

    This is another way of saying, “You are refuted, clown, by your very own “fact” that you provided.”

    And being massively, MASSIVELY wrong in your first allegation, why stop at just being stupid? So you go on to blame Bush.

    I just wrote another article which points out how just flat asanine in your intellectual depravity people like you truly are.

    Obama’s own words demonizing George Bush (the same way you are):

    “The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents – #43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.”

    What is the national debt now that this demagogue is running the show, JimBozo???

    It is $15.2 trillion, and about to go to $16.4 trillion under your messiah:

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House plans to ask Congress by the end of the week for an increase in the government’s debt ceiling to allow the United States to pay its bills on time, according to a senior Treasury Department official on Tuesday.

    […]

    The debt limit currently stands at $15.194 trillion and would increase to $16.394 trillion with the request.

    You moral idiots make me sick with your hypocrisy and your constant flood of lies. Bush added $4 trillion to the debt over EIGHT YEARS; Obama has now added $6 trillion in just THREE YEARS.

    But I’m not done with you yet, JimBozo. Because another important fact is that revenues INCREASED UNDER BUSH – JUST AS THEY HAVE INCREASED EVERY TIME TAX RATES WERE CUT:

    For the record, President George Bush’s 2003 tax cuts:

    raised federal tax receipts by $785 billion, the largest four-year revenue increase in U.S. history. In fiscal 2007, which ended last month, the government took in 6.7% more tax revenues than in 2006.

    These increases in tax revenue have substantially reduced the federal budget deficits. In 2004 the deficit was $413 billion, or 3.5% of gross domestic product. It narrowed to $318 billion in 2005, $248 billion in 2006 and $163 billion in 2007. That last figure is just 1.2% of GDP, which is half of the average of the past 50 years.

    Lower tax rates have be so successful in spurring growth that the percentage of federal income taxes paid by the very wealthy has increased. According to the Treasury Department, the top 1% of income tax filers paid just 19% of income taxes in 1980 (when the top tax rate was 70%), and 36% in 2003, the year the Bush tax cuts took effect (when the top rate became 35%). The top 5% of income taxpayers went from 37% of taxes paid to 56%, and the top 10% from 49% to 68% of taxes paid. And the amount of taxes paid by those earning more than $1 million a year rose to $236 billion in 2005 from $132 billion in 2003, a 78% increase.

    And, again, to use your own damn chart, take a look at the 2003 tax receipts: $3,043.4 trillion in 2003 to $4,051.6 trillion in 2008 – that is a 33.13 percent increase in revenue collected by Bush under the 2003 Bush tax cut. You miserable liar.

    You blame the housing bubble on Bush, which takes chutzpah. Bush tried SEVENTEEN TIMES to reform Fannie and Freddie; but you liberals blocked him every single time until it was too late.

    What you WON’T do, because you ARE a libturd, is blame Clinton for the bubble that HE created just before Bush took office. The Dotcom recession landed right on Bush’s lap, and the Nasdaq lost 78% of its value and trillions of dollars in wealth were just vaporized from the last days of the Clinton administration, you certainly weren’t out there saying, “Blame Clinton! Blame Clinton!” Were you then, you? $7.1 TRILLION in wealth was vaporized (43% of the the Market Capitalization of the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 Full Cap between 2000 Q1 and Q1 2003). But where were you when Bush was suffering from Clinton’s bubble, you liar without shame?

    You also lie about the Iraq War costs. The Iraq War cost $800 billion. The Obama stimulus costs more at $862 billion. And if you factor in what the CBO said the Obama stimulus would ultimately costs, far, FAR more at $3.27 TRILLION. And let’s also not forget the fact that Obama massively increased the war in Afghanistan all by his lonesome – so don’t you DARE blame Bush for that.

    You’re a libertarian the way I’m a tooth fairy, you walking disgrace. Libertarians want lower taxes and less government. You want to demonize Bush (who in eight years spent a fraction of what Obama has spent in just three) and defend Obama – who is an INSULT to everything true libertarians stand for.

    There’s a reason you people can’t be honest about your liberalism; deep down, you know what a cockroach you are – and you just don’t have the integrity to admit what you are. But don’t get me wrong, JimBozo – you SHOULD be ashamed.

    The second thing I have to point out, Mr. “self taught,” is that you had a real idiot for a teacher.

    Now get lost and try to pass off your lies somewhere else. They don’t fly here.

  88. jimbohara Says:

    Your fact cherry-picking, fact distorting response now makes it clear to me you’re not mistaken, but rather are deliberately trying to confuse the situation. Allow me to rip your ad hominem laden argument to shreds.

    And uh, yeah, I’m more conservative than you, because as a libertarian we actually subscribe to conservative principles like limited government, not neoconservative “big government” politics with empire-building on the agenda. I hope you don’t consider Thomas Jefferson a role model. But I digress…

    First, the crux of your post – Obama spending is out of control compared to Dubya. This is wrong as the fact show. You cherry pick to years.. Let’s bother to look more closely:

    Year/year increases in spending from “my own damn chart” (not mine but, uh, the US government’s):

    Year Expenditure Increase from previous year
    2001 3,093.6 187.6
    2002 3,274.7 181.1
    2003 3,458.6 183.9
    2004 3,653.5 194.9
    2005 3,916.4 262.9
    2006 4,147.9 231.5
    2007 4,430.0 282.2
    2008 4,737.3 307.3
    2009 4,999.7 262.4
    2010 5,261.8 262.1

    Please show me where Obama’s spending exploded?!? In fact, compared to Dubya’s 2008 budget, Obama’s increase year/year WENT DOWN! Man, don’t the facts suck?

    The whole “Clinton dot bubble” and the lame attempt to compare that faux-recession to train wreck recession of 2008:

    USA’s GDP by year since the Clinton years to present, current dollars, billions:

    1991 5,992.1
    1992 6,342.3
    1993 6,667.4
    1994 7,085.2
    1995 7,414.7
    1996 7,838.5
    1997 8,332.4
    1998 8,793.5
    1999 9,353.5
    2000 9,951.5
    2001 10,286.2
    2002 10,642.3
    2003 11,142.2
    2004 11,853.3
    2005 12,623.0
    2006 13,377.2
    2007 14,028.7
    2008 14,291.5
    2009 13,939.0
    2010 14,526.5

    Notable: GDP *NEVER* fell year/year, even after the .COM bubble (until 2009 – let’s stick with the Bush years for now). Ok, GDP did drop briefly *intra-quarter* in 2001, but I’m trying to highlight how trivial the .com bubble bursting was to the overall US economy. The economy continued to grow, stronger than ever after 2001.

    I’ll keep going tearing your post apart, but I’m not going to waste my time until I see you allow this post through, and respond to the refutation that Obama’s spending “exploded” multi-fold compared to Bush.

  89. Michael Eden Says:

    JimBozo,

    I have a way of dealing with your concluding threat. I simply do not have time to waste on losers with their little vendettas. But I’ll deal with this last post of yours.

    I refuted your first thesis that revenues tanked and spending didn’t soar. I won’t bother to cite the current receipts numbers (they are on your link), but they definitely didn’t “collapse.”

    Let’s look at those numbers expenditure a little differently:

    2,902.5 3,132.4 3,118.2 2,967.9 3,043.4 3,265.7 3,659.3 3,995.2 4,197.0 4,051.6 3,703.7 3,962.8 receipts

    2,761.9 2,906.0 3,093.6 3,274.7 3,458.6 3,653.5 3,916.4 4,147.9 4,430.0 4,737.3 4,999.7 5,261.8 expenditures
    =====================================================================================================
    + 140.6b +226.4b +24.6b -305.8b -415.2b -387.8b -257.1b -152.7b -233b 685.7b 1,296T 1,299T

    Bush’s average deficit: $301.5 billion
    Obama’s average deficit $1.3 TRILLION

    Fwiw, $350 billion of that $685.7 billion deficit was TARP funds that Bush allowed Obama to have and spend. Bush took the full $700 billion hit; Obama got half of the money.

    Another FWIW, it is not the president who is authorized to spend money; only CONGRESS has that power.

    Here’s another governmnet number chart for you of deficits:

    •2011 – $1.5 trillion budget deficit (projected)
    •2010 – $1.3 trillion budget deficit
    •2009 – $1.4 trillion budget deficit
    •2008 – $455 billion budget deficit
    •2007 – $162 billion budget deficit
    •2006 – $248.2 billion budget deficit
    •2005 – $319 billion budget deficit
    •2004 – $412.7 billion budget deficit
    •2003 – $377.6 billion budget deficit
    •2002 – $157.8 billion budget deficit
    •2001 – $128.2 billion budget surplus

    The last time a Republican Congress was around to control the budget, we had a deficit of $162 billion. That was the FY-2007 budget. The very next year the Democrats took over, with Pelosi and Reid running Congress, and their first budget deficit was $455 billion (nearly three times the size of the Republicans’ from the prior year). Then the Democrats just plain went out of control. $1.4 trillion deficit, $1.3 trillion deficit, $1.5 trillion deficit.

    Versus that $162 billion from Republicans.

    Realize that Obama tried to pass a budget earlier this year, and it was so shockingly high with such a staggering deficit that it was voted down 97-0 IN THE DEMOCRAT CONTROLLED SENATE. That was an abject disgrace.

    The old annual deficits under Republicans became the monthly deficits under Democrats:

    In the 12 years that Republicans controlled the House, the average deficit was $104 billion (average of final deficit/surplus FY1996-FY2007 data taken from Table F-1 below). In just 3 years under Democrats, the average deficit is now almost $1.1 trillion (average of final deficit/surplus FY2008 and 2009 data taken from Table F-1; FY2010 data taken from Table 1-3). Source: CBO January 2010 Budget and Economic Outlook

    Now, I documented these figures in a previous article (in which I back up what I say):

    So let’s recalculate based on the deeper analysis. Bush’s deficit spending was $410 billion a year divided by 365 days, which equals $1.1 billion per day. Versus Obama’s deficit spending, which has been $1,413 billion a year divided by 365, which equals $3.87 billion per day. That is 3.5 times more spending every single day from Obama.

    Still another abject disgrace is that the Democrat Party has not passed any kind of budget whatsoever in 974 days.

    You cite what you refer to as GDP figures (I’m not sure why, quite frankly), but I’ll just go with national debt figures. And simply repeat what I said in my last comment about who is guilty for reckless spending:

    I just wrote another article which points out how just flat asanine in your intellectual depravity people like you truly are.

    Obama’s own words demonizing George Bush (the same way you are):

    “The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents – #43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.”

    What is the national debt now that this demagogue is running the show, JimBozo???

    It is $15.2 trillion, and about to go to $16.4 trillion under your messiah:

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House plans to ask Congress by the end of the week for an increase in the government’s debt ceiling to allow the United States to pay its bills on time, according to a senior Treasury Department official on Tuesday.

    […]

    The debt limit currently stands at $15.194 trillion and would increase to $16.394 trillion with the request.

    You moral idiots make me sick with your hypocrisy and your constant flood of lies. Bush added $4 trillion to the debt over EIGHT YEARS; Obama has now added $6 trillion in just THREE YEARS.

    Now, you called yourself a “libertarian.” In the course of my political involvement, I’ve talked to MANY libertarians. I’ve talked to many libertarians who despised Bush for his spending.

    But you would be the very first “libertarian” in history who hated Bush for his spending and then defended Obama for his far worse spending.

    Which is another way of saying you are a liar.

    Now, for that reason, and the fact that you are threatening to try to make my life more annoying by having to deal with your constant stream of crap, I’m simply done with you. Bye bye.

  90. marcusttolbert@yahoo.com Says:

    I find it odd that Clinton as president created some 23 million job, had a projected surplus of 500 billion dollar ßurplus and à bàlànced budget and ran that into an 11.4 trillion dollar defect while eleminating 42million American jobs. Îf an honest evaluation is made Obama has ßpènt the 4 trillion dollars this first term to prevent the free fall that Bush put America into. If it had not been for this spending American unemployment would be àt20 percent or higher, these are the real facts of the matter. It rather obvious that the distortion of truth of w””eapons of mass destruction tag agaq and blaming Obama for the economic ills of the country is illogicl seeking to tell another liè and by telling it often enough will get others to believe it. It is because of these actions that America was driven into the dirt. When a president of these United states was only concèned about the rich
    Regardless of the way it it imperiiled Amèicà or the avèagè Americàn. Another comment in closing. At one time America the most respected country in the world, at this point it is despised. Wake up and smell the coffee, and this is largely because of the policies of George w. Bush.

  91. djdevine Says:

    Job numbers you claim for the Keystone XL Pipeline are questionable. The article you quoted in the WSJ by Kimberly Strassel is biased. Note: “(even Joe Biden can’t count that high)”. Not really a source for “facts”. Here’s some research that is based on reality. Worth a read, even if you refuse to believe it due to your own bias… http://tinyurl.com/7fm66yv

  92. Michael Eden Says:

    marcusttolbert,

    I see your drinking Paul Krugman’s Kool Aid. Yummy stuff for you libs, isn’t it?

    According to the BLS, the employed number was 119,543,000 in 1993, and peaked at 135,999,000 in January 2001. The gain was 16.4 million, not 23 million. Which is pretty good, even though it documents that you are repeating lies.

    What is interesting is that Bill Clinton was doing so abysmally as a president that he suffered one of the largest poltical ASSkickings in American history two years into his presidency, and it wasn’t until AFTER the Republcians took over both the House and the Senate and Bill Clinton was forced to admit “the era of big government is over” that those jobs were created.

    But you know, facts are terrible things and it’s no wonder liberals hate them so much.

    Another question worth pondering is how many of those NOT 23 million jobs were created by the internet bubble that blew up like a nuclear bomb at the end of Clinton’s watch?

    Here’s a couple of other facts that give ample reason to why liberals despise facts so much:

    Bill Clinton’s DotCom bubble that poisoned the economy for George Bush for most of his first term wiped out 78% of the Nasdaq portfolio and vaporized $7.1 TRILLION in wealth.

    Oh, and let’s not forget how Clinton gutted both the military and intelligence budgets so that we were both weak and blind. After Clinton crawled out of Somalia with his tail between his legs a guy named Osama bin Laden called America a paper tiger and set out to kick our asses. Something he succeeded at doing under Clinton’s watch as ALL of the terrorists came into the country and got all ready during the Clinton presidency.

    But why am I saying this when I’ve already said it and I can just copy and paste:

    Bill Clinton left George Bush with the massive Dotcom bubble collapse. That collapse that happened on Clinton’s watch wiped out 78% of the Nasdaq portfolio, and in fact vaporized more than 7.1 TRILLION DOLLARS in American wealth. And the ONLY reason we don’t talk about that – aside that too many in the media are just as biased and as stupid as you are, Smith – is that Clinton had also GUTTED the Pentegon and intelligence budget, leaving America both weak (Osama bin Laden called Clinton’s America “a paper tiger”) and blind. Clinton did to the CIA budget what he did to the Nasdaq – just wiped it out – and left us exposed to the 9/11 attack.

    Osama bin Laden’s words in 1998 following the Clinton fiasco in Somalia where the US pulled out with its tail between its legs: “Our boys no longer viewed America as a superpower. So, when they left Afghanistan, they went to Somalia and prepared themselves carefully for a long war. They had thought that the Americans were like the Russians, so they trained and prepared. They were stunned when they discovered how low was the morale of the American soldier. America had entered with 30,000 soldiers in addition to thousands of soldiers from different countries in the world. … As I said, our boys were shocked by the low morale of the American soldier and they realized that the American soldier was just a paper tiger. He was unable to endure the strikes that were dealt to his army, so he fled, and America had to stop all its bragging and all that noise it was making in the press…”

    Here’s a little more about how we have Bill Clinton to thank for the massive 9/11 attack to go on top of his massive DotCom bubble collapse:

    Author James Risen won the Pulitzer Prize on Tuesday for his much ballyhooed New York Times report last December that revealed President Bush’s previously secret terrorist surveillance program – a revelation he uncovered while researching his book “State of War.”

    In the same book, however, Risen makes an equally explosive claim about President Clinton’s relationship with the CIA – which his editors at the Times have so far declined to cover.

    Upon taking power in 1993, Risen reports, the Clinton administration “began slashing the intelligence budget in search of a peace dividend, and Bill Clinton showed almost no interest in intelligence matters.”

    The agency cutbacks combined with presidential disinterest took their toll almost immediately.

    “Over a three-or-four-year period in the early-to-mid 1990s,” reports Risen, “virtually an entire generation of CIA officers – the people who had won the Cold War – quit or retired. One CIA veteran compared the agency to an airline that had lost all of is senior pilots . . . “

    After Clinton CIA Director John Deutch cashiered several senior officers over a scandal in Guatamala, the situation got even worse.

    “Morale [at the CIA] plunged to new lows, and the agency became paralyzed by an aversion to high-risk espionage operations for fear they would lead to political flaps. Less willing to take big risks, the CIA was less able to recruit spies in dangerous places such as Iraq.”

    And there’s the blindness that led to the 9/11 attack, combined with the fact that Clinton demonstrated to Osama bin Laden with the “Blackhawk Down” fiasco in Somalia that the U.S. was just “a paper tiger,” and ripe for a massive attack. That attack was planned, funded – and all the terrrorist assets were in the USA and even trained to fly in American pilot schools- during the Clinton misrule.

    So if you want to blame Bush for Obama’s mess, the least you could do would be to have the decency to blame Clinton for Bush’s mess. But you’re not honest enough to do that. Neither you, or your corrupt Democrat Party, or your mainstream media propaganda networks, have any integrity at all. Republicans took responsibility and admitted fault for their overspending. Democrats are like Cain in the Book of Genesis; they refuse to accept responsibility for anything no matter how guilty they are.

    I also notice how you utterly fail to mention the gigantic role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the 2008 collapse:

    AEI Article: How Fannie And Freddie Blew Up The Economy

    Barney Frank And Democrat Party Most Responsible For 2008 Economic Collapse

    https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/2009/08/03/who-really-exploded-your-economy-liberals-or-conservatives/

    https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/2009/12/31/with-eyes-finally-wide-open-reconsider-why-the-economy-collapsed-in-the-first-place/

    https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/2009/07/08/biden-we-misread-the-economy-and-its-all-the-republicans-fault/

    Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created by Democrats. It was perennially staffed with Democrats. It had the sole power to bundle mortgages into the “mortgage backed securites” and then sell those securities to the private market under the guise that they were government and therefore AAA. It got massively into subprime loans to literally piss into those mortgage backed securities even as it made it impossible to tell a good security from a bad one. It forced banks to make utterly STUPID loans that went belly-up.

    Watch these videos to see that Fannie Mae was responsible, and Democrats were responsible for preventing ANY regulation at ALL on Fannie Mae: http://digitalartpress.wordpress.com/2009/03/22/video-proof-democrat-party-warned-responsible-for-fannie-mae-freddie-mac-economic-crisis-repost/

    https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/barney-frank-video-proves-democrats-at-core-of-2008-economic-collapse/

    Bush tried SEVENTEEN TIMES to reform and regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And Democrats stopped him at every single turn until it was too damned late. Look at the timeline, you moron: FANNIE and FREDDIE went bankrupt first – and they had over sixty damn percent of the housing mortgage market and there was no stopping the crash that Demoncrats (demonic bureaucratic rodents) created.

    But in SPITE of those terrible blows, the BLS reports for May 2008 employment show slightly over 146 million jobs, an increase of 10 million jobs since January 2001. Ten million jobs for Bushie. Which is really pretty dang good considering the crappy hand he was dealt by your Slick Willie…

  93. Michael Eden Says:

    I see,

    The Wall Street Journal is “biased” but Cornell University is above reproach?

    Well, at least you didn’t lecture me on the WSJs bias and then cite Media Matters…

    Wait a second, maybe you might as well have cited Media Matters:

    CNN Money Reporter Hits Keystone Pipeline from Far Left
    By Paul Wilson | December 15, 2011 | 11:55

    When President Obama put off giving the go-ahead to build the Keystone Pipeline until after the 2012 election, it put the liberal media in a difficult position. Just about everyone from Big Labor to congressional Republicans to the states through which the Keystone would run agrees it would create thousands of jobs, strengthen ties with Canada and reduce dependency on oil from unstable and unfriendly nations.

    Obama, who has yet to embrace a jobs scheme that actually produces jobs, bowed to the environmentalists and wealthy celebrity liberals who hate the Keystone Pipeline, which would run from Canada to the Gulf Coast. Journalists like CNN Money reporter Steve Hargreaves were left to defend the decision.

    In a Dec 14 piece titled “Keystone Pipeline: How many jobs it would really create?” Hargreaves cited two sources to make the case that the job-creating impact of the Keystone pipeline would be minimal at best – without noting the liberal environmental leanings of those sources.

    “The Keystone pipeline project is back in play as part of the payroll-tax cut debate,” Hargreaves said, “and Congressional Republicans say it would create jobs. But there’s a wide range of estimates, with one forecast that Keystone could actually cost jobs.”

    That “one forecast” was a study from Cornell University that blasted the potential job-creating impact of the pipeline. Other studies have forecast positive job impacts for the pipeline.

    The libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute has previously documented that the Cornell study was authored by a board member of Greenpeace Canada and financed by the Goodman Group, which counts among its clients the Sierra Club and Greenpeace. This information did not appear in Hargreaves’ report.

    Hargreaves also quoted spokeswoman Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, of the National Resources Defense Council, who said “The Republicans have been acting like this is a national jobs package, and it’s not.”

    Again, Hargreaves failed to explain that the National Resources Defense Council is an environmentalist group that is adamantly opposed to the pipeline. The group recently joined with three other environmental groups to file a lawsuit to block the pipeline. (Ironically, the National Resources Defense Council has previously come out against American dependence on unstable countries for foreign oil.)

    In fairness to Hargreaves, those defending the indefensible are likely to pick up any tool at hand. Obama’s decision was transparently political and deeply cynical, and no credible source would back it up.

    A couple of observations, Djdevine,

    1) Hey, that’s the unbiased study you linked to, isn’t it? You know, the one that was set up by a radical environmentalist and paid for with radical envioronmentalist money????

    2) Please take your self-righteous lecture about my being “biased” and shove you know where, you biased hack.

  94. djdevine Says:

    What’s with the constant disparaging, nasty attitude you take with every post here? Can you simply debate without all the name calling, etc.? Seriously. The point is that comparing un-sourced numbers in an WSJ editorial with data with numbers from a detailed study is worth further analysis of those numbers. If this blog is all about the numbers and facts, then let’s hash those out. Please argue the data on its merits. Why would you refuse to consider other data and imply it’s invalid because it comes those with a different viewpoint than yours? That was my point.

  95. djdevine Says:

    I see some issues with articles you linked to, “The Keystone XL Energy Project Is Much More Than A Pipe Dream”, from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, states:

    “A new influx of up to 700,000 bpd from Canada will dramatically increase U.S supplies and in turn drive gas prices down.”

    However, tar sands oil is slated for export. Valero’s CEO and chairman, Bill Klesse, and others have clearly stated there plans. This has nothing to do with lessening dependence on foreign oil and lowering gasoline prices here in the the U.S. The plan is to ship it out of the U.S. in the form of middle distillates – diesel, jet fuel, heating oil – primarily to Europe and Latin America. This point is never mentioned in all the pro-pipeline articles. The final product is simply not destined or intended for use by Americans.

    Also, for the last two years, and for the foreseeable future, demand for oil in the U.S. is in decline, while domestic supply is rising.

    These are just a few points omitted in claims by pro-pipeline advocates, and should be included as part of this argument.

  96. Michael Eden Says:

    djdevine,

    Can you simply go away?

    Don’t you DARE call me out for being nasty after you denounced me as “biased” –

    …even if you refuse to believe it due to your own bias

    – in your VERY FIRST WORDS to me.

    Which is to say that you literally introduced yourself to me by personally attacking me.

    Nothing pisses me off more than liberals who call people names and then bitch and piss and moan and whine when they get called names back. It’s like being a liberal means stamping the word “victim” on your forehead and then using rhetorical judo to make yourselves the victims in every argument you start.

    I demonstrated and DOCUMENTED that your “source” is blatantly biased and literally funded and staffed by the radical left.

    Versus the Wall Street Journal, which is the best newspaper in America by any measurement – including circulation.

    Why would you refuse to consider other data and imply it’s it’s invalid because it comes those with a different viewpoint than yours? That was my point.

    You are a hypocrite and I’m done with you.

  97. Michael Eden Says:

    Djdevine,

    We have had a very minor increase in domestic production for one reason and one reason only: the Bush policies produced more oil.

    Obama has done everything he could since to undermine that domestic production.

    I document that in this post: Obama Continues To Tell Shocking Demonstrable Lies: This Time About Oil Production

    In that article I cite this one:

    Obama’s Fuzzy Oil Production Math
    Bush administration actions have led to gains in supply.
    By Amy Harder
    Updated: March 17, 2011 | 8:50 p.m.
    March 17, 2011 | 1:57 p.m

    He doesn’t want to admit it, but President Obama is taking credit for something George W. Bush did.

    The White House is touting federal data that shows domestic oil production is at its highest level since 2003. In a blog post last week, Obama’s top climate and energy aide, Heather Zichal, points to Energy Information Administration data that shows oil production from the Outer Continental Shelf (which basically means the Gulf of Mexico) has increased by more than a third between 2008 and 2010.

    EIA Administrator Richard Newell says it takes several years for any major federal policy action — such as issuing leases — to affect domestic oil production.

    “Even if one has development drilling going on, there is about a one- to three-year lag between drilling and production that one will see,” Newell said during a break in a House Natural Resources Committee hearing on Thursday. “If you’re on a longer term — for example, new leases being issued in an area — you can be on a several-year time frame before you can see a relationship between new leases and production. So there are significant lags.”

    While Bush was in office from 2001 to 2009, the oil and gas industry saw many new leases and other expanded drilling opportunities. In March 2010, Obama announced plans to expand offshore drilling, but he retreated in the aftermath of the BP oil spill.

    According to EIA’s short-term 2011 outlook, released last week, oil production was significantly higher in 2009 than in the years prior. Obama may have been in office for most of that year, but the oil production numbers are due to action taken before he became president. In 2010, most if not all of the production increase recorded is likely due to action that predates Obama, since Obama didn’t take any major action expanding offshore drilling his first year in office.

    You damn liberals have been doing it for the last fifty years, and you’re STILL doing it: you said over and over that if we started producing oil now, it wouldn’t get to the market for ten years so it won’t help us.” The problem is that you said that ten years ago, and ten years before that, and so on. Which is to say that if we’d harnessed our own domestic oil WE WOULD HAVE HAD MORE FOR IT AND BEEN PAYING LESS.

    I also pointed out in another article that when Bush ended the idiotic moratorium on offshore drilling (i.e. allowing America to harness it’s own oil) gas prices went WAY down and stayed down. I quoted from the Washington Times:

    Gas prices have been on a roller-coaster ride over the past decade, dropping to near $1 after President George W. Bush’s first year in office, crossing the $2 mark in 2005 and reaching $4 in June 2008 before Congress and Mr. Bush took action, lifting presidential and congressionally imposed moratoriums on expanding offshore drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf.

    Mr. Bush lifted the presidential moratorium in July that year. The congressional moratorium expired Sept. 30, and prices fell precipitously, dropping more than $1 in October.

    “The reason that it dropped is because the U.S. sent a signal to the markets, by dropping the moratoria, that we’re going to drill on our lands. Obviously, we never followed up, and thus you see the crisis gradually rising,” said Rep. Doc Hastings of Washington, the ranking Republican on the Natural Resources Committee.

    Until Obama came along.

    Did you know that 2011 was the most expensive year for gasoline prices in U.S. history???

    We need American oil. That is simply a matter of sane national security. And there is no question that this Keystone pipeline will create jobs – and you are frankly an idiot for trying to argue that it won’t. Even the unions who would GET those jobs are siding against Democrats on this one because THEY would be the ones getting those jobs and they know that YOU, djdevine, are full of crap. We also need to stand with Canada when Canada does the right thing – because Canada is saying that if Obama continues to impose his irrational and immoral moratorium on Keystone they will reroute it and send the oil to China.

  98. Bob Says:

    Go to this link and read some facts or copy the link into your browser. (some of them are completely the opposite of what mister red wrote.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget

    All I have to add is that I’m an American, not a Democrat or Republican. I voted for Ronnie & I voted for Bill.
    The persson who wrote their resposes in Vermin red, in my view is the most unamercan and disrepectful person I’ve have ever had the displeasure of encountering via email.

  99. Michael Eden Says:

    Bob,

    I’m guessing you’re demonizing me when you talk about the “most unamerican and disrespectful person” you’ve ever encountered. Having no idea wth you were talking about, I scrolled over the article/comments. For the record, I most certainly didn’t “email” you jack squat. Please get your terms right.

    If you’re going to call me “un-American,” would you at least capitalize the country you say I don’t love? Because calling it “america” is quite disrespectful. And I frankly refuse to be hated on as being unpatriotic by a nasty clown who doesn’t even have enough respect for his country to call it “America.”

    And the last thing I’m going to say to you is that to link to some fifty page article and then insinuate that somewhere in that article it corrects me is lame and cowardly. If you think I stated something that is untrue, cite what I stated and then cite the correction with a link. Otherwise you are nothing but a rabid little chump pretending you’ve got valid critique when you really don’t.

  100. Michael Levin Says:

    BUSH vs OBAMA spending

  101. Trevor Says:

    Okay, I have been reading over the article and a lot of comments. I see a lot of what seems to be yelling and screaming. That is the problem with our country right now. Both sides will not even listen to one and the other because all they do is yell and shout and say how stupid the other side is. Talk like civilized people and maybe you will get through to one and another.

    Michael, I agree with most of what you say, my problem is how you say it. Now don’t get all angry with me, but honey does catch more flies than vinegar. Your goal should no be to patronize people, but to tell them what you think and try to CONVINCE them. If you are forcing them to listen to you, they will NEVER listen.

    Our government has a lot of issues, it had a lot with Bush and now with Obama. However, neither side is 100% in the clear. What we need to do is not defend our party to our deaths, but learn and admit what our party has done is a mistake.

    If we can talk to each other with out going at each others necks, we will get much farther. This means for our politicians and for the general public.

  102. Michael Eden Says:

    Trevor,

    I get comments like yours fairly frequently. Most of the time, it is obviously coming from a liberal who is posing as someone who is “moderate” or even “Republican” in order to stake out the territory of the “objective” and “independent” and “moderate” guy so that I must clearly be some kind of frothing fanatic. Which is to say most of the time the people saying this are spewing pure crap.

    The way I read you there’s at least a decent chance you are being honest. So I’ll give you an honest response.

    First of all, I had a vision of Barack Obama and a vision of America if Obama was elected that truly frightened me when the Jeremiah Wright revelations came out. “No, no no! Not God bless America! God DAMN America.” That’s what we voted for, and that’s what we got. I had a vision of what was going to become of America that I was determined to do everthing I could to try to prevent from happening.

    And things have turned out to be even WORSE than I thought they would. And things are going to get far WORSE very quickly if he is allowed to continue.

    I think of a line from Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises.” One character asks another how he went bankrupt. “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” That’s exactly where we’re headed under this president and his party. And suddenly is coming up real quick.

    This article lays it out: https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2011/12/29/obama-says-bush-increasing-debt-4-trillion-in-8-years-was-irresponsible-and-unpatriotic-so-obama-increasing-debt-by-6-trillion-in-3-years-is-what/

    Obama demonized Bush for raising the debt by $4 trillion over eight years; and then he raised it by $6 TRILLION in only three years!!! And it’s everybody’s fault but his.

    Your house is burning down. And the fire is about to explode the gas line and kill your entire family. So pardon me if I yell and scream to try to draw attention to the predicament.

    Second, I didn’t set out to be “yelling and screaming.” That may surprise you, but I didn’t.

    I tried to be “reasonable.” And I got a lot of vicious comments from the left that showed me that “civility” only works in a fight when the other side is “civil” too. But the other side ISN’T civil.

    Here’s an article I wrote that expresses how I came to feel: https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2008/11/06/do-unto-obama-as-liberals-did-unto-bush/

    When you are in a war, a total war, as Republicans and Democrats truly are, and the other side starts firebombing your cities, then you had better either start firebombing their cities or you’d better simply surrender. It’s far better to be a slave than it is to fight back. I don’t mind losing and having my children have a terrible future as long as I can keep my dignified persona.

    And I say NOT. I’m going to FIGHT for every inch of this country they take.

    You may or may not know military history, but when the Nazis took over Europe in Word War II, the only way to win it back was to fight over the ruins. That’s just the way it works. If we had taken the attitude, “Well, we can’t destroy it; we have to fight more nicely, the alternative would have been to just give the hell up. Because there was no way we were going to take it back under those conditions.

    There’s a third thing. And that is this idea that Republicans have to be nice and calm and whatnot because that’s the only way to win the “indpendents” whom we need.

    That’s a load of crap.

    The Democrats won with eight unrelenting years of “Bush derangement syndrome” and the most recklessly partisan and most liberal demagogue the nation has ever seen. You and I can play a game: you recount a hateful statement from Bush demonizing Democrats, and I’ll match you with a hateful statement from Obama demonizing Republicans. And long after your well is stone dry, I’ll still have plenty of ammo. Guaranteed. And remember Bush had EIGHT years to say hateful crap, versus Obama who has only had three years. I’ll literally spot you five years and I’ll still win the contest.

    Just why is it that Democrats can win being rabid, but you say that Republicans have to be appeasing and pleasant and charming to have any chance??? Seriously, you explain that to me.

    And if you dispute that premise, then you match up Bush’s statements that compare to Obama’s:

    One vision has been championed by Republicans in the House of Representatives and embraced by several of their party’s presidential candidates. It’s a plan that aims to reduce our deficit by $4 trillion over the next ten years, and one that addresses the challenge of Medicare and Medicaid in the years after that.

    Those are both worthy goals for us to achieve. But the way this plan achieves those goals would lead to a fundamentally different America than the one we’ve known throughout most of our history.

    A 70% cut to clean energy. A 25% cut in education. A 30% cut in transportation. Cuts in college Pell Grants that will grow to more than $1,000 per year. That’s what they’re proposing. These aren’t the kind of cuts you make when you’re trying to get rid of some waste or find extra savings in the budget. These aren’t the kind of cuts that Republicans and Democrats on the Fiscal Commission proposed. These are the kind of cuts that tell us we can’t afford the America we believe in. And they paint a vision of our future that’s deeply pessimistic.

    It’s a vision that says if our roads crumble and our bridges collapse, we can’t afford to fix them. If there are bright young Americans who have the drive and the will but not the money to go to college, we can’t afford to send them. Go to China and you’ll see businesses opening research labs and solar facilities. South Korean children are outpacing our kids in math and science. Brazil is investing billions in new infrastructure and can run half their cars not on high-priced gasoline, but biofuels. And yet, we are presented with a vision that says the United States of America – the greatest nation on Earth – can’t afford any of this.

    It’s a vision that says America can’t afford to keep the promise we’ve made to care for our seniors. It says that ten years from now, if you’re a 65 year old who’s eligible for Medicare, you should have to pay nearly $6,400 more than you would today. It says instead of guaranteed health care, you will get a voucher. And if that voucher isn’t worth enough to buy insurance, tough luck – you’re on your own. Put simply, it ends Medicare as we know it.

    This is a vision that says up to 50 million Americans have to lose their health insurance in order for us to reduce the deficit. And who are those 50 million Americans? Many are someone’s grandparents who wouldn’t be able afford nursing home care without Medicaid. Many are poor children. Some are middle-class families who have children with autism or Down’s syndrome. Some are kids with disabilities so severe that they require 24-hour care. These are the Americans we’d be telling to fend for themselves.

    So show me George Bush saying, “Those Democrats just want people to die in droves.” They want kids with autism and Down’s Syndrome.

    Or try topping this one:

    The Republicans plan, Obama says, boils down to this: ‘Dirtier air, dirtier water, less people with health insurance.’

    Show me Bush saying that Democrats want to poison your environement and kill you with medical neglect. Please.

    There’s just an arsenal of “bitter racist clinger” type remarks I can dredge up.

    You show me George Bush demonizing Democrats as unpatriotic Americans and a failed leaders for approving a debt ceiling extension – before asking for the three highest debt ceiling extensions in the entire history of the human race himself. You show me that crap.

    Show me this kind of anger coming from Bush:

    “Don’t you think we’re not keeping score, brother” – Chairman Obama
    “Bring it on”- Obama Regime to The American People.
    “Get ready for hand-to-hand combat with your fellow Americans” – Obama
    “I want all Americans to get in each others faces!” – Obama
    “You bring a knife to a fight pal, we’ll bring a gun” – Obama
    “Republicans are our enemies”–Obama
    ** Obama on ACORN Mobs: “I don’t want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry! I’m angry!”
    ** Obama to His Mercenary Army: “Hit Back Twice As Hard”
    ** Obama on the private sector: “We talk to these folks… so I know whose ass to kick.“
    ** Obama to voters: Republican victory would mean “hand to hand combat”
    ** Obama to lib supporters: “It’s time to Fight for it.”
    ** Obama to Latino supporters: “Punish your enemies.”
    ** Obama to democrats: “I’m itching for a fight.”
    “the Cambridge Police acted Stupidly” ” – Beer Summit Gaffe Leader
    “Democratic map with Republican targets on it”
    “God Damn America” – Barrack Hussein Obama’s Spiritual Advisor

    So you’re declaring, “There’s just no way Obama can say this kind of mean spirited stuff and get elected.” Only he did win, didn’t he? I guess it’s kind of like negative ads: sure, nobody likes them, but unfortunately they work.

    And you’re saying, “If the other side starts shooting at you, then you put your hands up and surrender! You can’t fight back! Fighting back never solved anything!” You’re saying, “If they hit you with poison gas in your trenches, the worst thing you can possibly do is hit THEM with poison gas; don’t stoop to their level. And if the other side just keeps on hitting your troops with poison gas day after day, well, that’s just the price we pay for being the nice guys who always finish last.”

    And I’m saying, NOT. I’m going to FIGHT for what I believe in. And pardon me for getting angry, and you know, yelling and screaming, while a man who calls himself my president says that me and everyone who thinks like me is evil and a bad American.

    And here’s the last thing: if you are in fact an honest Republican who is concerned about my tone and everything, rather than a pile-of-slime liberal who is just out to self-righteously posture under false pretenses, then YOU START A BLOG AND YOU SHOW ME HOW TO DO IT RIGHT AND BE EFFECTIVE DOING IT.

    C.S. Lewis put it this way:

    “Ever since I served as an infantryman in the First World War I had a great dislike of people who themselves in ease and safety, issue exhortations to men in the front line.”

    Are you in the trenches fighting, Trevor? I’ve been fighting the best I’ve known how for every inch of ground; have you been fighting? Can you show me how your front has been effective as opposed to my front?

    It is way to damn easy for people to stand back and say, “You’re doing it all wrong!” A lot harder to do it yourself.

    As I said, I didn’t start out “yelling and screaming.” But as I kept getting tons of leftwing hate poured on top of me – and here I was just trying to be reasonable – I started getting a touch angry myself. Sue me, as the lawyers say. But that’s what happens if you get into the trench and fight back. And I’m going to submit to you that were you to start blogging your let’s be nice, let’s be friends, can’t we just get along style of yours, you’re going to pull back a bloody stump so many times and you’re going to rethink. Because it’s hard to “reason” with an opponent who is taking big swings right at your mouth.

    Lastly, I’m just not into the “let’s agree to blame both sides” thing. We are talking about two fundamentally different visions of government: one wants high taxes and huge government and no personal responsibility; the other wants lower taxes and less government and a return to living within your means. It’s not “both sides” fault that we passed the massive and massively failed stimulus. It’s not “both sides” fault that we passed ObamaCare. It’s not “both sides” fault that the Democrats have failed to come up with a single budget for 984 days. It’s not “both sides” fault that we are $6 trillion deeper in debt in only three years of Obama.

    If you want to say “both sides are to blame,” fine. As long as you point out that Democrats are 90% to blame and Republicans are 10% to blame.

    Other than that, thanks but no thanks. Until you show me a) that you are out there fighting the good fight and boy does your way ever work; or b) that the Democrats have all decided to end the poison gas attacks so let’s all put our masks down, no thanks.

    P.S. I took this comment at length so I can link to it in the future for the next guy who says, “Politeness works great in any fight against viciousness.”

  103. Trevor Says:

    I have a great amount of respect for what you are saying and what you are trying to accomplish. I can assure you that I am not a liar trying to trick you. I truly believe what you say. However, we should NOT be at war with democrats. I did not say “we aren’t” I said we shouldn’t be. You like to quote a lot of articles for facts which I think is very helpful.

    “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’[a] 39 But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. 40 And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well.

    I am sure you have heard this saying many times, as everyone has. However, I do not care if you believe in god, or not. I do believe this is very true statement that everyone needs to take seriously. If everything we do is to get back at the other person, the battle will NEVER end. How do you want this battle to end? One side dying, or both working together to make a better America.

    As for your two demands, I am out there fighting the fight. I live in a very democratic city. I go to school where 95% of the students are democrats and have democratic parents. I do not just shut up and keep my opinion to myself. Yet i still have friends who are democratic and we can still argue about the government civilly.

    If you really believe that the whole of democrats are “shooting” at us, I am sorry but i feel you misjudge most them. There are plenty who will never change their mind, these are the same people who lash out rudely and just yell and scream. What about the group of people who are around the middle. They look at you and see the screaming lunatic that the democrats make you out to be.

    Do not be rude and awful to others just because you disagree with them. I am 100% for defending your ground and even getting into a heated discussion. But please explain to me how screaming and yelling helps.

    When your house is burning down because someone lit it on fire, does it help to scream and yell at them, or do something about it. I am all for saying the democrats are wrong in 90% of the things they do, that does not give you, or anyone else the right to yell and scream at them. Most of them are not informed properly and have had wool pulled over their eyes.

    What do you do when a blind person is not walking the correct way? Do you yell or scream at them? or do you polity try to help?

    You gave me your points, here are mine. Please prove:

    1) That you have convinced someone by yelling and screaming after you could not get them to agree with you initially?

    2) Why you think starting a blog is the best way to go about fixing the problem. There is more than one way to fight in the trenches.

    P.S. It is funny you brought up that book. I am actually reading “The Sun Also Rises” right now.

    Again I have a lot of respect for you. I just don’t want people to think we are a bunch of crazy people who just scream and yell. You are not that, but people easily get the wrong impression. Please understand that I am not telling you what to do, I am simply voicing my opinion like you are.

    I really do hope you keep doing what you are doing, just in a way that looks well on republicans. Its harder to choose between the lesser of two evils instead of one evil and one good looking side. Try to at least consider what I say, instead of just dismissing it.

    Thank you,

    Have a great day. Best of luck!

  104. Michael Eden Says:

    Trevor,

    Your follow-up comment is thoughtful, and I shall endeavor to respond without “yelling and screaming.”

    It is, of course, very easy to quote a Bible verse at me for “resisting” Democrats. I suppose it would be equally easy to cite the very same verse if someone was in the act of raping my wife and I tried to use force to prevent the rapist from doing so. Nevertheless, I would kick that rapist’s ass as hard as I could kick it until he was deader than the proverbial doornail. And I wouldn’t feel guilty about it, either. Maybe that’s just me.

    I’m reading a very interesting book right now titled, Moral Combat. One of the things I’ve learned was an interesting thought from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He said, “I have to sacrifice my righteousness so I can stop Adolph Hitler.” And one of the great Christians of all time became involved in the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. And paid with his own life.

    Now, it is REALLY easy for someone to come along and say, “He was wrong to do that. What kind of cheek-turning is that, after all?”

    And we can judge Dietrich and criticize him and condemn him (unless we contemplate the words, “Judge not, lest ye be judged” and quickly change our language to synonyms that mean the exact same thing but don’t point a finger of condemnation right back at us).

    So you might quickly say, “I’m not judging you!” But let’s face it, you are. Now, you might then respond by replying that sometimes it’s okay to judge even though Jesus said, “judge not,” and that Jesus didn’t mean, “You can’t EVER judge ANYTHING!” But by doing so you necessarily begin to accept the point that I shall proceed to make about fighting back rather than turning the other cheek.

    You say, “We should NOT be at war with the Democrats.” And that sounds pretty good in a Christianish sort of way.

    Who SHOULD we be at war with? Should we be at war with ANYBODY? I mean, can you justify being at war with Germany or Japan given your reading of Jesus? Shouldn’t we have just turned that cheek on December 8? Should we have gone to war with Osama bin Laden?

    Let’s throw Romans 12:8 at those warmongers who want to join Bonhoeffer and fight Hitler and say, “be at peace with all men.”

    Or we could also understand that:

    To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

    ???

    You have a view that very much seems to hold that one or both of these are true:

    It is always wrong to fight back against your enemies (or maybe “fight if you must, but always do so courteously and politely”).

    If you are nice to your enemies they will respond with niceness toward you (or in your words, “honey does catch more flies than vinegar” and “If we can talk to each other with out going at each others necks, we will get much farther”).

    And I frankly don’t believe that either of these are true (btw, as for your assertion about flies and vinegar, see this answer to the question, “Does vinegar kill flies?”).

    If I were witnessing to someone, if I were serving in a Christian capacity in a purely Christian context, I would turn the other cheek. I’ve actually DONE my share of cheek turning. But if someone broke into my house and endangered my family, I would be all guns blazing. And I wouldn’t feel guilty.

    What it amounts to, I believe, is how evil do you think the party that is responsible for 54 million abortions since Roe v. Wade is? How dangerous do you think they are to America? And how willing are you to fight?

    Quite possibly you think that Adolf Hitler, to dredge up that example again, was just “blind” and just needed a nice firm whisper. And you would never have tried to shoot him or blow him up like Dietrich Bonhoeffer so rudely wanted to do. I most certainly do not. There are just a lot of people (i.e., NOT just guys with nickames like “the Führer”) that we have to FIGHT.

    David didn’t try to sit down and reason with Goliath. He walked out on that field with every intention of killing that vile ogre.

    Phinehas in Numbers 25 didn’t see the Israelite man bringing a Midianite woman to the family tent and decide a polite conversation was in order. He shoved a spear through the both of them – to God’s obvious approval. Unless you think the context of the story reveals otherwise.

    And Jesus made a whip and kicked some ASS when he drove the money-changers out of the Temple. I’ve never done anything CLOSE to that to a Democrat, for what it’s worth.

    When you ask, “Why [do] you think starting a blog is the best way to go about fixing the problem?” my response is, “I don’t recall ever saying that. But that is how I am fighting, and I can’t help but notice that you are here using my possibly useless blog to talk to me.” And then I will add, “What specifically have YOU done to defeat the party that is responsible for 54 million abortions in America?”

    Your first question for me to prove, “That you have convinced someone by yelling and screaming after you could not get them to agree with you initially?” First and foremost ignores my own challenge to you – which demands my question, “Why on earth should I bother to respond to your challenge when you decided to ignore my challenge to you?” And secondly your challenge misunderstands my entire purpose for blogging.

    It so happens that I am NOT out to convince Democrats about much of anything. I’m not blogging to talk to Democrats; I’m blogging to 1) try to preserve a record as to what Democrats did these last years; 2) to educate and inform conservatives and give them ammunition and arguments for their OWN arguments with liberals; and 3) to provide the case to increasingly pissed-off independents as to why they ought to abandon the Democrat Party and vote Republican.

    And I’m not going to spend the time it would take to search for the comments just so I can toot my own horn, but I have actually – in the several thousands of comments I’ve received – received a fair number of all three types to document that yes, as a matter of fact I HAVE had some success in all three of those areas. And to the second of those points directly above I don’t have to look very far to find the “proof” you sought. I can actually quote you:

    You like to quote a lot of articles for facts which I think is very helpful.

    To which I respond, “Thank you. That’s why I blog…”

    I again return to the current book I’m reading, Moral Combat, as I reflect on your final thought, “I really do hope you keep doing what you are doing, just in a way that looks well on republicans. Its harder to choose between the lesser of two evils instead of one evil and one good looking side.” And I think of the Allies as they fought the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese. The author (Michael Burleigh) cites pacifist Nicholas Baker’s work Human Smoke which held that all belligerents were as bad as one another. And you could cut and paste and juxtapose snippets of what the Allies did to conclude they were either “evil” or “the lesser of two evils” just as you can do with my own efforts.

    When you say, “Its harder to choose between the lesser of two evils…” all I can do is point out that just as I would call you a moral idiot for failing to see that Nazism and Imperial Japanese fascism was on such a scale of evil worse than anything “mean” that the Allies did in their shooting and bombing back, I would similarly condemn as a moral idiot one who failed to see a difference between my “yelling and screaming” versus THE political party that is responsible for 54 million abortions in America alone. I mean, seriously, if you are literally torn thinking, “Hmmm. The Democrats have murdered 54 million innocent human beings, but that Michael Eden yelled at that guy. And I just can’t figure out who is more evil…”…

    Well, then I suppose all I can do is point out that that is PRECISELY why I don’t bother trying to have arguments with Democrats and convince them of stuff. I would sooner pound my skull against a brick wall.

    There are 1.2 million abortions every year in the United States. If you read this tommorow, there will have been 3,322 abortions in the intervening day. Conservatives truly ARE fighting a vicious war, whether you like it or not.

    I’ve heard your criticism and I again respond with C.S.Lewis’ words from Mere Christianity:

    Ever since I served as an infantryman in the First World War I had a great dislike of people who themselves in ease and safety, issue exhortations to men in the front line.”

    Only someone who has fought the blogwars for several years, as I have, and who has literally interacted with THOUSANDS of liberal hatemongering comments, truly understands the issues and pressures that come from trying to argue in a such a public forum. And it is obvious you haven’t walked an inch in my shoes. It’s very easy to criticize when you’ve not faced the onslaught that I have faced. It’s rather like the guy contemplating WWI thinking, “I’m going to fight just like a gentleman knight!” And then encountering the reality of trench warfare and mechanized killing.

    Dennis Prager makes an important point: leftism makes you meaner. And given the fact that liberal blogs outnumber conservative ones by scores to one, I am forced to take a whopping dose of mean every single day.

    I don’t go to liberals’ blogs and attack them the way they routinely come to mine and attack me; but I get in the trenches and fight them. Because I believe that God wants somebody to stand up and fight for a country that was once called “one nation under God.”

    You get in there and you do the best you can.

    Or you can stand way over there on the sidelines and criticize the combatants.

    There is a fine line between being too angry and not being angry when you OUGHT to be frothing mad at what you are seeing all around you in your culture. And if you want me to question whether I’m “too angry” (or as I noticed you insinuated, “too crazy”), I want you to question whether you lack passion in a day that we need it most desperately before it’s too late.

  105. Trevor Says:

    I am sad that we are arguing with each other. We are on the same side. I will just answer your points because I think you are right. I did not answer your first points.

    a) I told you how I fight, so I do not think I need to answer this again.
    b) Fight all you want. FIGHT as much as you can. But i have a question for you, since the Nazi’s were doing terrible things to the jews and a lot of other people, does that give us the right to do the same thing back to them? The same cruel things? I think not. Fight, but fight correctly, not cruelly.

    I do not know why you brought up the abortion thing, I could not agree more with you. I have the exact same opinion. But do not say they are all terrible killers, they can say the say for us because “when we unnecessarily go to war, we kill all of our men”.

    My last point, why do you say that you do not try to convince democrats? This seems like a rather useless use of a blog then. I do believe we should talk to each other AND try to convince the others.

    I do appreciate the way you have not been yelling and screaming, and because of that I can read what your saying and actually try and listen. I defiantly have had my mind changed slightly. I just hope you go into every debate with a mind that is willing to be changed, because if you don’t, it is very VERY pointless to debate in the first place.

    Thank you for your time, and your knowledge.

    Please just consider the things I have said instead of instantly trying to refute it.

  106. Michael Eden Says:

    Trevor,

    When you say, “Please just consider the things I have said instead of instantly trying to refute it,” RIGHT BACK AT YOU. You criticize me for defending myself without ever having demonstrated that YOU have listened. “I defiantly [sic] have had my mind changed slightly” might qualify if you had stated how it was changed.

    Apparently you wanted to offer me a lecture with my appropriate response being, “Yes, sir. Mea culpa.”

    As for me “changing my mind slightly,” I don’t need you to tell me the stuff you are telling me. I am constantly aware of it. It is part of the struggle of being a Christian conservative blogger. I pray about what I say on this blog quite often. Many of the people in my church know about this blog – including my senior pastor. I am very well aware that I say harsh things about the left, and I am very well aware of how that can come across to squeemish people like you.

    You don’t think I occasionally cringe? You seriously think you’ve illuminated something that had never occurred to me? The fact of the matter is that sometimes when you get in a fight, it is a guarantee that some people watching you fight are going to say, “He didn’t have to hit him like that.” And, you know, thanks and all; maybe if you had been in there helping me hold the guy, I wouldn’t have hit him that way. But don’t think I don’t really appreciate you over there on the sideline criticizing my roughness.

    Do you know you haven’t even ever bothered to provide a single specific example of what I’ve done that you find objectionable? You’be basically said, “you’re a meanie.” In terms of being annoyed, I find that incredibly annoying, too.

    That said, it’s not that I “won’t agree,” it’s rather that there is a degree of difficulty in pulling off being Mr Nice Blogger that you simply don’t fully understand.

    Secondly, as to your a) you really DIDN’T tell me how to fight. You quoted Jesus about turning the other cheek. You can watch all the boxing or cage fighting you want, and I promise you that’s not a technique that they teach. If that’s how you fight, then don’t, because you’ll be “coma boy.” You will NEVER win any fight you will ever get in.

    And as to your b) the Allies didn’t fight the Nazis by murdering Jews, and it is rather asinine of you to make such a comparison. The Allies, rather, fought back with TOTAL WAR. They FIREBOMBED the Nazis’ cities. They went for the jugular. They most certainly didn’t fight to be “nice” or “to avoid harsh language” as your “fighting technique” mandates: they fought to kill and they fought to win.

    To bring that home to my own case, I submit that I, too, do NOT “do the same things” that the liberals do. Show me where I tell lies, for instance. I can show you lies all day coming from the left: you show me ONE that I’ve told.

    Here’s a Democrat lie in the media attention right now: Biden went out and demonized Mitt Romney as “liking to fire people” when the remark couldn’t be more clear that Romney was making a specific point about wanting the American people to be able to have control over their healthcare decisions. In particular, he was talking about health insurance companies – the very people that Biden and Obama have themselves repeatedly attacked. It was a completely deceitful tactic.

    Where have I done that? Why would you insinuate that I’m no different from the most vicious of liberal tactics? Where is your specific evidence that I’ve done that?

    You don’t know why I bring up the abortion thing? Seriously? BECAUSE IT IS GENUINELY EVIL, that’s why. Because there is one and ONLY one political party that has championed the murder of 54 million innocent babies and that is the DEMOCRAT PARTY, that’s why. Because we are in a war for the lives of our children and you’re advising the fetuses and those who are trying to save their lives to “turn the other cheek.”

    You say you couldn’t agree with me more about that. But you then proceed to state that you fight genuine moral evil by making sure you don’t offend anybody. You don’t want to make any waves when you’re fighting baby killing monsters. And, yes, the Allies firebombed Dresden and Tokyo and killed tens of thousands of civilians, but they didn’t use any kind of harsh language, so it was okay. But apparently if they’d used harsh language then that would have just been beyond the pale. They would have been every scintilla as evil as the Nazis then.

    From there you proceed to assert a moral equivalence:

    I do not know why you brought up the abortion thing, I could not agree more with you. I have the exact same opinion. But do not say they are all terrible killers, they can say the say for us because “when we unnecessarily go to war, we kill all of our men”.

    If we say Democrats are evil for killing innocent defenseless babies, Democrats will say that we are evil for having a military or sending troops to fight for their country. So let’s just both agree that the other side ISN’T evil. And then we can be frienemies.

    When I ended by saying you seemed to be completely lacking in moral outrage, you just put everything I’m trying to say about what’s wrong with your view on a platter.

    First of all, do YOU, Trevor, believe that Bush was just as evil for going to Iraq and Afghanistan as the Democrats have been for abortion and 54 million innocent babies slaughtered in the one place they should have been safe? Do YOU think it’s a morally equivalent wash, Trevor? Seriously?

    Maybe you now say, “No, I think it’s baloney. But they’ll say that we’re just as evil, and that’s all that matters…” And I respond, No, Trevor: THE TRUTH IS ALL THAT MATTERS.

    And then there’s the inconvenient nail that pops the balloon of your argument given the fact that: a) Democrats started World War I; b) Democrats started World War II; c) Democrats started the Korean War; d) Democrats started the Vietnam War (which Republican Nixon ended, fwiw). And Obama MASSIVELY EXPANDED Afghanistan, which I think many now correctly see is unwinnable (and which is the reason that Bush decided instead to fight in Iraq where our air, armor and artillery power could prevail).

    And so, on your view, we should be afraid to boldly state the truth because the Democrats can offer a vicious lie. Even though that lie is self-refuting. Let’s be cowards and not stand up for those babies and tell the TRUTH about their murderers because the Democrats will respond by telling lies.

    I told you how I fight, so I do not think I need to answer this again.

    Yeah, Trevor, you sure have taught me how to fight, haven’t you? Thanks, but I think I’ll pass on having you as my fighting instructor after listening to your tips.

    And then I get to your next point, and my annoyance grows immeasurably.

    My last point, why do you say that you do not try to convince democrats? This seems like a rather useless use of a blog then. I do believe we should talk to each other AND try to convince the others.

    I provided three very specific things that I set out to do regarding my purpose for blogging. Here they are again:

    I’m blogging to 1) try to preserve a record as to what Democrats did these last years; 2) to educate and inform conservatives and give them ammunition and arguments for their OWN arguments with liberals; and 3) to provide the case to increasingly pissed-off independents as to why they ought to abandon the Democrat Party and vote Republican.

    Now, in your great wisdom, NONE of those have any validity.

    But you have actually refuted yourself, as I already quoted you as pointing out:

    You like to quote a lot of articles for facts which I think is very helpful.

    But of course it’s really not very helpful at all, because of course it’s “a rather useless use of a [sic] blog,” now.

    You are a pretzel who thinks he’s going in a straight line. You criticize my blog without ever actually providing any actual example. You demand I listen to you but refuse to give me the same respect. You ignore my challenges to you but believe that your challenges to me are vitally important. You tell me to turn the other cheek and then assert that you’ve told me how to fight. You tell me my blog is very helpful but then tell me my blog is rather useless. You accuse me of being no different from the left when that’s an outright lie about me that I deeply resent. You’ve never blogged a day in your life and frankly don’t have the first clue about the pressures and stresses of blogging, but actual experience means nothing whatsoever because you’ve got a nice-sounding theory.

    I mentioned earlier that I “occasionally cringe” at what I’ve said. Let’s say that my mom was watching me get in a brutal fist fight with someone and I really mess the guy up. I’d cringe then, too. Even if I just did what I had to do in order to not be the one lying bleeding on the ground. That’s the way fighting is.

    We’re in a total war. And you have to be willing to get into the trenches and take on the enemy and gouge his eyes out. I believe if you’d actually blogged and gotten the full does of liberalism and followed what the Democrats are doing when they AREN’T murdering babies to destroy this nation – including the “one nation under God” element of this nation – you’d have a far better understanding of that than you do.

    Here’s a video of Rick Santorum and his family getting attacked by the “Occupy” movement:

    This is what the left does all the damn time. It’s nothing new.

    We’ve got to be willing to get mean to combat it.

    Or we just need to surrender to the far left atheist abortion agenda and be done with it.

    This is basically you, Trevor. You’re the guy Rush Limbaugh slams here when he repeats the bogus charge that conservatives don’t dare fight back lest they offend.

    Now I’m done with this argument. You’re welcome to continue, but while I’m not blocking you your next comment here will go to spam the next day when I get to my comments. I’ve given you more than your fair say to speak your piece, and I have responded to you at length. This has gone on longer than I have time to entertain it.

    And when you tell me that I have a useless blog after YOURSELF telling me that my blog is very helpful, I can safely say that you have argued yourself into a circle. You have refuted yourself. In arguing that people will think that Republicans are “crazy” by reading my blog, in arguing that I am no different than the most vicious Democrats, and of course in labelling my blog as “useless,” you have demonstrated that it isn’t easy not to get mean in the course of debate: and YOU’VE only been at this online arguing thing for a couple of posts; come back and talk to me after you’ve dealt with thousands and thousands of vicious liberals, as I have, and you try not getting mean!

    Maybe I can only go so long without yelling or screaming.

  107. A Moderate Liberal Says:

    MIchael, as my name suggests, I am a Moderate Liberal. I agree with many of your points, but I also agree with Trevor’s point on “yelling and screaming.” While I realize that many Democrats can be quite vicious, yelling and screaming is not a correct answer. You wouldn’t listen to a “yelling” Democrat, just as a Democrat wouldn’t listen to you if you’re “yelling.” Screaming at liberals and democrats by ridiculing their policies makes no progress in fixing America’s many problems, which cannot be pinpointed to one president, or one political party, but to a whole host of problems, such as both parties’ refusal to work together, both presidents’ ineffective strategies to meld both parties together, and the American people for pursuing unsound economic strategies.

    Your criticism of Obama is not very different from Democrats criticizing Bush. Similarly, while you say that it’s permissible for you to get angry in response to a few thousand “vicious” liberals, Obama must deal with millions of equally “vicious” conservatives. Considering the circumstances, is it not reasonable that he’d be frustrated with both parties’ inability to come together to work on a solution?

    Finally, attacking Trevor because he remained moderate and civil is uncalled for, and it’s exactly why America is not the great country it once was. Party infighting. Trevor has stated that he is on your side, but your response was to chastise and yell at him for remaining moderate and civil. You believe in a more direct form of persuasion, but he believes in more civil persuasion. Everyone has their own way of arguing for their own point, and you don’t need to respond that way. Take Martin Luther King, Jr. He saw more direct and violent methods utilized by figures such as Malcolm X, and chose to go with the peaceful route. In the end, he succeeded, and remained greatly admired by both whites and blacks in the country. How can you fight Democrats and support your cause, when you can’t even agree with your own party?

    Respectfully yours,
    A Moderate Liberal

  108. Anonymous Says:

    “People who immediately resort to personal attacks on the intelligence and character of their opponents rather than bothering to actually deal with the ARGUMENTS and the FACTS are not worth talking to.”

    Please take note of your own words. You are not helping yourself or your message. I’m trying to read your posts but cannot get past your personal attacks.

  109. Michael Eden Says:

    Anonymous,

    Couple of things:

    1) Show me that YOU’RE doing a better job than me and maybe I’ll pay attention to you. Otherwise, I shall roundfile your self-righteous wisdom in the nearest receptacle. I submit that you have no idea what you are talking about and that “your message” is very different than mine in any event.

    I saw eight years of Bush derangement syndrome, and all of a sudden – even as liberals continue to demonize conservatives in the most vile of ways – we are just terrible people if we try to fight fire with a little bit of fire.

    You damn liberals with your rhetorical ju jitsu that is all about somehow making yourselves the victims so you can whine frankly bore me.

    2) It would be nice if you learned about something called “the fallacy of the false comparison.” Please read my own words rather than just reproduce them: I refer to “People who immediately resort to personal attacks..”

    I have NEVER personally attacked those people who come to my blog and argued their points with consideration. I’m ready to sling mud at mud slingers, but I am clearly referring to people who just come at me with a can full of nasty and nothing else.

    Then there’s another part of what I said that it would be nice if you paid attention to: “rather than bothering to actually deal with the ARGUMENTS and the FACTS…” Anyone who actually reads my blog knows that I exhaustively interact with my critics’ arguments and present facts to prove them wrong. Just as I am doing with you right now.

    But you don’t care about that, do you? Not when you think you can make me look bad by quoting a line I said with no context in hopes of undermining my credibility.

    3) Let’s provide that context, then. The individual I responded to with the words you quote BEGAN his “comment” by stating:

    Hey Michael Eden, someone needs to punch you in your racist face.”

    Which isn’t just a completely unwarranted personal attack, “Anonymous,” but a physical threat on top of it. I had never said anything to this individual, and certainly had never personally attacked him. He most certainly can’t say the same thing about himself, can he?

    But as far as you want other people to believe, I’m in the exact same category as this turd. It doesn’t matter that in thousands of comments I’ve never threatened to “punch anyone’s face,” racist or otherwise. But such distinctions are trivial to a guy of your character, aren’t they?

    On top of that, the slandering thug proceeded to state several things about me that were factually untrue. As an example, he claimed that I had never served in the military – which was a flat-out lie.

    I proceeded to correct him – at length – presenting the “facts” and “arguments” to refute him. You ignore facts and arguments, though, don’t you?

    And, as I already stated above, the individual I directed your “quote” to made statements about me that were factually untrue. And I have never made such statements about people in that manner.

    So you are now demonstrably wrong on three fronts in citing my own quote against me: you accuse me of “immediately resorting to personal attacks,” which in fact I do not do. I am quite polite to those who try to argue with me honestly and legitimitely. You accuse me of immediately resorting to personal attacks “rather than bothering to deal with arguments and facts,” which I also do not do. And you accuse me of deliberately lying about people, which I do not do.

    So on the one hand you complain about my personal attacks even as YOU disingenuously personally attack me. Anybody who reads ANY of my articles or comments knows that I exhaustively interact with facts and arguments. If you’re going to “encourage” me to refrain from personal attacks, perhaps you might yourself consider not insinuating lies about me?!?

    So when I now proceed to call you a LIAR, I am NOT falling prey to my own statement: rather, I am responding to yet another personal attack from you and documenting the things you said about me are completely false. Mud wrestling with people who throw mud is clearly not what the statement you quoted from me deals with.

    With all due respect, “Anonymous,” I genuinely don’t care to listen to the “wisdom” of a liar who sets out to slander me the way you just tried to do.

    If you don’t like me standing up for myself, then please go somewhere else.

    I really only want to waste my time with people who have enough maturity to read my arguments and look at my facts and interact with them rather than resorting to the “mommy, that boy called me a name!” garbage that I was frankly well past by kindergarten.

  110. Michael Eden Says:

    A Moderate Liberal,

    First of all, where do you allege that I “attacked” Trevor? I’m somebody who likes to deal with facts and specifics rather than to allusions.

    Second, just why is it that you assert that Trevor “remained moderate and civil”??? I can go back and document Trevor basically stating that people would read my blog and come to the conclusion that Republicans were crazy; I can go back to Trevor stating that my blog was a “complete waste of time,” and I can go back to his using the same form of moral equivalence that you yourself use to say that I’m no different than the worst liberal haters.

    So why is it that you pat a guy who said my blog is a complete waste of time is “moderate and civil”??? While I’m “attacking” him???

    You compare me to Barack Obama – which I guess means that I too am President of the United States. Because otherwise that would be a rather massive apple and orange thing, wouldn’t it?

    How about instead we play the same game I challegned Trevor to play: namely, you cite a hateful remark George W. Bush (or for that matter his dad) made about Democrats, and I’ll cite a hateful remark Barack Obama made about Republicans??? And we’ll see whose got the bigger arsenal of hate on the other guy’s side.

    Are you willing to play that game with me?

    Because I’m going to win that “apples and apples” game. Because your guy Obama is an unhinged hater and the most polarizing president this nation has ever had.

    I wrote an article titled “Do Unto Obama As Liberals Did Unto Bush.” (also available here)

    This idea that Barack Obama can – from the highest office in the land – attack me by claiming that I want dirtier air and dirtier water and I want children born with Downs’ Syndrome and autism and that I’m bitterly clinging to my religion and my racist antipathy but I ought to turn the other cheek is just not going to fly.

    Every day we get called “racist” by top Democrats. Every single day. You heard me, every single day. I MEAN EVERY SINGLE DAY. And when I make the arguments based on FACTS rather than demagogic rhetoric – that it is DEMOCRATS who are and who have always been racist, it’s not a game of moral equivalence. BECAUSE YOU LIBERALS HAVE BEEN CALLING US RACIST FOR FORTY FREAKING YEARS and it is long past time that someone shoved a finger back in your racist faces for doing it.

    You went after Bush with eight years of pure unrelenting hatred. You profited from that hate. It propelled you to victory.

    But now all of a sudden we don’t have a right to act in ANY way like you acted. Because it’s only fascism when WE do it and never when YOU do it.

    You need to read this article regarding a typical liberal’s abject hypocrisy and abject self-refuting rationalizations.

    I’m fighting back. And the more people like you whine about it, the more I’m going to feel like I’m scoring points.

    You want me to tone it down, A Moderate Liberal? Then vote Republican this year. Because as long as your “Hater-in-Chief” is president, as long as you keep voting for a liberal who says astonishingly hateful things about his opponents from the Oval Office, it’s war.

    And please don’t think that you get to vote for a bomb-throwing hater like Obama and then lecture me on my lack of civility.

    Fwiw, you make the assertion – which I find bogus – that there’s a true moral equivalence on the Republicans’ and the Democrats’ record in damaging this country.

    Let me point out first of all that our real debt is NOT the $16 trillion that is commonly cited; it is rather something like $211 trillion when you factor in the unfunded liabilities created by DEMOCRAT-CREATED Social Security and Medicare. So let’s just please tell the real truth here and accept the fact that if you’re going to talk about America’s catastrophic real debt, 95 plus percent of it was created by DEMOCRATS and ONLY by Democrats.

    Then consider the economic collapse of 2008 and consider the following:

    The rocket that exploded our economy was designed, built and lit by DEMOCRATS:

    AEI Article: How Fannie And Freddie Blew Up The Economy

    Barney Frank And Democrat Party Most Responsible For 2008 Economic Collapse

    https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/2009/08/03/who-really-exploded-your-economy-liberals-or-conservatives/

    https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/2009/12/31/with-eyes-finally-wide-open-reconsider-why-the-economy-collapsed-in-the-first-place/

    https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/2009/07/08/biden-we-misread-the-economy-and-its-all-the-republicans-fault/

    Or if you prefer watching videos:

    http://digitalartpress.wordpress.com/2009/03/22/video-proof-democrat-party-warned-responsible-for-fannie-mae-freddie-mac-economic-crisis-repost/

    Barney Frank Video Proves Democrats At CORE Of 2008 Economic Collapse

    Or if you just want to go back to Obama versus Bush in terms of vile rhetoric, let’s go back to Obama demonizing Bush for being “unpatriotic” and a “failed leader” for accumulating $4 trillion in debt in eight years when that lying weasel has accumulated $6 trillion in only three years.

    So you’ll just have to pardon me for not being willing to wear the albatross that Democrats created around my conservative neck.

  111. A Moderate Liberal Says:

    Michael, I believe that Trevor has remained more moderate and civil simply because he was not the one who started “yelling.” His “yelling” was simply one comment in response to your repeated “yelling.” Going off the fact that you believe you are justified in “yelling,” is it not reasonable that Trevor can make one comment in response to your many comments?

    In addition, you have not responded to my comment on whether or not it’s reasonable for Obama to say a few things about Republicans, who most people say will not work with Obama. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57360817-503544/poll-obamas-approval-rating-stable-americans-want-compromise/

    Finally, I’d be willing to play that game with you. I merely want to peacefully show my point, but I’d be more than happy to play a “blame game.” It’s a good thing we’re not the people in Congress who play a blame game every day, on both sides.

    While in general, I wish to stay bipartisan and fairly represent both sides, I will go with the Democrats for the sake of debate, which, hopefully, will keep “yelling and screaming” at a minimum.

    Bush says “If Democrats are elected, then we lose to the terrorists.” Mind you, this is not about if what he said was right or not. It’s about the “arsenal of hate” you seem to enjoy.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/30/AR2006103000530.html

    Respectfully yours,
    A Moderate Liberal

  112. Michael Eden Says:

    A Moderate Liberal,

    Kindly show me where I was the one who “started yelling” at Trevor. Prior to his coming to my blog, I had never “yelled” at him in any way.

    Furthermore, I believe I already asked you to specifically tell me where I “yelled” at Trevor. I mentioned I like to deal with facts and specifics rather than to assertions. I won’t ask you again to kindly back up what you are asserting.

    I bring that up particularly since Trevor in his last comment to me specifically stated to me, “I do appreciate the way you have not been yelling and screaming.” You are here claiming that Trevor was too ignorant to know what he was talking about. So you can see why I would be confused.

    While we’re on that subject, explain why Trevor calling my blog a “waste of time” is moderate and civl.

    And while we’re still on the subject, since you are a liberal and you are criticizing me for my attacks as a conservative, kindly show me where YOU have been fighting the good fight similarly criticizing vicious liberals. Because otherwise I have absolutely no respect for you at all; you are just one more liberal hypocrite who says, “Do what I say, not what I do all the time.”

    Your “you have not responded to my comment thing” goes directly into your “I’d be willing to play that game with you” in terms of Bush saying something hateful for every Obama saying something hateful. It is my contention that Obama is the most hateful president we have ever seen, and that the man routinely uses angry and hateful language to demonize his opponents. And if you’re going to vote for a demonizing demagogue like that, kindly shut up about people like me responding to him.

    Barack Obama is the most polarizing and divisive president this country has ever seen because of the way he demonizes his opponents. And if you really want to end the divisiveness, you could start by kicking his butt out of office. Because we’re not going to make peace with a guy who says we want dirty air and dirty water and that we want kids with Downs Syndrome and autism. It is war until the guy you voted for is gone.

    As for your claiming you can match a hateful Obama quote with a hateful Bush quote, good. This will be enjoyable.

    You have your line from Bush. I would actually submit to you that we are currently going absolutely NOWHERE in Afghanistan. Obama Ignored the Military’s Advice on Afghanistan. And Iraq is already falling apart after Biden said that Iraq was going to be one of Obama’s greatest acheivements after Bush WON the war for him. The key general who won the war in Iraq said that Obama’s policy for defeat in Iraq was “a complete disaster.” And Iraq is on the verge of litterly falling apart only weeks after Obama pulled all the troops out against his general’s fierce advice.

    Obama is desperately trying to negotiate with the Taliban so he can pull out with his tail between his legs and “have peace with honor” to quote Neville Chamberlain.

    Meanwhile, Iran is just about to possess nuclear weapons. For the record, Bush TRIED to deal with Iran, but Democrats Obama, Biden and Hillary Clinton demonized him for doing so. Meanwhile, Bush was smart enough not to GET America deeply into Afghanistan, understanding from his generals that it was a terrible terrain for our air, armor and artillery to fight in. Whereas Obama MASSIVELY escalated the war. Bush chose Iraq as his central front, won there, and then Obama who is losing in Afghanistan is on the verge of losing what Bush won for him.

    Oh, and decades long Egypt is succumbing to Islamic extremism as the Muslim Brotherhood – a terrorist organization – has taken over the government.

    I would also like to point out that Democrats were all for the Iraq War –

    http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/b/bushlied.htm
    http://www.freedomagenda.com/iraq/wmd_quotes.html
    http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp

    – until they cut and ran and stabbed a president at war in the back the way NO party had EVER stabbed a president at war before.

    So I’d say that George Bush’s prediction has proven correct, regardless of how harshly you think it was worded.

    Okay, now it’s my turn. I’ll start with the old favorite:

    And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations

    You see, they get racist because of their bitter religion-clinging…

    Let’s not forget that Bush was president for eight years, versus only three for Obama.

    If you can’t come up with more Bush hatred than I can Obama hatred, you lose bigtime. Because it will show which party and ideology is really the haters.

    You’re up.

  113. Anonymous Says:

    Michael, you just unfortunately proved my point. I referenced your own language to make the point that your message is hurt and is hard to take seriously when you attack others. I AM TRYING TO HELP YOU. But instead of taking the point to heart, you (in only your second sentence) called me self righteous and “submitted” that I have no idea what I am talking about. You then proceeded to call me a “damn liberal” and a liar. And, you know nothing about me. This is unfortunate. I would actually like to see someone, ANYONE, make political points without insults. Is that really too much to ask? I never defended the guy who made the physical threat, as that was completely unacceptable. My only hope and request is that intelligent, reasonable people can rise above the name calling and insults and focus on the real issues.

  114. Michael Eden Says:

    Anonymous, for you to claim that “I just proved your point” when I just went through a thorough refuation of your quote of me and documented how my words did NOT refute me – because 1) I have NEVER attacked anyone who hadn’t first attacked me. My quote refers to “People who immediately resort to personal attacks on the intelligence and character of their opponents” and I carefully stated that I do not do that and have NEVER done it. I have only gone after people who have gone after me – and I don’t see where I provided a statement that I will never respond to personal attacks in my words. And my words did not refute me because 2) I ALWAYS “actually deal with the ARGUMENTS and the FACTS” that my opponents use and refute them with arguments and facts of my own.

    YOU are the one who is now guilty of the statement you quoted. Becuase I provided arguments and facts in my last comment to you and you simply falsely pretended in your last comment that I didn’t do so.

    If you had tried to argue, “It’s not true that you don’t start attacking people who didn’t attack you” and then try to show me where I did so, or if you had tried to argue, “You do NOT deal with “the arguments and the facts” and then tried to show me where I hadn’t done so, you would have at least had the shred of credibility. Instead you merely IGNORED my “arguments and facts” as though they didn’t exist.

    Further, when you say, “I never defended the guy who made the physical threat,” I say BULLCRAP. Because THAT was the guy my words were directed to, and when you stripped my statement of context you in fact DID defend him and instead try to make ME the villain.

    I block people like you who do not argue honestly. So goodbye. You’re just not worth my limited time.

    If I need help, I would rather look for a passing rattlesnake, thank you very much.

  115. Questioner Says:

    What do you think of this article, Michael?

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/01/15/andrew-sullivan-how-obama-s-long-game-will-outsmart-his-critics.html

  116. Michael Eden Says:

    I think the writer is dishonest. Andrew Sullivan calling himself “a conservative” in any sense is a complete joke:

    A caveat: I write this as an unabashed supporter of Obama from early 2007 on. I did so not as a liberal, but as a conservative-minded independent appalled by the Bush administration’s record of war, debt, spending, and torture

    I just wish that more liberals could be honest about their liberalism and just embrace it.

    But on his own view, Sullivan ought to be more appalled by Obama than he was by Bush.

    Obama massively expanded the Afghanistan War. And that war is going VERY poorly after Obama ignored the advice of his own generals. Democrats attacked Bush on a “good war, evil war” platform, saying that Afghanistan was the “good war” and Iraq the “evil war.” But consider that Bush WON his war, as evidenced by Vice President Biden stating in February of last year:

    I am very optimistic about — about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration.”

    Here we are a year later and Iraq is falling apart and the key general who won the war is calling Obama’s policies a complete disaster. And the war that was won that Democrats tried to take credit for after they demonized it for years is now on the verge of being pissed away by Obama. The country is on the verge of falling apart only weeks after we pulled out (again!!!) against the generals’ advice.

    Meanwhile, Obama started a war with Libya and has basically been waging a war in Yemen and Pakistan (much to the anger and contempt of the latter nuclear armed country).

    On the issue of debt and spending, Sullivan is still mad at Bush? Really? Obama demonized George Bush for adding $4 trillion to the debt in eight years; THE HYPOCRITE HAS ADDED $6 TRILLION TO THE DEBT IN ONLY THREE YEARS!!!!

    As for “torture,” Obama still has Gitmo running after all of his demonization and he is still practicing “rendition” where terrorist suspects are shipped off to countries which we KNOW they will be tortured for information. Which is to say that it’s not that Obama is opposed to torture as much as he’s simply a hypocrite about it.

    Meanwhile, even the Daily Kos acknowledges that Obama has been a worse violator of civil liberties than George Bush was.

    So I think I can safely question this guy’s fundamental premise in writing this article.

    Obama is all about Obama. Only Obama matters to Obama. While he is a far leftist, he will sell out anybody to advance himself because he is the only entity that matters in his universe. That’s what I have to say about the disappointed liberals he’s abandoned or let down.

    As for maybe getting re-elected, I can only say this: under Obama this is “God damn America.” In God bless America, God doesn’t give us the leaders we deserve; in God damn America we DO get the leaders we deserve – and suffer the consequences of those leaders’ evil decisions.

    If this country wishes to remain God damn America, then Obama will get re-elected. And it will go the way of the Dodo bird.

  117. Muh Says:

    I would really like what Rebublicans had to say a lot more if they stayed away from demonizing the other side. Obama isn’t evil and his party isn’t demonic. That’s just stupid and disingenuous, just more [deleted by moderator due to profanity] rhetoric. I eve agree with your general thesis, you don’t have to be an [deleted by moderator due to profanity] about it is why I’m saying.

  118. Anonymous Says:

    Eden……this is the first and last time I will EVER read your blog! Everything you say has NO MERIT when combined with your pompous, arrogant attacks on those who respond to you in a civil manner. You are not a real Man….You are a coward and a cry baby…a wanna be bully, but in reality a whining pussy…. disrespectful and condescending….immature and child like….
    Just think how many people you would have following you if you treated them with respect. It is easily apparent that you have VERY LITTLE SELF ESTEEM. I pity your feeble attempts to convince any one of anything. You are IRRELEVANT!!!!!

  119. Gayle Turner Nieters Says:

    Simply unexceptable

  120. Michael Eden Says:

    Muh,

    We have a little more than a difference of opinion there.

    The Democrat Party is 100% responsible for 54 million murders of its most innocent and helpless citizens. Today marks the 39th anniversary of their victory over life.

    As for Barack Obama, he not only held a 100% NARAL rating when he was elected president, but he actually supported the murder of a baby who had actually survived an abortion attempt and been born alive:

    Obama Crossed The Line From Abortion To Genuine Infanticide

    Jill Stanek On Why Barack Obama Voted For Infanticide

    Why Barack Obama Is A Baby Killer. Period.

    So I believe quite rightly that Barack Obama IS evil and his party IS demonic. Even HITLER didn’t commit as many homicides as the Democrat Party.

    As for Republicans and “demonizing,” you have very selective amnesia.

    I remember an elected Democrat congressman saying to the American people, “If you do get sick America, the Republican health care plan is this: ‘die quickly.'” And Democrat organizations such as Think Progress cheered wildly.

    More recently, we’ve had Barack Obama as the president of the United States and all of its citizens denouncing the Republican Party as the Party of dirtier air and dirtier water, and denouncing the Republican Party as wanting more children with Downs’ Syndrome and autism.

    Now, what you want of the Republican Party in general and me in specific is for us to just lay down our arms and refuse to fight back.

    It has happened to the Republican Party – and they’ve lost every time they’ve done it because there is just no reason to vote for such insipid weakness – but it aint going to happen to me.

  121. Michael Eden Says:

    Anonymous,

    Good morning to you, too.

    I’d like to begin by pointing out that this “gentleman” has never dialogued with me before. This was how he chose to introduce himself to a guy who had never personally attacked him in any way, shape or form.

    I always have a nice laugh at people who rabidly attack me because of my “attacks.”

    It’s like, “I’m nothing more than a big fat giant hypocrite and I’d like to demonstrate that fact to all of you now.”

    This fellow says he’s angry about my “arrogant attacks on those who respond to you in a civil manner.”

    How does he define a “civil manner”? Let’s see what “being civil” looks like to a liberal:

    You are not a real Man….You are a coward and a cry baby…a wanna be bully, but in reality a whining pussy…. disrespectful and condescending….immature and child like

    You see, it’s only ME who goes over the top on those nice wonderful and oh-so-very polite lefties. And here they are being so civil and everything!!!

    These are the people who lecture me for being mean when they are nothing but rabid, vicious animals who attack the gentle and mean alike.

    Anonymous (and I find it interesting that a guy who calls me a “coward” and tells me “I’m not a real man” is far too much of a coward to provide his name, preferring the “manly” venue of a blind attack) ends his hate-festival by exlaiming:

    You are IRRELEVANT!!!!!

    It’s kind of like the atheist who doesn’t believe in God. But he hates Him just the same.

    If I’m so damned irrelevant, then why are you talking to me???

  122. Anonymous Says:

    Michael Eden, you are a bitter fucking idiot. shut your piehole.

  123. Trevor Says:

    Haha that one made me laugh. Awh I liked that comment. I enjoyed the “Good morning to you, too”. Awh that made me laugh. :)

    I really hate that idiot who posted that because he destroyed all of what we were saying. He was fighting fire with a lot more fire. I wonder how many times that is gonna proven to not work. I am sure you are gonna come back with “explosions do put out a fire”, okay sure, its just an expression.

    The other guy who was saying for you to try and stop attacking never attacked you. He was just trying to make a point, like I was. I feel like he never disrespected you. Unlike you who just yelled at him “BULLCRAP”. Was that necessary to your point? I think not.

    However I do agree with what you say about abortions and I never really heard his opinion on it.

    I feel like a lot more people(like myself and the liberal) would agree more with you, if you just changed your attitude and general hostility towards people. Just my opinion.

    Feel free to keep yelling at people, and keep getting yelled at by others. I hope its fun to play the tit for tat game. I personally don’t enjoy it. But hey that’s just me.

    I will leave by saying something by him rather than like you:”If I need help, I would rather look for a passing rattlesnake, thank you very much.”

    “Respectfully yours,
    A Moderate Liberal”(In this cause a republican)

    P.S.
    I never called your blog useless. You took what I said way out of context. I said IF you don’t use this blog to help convince democrats THAN it is useless. A bunch of republicans talking to each other about how stupid the democrats are. That I will call useless. Reaching out and talking to the democrats, I would call that very useful.

  124. Eric Says:

    Bush had 8 years (for all democrats who cant figure this out.. its 2920 days) to increase the deficit 4.858 trillion… And within your 735 days (for all democrats who cant figure this out.. its 2 years and 5 days) to do darn near the same damage of 3.445 trillion to the economy So, if you give him another term.. we should be able to at least triple this deficit. Bush also had a war to spend on, and Katrina to spend on… Unlike Obama who wants to give the money to bail out the banks who are responsible for giving loans that they shouldnt have, and bailing out auto industries who spent the money on bonuses for CEO’s who should have been watching their figures in the first place. Very little of this money went to increasing wages for laborers who make way too much money from the unions as it is. none of this money went to decreasing the price in which we buy cars at, none went towards helping individuals who had to forclose on their farms. but we did manage to give help to individuals who were going to forclose on their house because they had a mortgage for a 1/4 million dollar house on a $12 hour wage, and we did manage to give food stamps to individuals who dont qualify for them in the first place, and tellthem that as long as they remain non working they can collect them as long as they need. Instead of telling them that they have a certain amount of time for them and must improve their finances by then.

  125. Eric Says:

    Another thing…and yet, me as a disabled vet who lives off $600 per month while going back to college to get my degree (because my job skills are limited now) cant qualify for them because I am a full time student!.Yet my neighbor who doesnt go to work nor doesnt have any intentions on going to work can make money under the table can bring in $405 per month for food…. so put that in your socialist vote buying welfare program pipe and smoke it!

  126. Michael Eden Says:

    Anonymous,

    Yes, I know I am – especially when I am contrasted to one so gracious and obviously intellectual as you so clearly are.

    I normally edit for profanity, but while I will block you as a useless dumbass who has nothing more to offer but a brain filled with nothing more than a few expletives, I’ll let this one stand as is – with apologies to any reader who is offended.

  127. Michael Eden Says:

    Trevor,

    Very bored with this topic of discussion; getting very bored with you constantly bringing it up.

    You cited one rude slimeball; here’s another who just popped in. I get them all the time.

    You’re a well-meaning but very ignorant guy, Trevor. You’ve never blogged (by your own acknowledgment); you don’t have a freaking clue how you would respond after you’d been mugged a few hundred times.

    I get a lot of incredle dishonesty from the left all the time, too. The guy who took up your side, who called himself “Moderate Liberal,” proceeded to deliberately try to deceive me and my readers by posting as several different people.

    Both types of liberals just wear you out after a while. Not that YOU would have any clue about it, Trevor.

    I find it both remarkable and incredibly annoying that a guy like you whose NEVER done what I do nevertheless is a self-professed expert.

    As per your P.S., no, I most certainly did NOT take you out of context. I very specifically told you my three purposes of blogging – and just as specifically told you my purpose in blogging was NOT to endlessly argue with Democrats.

    It was AFTER I very specifically stated that I was not trying to “help convince Democrats” that YOU proceeded to say that my blog was useless.

    Here is the flow of thought, from my statement to yours:

    Me:

    Your first question for me to prove, “That you have convinced someone by yelling and screaming after you could not get them to agree with you initially?” First and foremost ignores my own challenge to you – which demands my question, “Why on earth should I bother to respond to your challenge when you decided to ignore my challenge to you?” And secondly your challenge misunderstands my entire purpose for blogging.

    It so happens that I am NOT out to convince Democrats about much of anything. I’m not blogging to talk to Democrats; I’m blogging to 1) try to preserve a record as to what Democrats did these last years; 2) to educate and inform conservatives and give them ammunition and arguments for their OWN arguments with liberals; and 3) to provide the case to increasingly pissed-off independents as to why they ought to abandon the Democrat Party and vote Republican.

    You:

    My last point, why do you say that you do not try to convince democrats? This seems like a rather useless use of a blog then. I do believe we should talk to each other AND try to convince the others.

    I told you that I was not out to argue with Democrats, and you, clearly understanding why I blogged, proceeded to pronounce my blog “useless.” ALSO, YOU VERY CLEARLY DID NOT USE ANY QUALIFYING SUBJUNCTIVES.

    You now proceed to mischaracterize both me AND yourself. That is very dishonest of you, and I do not appreciate your aspersion of my or my very accurate reading of you.

    Btw, I don’t particularly like to toot my own horn, but I frequently get a great many readers who very much DO appreciate my blog and my reason for writing it. Here is one such testimonial I just received. You will note by comparing when he wrote to when you did that I didn’t have to go dredge it up, but that it is quite contemporaneous with your current criticism.

    But clearly Free Market Capitalist’s opinion of what I’m doing and why I’m doing it pales in comparison to your far more exalted one.

    Now, if you don’t like my style, please feel free to go read somebody else. But PLEASE don’t keep reading me while you bug me about how I’m doing it anywhere nearly as well as you could. Start your own dang blog instead, and come back and talk to me in a few years.

  128. Michael Eden Says:

    Eric,

    Just looked at your second comment.

    I don’t have to tell you this, but welcome to the world of Obama’s and the Democrat Party’s “moral hazard.”

    That’s when it pays more to NOT work than it does to bust your ass. And all you have to do is keep voting Democrat until America crumbles like a rotton pier in a hurricane.

    I wish you every success as you try to make a life in an economy that has been poisoned.

    P.S. I am a disabled veteran, too. So I mean the above quite sincerely.

    Btw, if you haven’t heard of a VA program called “vocational rehabilitation,” (Voc Rehab for short) please look into it. You may qualify, and it is a REALLY great program for disabled vets who are trying to get the training they need.

  129. Anonymous Says:

    Your arguments would be much more persuasive if you didn’t constantly insult anyone who doesn’t agree with your ideas.

  130. Adelynn Says:

    Michael eden, you’re amazing. I totally agree with everything you say.

  131. Anonymous Says:

    i don”t have all the answers , but really nobody does in my my mind i think we can save a hell of alot of money if we start worrying about ourselves and stop helping all these other countries out when don”t even have enough money to help our own selves

  132. Michael Eden Says:

    Anonymous,

    I find that “argument” rather bizarre.

    Whether I am polite and gracious or nasty and mean, my arguments are the same arguments.

    Aristotle could have written his philosophy with a sneer or with a smile; it would have been the exact same logic either way.

  133. Michael Eden Says:

    Adelynn,

    Thanks very much for that expression of support.

    Adelynn is a very lovely name, btw. It has a very elven, musical ring to it.

  134. Michael Eden Says:

    Anonymous,

    You won’t get any argument from me about cutting way, WAAAAY back on our giving billions of dollars to countries that hate us.

    There are times when certain countries need our aid, but over 90% of our foreign aid is utter crap.

  135. Eric Says:

    Michael Eden..

    I dont mean any disrespect on your blog.. but, as a disabled vet, it just aggrivates me that everything I fought for and believed in with this country suddenly isn’t true! And everything that this country should be is crumbling due to irresponsible government.. We are about to lose the status of world currency because we keep printing money and our dollars arent worth the toilet paper we have in our bathrooms. The reason the price of gold is at $1700 an ounce is because it takes more of those dollars to buy that same amount of gold. And the corrupt politicians of this country seem to think that they will leave the damage for our kids to repair.

    I have checked out the Voc Rehab Program.. Thats the only way I was able to go back to college. And, yes… it is a wonderful program for vets. The VA has been a heaping load of help to me! But, even the VA is in danger of losing their funding if this spending keeps going on.

    Lots of thanks to you as being a vet!..

    Eric

  136. Eric Says:

    England used to be the leader in world currency with the british pund based of sterling… They lost that status during WWI because of the same thing we are doing right now! They had to fund the war they were involved in so they printed more money.. Then the Rothschild family kept buying their currency which put them into the status they are now And now they pretty much own the World Banks because of it…

  137. Julie L. Says:

    Wow, the exchanges here explain the problem. So much vitriol, including from the Christians. I’m guessing the starting point for any solution is to start by respecting each other. I’m also guessing that this isn’t going to happen any time soon…

    In the meantime, do your best. Don’t bite people so hard that they couldn’t hear you even if they wanted to. Be a little kinder than you’re inclined to be. Think of creative solutions; if the old ones worked, we wouldn’t be in such a mess.

    Maybe another moderate Republican (besides Romney) will step up. Newt would have Russia & China firing missiles at us just to shut him up. Obama is not the prince we’d hoped for. Unless things change, we have to choose between him and (hopefully) Romney, a man who believes a prophet/God landed in Missouri, in addtion to Santorum’s mythology! It’s a tough decision. Romney does seem to be moderate. Maybe a dose of bland is a good prescription for the next 4 years.

    To keep things in perspective, civilization has progressed, e.g., left-handed red heads are no longer burned at the stake (I happen to be both of those). The problems we face in America today started decades ago. Basic problem: lack of vigilance on the part of most citizens. Now, being kinder and more respectful is, I believe, the only place to start. Otherwise, any good ideas one might present will be drowned out by the noise.

  138. Michael Eden Says:

    Eric,

    You certainly don’t disrespect me, Eric. So far I’ve welcomed every word you’ve typed.

    My dad had surgery, and I visited him in the hospital tonight. He just got moved to the rehab ward and had a roomate for the first time – a nice conservative old guy named John.

    John is a veteran who had said that Obama was the worst president we’ve ever had – and that Carter was the second worst and Obama took after Carter.

    I said to him it makes me sick that I’m watching my country that I served fall apart before my very eyes, and how in so many ways this isn’t the country I sacrificed to serve.

    We’re becoming a European state. And in Europe many simply don’t give a damn. They don’t care if their country collapses because they view it as “too big to fail” and all they really care about is THEIR handout.

    And we’ve become like that to an astonishing and dismaying degree.

    I agree with you that the US is on the verge of losing its status as the world’s “reserve currency.” And if that happens, the United States – which has been able to exploit all kinds of shennanigans that no other country on earth can do because we are the reserve currency – will catastrophically fail literally overnight.

    Your words remind me of something Michael Scheuer once said:

    They want to play games at home. They want to stay in power forever. They want their office. They don’t want to protect the United States. They somehow think that America is eternal and can never be defeated. Well, they’re going to be in for a great wakeup call, Sir.

    It makes me sick to my stomach as both a citizen and a veteran. And I can tell it does the same to you.

  139. Eric Says:

    For everyone out there (independent, liberal or conservative) who doesnt know what AAA status is when they talk about it on the news….. Its not your Auto benefits to come and recover your car when it breaks down.. It is our status as the leader in World Currency!… Everyone who does business in the world has to convert their money/currency to US dollar to exchange money and do business in the world…That is a pretty privilaged position in the world! Every other joker in the world is considered to be second rate….Do you want to be a second class citizen??If you do.. then keep printing money!

  140. Eric Says:

    No, Im not saying Obama is a bad president… just a knieve and irresponsible president… The Democratic Party couldnt get the money they wanted for their agenda… Obama hadnt been in Congress for too long, and the old timers in Congress knew that.. So they decided to put a knieve person in office.. THis way, he puts all his faith in his party, signs off on all of their pork spending, and he gets blamed for it at the end.. They dont have to take any responsibility for it when they want to be put into office. Because when presidential debates come up, politicians dont have to answer truely to the way they voted because the votes are not line item votes.. its a vote for a certain biull with a load of earmarks and it hides the way they truely vote for things.

  141. Eric Says:

    Who killed Caesar…???,,, 10-12 senators..Right???.
    Same thing here instead of doing it with a knife, they are doing it through reputation and politics.

  142. Muh Says:

    Oh brother…abortion?? We’re counting that as murder now? Well, how many innocents Iraqis and American soldiers did Bush get killed in the useless Iraq war? And they were actual people, not just a bunch of cells.

    I love how Republicans are all about government getting out of people’s lives as long as that means not regulating businesses or helping people down on their luck, but the second there’s something they see as morally wrong because the Bible says so, suddenly government needs to take charge!

    And once the government forces people to have these children they don’t want, are they going to pay for them too? Oh good, more government handout programs, I thought you were against that. Or would they just force these mothers with no money to take on that burden? I just can’t imagine forcing someone to have a child they don’t want, I’m not for abortion necessarily, but it’s not the government’s business.

    The Republicans want government to be small…just small enough to fit in people’s bedrooms.

  143. Eric Says:

    Muh.. Who are you responding to?

    But, On another note…personally, I dont think abortion is right.. but, Im not into that argument… But, I am in favor of population control for people on government handouts such as welfare, public aid, food stamps and so on… Its not right that a person asks the taxpayer for a free handout to help them out, and then they go have 3 to4 more kids while on it because now they dont have to bare the burden of financial responsibility for raising their own family…

    And concerning the Iraq war…. We arent over there destroying crap like all you ignorant SOB’s think.. we were over there helping them rebuild what we had destroyed when we had to come in there and building better facilities in which they didnt have in the first place!… Its the extremists and outside influences such as bordering countries who are doing the destruction over there!…. After we build a new hospital for them some piece of inbred crap from another country comes over to blow it up!..The only Iraqis dying over there are the extremists who are blowing crap up!…These people are building and owning their own businesses and able to keep their profits.. something that was tabboo under Saddams rule. I spent 3 years over there I know what the F’s going on over there….I dont get my information from Michael Moore and Whoopi Goldberg!…I get my facts from experience! How would you like to be mortared for 2 hours straight.. then everything just stops all at once.. and 10 minutes later, a guy comes into the clinic (where we do our job as compassionate Americans and stitch him back together again) because the thumb and index finger on both of his hands are blown off because he forgot to take his hands off the mortar tube as he was firing it at us!…

  144. Eric Says:

    But, You wont hear about that in the media… Nor will you hear about the guy who wanted to make a point to the Americans by dowsing his 5 year old son in gasoline and setting him on fire! as the mother comes running to the clinic with her kid in her arms; screaming and crying for Americans to please help her son!

    Its the bordering countries starting crap in Iraq… Why do you think the Iranians want nuclear power?.. because they know that their well is running dry and their days are limited. Thats why Russia protects their sorry asses.Because Russia is sucking up what oil they can get at rock bottom prices while the getting is still good. Iran wants iraqi oil so they start chaos and pandimonium over there that way they can come in the back door as their big brother (“equal” brothers) and steal the oil from their wells dry over the next 50 to 70 years. If Iran had nuclear power, they wouldnt have to worry about oil. Yet, Iran isnt responsible enough to be in charge of any kind of nuclear program. You have to handle them with kid gloves as it is,,more less put nukes in their hands.

  145. Muh Says:

    Eric, I was responding to Michael Eden from waaaay up above, sorry if it seemed like a tangent. But you know, not everyone who wants an abortion is some poor person wanting government handouts and has four kids. I’d like to see our government start imprisoning typical Americans until they have their baby, that would be great.

    As for Iraq…well, let’s say if Spain invaded us and killed a bunch of our citizens, would we be happy that they were putting up some buildings better than the originals? If al-Qaeda rebuilds the towers, would all be forgiven?

    Seriously, regarding the war…do you really think the only Iraqis who died over there are the extremists who are blowing crap up? Where do you get that? I mean, that’s out of this world. Even in a hugely just war like WW2, we killed tons of civilians. That’s just a natural by-product of hitting populated area.

  146. Eric Says:

    If its a natural by-product of war, then why even harp on it…by calling this war useless, you are insinuating that all of the efforts of my brothers in arms was useless…And,it is a disgrace for you to allow me and my brothers-in-arms to shed their blood then turn around and pull out because what your party once encouraged by voting to go to war is now considered to be “useless” by them. Thus, because the democrats have always stirred chaos among political parties to justify their means… They voted to go to war so they could point the finger at Bush as a hateful war monger so they could preach to the nation to say ” See??!! We are right and they are wrong!!” Vote for our party…Instead of pointing fingers at who is right and who is wrong.. you people need to start taking on responsibility for their own actions to reform their government before their government implodes on its citizens.

  147. Eric Says:

    The way you take on responsibility for your own actions is to vote these frickin idiots out of the senate! both parties… democrats and republicans!… they have been there way too long and have become complacent with their duties to America!.

  148. Eric Says:

    By pulling out of the Iraq war because it is politically incorrect now…Makes us no better than the Europeans!… The French pulled that crap with starting the Vietnam War then we decided to back them up .. then they pulled out and left us holding the bag to clean up the mess!

  149. Muh Says:

    Wow Eric, you sort of read as paranoid. And don’t call the Democrats “my party,” just because I think Republicans are full of it doesn’t make me a Dem either. And your basic theory is that Democrats are the only party that stirs chaos?

    And let me ask you about the war…wasn’t the objective to get all of the weapons of mass destruction that were there? And how many did we uncover? So, was the objective reached or not? If not (which is the correct answer) then why would we stay there? I’m not saying soldiers are useless, I’m saying the entire war was based on a sham by some politicians with war jonses, and of course those are the guys who never actually served. It’s wrong that so many people were killed for a war that was about nothing and accomplished nothing. And I’m no peacenik, going into Afghanastan was absolutely correct.

    Let me ask you this…do you think we should stay in Iraq, and if so, to what end? When would you say “we have accomplished what we need to do here.”

  150. Eric Says:

    See, with Vietnam.. The French were over there harvesting rubber tree plants.. Yet they decided to stir chaos by crossing into the wrong territory becausee of the greed for rubber tree plantations. so the Russians and Chinese were supplying North Vietnam with war materials and weapons. Then when the US decided to help France out, after getting our feet dug in over there, the French pulled out like cowards and went home because it was becoming politically incorrect to be there!..

  151. Eric Says:

    Thats why that war was considered a police action rather than a war… because we were only supposed to be there to make sure the French didnt get their asses kicked too bad!…Then the Chinese and Russians decided they were gonna start trainning North Vietnam forces to fight a war.. so while we are over there.getting our asses kicked because the cowards pulled out, we had to stay there and make sure the South Vietnamese didnt get their asses kicked too bad!.. That is what socialism and liberalism is good for in this world…. trying to start crap then when big bubby comes along to make sure your not getting picked on too bad.. you decide to go home while big bubby is in a fight with the neighborhood bully..

  152. Eric Says:

    Do ya see a trend here??? The BIG BAILOUT…. and it goes right back to the liberal agenda of bailing out the banks and auto industry in this country. They shouldnt have gotten themselves into this mess in the first place.. The CEO’s should have been watching their figures to begin with.

  153. Eric Says:

    And whos left holding the bag again???….. The American Tax Payer!!.. because it sure aint the ones on welfare and food stamps.. because they arent paying any taxes on that stuff to begin with.

  154. Muh Says:

    So would you consider Bush a liberal? He approved bailouts for the banks and the auto industry.

    And my question remains, what would you consider to be a winnable agenda in Iraq? What would be your end game?

  155. Eric Says:

    And dont tell me that they pay taxes on their food and stuff they buy with it.. because heres how it works… I have a pint jar that has 400 milliliters of water in it … I pur out 100 milliliters of it into a glass and give it to you… then you take your little glass and pour out 10 milliliters of it into a shot glass and give it back to me to put back into the jar… did you actually contribute anything to replenishing the jar of water??? No.. you only gave up what wsnt your to begin with…

  156. Eric Says:

    THe only time anyone on these programs contributes to filling the jar is if they go out and get a job then after they pay income taxes for a while. They need to total up what they have paid in taxes, and total up what they have collected from these programs and compare the two… then when your income taxes either equals or out weighs the program benefits in which you have collected throughout the years,…. then you have contributed to filing the jar.

    Its common sense people..

  157. Michael Eden Says:

    Julie L.,

    I could point out that you are implicitly calling me out as a lousy Christian, quote Jesus as saying, “Judge not,” point out that you are judging me, and then conclude, “Why should I listen to a lousy Christian tell me about what it means to be a Christian?”

    But I would be making the same sort of mistake about fundamentally misunderstanding Christianity that you are making. So I won’t do that.

    Maybe Christians shouldn’t be involved in politics because politics is a mud pit and you don’t get into a mud pit without getting muddy.

    Maybe Christians shouldn’t be police officers, because it’s mean to write people tickets or put people in jail.

    Christians certainly shouldn’t be soldiers, because goodness gracious there is certainly nothing more “vitriolic” than shooting somebody.

    I read my Bible, and I come across Phineas:

    “Then an Israelite man brought to his family a Midianite woman right before the eyes of Moses and the whole assembly of Israel while they were weeping at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. When Phinehas son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest, saw this, he left the assembly, took a spear in his hand and followed the Israelite into the tent. He drove the spear through both of them–through the Israelite and into the woman’s body. Then the plague against the Israelites was stopped; but those who died in the plague numbered 24,000.” — Numbers 25:6-9

    Note that this extremely “vitriolic” act was approved by God; and was in fact the very thing that God wanted to see before He stopped His divine judgment.

    Of course, leftists have a very different reading about this story and about the God it concerns than I do. From Slate Magazine:

    Here is most hideous war crime in a Bible filled with them. As with the story of Dinah, it is sexual misbehavior that spurs the ugliest, evilest biblical vengeance. At the start of the chapter, God tells Moses he must complete one more task before he dies: taking vengeance against the Midianites. Why? For the fairly piddling crime described in Chapter 25. God was threatening punishment for Israelites who’d been whoring with Moabite women. At that very moment, an Israelite walked by the Tent of Meeting with his Midianite girlfriend. Phineas speared the couple to death. God, delighted by Phineas’ zealotry, stops the plague he had sent against the Israelites as punishment for their lechery. Even so, 24,000 Israelites die. For reasons I can’t understand, God and Moses hold the entire Midianite nation responsible for this mess, and they want payback. If you ask me—and Moses didn’t–the Bible is willfully ignoring the obvious point. It was the Moabite women, not the Midianite women, who did the dreadful whoring that provoked God’s rage and the plague. Going after the Midianites to punish a Moabite crime is as nonsensical as the United States invading Iraq to teach al-Qaida a lesson. (Oh, wait. We did that.)

    Who is right about “vitriol”? God or Slate Magazine??? Boy, that’s a really tough one for me – and I KNOW it’s an impossible one for you, Julie.

    My Jesus called people “snakes” and “vipers” (Matthew 12:34; 23:33). My Jesus looked people right in the eye and told them, “You are of your father the devil” (John 8:44).

    I dunno. It’s too bad you weren’t around to criticize Jesus for His “vitriol.” And as a “Christian,” too!

    Maybe THAT’S why they burned left-handed redheads at the stake… (that WAS just a joke, btw).

    I fundamentally disagree with you when you say, “Wow, the exchanges here explain the problem.” You think people being mean to each other explains why we’re so polarized; I disagree. The meanness is a SYMPTOM of the problem that one party now stands for genuine evil such as the evil of 54 million dead babies since Roe v. Wade.

    Allow me to present a rival thesis to yours:

    Edmund Burke said all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. And I submit to you that just as Adolf Hilter and Nazism flourished because men like Neville Chamberlain didn’t have the stomach to stand up to him while he grew stronger and stronger and more and more powerful until it was too late; so also America has become a toxic poisonous culture because too many people who called themselves “Christian” didn’t have the stomach to step into the ring of our culture and FIGHT for it.

    This notion that everybody would agree with me if I were only a little bit sweeter has the flaws of being 1) refuted by history; 2) naive and 3) crazy.

    You’re one of those who say, “Negative ads don’t work, so politicians shouldn’t ever use them.” But you see, negative ads DO work.

    In 2005, everything was going swimmingly compared to today under Bush. But Democrats tore him apart one bloody piece of meat at a time. They took total control of the House and the Senate in 2006 – and look what happened to our country. But they weren’t done yet; they demonized Bush some more to complete eight complete years of Bush derangement syndrome – and they added to their total control of the House and Senate and took the White House too.

    You don’t like it, I understand; but “biting people hard” works.

    I’d love to have the fluffy bunny and rainbow unicorn world you envision, Julie. Who wouldn’t? But instead, we live in a culture at war over things like the holocaust of abortion and the militant homosexual agenda and flat-out Marxism being imposed on our once-free nation. And so people who CARE have to stand up and fight.

    P.S. If Mitt Romney is the candidate, I will support him against Obama.

    P.P.S. What on earth are you talking about when you refer to “Santorum’s mythology”??? And isn’t that sort of a vitriolic thing of you to say about him???

  158. Michael Eden Says:

    “Oh brother…abortion?? We’re counting that as murder now? Well, how many innocents Iraqis and American soldiers did Bush get killed in the useless Iraq war? And they were actual people, not just a bunch of cells.”

    Muh,

    “And they were actual people, not just a bunch of niggers.” — Democrats prior to and after the Civil War.

    “And they were actual people, not just a bunch of Jews.” — Adolf Hitler

    For the official record, I point out the fact that YOU, Muh, are STILL nothing but a bunch of cells. So it ought to be open season on you by your own vile logic.

    A couple of scientific facts:

    I don’t know about you (species of cockroach???), but when I was in my mother’s womb, I was human by definition of my parents, and a being by virtue of the fact that I was a living thing: I WAS A HUMAN BEING.

    Every single living thing is rigorously categorized. All human beings fall under this progression:

    Kingdom-Animal
    Phylum-chordata
    Class-Mammalia
    Order-Primate
    Family-Hominid
    Genus-Homo
    Species-Sapiens

    That categorization is EVERY SCINTILLA as true for a baby in the womb as it is for YOU. And the babies are FAR more deserving of life than you, because they didn’t cheer as 54 million human beings were murdered in the womb the way YOU have.

    Now, that said, your crap about Bush and Iraq is crap. You’re the same sort of despicable hypocrite that Barack Obama was when he self-righteously said Bush was “air raiding villages and killing civilians” in Afghanistan. It so happens that since becoming president, Obama has not only MASSIVELY EXPANDED the war in Afghanistan, but he expanded the war into Pakistan as well. And he has not “air-raided more villages and killed more civilians” than Bush did.

    I wrote this back in early 2010: https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/obama-keeps-air-raiding-villages-and-killing-civilians/

    Obama has massively air-raided and killed since then. He has massively piled up on his “air-raiding civilian-killing body count.” Here’s a recent one that truly pissed off an already pissed off Pakistan.

    Such is your vile tendency to point a finger when three fingers are pointing back at YOU.

    I’ll take your logic regarding “paying for unwanted human beings” and demand that you be consistent enough to apply it to all the homeless people, etc. Let’s be “pro-homeless, pro-choice” the way you’re “pro-child, pro-choice.”

    It happens to be a fact that there are MILLIONS of couples who would LOVE to be able to have one of those “unwanted” children of yours. My neighbors recently literally went to China to adopt a child (no, neither one of them is Chinese or even Asian) because the liberals have so screwed up the adoption laws that it is almost impossible to get a child here.

    Btw, your argument, “I’m not for abortion necessarily, but it’s not the government’s business,” reminds me of a a strikingly similar one:

    The argument that “it’s a woman’s right to choose” is STRIKINGLY similar to the justification of slavery. During the Abraham Lincoln/Stephen Douglas debates, Douglas said that he was personally against slavery, but that the states should have the right to choose for themselves. Lincoln’s answer was that “You cannot have a right to do wrong.”

    Here is Lincoln’s exact words refuting Douglas’ (and YOUR OWN) argument:

    Try it by some of Judge Douglas’s arguments. He says he “don’t care whether it is voted up or voted down” in the Territories. I do not care myself in dealing with that expression, whether it is intended to be expressive of his individual sentiments on the subject, or only of the national policy he desires to have established. It is alike valuable for my purpose. Any man can say that who does not see any thing wrong in slavery, but no man can logically say it who does see a wrong in it; because no man can logically say he don’t care whether a wrong is voted up or voted down. He may say he don’t care whether an indifferent thing is voted up or down, but he must logically have a choice between a right thing and a wrong thing. He contends that whatever community wants slaves has a right to have them. So they have if it is not a wrong. But if it is a wrong, he cannot say people have a right to do wrong. He says that upon the score of equality, slaves should be allowed to go in a new Territory, like other property. This is strictly logical if there is no difference between it and other property. If it and other property are equal, his argument is entirely logical. But if you insist that one is wrong and the other right, there is no use to institute a comparison between right and wrong. You may turn over every thing in the Democratic policy from beginning to end, whether in the shape it takes on the statute book, in the shape it takes in the Dred Scott decision, in the shape it takes in conversation, or the shape it takes in short maxim—like arguments—it every where carefully excludes the idea that there is any thing wrong in it.

    ALL kinds of arguments were offered by pro-slavery apologists, including the argument that blacks weren’t fully human, and that freeing the slaves would create economic and cultural hardships for the slaveowners and the southern states and way of life. Does this ring any bells? In its now-infamous Dredd Scott decision, the Supreme Court ruled that blacks only amounted to 3/5 of a human being, and thus could be treated as property. When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, he essentially said to the Supreme Court, “You are wrong!”

    Just as YOU ARE WRONG now, Muh.

    Another simple fact is the idea that ‘the state’ is NOT being “neutral” in allowing abortion; IT IS DECIDING THAT THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH ABORTION, AND THAT IS CLEARLY NOT “NEUTRAL” ANY MORE THAN DISALLOWING ABORTION. The state is taking a moral position. It is NOT neutral. And God will judge that state just as God will one day judge YOU.

  159. Muh Says:

    So Obama is now specifically leading miliatry air raids? All of those innocents you mentioned were killed because he specifically ordered those attacks? That’s dumb. The fact is, we’re in war and them’s the breaks, innocents get killed…but Obama didn’t put us there, he inherited it. Although look what’s going on now, pulling out troops. And by the way, you seemed to have missed in that very article you posted that the military guys were complaining that they were being hamstrung by the new rules of engagement specifically set up to avoid civilian deaths if at all possible. Who put those in place, I wonder?

    And I’m glad that your parents considered you a person in the womb, but that doesn’t make anything a scientific fact. I’d think you would follow that up with some science, but I guess not.

    I could scientifially explain the difference between a mass of cells in the womb that’s one week old and an actual human being who can speak and play Nintendo, but I guess you wouldn’t want to hear that. Since yes, I’m a mass of cells as you say…well, so is grass. Should cutting grass be against the law?

    I just don’t believe the second a sperm hits an egg that there’s a person instantly made. I think that’s a completely irrational approach.

    Why is everything the fault of the liberals? You think if suddenly you got a bunch of Republicans in there that the world would be a shiny happy place where no one is sad?

    Also, what the heck does any of this have to do with “pro homeless?” You like one of those weirdo conservatives that think “this guy disagrees with me on something, he must be a LIBERAL and LOVES HOMELESS PEOPLE and FOOTSTAMPS and PEOPLE WHO DON’T WORK! I’m not pro-homeless. Not anti either. Are you saying being pro-homeless means I’m against putting them in ovens or something? What are you even talking about?

    And notice how Eric never got around to answering my questions to him, by the way.

  160. Muh Says:

    And you know, Jesus was pretty liberal. He outright said we should take care of the homeless and that rich people are going to Hell.

  161. Michael Eden Says:

    Muh,

    I know I’m not the subject of the question, but I’ll take it anyway.

    For the record, I find it funny how your liberal AND YES DEMOCRAT crap sounds about Iraq when someone who was THERE confronts you about what an idiot you are.

    Please, PLEASE don’t say you aren’t a Democrat or I will block you, Muh. I have now seen FAR too many comments from you, and you take the 100% pure Democrat line in every single one of them. Just look at what you’ve stated in your last few comments: you’re pro abortion (major Democrat position); you’re anti-Iraq War (major Democrat Position); you’ve attacked Bush (major Democrat talking point). To say you aren’t a Democrat is just dishonest of you, and I block dishonest people.

    You people who falsely present yourselves as some kind of moderates when you are anything but simply make me sick.

    As to the Bush a liberal thing:

    I’ll quote Jonah Goldberg from Liberal Fascism, page 23:

    This includes some self-described conservatives. Compassionate conservatism, in many respects, is a form of Progressivism, a descendant of Christian socialism. Much of George W. Bush’s rhetoric about leaving no children behind and how “when somebody hurts, government has got to move” bespeaks a vision of the state that is indeed totalitarian in its aspirations and not particularly conservative in the American sense. Once again, it is a nice totalitariansim, motivated no doubt by sincere Christian love; but love, too, can be smothering. In fact, the rage that Bush’s tenure has elicited in many of his critics is ilustrative. Bush’s intentions are decent, but those don’t share his vision find them oppressive. The same works the other way around. Liberals agree with Hillary Clinton’s intentions; they just assert that anyone who finds them oppressive is a fascist.

    George Bush did MANY things that were not “conservative” in any way. No Child Left Behind was NOT conservative. The Bush Prescription Drug called “Medicare Part D” was NOT conservative. The Bush decision to give GM a bail out (I noticed that Obama forgot to give Bush credit for that in his SotU speech last night) was NOT conservative. And when Bush said, “I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system,” he was NOT being conservative.

    Bush had the virtue of being FAR more conservative than the current weasel in the White House. And while he was inconsistent – as the above amply demonstrates – he was by no means an ideological conservative by any means.

    which is to say your question is rather imbecilic on it’s face; all the more so since you thought it was worth repeating.

    You mentioned the bank bailouts, so let’s take a look at them.

    George Bush – quite maybe being a lousy conservative – authorized $700 billion for TARP (the bank bailout in question). Bush left $350 billion of that for Obama to use. So Bush was $350 billion worth of fascist bastard.

    Let’s see what Obama did with his “$350 billion.” From ABC re: TARP, July 2009:

    “The total potential federal government support could reach up to $23.7 trillion,” says Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, in a new report obtained Monday by ABC News on the government’s efforts to fix the financial system.

    Yes, $23.7 trillion.

    So Obama was the fascist messiah the left always wanted, but whereas Jesus multiplied loaves and fishes, Obama magically multiplied crony capitalist fascist rat bastard TARP dollars.

    So it’s okay to blame Bush for TARP or for being a liberal, as long as you blame Obama about 6,757% more.

  162. Muh Says:

    Ron Paul agrees with many of my views, is he a Democrat? Or a libertarian?

    I’m making you the subject because in every post you make the subject about ME. I’m a liberal, I’m a Democrat, I’m evil. You can’t have a discussion, you have to house it in a hysterical fashion.

    Go ahead and ban me if you want, be a coward.

  163. Michael Eden Says:

    Jesus was a big government liberal who wanted to tax the bejeezus out of the people and redistribute their wealth to go to welfare boondoggles?

    I recall Jesus praising an old widow who voluntarily gave her last coin in offering to her church (Luke 21). Do you have that passage where Jesus praises a politician for confiscating somebody else’s wealth and redistributing it to his special interests/voters???

    That’s quite a stretch. But you’re a liberal, so I can understand how you cannot possibly understand Jesus.

    Even FDR would have been appalled at the “welfare without work” that now defines the modern Democrat Party. Please don’t drag Jesus into your Marxist bullcrap.

    For the record, conservatives are a LOT more like Jesus than liberals are:

    March 27, 2008
    Conservatives More Liberal Givers
    By George Will

    WASHINGTON — Residents of Austin, Texas, home of the state’s government and flagship university, have very refined social consciences, if they do say so themselves, and they do say so, speaking via bumper stickers. Don R. Willett, a justice of the state Supreme Court, has commuted behind bumpers proclaiming “Better a Bleeding Heart Than None at All,” “Practice Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Beauty,” “The Moral High Ground Is Built on Compassion,” “Arms Are For Hugging,” “Will Work (When the Jobs Come Back From India),” “Jesus Is a Liberal,” “God Wants Spiritual Fruits, Not Religious Nuts,” “The Road to Hell Is Paved With Republicans,” “Republicans Are People Too — Mean, Selfish, Greedy People” and so on. But Willett thinks Austin subverts a stereotype: “The belief that liberals care more about the poor may scratch a partisan or ideological itch, but the facts are hostile witnesses.”

    Sixteen months ago, Arthur C. Brooks, a professor at Syracuse University, published “Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism.” The surprise is that liberals are markedly less charitable than conservatives.

    If many conservatives are liberals who have been mugged by reality, Brooks, a registered independent, is, as a reviewer of his book said, a social scientist who has been mugged by data. They include these findings:

    — Although liberal families’ incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household ($1,600 per year vs. $1,227).

    — Conservatives also donate more time and give more blood.

    — Residents of the states that voted for John Kerry in 2004 gave smaller percentages of their incomes to charity than did residents of states that voted for George Bush.

    — Bush carried 24 of the 25 states where charitable giving was above average.

    — In the 10 reddest states, in which Bush got more than 60 percent majorities, the average percentage of personal income donated to charity was 3.5. Residents of the bluest states, which gave Bush less than 40 percent, donated just 1.9 percent.

    — People who reject the idea that “government has a responsibility to reduce income inequality” give an average of four times more than people who accept that proposition.

    Brooks demonstrates a correlation between charitable behavior and “the values that lie beneath” liberal and conservative labels. Two influences on charitable behavior are religion and attitudes about the proper role of government.

    The single biggest predictor of someone’s altruism, Willett says, is religion. It increasingly correlates with conservative political affiliations because, as Brooks’ book says, “the percentage of self-described Democrats who say they have ‘no religion’ has more than quadrupled since the early 1970s.” America is largely divided between religious givers and secular nongivers, and the former are disproportionately conservative. One demonstration that religion is a strong determinant of charitable behavior is that the least charitable cohort is a relatively small one — secular conservatives.

    Reviewing Brooks’ book in the Texas Review of Law & Politics, Justice Willett notes that Austin — it voted 56 percent for Kerry while he was getting just 38 percent statewide — is ranked by The Chronicle of Philanthropy as 48th out of America’s 50 largest cities in per capita charitable giving. Brooks’ data about disparities between liberals’ and conservatives’ charitable giving fit these facts: Democrats represent a majority of the wealthiest congressional districts, and half of America’s richest households live in states where both senators are Democrats.

    While conservatives tend to regard giving as a personal rather than governmental responsibility, some liberals consider private charity a retrograde phenomenon — a poor palliative for an inadequate welfare state, and a distraction from achieving adequacy by force, by increasing taxes. Ralph Nader, running for president in 2000, said: “A society that has more justice is a society that needs less charity.” Brooks, however, warns: “If support for a policy that does not exist … substitutes for private charity, the needy are left worse off than before. It is one of the bitterest ironies of liberal politics today that political opinions are apparently taking the place of help for others.”

    In 2000, brows were furrowed in perplexity because Vice President Al Gore’s charitable contributions, as a percentage of his income, were below the national average: He gave 0.2 percent of his family income, one-seventh of the average for donating households. But Gore “gave at the office.” By using public office to give other peoples’ money to government programs, he was being charitable, as liberals increasingly, and conveniently, understand that word.
    georgewill@washpost.com

    Here’s another version of the above:

    Philanthropy Expert: Conservatives Are More Generous
    By Frank Brieaddy
    Religion News Service

    SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Syracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks is about to become the darling of the religious right in America — and it’s making him nervous.

    The child of academics, raised in a liberal household and educated in the liberal arts, Brooks has written a book that concludes religious conservatives donate far more money than secular liberals to all sorts of charitable activities, irrespective of income.

    In the book, he cites extensive data analysis to demonstrate that values advocated by conservatives — from church attendance and two-parent families to the Protestant work ethic and a distaste for government-funded social services — make conservatives more generous than liberals.

    The book, titled “Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism” (Basic Books, $26), is due for release Nov. 24.

    When it comes to helping the needy, Brooks writes: “For too long, liberals have been claiming they are the most virtuous members of American society. Although they usually give less to charity, they have nevertheless lambasted conservatives for their callousness in the face of social injustice.”

    For the record, Brooks, 42, has been registered in the past as a Democrat, then a Republican, but now lists himself as independent, explaining, “I have no comfortable political home.”

    Since 2003 he has been director of nonprofit studies for Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

    Outside professional circles, he’s best known for his regular op-ed columns in The Wall Street Journal (13 over the past 18 months) on topics that stray a bit from his philanthropy expertise.

    One noted that people who drink alcohol moderately are more successful and charitable than those who don’t (like him). Another observed that liberals are having fewer babies than conservatives, which will reduce liberals’ impact on politics over time because children generally mimic their parents.

    Brooks is a behavioral economist by training who researches the relationship between what people do — aside from their paid work — why they do it, and its economic impact.

    He’s a number cruncher who relied primarily on 10 databases assembled over the past decade, mostly from scientific surveys. The data are adjusted for variables such as age, gender, race and income to draw fine-point conclusions.

    His Wall Street Journal pieces are researched, but a little light.

    His book, he says, is carefully documented to withstand the scrutiny of other academics, which he said he encourages.

    The book’s basic findings are that conservatives who practice religion, live in traditional nuclear families and reject the notion that the government should engage in income redistribution are the most generous Americans, by any measure.

    Conversely, secular liberals who believe fervently in government entitlement programs give far less to charity. They want everyone’s tax dollars to support charitable causes and are reluctant to write checks to those causes, even when governments don’t provide them with enough money.

    Such an attitude, he writes, not only shortchanges the nonprofits but also diminishes the positive fallout of giving, including personal health, wealth and happiness for the donor and overall economic growth.
    All of this, he said, he backs up with statistical analysis.

    “These are not the sort of conclusions I ever thought I would reach when I started looking at charitable giving in graduate school, 10 years ago,” he writes in the introduction. “I have to admit I probably would have hated what I have to say in this book.”

    Still, he says it forcefully, pointing out that liberals give less than conservatives in every way imaginable, including volunteer hours and donated blood.

    In an interview, Brooks said he recognizes the need for government entitlement programs, such as welfare. But in the book he finds fault with all sorts of government social spending, including entitlements.

    Repeatedly he cites and disputes a line from a Ralph Nader speech to the NAACP in 2000: “A society that has more justice is a society that needs less charity.”

    Harvey Mansfield, professor of government at Harvard University and 2004 recipient of the National Humanities Medal, does not know Brooks personally but has read the book.

    “His main finding is quite startling, that the people who talk the most about caring actually fork over the least,” he said. “But beyond this finding I thought his analysis was extremely good, especially for an economist. He thinks very well about the reason for this and reflects about politics and morals in a way most economists do their best to avoid.”

    Brooks says he started the book as an academic treatise, then tightened the documentation and punched up the prose when his colleagues and editor convinced him it would sell better and generate more discussion if he did.

    To make his point forcefully, Brooks admits he cut out a lot of qualifying information.

    “I know I’m going to get yelled at a lot with this book,” he said. “But when you say something big and new, you’re going to get yelled at.”

    Jesus would also have told you that YOU’RE going to hell, for the record, Muh.

  164. Muh Says:

    Liberals can’t give money because they only have food stamps.

  165. Muh Says:

    And there’s nothing a self-satisfied Christian enjoys more than telling someone they’re going to hell!

  166. jj Says:

    Obama cleaned Bushes BS! how else could he fix it? i hand you a house full of termites, spiders, broken windows, holes in walls, water leaks, … Now you have to live in this house and your family(US citizens) expect you to fix it what will you do?

  167. Michael Eden Says:

    Muh,

    It’s too bad that your arrogance is surpassed only by your stupidity.

    Please learn to read (I know it is FAR too much to ask to say ‘Please learn to think’):

    – Although liberal families’ incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household ($1,600 per year vs. $1,227).

    […]

    In 2000, brows were furrowed in perplexity because Vice President Al Gore’s charitable contributions, as a percentage of his income, were below the national average: He gave 0.2 percent of his family income

    And regarding the “going to hell” thing, this blog is about telling the truth, because whether a “self-satisfied” one or otherwise, you are not a Christian.

    I would rejoice greatly were you to become one, fwiw.

  168. Michael Eden Says:

    Given your line of thinking, apparently I make it FAR WORSE.

    Obama economic record

  169. Muh Says:

    Well, when it comes to charitable giving I bet a big difference is that less libs go to church, and thus don’t automatically give away ten percent to keep from burning in a lake of fire.

    Hey Michael, would Jesus think calling people stupid all the time was a good thing, or a bad thing? If He were standing next to you, would you write such things to me? Maybe you should turn the mirror back on yourself.

  170. Eric Says:

    Muh Says:
    January 25, 2012 at 8:45 pm
    And you know, Jesus was pretty liberal. He outright said we should take care of the homeless and that rich people are going to Hell.
    Muh Says:
    January 25, 2012 at 9:23 pm
    And there’s nothing a self-satisfied Christian enjoys more than telling someone they’re going to hell!

    Muh… Jesus is what you mentally make of him…In your eyes he is liberal… In my eyes he was both pretty conservative…

    When asked if people should pay taxes unto Caesar.. Jesus relied “Whos face is on the coin?” ” Give unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar” and Give unto the Lord what belongs to the Lord
    When God told us about reaping our harvest, he said to reap your harvest and leave the outer edges of your crops for the homeless and the hungry… He didnt say to harvest your crops and leave 25% of the harvest in which you labored for sitting at the edges of the field for the homeless and the hungry.. which means to me that the homeless and the hungry should have to work for their meal also even if it is free charity to them.
    And no True Christian gets satisfaction from telling others that they are condemned to hell!.. Thats the last thing I want to do as a Christian.. Its not my position to determine who is going to hell and who isnt.. If you are implying that you are equal to God and can make that decision.. then I pity you.

    You need to re analyze yourself as a Christian.

  171. Muh Says:

    I’m not saying I can tell who’s going to hell and who isn’t…but in this thread I think Mr. Eden has informed me about six times that I’m going there. As well as calling me stupid and an idiot over and over. My Christian friends would think that was mean.

  172. Eric Says:

    Just like my disaster preparedness supplies.. Although I have managed to build up a years worth of food and supplies for any type of disaster, I have also set aside 10% of my supplies and bought stuff like Ramen Noodles for the more unfortunate.. But, although I am going to give them food, it is also expected that they try to improve their situation even if it is asking if there are any chores in which they can help out with. If I see them coming back over and over again without wanting to contribute anything.. then Im probably not going to give them anything.

  173. Michael Eden Says:

    Muh,

    You clearly don’t listen to your “Christian friends” about anything else; why on earth would you listen to them about what they would call me?

    Oh, that’s right. You’ve got a filter that only allows you to hear what you want to.

    I believe I’m done with you by now.

    I’m trying to write articles about important issues, and you’re trying to specialize in personality disorders and practice classic liberal traits such as victimism (using whatever rhetorical ju jitsu you’ve got in order to make yourself the victim and your opponent ‘mean’ because your warped mind equates that with “winning”) and avoidance (changing the subject from how ridiculously insane your messiah is in his spending to try to make the issue about me being ‘mean’).

    This article is summed up rather well by it’s title: Who Spent More?

    And you are determined to talk about everything BUT that, aren’t you?

    So buh-bye.

    But I’ll leave you with a word of advice: listen to your “Christian friends” very carefully. Then rethink everything you’ve ever thought and recognize how completely wrong you are. And then repent and accept the Savior who revealed Himself in the Bible, and you’ll be in a lot better shape than you are in now.

  174. Eric Says:

    I dont think that the bible meant that rich people are going to hell…. I think Jesus said that ” It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven” because he wanted to make a point that it is extemely hard for a rich man to give up the ownership and attachment to his money and worldly possessions. Because, a poor man does not have that attachment because he has never experienced that attachment.

    But, it can be done.

  175. Michael Eden Says:

    “I could scientifially explain the difference between a mass of cells in the womb that’s one week old and an actual human being who can speak and play Nintendo…”

    Muh,

    I think it is readily apparant that you have never studied the philosophical questions behind “what qualifies someone/something as human?”

    Earlier, I told you:

    When I was in my mother’s womb, I was human by definition of my parents, and I was a being by virtue of the fact that I was a living thing: I WAS A HUMAN BEING.

    Further, every single living thing is rigorously categorized. All human beings fall under this progression:

    Kingdom-Animal
    Phylum-chordata
    Class-Mammalia
    Order-Primate
    Family-Hominid
    Genus-Homo
    Species-Sapiens

    That categorization is EVERY SCINTILLA as true for a baby in the womb as it is for YOU.

    Now, you are asserting that “scientists” are claiming that there is a distinction between a “homo sapiens” and a “human being.” There are human beings who aren’t homo sapiens? There are homo sapiens that aren’t human beings? And scientists are making those claims? Bullcrap, you ignorant liar.

    Furthermore, just to demonstrate how trivial your “I could scientifically explain the difference” line is (and what you say you “could do” and what you did do are in fact very different things. I could fly to the moon if I flapped my arms hard enough too, I’m sure), your “scientific” assertion suffers from the problem that there are lots of human beings walking around who CAN’T speak.

    You want an example? How about Stephen Hawking:

    Hawking’s achievements were made despite the increasing paralysis caused by the ALS. By 1974, he was unable to feed himself or get out of bed. His speech became slurred so that he could be understood only by people who knew him well. In 1985, he caught pneumonia and had to have a tracheotomy, which made him unable to speak at all.

    Poor guy just failed your test of humanity. As, btw, do millions of quadriplegics and others who sadly cannot play Nintendo.

    Which is to say that I am arguing with an ignoramus. And I get so many comments that it really annoys me to get crap like this from ignorant people who a) think they’re smarter than everybody else and b) clearly need attention and try to get it in annoying ways.

    The issue is far more difficult to develop “scientific criteria” for “why do I qualify as human” than you obviously can possibly understand.

    There are quite a few philosophers (because this issue isn’t even a question of “science,” but philosophy, just for the record) who have provided functional lists to ascertain why something qualifies as “human.” A very big problem with that is that none of these “experts'” lists agree.

    You document your ignorance in asking:

    Also, what the heck does any of this have to do with “pro homeless?”

    You specifically cited being “unwanted” as being a justification to murder/abort babies. I can show you ALL KINDS of human beings walking around or too sick to walk around who are very much unwanted. Amd I was simply pointing out that if being “unwanted” was a valid criteria, we should be consistent and take out ALL the unwanted. Which underscores the fact that your criteria is bogus. But sadly you are apparently just too ignorant to understand such things.

    A major problem with trying to provide functional criteria such as that “human beings can talk, and fetuses can’t talk so they aren’t human beings” is that YOU won’t be able to talk when you go to sleep tonight. So can I kill you while you’re sleeping. And if you say, “I’ll be able to talk when I wake up,” well hello: that fetus will be able to talk when it comes out of momma’s womb if she doesn’t kill him. And of course what about human beings who are in comas? Many of them will recover if you just allow them the time to do so. It would be murder to kill them simply because they don’t temporarily pass some functional test for a “human being” based on the list of some philosopher who is desperately trying to define a “human being” in a way that doesn’t count a baby in the womb.

    Btw, you have repeatedly castigated me for calling names, so I appreciated your label of me as a “weirdo conservative.” You also recently called me a “coward” – and maybe you don’t find being a coward insulting, but I sure as heck do. You’re just a typical liberal who has the hypocrisy to attack other people for the things that you yourself are doing. I’m sure I could find plenty more insults from you if I cared to go back and look for them in your previous comments, but you just aren’t worth that much effort.

  176. ASK Says:

    Michael Eden, I have thoroughly enjoyed reading your blog posts!
    Keep up the great work on setting the record straight for those that continue to go through life seeing/hearing/thinking through their ignorant filters.

    Much respect….
    A.

  177. Michael Eden Says:

    Thanks much, ASK.

    Very much appreciate your vocal support.

  178. Herman Cain Says:

    TLDR

  179. Eric Says:

    I have a difference of opinion (up to a certain point) which would debate you on that Michael… But, this is not the blog for abortion.debates.. we are merely trying to blog about the deficit and spending issues in this country.

    No disrespect intended..

    Eric

  180. Liebegone Says:

    Mr. Eden,

    I am about as staunch a conservative as you’ll ever find, but I have a hard time buying what you’re selling. That Bush inherited a hole from Clinton? That Obama didn’t inherit a hole from Bush? This is worse than nonsense.

    Let me teach you a bit about being a conservative:

    Rule 1. Pay your way. Any fool can see that both Reagan and Bush II roundly broke this rule. Their tax cuts put what were at the time unprecedented holes in the budget. They weren’t paying their way and they weren’t real conservatives. You need to face this fact squarely if you want to be more than a Bush sycophant.

    You can’t blame this on the fact that Democrats controlled congress, because nothing could have been done without Republican assistance. These budgets were passed by bipartisan majorities and signed by Republican presidents. They are both equally to blame for the deficit spending. Period.

    Rule 2. Be honest. No one likes a liar, and spinning is just a politically acceptable form of lying. It is just a lie to say that tax cuts pay for themselves. They did not under Kennedy, did not under Reagan, and did not under BushII. After each of these sets of tax cuts the budget deficit increased, and in some cases positively soared (See, Reagan and Bush II.)

    It is merely obfuscating matters to note that decreasing tax on the wealthiest also increased tax receipts from that group of individuals without noting that the increase in those receipts comes from the fact that there has been an even greater increase in the percentage of total income dollars that top tax bracket makes. The fact remains: Taxes on the wealthiest went down, and overall receipts declined, resulting in deficit spending. This is not paying your way.

    Obfuscating on this level is lying, which is clearly not the conservative thing to do.

    Rule 3. Be fair. Think back to the fall of 2008. The stock market had been in a slow decline since October of 2007. But suddenly In the fall of 2008 the Dow was routinely losing 500 points a day (albeit, making some of that back the next day). This wasn’t like the dot.com bust, where a relatively small group of gamblers screwed themselves. This was broad based and catastrophic. Nothing Obama had done or could have done accounted for the Dow standing at 6500 in April of 2009. Obama was dealt a miserable hand and I wouldn’t be too surprised if McCain threw the race because every economist knows that financial crisis (as opposed to mere recessions) gets worse before it gets better. to blame Obama for the state of our economy (which, incidentally is much better than you let on) ignores reality.

    Rule 4. Be a realist and avoid magical thinking. Do you honestly think giving further lowering taxes on the wealthiest Americans is going to do anything good for our economy? The problem right now is that we have managed to kill off our middle class, which is the goose that lays the golden eggs. Re-tooling our economy to re-invigorate the middle class is not going to be easy, and it won’t be cheap. It won’t just happen on its own, either. The 1920s weren’t a paradise for many, but it was for a few. Contrast that with the 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s which was a paradise for the many. We aren’t going to get back to the good times without shared sacrifice. It will take the hard work of those who have hard work to give, and it will take the money of those who have the money to give.

    Rule 5. Be grateful and give freely. We got where we are now by greed. Steven Jobs was emblematic of the thinking of the new class of American businessmen: Make the product where it can be made most cheaply, sell it where it can be sold most expensively. He had no duty to his fellow countrymen, no duty to his nation, and his sole duty was apparently to acquire the largest amount of wealth he could for himself. Did you know that last year he made $400,000 profit on each employee? Imagine what this country would have been if he had made only $350,000 or $300,000 from each. Imagine how many more could have lived that much better!

    This nation provided the infrastructure for men like Steve Jobs to acquire this wealth. The generation before the the Jobs of this world sacrificed mightily to ensure that all Americans had the best chance at the opportunities they had. They unflinchingly gave blood and life in world war II, and when they came home they were willing to pay whatever it took to create the best, richest and fairest nation this world has ever known. Did that last great generation really toil so hard so that some snot nosed kid with a god complex could amass at the expense of those who create the wealth for them? Really?

    To me, there is nothing conservative about today’s robber barons.. They are internationalists, and jet setters who have homes in every paradise on earth and loyalty to no nation at all. That isn’t conservatism, that is materialism and greed.

  181. Michael Eden Says:

    Liebegone,

    How about if I teach you something about telling the truth and not misrepresenting and lying about other people.

    You begin by lecturing me:

    I am about as staunch a conservative as you’ll ever find, but I have a hard time buying what you’re selling. That Bush inherited a hole from Clinton? That Obama didn’t inherit a hole from Bush? This is worse than nonsense.

    How about YOU are nonsense, Liebegone.

    NOWHERE in my article that you are commenting upon do I make either claim that you impute to me. I talk about Bush’s spending and I talk about Obama’s spending. So what you are doing is going into the comments and stating what I have said in a VERY disingenuous way without bothering to quote me or provide any context whatsoever.

    You say:

    Rule 2. Be honest. No one likes a liar, and spinning is just a politically acceptable form of lying

    How about we talk about YOUR honesty, you self-righteous hypocrite???

    There is no question that George Bush “inherited a hole from Clinton.” That is simply a fact. Clinton left Bush with the Dotcom bubble the collapse of which vaporized $7.1 trillion in American wealth and resulted in the Nasdaq losing a massive 78% of its valuation. That is true.

    The mainstream media ignores that, but it remains a simple FACT.

    And if you wish to debate that FACT, please feel free.

    I do NOT argue that “Obama didn’t inherit a hole from Bush” in the same sense as you dishonestly claim. That would be asinine. Obviously the economy was plunging in 2008 and early 2009 when Obama took office. I would be a dumbass for trying to argue that the economy was “fine” when Bush left office. You are a LIAR for trying to make me appear to deny something like that.

    Everybody KNOWS the economy was already tanking when Bush left office. But how many people are aware of how bad the economy was when CLINTON left office? And why as a “conservative” do you not care that everybody blames Bush for the “mess” he left us in but nobody blames CLINTON for the mess he left us in???

    Proving that you lie about what I said, one of my comments I said this:

    So if you want to blame Bush for Obama’s mess, the least you could do would be to have the decency to blame Clinton for Bush’s mess. But you’re not honest enough to do that. Neither you, or your corrupt Democrat Party, or your mainstream media propaganda networks, have any integrity at all. Republicans took responsibility and admitted fault for their overspending. Democrats are like Cain in the Book of Genesis; they refuse to accept responsibility for anything no matter how guilty they are.

    And it seems that the person I first directed that comment to was not the only dishonest person.

    Why don’t you at least argue with my actual point rather than fabricating a straw man???

    What I DO point out is ANOTHER thing that the media refuses to cover; namely, that the CAUSE of the 2008 collapse had far more to do with DEMOCRAT policies than Republican ones.

    I have exhaustively detailed the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the 2008 collapse:

    https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2010/01/23/aei-article-how-fannie-and-freddie-blew-up-the-economy/

    Barney Frank And Democrat Party Most Responsible For 2008 Economic Collapse

    https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/2009/08/03/who-really-exploded-your-economy-liberals-or-conservatives/

    https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/2009/12/31/with-eyes-finally-wide-open-reconsider-why-the-economy-collapsed-in-the-first-place/

    https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/2009/07/08/biden-we-misread-the-economy-and-its-all-the-republicans-fault/

    Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created by Democrats. It was perennially staffed with Democrats. It had the sole power to bundle mortgages into the “mortgage backed securites” and then sell those securities to the private market under the guise that they were government and therefore AAA. It got massively into subprime loans to literally piss into those mortgage backed securities even as it made it impossible to tell a good security from a bad one. It forced banks to make utterly STUPID loans that went belly-up.

    Watch these videos to see that Fannie Mae was responsible, and Democrats were responsible for preventing ANY regulation at ALL on Fannie Mae:

    http://digitalartpress.wordpress.com/2009/03/22/video-proof-democrat-party-warned-responsible-for-fannie-mae-freddie-mac-economic-crisis-repost/

    https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/barney-frank-video-proves-democrats-at-core-of-2008-economic-collapse/

    Even now, three years later, Democrats have done nothing to address the fundamental cause of the 2008 collapse: 2011 was the worst year IN AMERICAN HISTORY for home sales. Even as Fannie and Freddie have grown even more massive and are now holding NINETY PERCENT of all home mortgages even as they first started the 2008 collapse by going bankrupt and have since become a bottomless pit for the taxpayers. And now those taxpayers are going to be asked to fork over yet ANOTHER $100 billion.

    It frankly astounds me that you would call yourself a “conservative” and deny any of these basic premises. Which is another way of me calling you a disinegenous liar who is pretending to be one thing when he is very much the opposite. And your liberal philosphy about tax cuts and “robber barons” underscores that.

    Finally, I wrote an article in which I categorically document that tax cuts INCREASE REVENUE and have increased revenue every single time they have been tried:

    https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2010/09/08/tax-cuts-increase-revenues-they-have-always-increased-revenues/

    In taking on the guise of a “conservative,” you somehow deny its most central premises. And you somehow argue exactly like a liberal would. Cutting taxes increases revenue. That is simply a fact. If politicians proceed to spend more such that the deficit goes up, that has nothing whatsoever to do with the FACT that tax cuts INCREASED revenues. So in stating that tax cuts don’t pay for themselves because the debt increased is like comparing apples to oranges and concluding pears.

    Get lost. You were deceitful on just about every level you could have been. To whatever extent your list of pointers have merit (and I frankly didn’t bother to read them after the crap that made my eyes explode out of their sockets), they are posted for posterity.

  182. Michael Eden Says:

    Eric,

    I’ve got several articles on abortion, and in fact “abortion” is one of the categories I’ve provided that then provide all the articles on said category.

    I will ALWAYS defend life, but this article is about spending.

    Muh went from lecturing me about civility to lecturing you about the Iraq War to debating about whether George Bush was a “conservative” to mocking the pro-life view. And that’s just the digressions I recall off the top of my head.

    I just crawled all over another guy who tried to make this article about: “That Bush inherited a hole from Clinton? That Obama didn’t inherit a hole from Bush?” But that is NOT what this article was about; it was about who spent more and who enlarged government more and who increased the debt/deficit more.

    Best to simply stick to the topic. Thanks for understanding.

  183. John Says:

    I came across this page by pure accident. This is an excellent and informative site.
    Your responses to liberal critics and shadow conservatives are simply outstanding. Don’t change a thing.
    Keep up the great work.

  184. Liebegone Says:

    Not sure I’d call it “crawled all over.” Sounded more like you were soiling yourself.

    But you want to stand by your words about Bush II inheriting a hole from Clinton. Bad choice. Remember, the discussion is about increasing the deficit. You even posted just earlier statistics which point up the error in your statement:

    2001 127.3 Billion Dollar Surplus 152.76 Billion Surplus R D R
    2002 157.8 Billion Dollar Deficit 186.204 Billion Deficit R D R
    2003 374 Billion Dollar Deficit 430.1 Billion Deficit R R R
    2004 413 Billion Dollar Deficit 462.56 Billion Deficit R R R
    2005 319 Billion Dollar Deficit 347.71 Billion Deficit R R R
    2006 248 Billion Dollar Deficit 260.4 Billion Deficit R R R
    2007 162 Billion Dollar Deficit 165.24 Billion Deficit R D D
    2008 455 Billion Dollar Deficit 455 Billion Deficit R D D

    Hope you enjoy your words. Any Katsup with that?

  185. Michael Eden Says:

    John,

    Thanks much.

    As you can see, I manage to pretty much be bathing in a stew of liberal anger basically all the time, and need all the friends I can get.

  186. Michael Eden Says:

    Liebegone,

    Two things: 1) You are now a thoroughly proven LIAR; and 2) You are an imbecile.

    As for the first one, you introduced yourself by saying the following:

    I am about as staunch a conservative as you’ll ever find, but I have a hard time buying what you’re selling

    Now, I already had seen through you like an X-ray, you lying fraud. But thank you for coming back and making it official.

    You’re “as staunch a conservative as I’ll ever find,” and you’re pimping Clinton and ridiculing Bush???

    Let me clarify everybody as to what this thoroughly dishonest chump Liebegone was trying to do: he didn’t have the honesty, decency or integrity to say, “I’m a liberal and I disagree with you.” Nope, not this cockroach. He says, “I’m Mr. Conservative, and even I can’t buy what this guy Eden is saying.” Liebegone is playing false flag. He was trying to pass himself off as a “conservative” in order to marginalize me as sombody who was just waaaay out there beyond the pale.

    But the problem is that NOBODY who was a true conservative would have said what you said.

    You are a dishonest slimeball, Liebegone. You are a liar without shame. And I block liars. There is simply no point in wasting your time trying to have a legitimate discussion with a dishonest vermin like you who misrepresents himself and misrepresents the facts. As I had already caught you doing.

    So then there comes 2) that you are an imbecile in addition to being pathologically dishonest.

    “Remember, the discussion is about increasing the deficit,” you say. So you present the deficit under Clinton’s last year (the one Republicans forced him into after Clinton had to go back on everything he’d previously believed in and say, “The era of big government is over”).

    WRONG, YOU IDIOT! The discussion is about BUSH’S spending versus OBAMA’S spending!!! Are you just too damn stupid or something? Are you just immune from basic reality?

    We’re all just supposed to forget the last three years? The entire Obama presidency is something to be overlooked, such that the important discussion is REALLY about Bill Clinton???

    Clinton has been GONE for going on twelve years, you dumbass.

    HERE is the discussion now:

    “The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents – #43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.” — Barack Obama

    What’s the national debt now after Obama demonized Bush, you lying moron??? It is $15.28 trillion dollars, and Obama just imposed another $1.2 trillion (making the debt $16.5 trillion) which will be exhausted even before the election.

    The discussion is whether Bush’s $4 trillion in eight years is worse than Obama’s $6 trillion in four years, you too-stupid-and-too-dishonest-for-me-to-ever-waste-another-second-on dumbass.

    Now you just get lost and go find a pile of horse poop to buzz around. Because you are done here.

    For the record, nothing pisses me off more than an arrogant jackass who comes on to my blog and starts spouting lies.

    Proverbs 27:3 describes my dilemma in blogging when I know liberals will come after me using either stupid and deceitful arguments or utterly irrelevant facts: “Stone is heavy and sand a burden, but provocation by a fool is heavier than both.”

  187. Liebegone Says:

    Mr. Eden,

    I’ll put my conservatism (and my intellect) up against yours any day.

    Here is a quote from you: “In light of the President’s expected rhetorical nod to fiscal responsibility, it’s worth keeping in mind his record on deficits to date. When President Obama took office two years ago, the national debt stood at $10.626 trillion. It now stands at $14.071 trillion — a staggering increase of $3.445 trillion in just 735 days (about $5 billion a day).”

    As you can see, you are in fact the one who made this about deficits, not mere spending. And indeed, this would be the relevant topic for a fiscal conservative. Spending isn’t a problem when you have the money. Fiscal conservatism says make do with less, but above all, live within your means. This is what we have been failing to do in a rather grand fashion since 1980. Just look at any debt table and you will see that is the year when our national debt started soaring and our annual budgets started simply ignoring the precept of “live within your means.”

    What I have seen, as a conservative, over the past 40 years is a group of people calling themselves conservatives who really aren’t, and I’m getting pretty darned sick of it. The point I’ve been trying to make to other conservatives is that you don’t have to check your brains and your decency at the door when you sign on to the cause. You need to study a little political philosophy, I think.

    I am guessing from the way you edit this blog that you in fact are not a conservative at all, but are, rather, merely a tyrant. And the way you run to ad hominems at the first sign that you might be intellectually outmatched makes me think that you are something of a baby too.

    You make the mistake which many faux conservatives make, which is to identify too strongly with a candidate while ignoring the ideals. Whether you like it or not, Reagan and Bush simply were not fiscal conservatives. Their budgets, the ones they signed into law, prove this point.

  188. Eric Says:

    Look,During the 80’s, and early 90’s we were doing really well. Reagan had created NAFTA & GATT, But, he wasnt going to sign it into law because of the holes in the system. This giving everyone else the opportunity to steal American jobs. He wasnt going to sign it into law unless these issues were taken care of. Then comes along Bush Senior, he looked at it the same way. Thats why he didnt sign off on it for 8 frickin years…Then comes along Mr Clinton..The baby of the crowd. A youngster without a clue riding on the coat tales of anyone who has proven themselves. So, as he manages to advance himself in the political world by riding on the coat tails of everyone else, he is used to doing that. After having a bunch of idiots elect his sorry ass into office, he sees this bill.. NAFTA & GATT laying there and signs it into law thinking he is going to ride on the coat tails of Reagan and be the Nations savior.., and on top of it making it easier for people to collect welfare, public aid and food stamps, and also we can also bring in more laborers into this country (an hair-brain scheme for more tax revenues) by giving amnesty to all illegal aliens….. This is his angel in disguise. A quick fix to everyones problems. So, as we do business with the Chinese, Mexico and every other yahoo out there during the 90’s, taking our products overseas teaching the communists and socialists of the world our trade secrets, and how to design and build our products all throughout the 90’s, then we get Bush Jr. Now that we have trained the world on how to build our products, they no longer need our plants (closing alot of businesses here in America) and start reverse engineering everything because there are no copyright laws in China.. “to hell with the Americans” we will plagirize everything they do and sell it cheaper because we can hire slave labor under the worse conditions.. Now, Americans are used to buying these cheap products, And frankly do give a rats ass about the economy anymore because they can buy this $300 item for $25…. No need for me to have a job that pays $12hr when I can buy the same amount of goods on a $8 hr job.Now towards the end of Bush Jrs term, the defecit from borrowing has built up in the background because those same people who were working for $12hr now work for $8 hr and reduces the tax revenues at the same time not to mention all of the new immigrants we have sucking up those jobs and are not going to become citizens because they are just here for the money and have intentions on going back to their own country to buy a large parcel of land and a huge house to retire on. Not only that, then we have both Katrina which comes along, and the twin towers which starts a war… the Democrats in office looking at all of this chaos as their knight in shining aromor to point the finger at the patsy.. (in which they always do when elections are around the corner)…Instead of pointing fingers… evryone (All Americans) need to take on some responsibility of their own and vote the idiots and chaos breeders out of office and fix what damage has been done.. but instead of doing that everyone wants to lay the blame on the other guy by pointing fingers and trying to say “This is why I am right!”… and because of that, the same idiots, and chaos breeders will be elected back into office because no one wants to take on the responsibilty for their own actions and say” Maybe I was wrong???”

    Eric

  189. Eric Says:

    Not only did we get into this mess when the Chinese started reverse engineering our products and shutting our business down. but, now we have illegals who have no intentions of becoming citizens sucking up what jobs we have left in this country (mind you that they are not paying taxes) so, tax revenues are out of the question on that one, and toadd more insult to injury, we have the freeloaders on the welfare, publicaid, and foodstamp systems who 80% of them have no intentions of improving their situation and coming off of it.

    It all goes back to my example of the pint jar with water in it.

    Eric

  190. Eric Says:

    And as people get on the welfare, public aid, and foodstamp system, they are thinking….why should I hump my ass for 40 hours per week at some meaningless $8 hour job when I can work 15 hours a week at some meaningless job and get the rest of my shit for free from the government!!

  191. Eric Says:

    Now that the Chinese ar building the products that Americans designed and engineered, and American Jobs have been ended because the Chinese pirated all of our products. Now the Chinese are raising their prices to reflect the original prices of American goods. which means America has to borrow more because they have NSF in the bank to cover debts in which they are charging.

    The Chinese always said they were going to conquer The United States without firing a shot…. and they did it!!! and the American People are standing on the side lines letting them doit because they are too busy pointing fingers at one another trying to blame it on the other guy..

    Eric

  192. Eric Says:

    Talk about dumbing down America.. its happening right now… The type of people you have out there are more into virtual reality games rather than understanding history… If you go on You Tube and search for a video called The Intelligence Revolution.. a video produced by BBC One girl says that she would prefers to play in her virtual world rather than reading about history… And, this is the type of people we have voting for our leaders.. people that have no clue to what is going on around them nor what happened in the past because they are too consumed by virtual reality to deal with such stupid shit as reality.

  193. Michael Eden Says:

    Eric,

    Your last really intrigues me:

    Talk about dumbing down America.. its happening right now… The type of people you have out there are more into virtual reality games rather than understanding history… If you go on You Tube and search for a video called The Intelligence Revolution.. a video produced by BBC One girl says that she would prefers to play in her virtual world rather than reading about history

    We used to be a Judeo-Christian nation, if not officially according to our founding fathers, certainly by the way we overwhelmingly believed as a people.

    No longer: we are now what the political left tried to make us – a postmodern culture.

    And postmodern thought is defined by cynicism, pessimism and a dislike for reality.

    I directly talk about video games and the retreat from what increasingly cynical people view as a dislikable reality here: https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2008/04/29/grand-theft-auto-iv-the-consequences-of-gamer-culture-1/

    and then more here: https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2008/04/30/grand-theft-auto-iv-the-cure-for-gamer-culture-2/

    I write about the progression in this three part series: How Postmodernism Leads To Fascism (Part 1); (Part 2); (Part 3)

  194. Eric Says:

    Awesome, I will definately be reading that

  195. Eric Says:

    You know… I don’t claim to be the smartest man on earth…And, I definately don’t know all the technical mumbo jumbo and hoopla of what I am talking about. But I do know what I am talking about becauset “I Lived Through Those eras!” I know whats going on… and I can at least say that I havent got cataracts and I can see whats going on around me in this world! But, some people out there have cateracts.. which is forgiveable, but others just plainly put on their horse blinders and refuse to see it because they are too worried about seeing whats directly infront of them and nothing else..

    Eric

  196. Eric Says:

    And when those people put on their horse blinders; They are thinking … Any bad thing I do see is forgiveable.. because here in a second.. I’m not going to have to see it anymore…..Trot..trot…trot…trot….Meanwhile, the snake we just passed is now at your feet and has decided he’s aggrivated and bites you….

  197. Michael Eden Says:

    Eric,

    I too often use the word “stupid” to describe the left.

    When I do so, I am not referring to their IQs, their level of education or anything of the sort. Rather, I am referring to their worldview and what their worldview has done to their ability to comprehend reality.

    Understanding the world as it really is boils down to being able to see – at least in part and to a certain degree given our finiteness – the world as God sees it. The Bible – the Word of God – is the lens that enables us to be able to do that.

    Liberals as a whole reject that Book just as they reject the Judeo-Christian worldview that is based on what that Book teaches.

    Instead of perceiving Truth, liberals turn to a world of theories such as Marxism (which is fundamentally hostile to the Christian world view). And as such, they cannot even possibly see or understand the world as it actually is.

    They literally make themselves stupid by sheer brute force of will. They take the image of God that God bequeathed every human being with (it’s something that babies in the womb have, btw) and they piss it away.

    That’s how I see the blinders that you describe. And they are blinding indeed.

  198. Eric Says:

    Heres another news flash for you…. Obama wants to raise the debt ceiling again of another 1.2 trillion dollars…. So hes letting you know that hes gonna let the dogs loose again. … So lets borrow more money and Print more money… Lets just leave that much more damage for our kids to fix..

    http://video.foxnews.com/v/1387115433001/obama-asks-to-raise-debt-ceiling-again/

  199. Liebegone Says:

    MIchael,

    Your willingness to censor opposing opinions is kind of breathtaking. I’ve never been on a blog in which the moderator felt so threatened by a poster’s opinion that they took the extraordinary step of censorship.

    I guess that means I win.

  200. Michael Eden Says:

    Eric,

    Precisely.

    We’re at a point where the interest on our debt will soon be like an Obama stimulus (his was $862 billion) every single year. That is what we will be paying IN INTEREST.

    Only that stimulus will be going mostly to China and Japan.

    Our children are GUARANTEED to be debt slaves and to live in far poorer circumstances than their parent’s generation that racked up this unpayable debt due to their moral stupidity.

    Liberals say, “Let’s kill 54 million babies and turn the ones who manage to survive our policies into debt slaves.”

  201. Michael Eden Says:

    Liebegone,

    Okay, I’ll allow you back just to dump all over you some more.

    First of all, your last comment was incredibly illustrative of something I just got through writing. You said:

    Your willingness to censor opposing opinions is kind of breathtaking. I’ve never been on a blog in which the moderator felt so threatened by a poster’s opinion that they took the extraordinary step of censorship.

    I guess that means I win.

    I wrote an article about liberal nutjobs just a couple of days ago. In that article I wrote the following:

    In any event, I’ve recently gotten a larger dose in a shorter period of time crap from liberals that I’ve basically been experiencing since the day I got my “very first comment” and it turned out to be from a liberal hater. I’m getting my fill of liberal avoidance and victimism and projection and other disorders.

    “Victimism” in this context is when a liberal practices a particularly bizarre form of psychological jujitsu in order to make themselves the victim in an argument or debate. You see, in their warped little minds, if they can manage to make themselves the victim, they win. It doesn’t matter how strong your case is or how weak theirs is otherwise; in liberalism the victim always wins. Period. And look; they’re the victim!

    So, of course, if I say something mean – (regardless of anything vile they previously said to me) – they become the victim and therefore they win the debate. Because that’s the way their world works.

    I also noted in that very same article that lo and behold I frequently get liberals masquerading as conservatives. Note the recent case in which I called a pseudo-conservative out and he admitted he was playing a game with me. And here you are playing the same snake game with me.

    Thank you for being the poster boy for exactly the kind of pathetic liberal troll I was talking about, Mister Victimism. Thank you for epitomizing precisely the mindset that I was referring to. I really appreciate having yet another example of a whining leftist claiming that I somehow abused him and ergo sum he therefore wins the debate whether he’s got a single damn fact on his side or not.

    That said, you continue to demonstrate that you are a true idiot. Because EVERY blog administrator blocks turds who try to hijack his or her blog, or who make genuinely offensive comments, or who just repeatedly lie out of their anus.

    Now to your other comment. You said:

    I’ll put my conservatism (and my intellect) up against yours any day.

    Here is a quote from you: “In light of the President’s expected rhetorical nod to fiscal responsibility, it’s worth keeping in mind his record on deficits to date. When President Obama took office two years ago, the national debt stood at $10.626 trillion. It now stands at $14.071 trillion — a staggering increase of $3.445 trillion in just 735 days (about $5 billion a day).”

    As you can see, you are in fact the one who made this about deficits, not mere spending. And indeed, this would be the relevant topic for a fiscal conservative

    Let’s dissect this a little bit.

    As for your “conservatism,” what you have already basically stated is that Bill Clinton is the most conservative president we’ve had in decades, because after all you made a big deal about his deficts being low; and under your view of it Ronald Reagan would be one of the most liberal, because weren’t his high? What you don’t understand is that Bill Clinton was a GODAWFUL liberal who got his political ass kicked two years after taking office in 1994 due to his failed policies and huge government mindset. And AFTER he got his liberal ass kicked he said “the era of big government is over.” And he said that because he had lost both the House of Representatives AND the US Senate and the Republcians in power FORCED him to cut spending. I write all about that historical fact here. Versus Reagan, how NEVER had a Republican House for his entire presidency and only even had control of the Senate for a couple of years. He had to compromise with Democrats, and that meant he had to tolerate a lot more spending, which – even though Reagan’s lower taxes resulted in massively more revenue – ultimately increased the deficit.

    Reagan would fall under your “What I have seen, as a conservative, over the past 40 years is a group of people calling themselves conservatives who really aren’t, and I’m getting pretty darned sick of it” spewage.

    Well, I’m getting pretty darned sick of you. And if you think that you should be the guy who gets to define Ronald Reagan out of “conservative” and Bill Clinton INTO “conservative,” well, I’m sicker now. And dumber for having been forced to entertain your thoughts.

    Which is to say you are a conservative my butt. As I’ve already stated.

    As for your boast about your vast intellect, I hope we don’t match up. Because I don’t want to be that dumb.

    Here’s where you proceed to go sheer dumbass stupid:

    Here is a quote from you: “In light of the President’s expected rhetorical nod to fiscal responsibility, it’s worth keeping in mind his record on deficits to date. When President Obama took office two years ago, the national debt stood at $10.626 trillion. It now stands at $14.071 trillion — a staggering increase of $3.445 trillion in just 735 days (about $5 billion a day).”

    As you can see, you are in fact the one who made this about deficits, not mere spending

    Let me go back to my immediately previous words to you:

    “Remember, the discussion is about increasing the deficit,” you say. So you present the deficit under Clinton’s last year (the one Republicans forced him into after Clinton had to go back on everything he’d previously believed in and say, “The era of big government is over”).

    WRONG, YOU IDIOT! The discussion is about BUSH’S spending versus OBAMA’S spending!!! Are you just too damn stupid or something? Are you just immune from basic reality?

    We’re all just supposed to forget the last three years? The entire Obama presidency is something to be overlooked, such that the important discussion is REALLY about Bill Clinton???

    Clinton has been GONE for going on twelve years, you dumbass.

    HERE is the discussion now:

    “The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents – #43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.” — Barack Obama

    What’s the national debt now after Obama demonized Bush, you lying moron??? It is $15.28 trillion dollars, and Obama just imposed another $1.2 trillion (making the debt $16.5 trillion) which will be exhausted even before the election.

    The discussion is whether Bush’s $4 trillion in eight years is worse than Obama’s $6 trillion in four years, you too-stupid-and-too-dishonest-for-me-to-ever-waste-another-second-on dumbass.

    Now, when I said –

    WRONG, YOU IDIOT! The discussion is about BUSH’S spending versus OBAMA’S spending!!!

    – somehow you your malfunctioning neurons interpreted those words as my trying to say all that mattered was “spending” (as opposed to “deficits”) when I WAS SAYING THAT THE DISCUSSION WAS ABOUT BUSH VERSUS OBAMA.

    How many times are you going to try to misrepresent me and my arguments, you conniving jackass? Why should I keep allowing you or anybody else to do so?

    You had been going back to Clinton and forgetting ALL ABOUT OBAMA as though the last three years just didn’t matter. Does nobody but me notice how your chart gives us Slick Willie and then ends in 2008?

    DUMBASS!

    Here is a more complete chart from one of my previous comments on this article, for the record:

    2001 127.3 Billion Dollar Surplus 152.76 Billion Surplus R D R
    2002 157.8 Billion Dollar Deficit 186.204 Billion Deficit R D R
    2003 374 Billion Dollar Deficit 430.1 Billion Deficit R R R
    2004 413 Billion Dollar Deficit 462.56 Billion Deficit R R R
    2005 319 Billion Dollar Deficit 347.71 Billion Deficit R R R
    2006 248 Billion Dollar Deficit 260.4 Billion Deficit R R R
    2007 162 Billion Dollar Deficit 165.24 Billion Deficit R D D
    2008 455 Billion Dollar Deficit 455 Billion Deficit R D D
    2009 1416 Billion Dollar Deficit 1416 Billion Deficit D D D
    2010 1294 Billion Dollar Deficit 1294 Billion Deficit D D D
    2011 1650 Billion Dollar Deficit 1650 Billion Deficit D D R

    It’s those three years of totally insane spending and utterly immoral deficits that matter! Except to YOU, “Mister conservative.” That was the point of my article that you were commenting on, and that was the point I was all-too-patiently attempting to explain to you. But you are just not able to mentally apprehend that even after I tried three times to explain it to you.

    You just aren’t that bright. So somehow you tried to make my point all about “spending” and not “deficits” or maybe “deficits” and not “spending” as long as we could go back to way back when when Clinton was president and ignore the last three years of Obama.

    Clinton is LONG GONE, you dumbass.

    Barack Obama came into power in 2009 with a Democrat House and a Democrat Senate and both our SPENDING and our DEFICIT exploded like nothing the human race as ever witnessed in all of history. But you don’t want to talk aobut any of that, do you, “Mister conservative”???

    This very article that you are commenting on points out that the last Republican Congress that left office in 2006 (before America fell completely apart) wrote a budget that had a deficit of $165 billion. Note that Democrats – and it is CONGRESS that has control of the pursestrings and the spending – took over and gave us a $455 billion deficit the VERY NEXT YEAR. And from that point on these last three blasphemous years (that you wouldn’t talk about) we’ve had $1.5 TRILLION budget deficits.

    So I am very willing to talk about either deficits OR spending, you abject moron.

    What I’m NOT willing to do is go back to Bill Clinton, or Andrew Jackson, or any other president from ancient history when we’ve got an out-of-control fool running things RIGHT THE HELL NOW.

    For the record, you stated in a comment that is still spam that “The Reagan tax cuts (most famously the Economic recovery Act of 1981) reduced revenue from personal income tax from $282 B in 1981 to $276 B in 1982, and to $272 B in 1983.”

    How about the facts: During the Reagan Administration, federal receipts grew at an average rate of 8.2%. How about the fact that federal Income Tax receipts increased from 1980 to 1989, rising from $308.7 Bn to $549.0 Bn. That one alone shows how full of crap you are. How about the fact that Real gross domestic product (GDP) growth recovered strongly after the early 1980s recession ended in 1982, and grew during his eight years in office at an annual rate of 3.85% per year. Sixteen million new jobs were created, while inflation significantly decreased.

    AND HOW ABOUT IF WE COMPARE THAT TO THE GUY WHO IS IN OFFICE RIGHT NOW WHO YOU WILL NOT TALK ABOUT???

    Now I have given you FAR more time than you deserve, and you will henceforth exist only in my spam file.

  202. Anonymous Says:

    Yea, Reagan invented the technological revolution. You sir, are an idiot.

  203. Michael Eden Says:

    Anonymous,

    Hey, dumbass who says I said that Reagan “invented the technological revolution” and then called me an idiot.

    Where exactly did I say that?

    ‘Cause I really don’t think I’ve ever said anything of the sort. And if someone calls somebody an idiot for saying something that somebody didn’t even say, well, that someone is a real idiot.

    Please quote my exact words when you assert bizarre things I’m alleged to have said.

    Oh, and btw, if you’re referring to somebody ELSE who claimed that and you don’t have either the brains or the common decency to bother to refer to the person you’re actually calling out, well, you’d STILL be an idiot, wouldn’t you?

  204. Eric Says:

    Hey Anonymous..

    I called it “The Intelligence Revolution” NOT..”The Technological Revolution”. So,.I guess that excludes you hugh???…lol . And, I didnt say Reagan invented it…. He may have indulged in it with Star Wars Program… But never invented it…What I did say is that Reagan did create NAFTA and GATT.. But, even he wasn’t idiotic enough to sign it into law..unlike your Super Idiot Bill Clinton… Lets put a BIG ‘S’ on his forehead for “Super Idiot”…That stupid moron rode on the coat tails of everybody more intelligent than himself.. The only thing was that he screwed up when he decided to ride on the coat tails of Reagan and thought he would take credit for Reagans work.. Then when it failed, the Democrat Party decided to point the finger at Reagan and Bush because the Reagan Administration created the bill….lol… I know I lived through those eras.. I lived through the eras of Johnson to present…Johnson… suspected of being involved in murdering the president so he could claim presidency and go to war in Vietnam… You wanna talk about Ford and Carter??? Ford, The one president whom bumbled his way into office by being Speaker of the House.. “No one ever elected his sorry ass as president”.But atleast he tried the best he could for the remainder of time he had.. so, dont go blaming that on the Republican Party for running someone like Ford for president….like the Democrats always do by pointing fingers at him…. he was just appointed when the biggest idiot of the Republican Party (Nixon). decided he wasnt going to man-up and chose to step down like a coward….And ever since then, The Democrats have been running on the theory that if it was OK for the Republican Party to do it, Then we will operate like that…Lets talk about Carter… that frickin idiot collapsed the economy and drove inflation through the roof…sorta like Obama hugh??…. botched the job of the Iran Hostage Crisis… and the idiot couldnt even delegate authority to his own administration… a real frickin wussy….At least Reagan offered us hope, and committed to his promise of that hope….

    Best regards….
    Eric

  205. Eric Says:

    and by the way… with Johnson, he wasn’t an official suspect in the murder of JFK. But, the public always knew that something wasnt right with that situation….. Kennedy didnt want to go to war, the Democrat party did, Johnson and Kennedy disliked each other Kennedy always picked on Johnson tremendously. always trying to make Johnson look like a fool. Oswald was just a candy for the public eye…

  206. Eric Says:

    How would that look??? both nationally, and internationally, that the president of the United States was suspected to be a murderer???

  207. Eric Says:

    Ford is one good factor why all of the assassination theorists are wrong when it comes to Obama… Because if Obama is knocked off, and his vice president some how cowards out and leaves office… It leaves Pelosi in charge… Thats a real scary thought… she cant even do her job as Speaker of the House to bring everybody together to form a budget…more less run this country!

  208. Eric Says:

    Sorry, my bad… I get to reminessing in the past and forget who is who… Current Speaker… … (John Boehner)…probably my PTSD acting up again….

  209. Eric Says:

    I guess Im not part of the Intelligence Revolution either…lol

  210. Eric Says:

    And by the way, I consider my political affiliation to be indepenedt with a conservative spot light… Meaning… I dont care who is in office or who wants to be in office.. I call the shot how I see them…Yet, I lean toward a conservative point of view because my original party (Democrats) have been over run by the socialists and liberals…. Yeah I was once Democrat.. and Yeah I voted for Carters sorry ass…. but thats when I started to see what was happening and decided to go independent because my mind kept telling me loyalty to the political party.. I dont want to be Republican.. so, I became independent… at that time you had to either be Republican or Democrat… so, I kept my mouth shut, eyes and ears open and learned a few things along the way..

  211. Eric Says:

    But, at least I am able to stand up on both feet, dust myself off, look you straight in the eye and honestly and truthfully tell you…”I was wrong!”

  212. Eric Says:

    But, the rest of you guys out there cant do that… Why?? Because, your still pointing fingers at one another trying to put the blame off on the other guy rather than looking at the problems we have at hand trying to figure out how to go about fixing them…

  213. Eric Says:

    What the next president needs to do is 1) call his administration to council sit down and explain to them that any bill passed off since the Reagan Administration (whether its an earmark to a bill or not) Needs to be analyzed and amended… I dont care whether it takes having to hire 2000 lawyers for the next 4 years… we need to propose amendments to everything. Then, to bring all those Senators and presidents whom were responsible for passing this crap and hold them accountable in front of the Supreme Court.. And if they are dead, then they will be dug up, reburied in a prison graveyard until their sentence is completed.
    That would get some eyes rolling for the next set of idiots and chaos breeders so eager to jump at the position.

  214. Eric Says:

    Here is my definitions of liberals, socialists and communists.

    A liberal is a brainless socialist. (sheeple.. for the socialist movement).
    There is no difference between a socialist and a communist except for the communist achieves his goals at the point of a gun, and the socialist achieves his goals through the tip of a fountain pen.

    With that said, I have more respect for a communist because a communist has the integrity to pronounce what he is and how he does it. where the socialist tries to hide what he is and how he does it by going behind your back with a fountain pen trying to force his agenda through rewriting history to his liking (a lie from what actually happened) and attaching his laws through loopholes in the system.

  215. Eric Says:

    Here is what is going on with this country’s spending habits….. Your politicians know that we are going to lose our AAA status in the world and become a second rate country….So, what do most people do right before they declare bankruptcy??? They max out their charge cards, buy the most stuff they can to survive for a little while, borrow as much money as they can and then go bankrupt because they know that the lawyers are gonna pull their credit cards from them, seize their bank accounts, and liquidate anything that is traceable and apply the same to anyone who has any legal attachment to your financial responsibilities…….

    Nice going people you just liquidated your children and sold them into slavery.

  216. Michael Eden Says:

    Eric,

    Regarding this comment by you, you can start to see why I am so “mean” after blogging four years.

    I get that kind of crap all the time, and I don’t have the time or the patience to correct the lies of people who (I believe intentionally) misrepresent me or my arguments.

    This guy Liebegone fundamentally tried to misrepresent my argument saying,

    “I have a hard time buying what you’re selling. That Bush inherited a hole from Clinton? That Obama didn’t inherit a hole from Bush? This is worse than nonsense.”

    I never said anything like that: it was a fabricated straw man. So I had to defend myself against pure crap.

    Then Liebegone just as deceitfully proceeds to try to make the argument about Clinton vs. Bush, when Clinton was president 20 damn years ago. As though that is more important than what Obama is doing RIGHT NOW.

    So I have to keep bringing it back to the actual subject at hand – and frankly the only one that actually matters: the last three years and what Obama has done since Bush.

    Then Liebegone tried to again misrepresent my argument to make it all about spending instead of deficits or deficts instead of spending. Like that distinction even matters as we’re about to plunge off a financial cliff due to out-of-control spending AND out-of-control deficits.

    And again I was supposed to waste my time answering to a straw man created by a guy who is just plain dishonest.

    Again and again, this guy misrepresented me, tried to change the subject and tried to undermine my credibility by misrepresentation. And when I finally blocked him – after giving him more say than he deserved – he whined about it and used the exact same words and the exact same tactics that I had written about liberals using just a couple of days earlier.

    If you keep doing this, you get very impatient dealing with people like that.

  217. Sean Says:

    Holy cow. I didn’t think it was possible for people to cram so much stupidity into one comments section. I love how people enjoying cherry picking “facts” and bending these “facts” to support their per-determined conclusion. Let’s face it: this has nothing to do with facts but rather trying to justify your own worldview instead of trying to have an intellectually honest discussion about a very serious set of issues that TRANSCENDS party lines and will likely negatively affect us decades into the future irregardless of whether we pull the red lever or the blue lever.

    You guys are hopeless. Maybe we should think about how we are going to get out of this mess (hint: I dont think partisan political nonsense is REALLY going to help us!). Nah, that’ requires critical thinking and that’s haaard. Not that it matters, we’re screwed either way.

  218. Michael Eden Says:

    Sean,

    I suppose it’s possible that the gist of what you say may be true.

    But I couldn’t help but notice that YOU have no “facts” to provide whatsoever.

    And I’m willing to confess that maybe it’s just me, I actually prefer someone who tries to argue for his worldview with FACTS than someone who brings nothing to the table but a tone of sneering condescension.

    It’s possible that you are so completely cynical that you don’t believe in any sort of objective truth whatsoever; or to put it another way, that no worldview is any better than any other.

    That would include YOUR worldview, for the record. Which is to say you would be every bit as “hopeless” as all the rest of us poor suckers. Which would then destroy your smugness; because you’re just as much a fool cramming “so much stupidity into one comments section” as all the rest of us fools, aren’t you?

    I for one beg to differ; I very MUCH believe that one worldview is right and all the others are wrong. I also believe the issue that most endangers us is government spending, and as we speak there is one party that is truly trying to reign in that spending; and there is another party that is demonizing them at every turn for that effort.

  219. Eric Says:

    Sean…

    Exactly… Thats what I am trying to express to everyone… but everyone keeps wanting to point fingers and blame the other guy…No!… they need to take on the responsibility for their own decisions and actions first. Then decide what we are going to do about fixing the problem at hand.

    Eric

  220. Michael Eden Says:

    Eric,

    You’re right and you’re wrong.

    A lot of the type of finger pointing that we see from our elected officials is truly meaningless. It doesn’t accomplish anything.

    But we need to ask some basic questions: is the federal government spending too much or too little? Is Obama raising the national debt by $6 trillion in three years good (heck, maybe he should double down which is basically what he wants to do) or it is very, very bad. We’ve got two choices: to believe in keynesian economics – which holds that the government must spend massively to grow the economy (and many liberals decried the massive Obama stimulus on the grounds THAT WE DIDN’T SPEND ENOUGH) – or we should believe in economic freedom and the free market system. It is one or the other, Eric. They cannot both be the correct course.

    It is beyond obvious that the liberals/Democrats and the conservatives/Republcians represent mutually exclusive worldviews (as Sean put it). One of them is right and the other one is dangerous.

    Let me cite an article that underscores my point:

    A National Debt Of $14 Trillion? Try $211 Trillion
    by NPR Staff
    August 6, 2011

    When Standard & Poor’s reduced the nation’s credit rating from AAA to AA-plus, the United States suffered the first downgrade to its credit rating ever. S&P took this action despite the plan Congress passed this past week to raise the debt limit.

    The downgrade, S&P said, “reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government’s medium-term debt dynamics.”

    It’s those medium- and long-term debt problems that also worry economics professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff, who served as a senior economist on President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers. He says the national debt, which the U.S. Treasury has accounted at about $14 trillion, is just the tip of the iceberg.

    “We have all these unofficial debts that are massive compared to the official debt,” Kotlikoff tells David Greene, guest host of weekends on All Things Considered. “We’re focused just on the official debt, so we’re trying to balance the wrong books.”

    Kotlikoff explains that America’s “unofficial” payment obligations — like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits — jack up the debt figure substantially.

    “If you add up all the promises that have been made for spending obligations, including defense expenditures, and you subtract all the taxes that we expect to collect, the difference is $211 trillion. That’s the fiscal gap,” he says. “That’s our true indebtedness.”

    We don’t hear more about this enormous number, Kotlikoff says, because politicians have chosen their language carefully to keep most of the problem off the books.

    “Why are these guys thinking about balancing the budget?” he says. “They should try and think about our long-term fiscal problems.”

    According to Kotlikoff, one of the biggest fiscal problems Congress should focus on is America’s obligation to make Social Security payments to future generations of the elderly.

    “We’ve got 78 million baby boomers who are poised to collect, in about 15 to 20 years, about $40,000 per person. Multiply 78 million by $40,000 — you’re talking about more than $3 trillion a year just to give to a portion of the population,” he says. “That’s an enormous bill that’s overhanging our heads, and Congress isn’t focused on it.”

    “We’ve consistently done too little too late, looked too short-term, said the future would take care of itself, we’ll deal with that tomorrow,” he says. “Well, guess what? You can’t keep putting off these problems.”

    To eliminate the fiscal gap, Kotlikoff says, the U.S. would have to have tax increases and spending reductions far beyond what’s being negotiated right now in Washington.

    “What you have to do is either immediately and permanently raise taxes by about two-thirds, or immediately and permanently cut every dollar of spending by 40 percent forever. The [Congressional Budget Office’s] numbers say we have an absolutely enormous problem facing us.”

    Let me ask a question with an obvious answer: which party is the party of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid? Which party is the party that has refused to reform any of these in any way, shape or form? Which party has demonized the other party for ANY effort whatsoever to reform these boondoggles which are killing us?

    It is simply a fact that the Democrat Party is responsible for 99% of the actual debt that is killing us. That is a FACT. And if there is any such thing in this world as moral responsibility, then we should be “pointing fingers” at the poltical party that has crippled us with a debt burden that we can never possibly repay.

    Ultimately, the American people must make a choice as to which philosphy they want to risk their survival on – because we’re to the point where our national survival is very much in doubt.

    So if you want to call it “finger pointing,” fine. But I’m calling for the American people to make a choice, and to make the right one before liberalism destroys us.

    We as a people need to either elect CONSERVATIVE Republicans in a landslide and give them the mandate they need to turn our death spiral around, or we need to go the way of the Dodo bird.

  221. Anonymous Says:

    You discredit you’re entire page by using language like “You see, in their warped little minds” you biased prick.

  222. Eric Says:

    Yes,
    But, we all know who is responsible. Yet, all the finger pointing is doing is insinuating an argument and nothing gets accomplished. Did Reagan Finger Point… From Time to Time yes.. But for the most part no. Because he knew that it was like two kids getting into an argument. Because big bubby knows that he can get little bubby upset even more just by whispering to him.. your at fault..and nothing will be accomplished. He thinks mom & dad are looking at him as being more mature than his little brother.. but, they know what he is doing in the back ground. All fingerpointing does is antagonizes the immature and nothing ever gets accomplished rather than putting down the numbers on a piece of paper without assigning responsiblity to them and trying to fix the problem. Because as soon as you put a name by a problem, your liberal base is going to get upset and start yacking their BS…Ultimately it is not the responsibility of either party involved in creating the mess… It is our responsibility of a people as a whole to take responsibility for our own actions and fix the problem. (with or without the politicians/government)…

  223. Eric Says:

    If people want to be handled with Kid Gloves…. then handle them with Kid Gloves.. long enough to fix the frickin problem… Then after the problem is solved.. you can fight and argue about who is at fault until your hearts content.

  224. Eric Says:

    Now.. is your article about instigation or problem solving? Because, you know how your liberal base will try to spin shit and create chaos in order to confuse everyone else and deter their eyes from the real matter at hand so they can have the satisfaction of saying ” See I am right!”… Because you know that that is what they are about.. Instead.. your article should have been named.. Who is the biggest spend thrift Obama or Bush?…

  225. Eric Says:

    You see, a Liberal is like your pet dog… you never beat him with your hand… always roll up a newspaper and whop his ass when he is wrong…That way, your pet dog isnt afraid of you…He wont be afraid to be buddies whith you because when he sees your hand waving around.. he just knows something is wrong yet, he will still come near you to make nice with you and be your pal… But, if he sees a newspaper especially when it is being rolled up… he knows somethings on.. and he cowars away…

  226. Eric Says:

    You see, dogs and liberals have the same mentality… neither of them retain information long term except for commands and sudden impact situations. They both operate on a short-term survival instinct (survival at the current moment). Yet, they know to run when they see a news paper and they come running when you have goodies in your hand..lol

  227. Eric Says:

    Now some dogs just like some liberals have no loyalty.. they will attack the hand that feeds them when they see that the moment is in teir favor without thinking about the consequences of how it will impact the future…. Those are the dogs that you expose.

  228. Eric Says:

    or should I say expunge…

  229. Michael Eden Says:

    Eric,

    Reagan succeeded in his overarching vision for America: to defeat the Soviet Union and end the existential threat of global communism. And he succeeded in winning a war that began under Truman in 1945 and continued until Reagan finally ended it in the very short aftermath of his presidency in 1989.

    Other than that, Reagan did NOT succeed. As the left loves to point out, spending (and deficits) skyrocketed. Reagan raised revenue MASSIVELY with his tax cuts which increased investment, but he was unable to do ANYTHING to reign in Democrat spending.

    Reagan wanted to spend massively on military and intelligence capabilities – which Jimmy Carter had gutted during his misbegotten and failed presidency. But Democrats would not cut so much as one penny from ANY of their massive government programs. The end result was that government spent massively more.

    So, in the sense that we are referring to here about spending, Reagan failed. And that can’t be our model now (letting Democrats have what they want as long as we can have what we want).

    If you believe that sweet talking the left is the path to get them to fundamentally acknowledge the error of their ways and start governing like Republicans, I welcome you to start your own blog and try to make your little dream come true.

    My view is that the Democrat Party has to be crushed, because they are the rigid ideological barrier that will prevent America from having any chance whatsoever to escape the debt death-spiral that I documented in my last comment to you.

  230. Michael Eden Says:

    Anonymous,

    Normally I block people out of hand who use the kind of profanity you introduce yourself.

    But you so refute yourself that I had to post you before blocking you. And apologize to my readers for allowing your language.

    You say:

    You discredit you’re entire page by using language like “You see, in their warped little minds” you biased prick.”

    Let us unpack that for a second:

    I discredit myself by using language about your “warped little minds.”

    But YOU don’t discredit YOURSELF for using language about me being a “biased prick.”

    Only that kind of thinking happens ONLY in a liberal universe where 100 percent distilled purified abject hypocrisy is the ocean you vile little liberal fishes swim in.

    Notice also that anonymous offers NOTHING beyond his personal attack of me. The facts don’t matter to liberals like him; only his hate and abject moral hypocrisy matters. I can’t argue or reason with this guy. He doesn’t care about facts or arguments.

    But there are those of you who say, “But if you’re nice and polite and courteous to him he’ll become a completely different person and suddenly the facts WILL matter to him and you can change his mind and convince him that every single thing he’s ever thought in his entire useless life have been wrong. I just don’t think so.

    And those who tell me I’m mean etc. need to realize that I deal with people like this creep every single day. I’ve been dealing with their hate and their hypocrisy for four years. And I frankly don’t have any time for it at all.

  231. Eric Says:

    I will try to tone my vocabulary down also.

  232. Eric Says:

    Im just saying handle them with kid gloves.. because if they are not part of their own party, then part of them want to join your party and screw it up just as bad

  233. Eric Says:

    All I am trying to say is let the hall monitors (squeeky wheels) cry to the principal because thats all they will ever know how to do in life… At least the nerds and the geeks don’t cry to anyone.. they tend to keep their mouths shut about stuff try to make friends with the populars and want to be acknowledged for what they are….Smart brainiacs and thinkers.

  234. Eric Says:

    Liberals are the same kind of people that call the police or Association to come and fine his neighbor $75 because his neighbor is at work all the time trying to hump his butt on overtime trying to make ends meet and make the mortgage while his trashcans are sitting in his driveway until 10 or 11:00 at night. The same kind of people that call the cops to report a ficticious crack house because they dont like their neighbors. The same kind of people that rather than taking their shopping cart back to the cart corral after unloading the groceries in their car, leave the car standing there on a windy day facing your car.. then laughs about it as they leave…. Your not gonna get around their stupid crap in the world.

  235. Eric Says:

    And the only way they are gonna learn that they are wrong is if the same kind of people start doing it to them on a constant basis… If someone of better class does it to them, then they get mad about your cart hitting their car, and they try to blame all of the 250 dents and scratches pre-existing on their car.. they try to blame it on you when they go ask the store for their surveillance tapes.

  236. Eric Says:

    You see they laugh about it as they leave because they know that its gonna hit your nice looking car, scratch and dent it pretty good… All because their theory / notion in life is….. If I havent got anything nice… Then, no one else in life deserves it either….They want to sit on their butts while everyone pays their way and do nothing to improve their situation, Then say everyone else is holding them down and demand half of what everyone else has so they can bring everyone else down to their crappy situation in life. Its easier to pull someone in the wter with you as they are reaching out to you so you dont drown… rather than working at using their hand for guidance and support to swim your way back to the surface of the water.

  237. Eric Says:

    Here’s a good quote for all you sheeple out there…. Benjamin Franklin ..”If you make yourselves sheep, the wolves will eat you.”

  238. Michael Eden Says:

    Eric,

    Good one. That may be where “sheeple” came from.

    I believe that people fall into three categories: the sheep, the wolves and the sheepdogs. And I consider myself a sheepdog who tries to (as viciously as is necessary) protect the sheep from stupidly electing liberal wolves who rely on Marxist class warfare to devour the prosperity of America.

  239. Liebegone Says:

    I look forward to going to Blogs Rater and crowing about how I so intimidated you with mere facts and logic that you had to keep other posters from seeing me beating you. You are toast in the blogosphere.

  240. Michael Eden Says:

    Liebegone,

    Do your worst, you rabid little cockroach.

    Frankly, I wouldn’t mourn the loss of anybody who relies on your opinion for pretty much anything.

    Anybody who wants to see how you warp and pervert your “facts and logic” is welcome to review our exchange.

    Now please get lost. Your fabricated straw mans, your willingness to rely on deceit and your ignorance are just too “intimidating” for me to put up with.

  241. wolfpaw Says:

    In the 2nd paragraph you say Bush increased the debt by 5 Trillion. Then, in the red and blue chart, you say he only increased it by 2.4 Trillion. Which is it?

  242. Michael Eden Says:

    That is a good question, wolfpaw.

    Although let me point out the technical fact that I didn’t make either claim as much as I cited other (more) legitimate reporting sources that did.

    The figure of Bush’s actual increase of debt was something close to five trillion. That’s total debt.

    Given your question, I went back and took a quick look at the “red and blue” chart. From my reading, that was examing the increase in the PUBLIC debt, which is only part of the TOTAL debt.

    Here is a Wikipedia article on the US public debt that may further inform you: basically there are two components of our “national debt”: the public debt and the intragovernmental debt.

    Here is an important point made right after the red and blue chart:

    As the graph above shows, the debt held by the public increased $2.4 trillion between 2000 and 2008, from $3.4 trillion to $5.8 trillion. Under President Obama’s budget proposal, the debt held by the public is projected to increase $6.1 trillion between 2008 and 2012, from $5.8 trillion to $11.9 trillion.

    Here is another article that uses some of the same numbers that the one in my article does and explains them in a different way:

    Estimated Budget Totals for 2008-2010 Show Government Public Debt Rise 63 Percent
    Published February 26, 2009 | FOXNews.com

    If passed, President Obama’s spending and tax blueprint for 2010 will mean the U.S. government’s debt will increase 63 percent in two years.

    The publicly held debt — money that is owed by the government to foreign and domestic creditors — was 40.8 percent of gross domestic product in 2008. That increased to 58.7 percent based on projections for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1, and will rise again to 64.6 percent in 2010 under Obama’s proposed budget.

    Gross domestic product is a dollar value of all the finished goods and services produced by the nation. The United States’ GDP was $14.22 trillion in 2008, of which $5.8 trillion was debt held by the public. In 2009, GDP is projected to increase to $14.4 trillion but the publicly held debt will rise to $8.3 trillion. According to Obama’s budget plan, the economy will reach $14.7 trillion. Public debt will rise to $9.5 trillion.

    Click here for a list of budget totals for President Obama’s 2010 spending and tax blueprint, compared with 2008 numbers and estimates for 2009.

    Basically, in answer to your question, it’s both. The $5 trillion and the $2.4 trillion figures you question are simply two different ways of looking at the debt and pointing out how incredibly out-of-control Obama truly is. The “red and blue” chart is looking at public debt and documenting that it increased “only” $2.4 trillion during Bush’s entire presidency, versus Obama who has already increased that same debt by $6.1 trillion in JUST FOUR YEARS.

    Btw, our REAL debt is far, far higher than our national debt. It is actually more than $211 TRILLION.

    And when you read that, you can note that when you consider our ACTUAL debt, 99-plus percent of it was created by DEMOCRATS.

  243. John Says:

    My personal fix for our government:

    1.Create a flat tax of 23% for Income tax.

    2.Have a 15% tax for capital gains, and a 7.5% tax for capital gains if they invest in American created businesses.

    3.Drop the laws for marijuana.
    Every statistic I have seen shows it is not harmful. If we legalize it we will: create jobs, help the economy, have less drug dealers, and people will reap the medical benefits.

    4.Lower the minimum wage.
    The current minimum wage is above the market rate, which causes the unemployment rate to rise. This means less people having jobs, less people paying taxes, and a bigger debt for our government.

    5.Make the government smaller.
    Example: There is no reason for the government to be involved in our energy or agriculture. This crowds out private growth, raising the unemployment rate. We need people to start business and create jobs, not the government.

    Almost 50% of Americans pay $0 in taxes. Where as the top 10% of Americans pay 70% of taxes. It does make sense for the richer to pay more in taxes, that is why a flat tax is fair. If you use percents, the more money you make, the more money you pay.

    The people who say the rich are not paying enough, seem to want the top 10% to pay 100% of the taxes. This seems unfair and rather lazy.

  244. Michael Eden Says:

    John,

    Other than the marijuana thing, I believe you’re dead on. And a very good short summary as to why your points have merit.

    And while I personally believe that pot IS dangerous in that it attacks the brain and is extremely psychologically addictive, that’s just not an issue that I’m willing to fight to the death over either way. If I could get the other four very good things you mention, I’d go with your legalizing pot.

  245. John Says:

    I guess we can agree to disagree on #3. Now we just need people to start accepting FACTS.
    The top 1% earn 20% of the money. Then they pay 38% of the taxes.

    Yes, they don’t pay enough, that makes PERFECT sense(sarcasm).

    Hopefully people will start understanding math and stop basing their decisions on “feelings”.

  246. Michael Eden Says:

    John,

    Agreed on #3.

    Also agreed on your point about the fact that the “rich” pay MORE than their “fair share.”

    The Democrat Party counts on 1) ignorance and 2) self-centered envy and greed to sell 3) sugar-coated Marxism.

    Karl Marx expressed the central economic thesis of communism as follows: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

    In spite of repeated challenges, I have never heard a single Democrat explain how their party and Marxism were different in terms of that central economic principle.

    Which is to say that communists and Democrats are “different” only in degree of communism, not in the underlying central tenets that define communism.

  247. John Says:

    I just wish I could get them to admit it when they are wrong. They base all of their decisions on what they THINK is right, not what is proven to be right. I have been having a discussion with 2 liberals these past 2 days. Its like I have to find them to just admit when they are wrong, and then when i finally do, they just go off on a totally different tangent. It can get very frustrating, as I am sure you know.

    Hopefully you can break through their hardheadedness.

    My philosophy when going into a debate is for both sides to be willing to change their mind. If not that it is an immovable object meeting an unstoppable force. Be confident and sure about what you know, but at least have an open mind. I find that most liberals I argue with will defend their ways till the end, even past the point where they have been proven wrong MULTIPLE times.

    They will grab at their small grain of truth and try to make it support all of their ideals.

  248. Michael Eden Says:

    John,

    You hit one of the two major dilemmas right in the head (the other being the level of anger dividing this country).

    Liberalism is a religious faith committment. That’s why it is virtually impossible to prove them right with facts or arguments – no matter how good your facts/arguments are or how weak the liberals’ are.

    I remember something Ann Coulter wrote:

    Conforming to pattern, when a commission was convened to investigate intelligence failures that preceded 9/11, Republicans mistakenly imagined that the purpose of the commission was to investigate intelligence failures, not to be a partisan game for Democrats to rewrite history.

    And while Bush appointed moderates willing to investigate, the Democrats stacked their numbers with ideologues such as Jamie Gorelick who actually had been overwhelmingly responsible for the failures (such as Jamie Gorelick, who had created the “wall” that had made it impossible for the FBI and CIA to share what they knew with one another. The FBI couldn’t even be told that dangerous terrorists were IN the country because of that “wall.”).

    Here’s another example on Social Security reform:

    The Left now acts as if this never happened. For instance, in a recent television appearance, liberal commentator Bill Press argued that–rather than noisy disagreement–”Americans want discussion” on health-care reform. Who could disagree with that sentiment–except, perhaps, the Obama administration, which pushed Congress to rush through legislation by early August? This timeline was clearly aimed at preempting discussion and presenting the public with a “done deal” on health reform. As one protester put it, the president spent more time choosing a dog than he did discussing health-care reform.

    Likewise, Mr. Press complained that opponents hadn’t put their own reform plans on the table. “The people who are there to protest–what are they for? Are they for the status quo? The Republicans haven’t put any other plan on the table.” But did congressional Democrats offer their own alternative to President Bush’s 2005 Social Security plan? When a fellow Democrat asked Rep. Nancy Pelosi when their party would offer its own Social Security plan, her answer was “Never. Is that soon enough for you?” Democrats would not even negotiate until personal retirement accounts were taken off the table. Why should Republicans act differently today, regarding the “public option”?

    Today our unfunded liabilities – due to Democrats’ Social Security and Medicare – is over $211 TRILLION. Democrats have killed this country. And they killed this country by imposing utterly failed Ponzi scheme programs on America and then refusing to budge so much as an inch from them while we go bankrupt. Medicare will be BANKRUPT by 2017, but when Paul Ryan attempted a commonsense reform Democrats found a Ryan-lookalike to push an old lady in a wheelchair off a cliff in a fearmonger ad.

    Now, if Democrats were actually considering “facts,” they would look at that cold hard fact of a $211 trillion unpayable debt and they would come to their senses. BUT THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT FACTS. That’s the problem.

    Instead the people who CAUSED 99.9 percent of the crisis we now face are the people who call Republicans “the party of obscructionism.” Never mind that they constantly apply that label to us because we won’t compromise on participating in class warfare with them and help them demonize the rich who create jobs and invest in our economy. They know full well that that is an issue upon which we’re not going to cave; but they hype it anyway because they’re not interested in a solution, but only in scoring demagoguery points.

    My own view is you have to rise up to meet such militancy, rather than cave in and “compromise” to it. And if you show up willing to compromise, you’re side will be the only one that gives up anything. We can’t compromise with the left because they are rabid; all we can do is defeat them.

    And the same is true for the level of attacks. Negative attacks WORK. That was how Democrts demonized their way to victory in 2006; they viciously blamed Bush for EVERYTHING. They went after him on Iraq and they went after him on the Katrina disaster like nothing I’ve ever seen. You look at when our economy began to tank and you look at the fact that Democrats were running 2/3rds of the government, and you’d think they bore some responsibility for the collapse in 2008 – but NADA! Blame Bush Blame Bush Blame Bush Blame Bush Blame Bush Blame Bush Blame Bush Blame Bush Blame Bush Blame Bush Blame Bush Blame Bush Blame Bush Blame Bush Blame Bush Blame Bush.

    And the very same people from the left who viciously tore Bush down one bloody chunk of meat at a time now self-righteously lecture me to tone down my vitriol.

    And now we’re supposedly morally wrong for blaming Obama. And of course we’re told we only blame Obama because we’re racist, because if Obama was a white socialist instead we we’d love him and welcome his destructive policies.

    I go with how Reagan compromised: only from a position of true strength. And only when we’re getting most of what we want. That’s the only way to negotiate with either Soviet communists or Democrats (which is today a synonym for the same thing).

    We’re truly in a culture war. We are as divided as we were in 1860. Conservatives and liberals have polar opposite goals for America. If our division were sufficiently border-related geographically like it was in 1860, we’d have another Civil War.

  249. Tyler Says:

    Where did Liebegone go??

  250. Tyler Says:

    Liebegone brought some interesting points to this awesome read that he should be able to continue his argument. Obviously he’s exactly right, neither party is conservative anymore, and this entire stream of information suggests just that. Both parties are self- interested, profoundly corrupt and all politicians for all I know are laughing all the way to pay day, oh wait…insider trading means they are getting paid virtually everyday. I voted for Obama dammit, might be one of the worst Presidents in my 38 years who happened to follow the then second worst President in my limited lifetime. He was supposed to curb the war in Iraq, from what I understand he increased DOD contracts despite pulling our troops back, he was supposed to curb the vehement rhetoric in Washington, he instead gives us Obamacare and as you state increased spending over revenue. There needs to be a place on the ballott that reads None Of The Above, so these liars in Washington understand I’m paying attention and learning that both sides are wasting my contribution to this great country. Personally, I find I believe in Ron Paul more than any of the options out there too bad I won’t be allowed the opportunity to vote for him, seems the most honest, principled, actual conservative out there! It’s too bad that these dammed politicians don’t do what we tell them to do or our opinions and positions would surely be something to clown on!

  251. Tyler Says:

    The funniest and perhaps saddest reality is that it took a President like Bush to create Obama. After 8 years of Bush, his ineptitude gave rise to the guy who just had to be better than the last and that is the road to the Whitehouse, the “lessor of the last evil”.

  252. Michael Eden Says:

    Where did Liebegone go??

    Tyler,

    You seem to be claiming that you read through the comments quite thoroughly and came to an informed decision about Liebegone’s “contribution.”

    And yet you actually read through the comments so poorly that you don’t know where he went???

    In your follow up comment, you say,

    Obviously he’s exactly right, neither party is conservative anymore, and this entire stream of information suggests just that.

    Let me ask you a few questions:

    What was the “conservative” way to deal with the $862 billion stimulus? Would a conservative be for or against that?

    Democrats were in lock step support of that stimulus. Here’s an article from the Huffington Post to denote the Republican side: “Stimulus Passes With Zero Republican Support.”

    Oh, and by the way, the TRUE cost of that stimulus that Republicans stood against turns out to be $3.27 TRILLION, according to the CBO.

    Now, you and Liebegone can tell me all damn day long that the “conservative” position was to go with the Democrats and pass that generational theft act. It’s what “conservative” Liebegone’s hero (as shown in his posts) Bill Clinton would have done.

    I’ll simply be the guy laughing in both of your faces and mocking you that you actually think people are stupid enough to believe you when you claim the mantle of “conservative.”

    Let me play this fun game again with ObamaCare, the socialist takeover of our health care system that followed the same lies we were told about Medicare and Medicaid that are now putting the USA $211 TRILLION in real debt.

    What was the “conservative” response to ObamaCare, Tyler? And which party took that side?

    You idiots who want to say the Republican Party isn’t any more “conservative” than the Democrats are so full of fecal matter that you even stink when you post comments over the internet.

    I voted for Obama dammit, might be one of the worst Presidents in my 38 years

    You dumbasses who voted for Obama are going to lecture ME about what a “real conservative” looks like now??? I was there WARNING you jackasses! You already proved you don’t have the first clue!!! But now you’ve become an “expert” all of a sudden.

    You aren’t any smarter now than you were when you voted for Obama, Tyler; you’re just incredibly dumb in a slightly different way.

    For the record, the last deficit Republicans passed (yes, I know, it’s amazing; Republicans actually PASSED a budget!!! I know what you and Liebegone will say: how “anti-conservative of them!!!) had a $162 billion deficit. That was a lot. Oh, unless you consider that EVERY SINGLE DEFICIT UNDER OBAMA HAS BEEN WAAAAAAYYY OVER A TRILLION DOLLARS.

    Republicans aren’t perfect. EVERYBODY agrees with that. But they are the best chance we’ve got of having “conservatives” running anything. And every “real conservative” is going to vote Republican and keep trying to make the party better from the inside rather than voting for slimebags like Obama.

  253. Michael Eden Says:

    The funniest and perhaps saddest reality is that it took a President like Bush to create Obama.

    So THAT’S the form the “blame Bush” argument will ultimately degenerate into?

    “We knew it was Bush’s fault all along, and see we were right!!! It was BUSH who gave us Obama! Vote Democrat! Vote for the eternally Bush derangement syndrome party!!!

  254. Tyler Says:

    I’m not lecturing anyone, problem you have is that guys like me do not agree with either you nor the “dumbass liberals” you call them. I understand you will describe a political, limited “box” to define me, and that’s your proactive or view of things, fine. My issue is if I could find a fiscal conservative who was a social liberal, or a person devoted to real “limited government” on all issues, than I would follow. I’ve always felt if I could get the Democrats out of my wallet, and the Republicans out of my mind, or morality than I would be free of Governent control completely. Can’t believe this ideal is not more widely spread, or why people like Government control on some level. You seem like you want Government to dictate quite alot to me and yet feel so strongly about limiting the involvement of Government in the economy, why the dichotomy of principles?
    As far as Obama and my vote, he never sent me an email or told me that he was going to spend this much money this fast, it never came up, nor did he mention Obamacare, his love of Hitler or Commnist Russia. I had hopes we would get out Iraq quicker but I understand we are rebuilding the country Bush decided to destroy, I had hopes that we would get our young boys and girls out of harms way in a Afghanistan instead of Nation Building another enemy. I’m not at all happy with President Obama and may likely not vote for him again, he in fact followed some of your Government Interventionist principles you probably espouse here in California that has sent tax revenue back to the street and to your criminal! It’s too bad the Republican’s are such hypocrites, or private businesses could be thriving in this state in a variety of ways including marrying a bunch of people who wish to express their union. Ironic, that those who believe in the Sanctity of Marraige would vote for a three time adulterer, by the way didn’t Republican Bob Barr’s daughter kill one of those 54 Million kids you claim to defend, shame on you righteous….or is do as I say?….

  255. Michael Eden Says:

    Tyler,

    A few things,

    Number one you’re lecturing me every bit as much as I’m lecturing you. The difference is that you can’t face up to it. I get criticism all the time from – yes, moral relativist liberals – who criticize me up one side and down the other. And they are so self-righteous about how “judgmental” we conservatives are. And then I’ll ask the simple question, “Are you saying I’m wrong?” And then all of a sudden the very same people who were just demonizing/attacking/criticizing me all over the place are suddenly stumbling all over themselves to say, “No, I’m not judging you.” And, of course, yes they are; they’re just too much of a bunch of dishonest hypocrites to admit it.

    Number two there’s a difference between espousing good moral values and living up to those values. Let’s say I tell you that murder is wrong and then I go out and lose it and kill somebody the next day; does that mean that murder isn’t really wrong??? If a Republican doesn’t live up to the values he espouses, how on earth does that make those values false??? To address your specific example, if Bob Barr’s daughter has an abortion, does that make abortion right??? And are you trying to actually argue that Bob Barr ought to have the right to forcibly prevent his daughter from having an abortion, such that HE is responsible for HER action???

    And oh my gosh that is just so incredibly judgmental of you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    So apparently what you stand for is pure amoralism. Only you are pretty damn self-righteous in your condemnation of a whole array of issues across the board to be able to claim that you stand for having no values. It’s just that you are every bit as quick to criticize me as standing for the sanctity of marriage as I am to criticize you as standing AGAINST the sanctity of marriage.

    So, yes you are too lecturing me. You just don’t have the integrity to admit it.

    Number three, when you talk about getting “the Republicans out of my mind, or morality…” you run very afoul of our founding fathers who profoundly disagreed with you.

    Let me start with the words and meaning of George Washington in his Farewell Address given on September 17, 1796:

    What are the foundations of America? After 45 years of public service, George Washington, our greatest patriot and the father of our country, gives his farewell address. He says, ‘We need to remember what brought us here. We need to remember what made us different from all the other nations across Europe and the rest of the world. We have to remember what our foundations are.’ It was the road map, showing us how we’d become what we were, and how to preserve it. It has long been considered the most important address ever given by any US president. President Lincoln set aside an entire day for the entire Union Army and had them read and understand it. Woodrow Wilson did the same during WWI. But we haven’t studied it in schools for over 45 years, so your lack of understanding is understandable. Washington said:

    Of all the habits and dispositions which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” — George Washington, Farewell Address

    If you want your politics to prosper, the two things you will not separate will be religion and morality. If you want your government to work well, if you want American exceptionalism, if you want the government to do right, if you want all this, then you won’t separate religion and morality from political life. And America’s greatest patriot gave a litmus test for patriotism. He says in the very next sentence (immediately continuing from the quote above):

    In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars.” — George Washington

    Washington says, Anyone who would try to remove religion and morality from public life, I won’t allow them to call themselves a patriot. Because they are trying to destroy the country.

    So I’m left channelling the father of our country and asking you, “why are you trying to destroy the country?” And, “Why aren’t you a patriot?” Because George Washington specifically stated for the historical record that you are NOT a patriot.

    And please see here for a rather large assemblage of quotes from our founding fathers about the NEED to bring religion and morality into this country.

    Whose Country Do We Want: Our Founding Fathers’ Or Our Secular Contemporaries’?

    Now, as to your last point about just never being capable of grasping what Obama would do if he got elected, yes, Tyler, the word “dumbass” applies to you quite precisely.

    I have been at this blogging thing for nearly all of 2008, and I wrote article after article – along with numerous other conservatives – talking until I was blue in the face of what a financial disaster Obama would be for America. I and we were also crystal clear about the fact that many of his promised policies – such as shutting down Gitmo – were utterly impossible and only an idiot would believe them.

    And you only serve as a case in point about what kind of idiot would believe all of Obama’s self-contradictory bullcrap.

    In the end, you refute everything you stand for. You won’t vote for Obama, but you won’t vote for the Republican. So just write in “Mickey Mouse.” Because the only candidate you deserve is one that is 100% irrelevant to actual reality.

  256. Tyler Says:

    So now we enter the spin zone. Of course if I judge you for judging me than I suppose I’m just as guilty? Logic would follow though that if I stopped judging you for passing judgement on me you would still continue…of course. Put another way I am not telling you to go marry another man, or have an abortion or suggest to control your morality but you certainly will mine and everyone else’s you don’t agree with. And now I’m, along with being amoral, an unpatriotic, stupid, dumbass, who is “trying to destroy this country” wow! Backed up by George Washington and all. Of course his and your no religion + no morality = unpatriotic equation hinges on one factor. WHO are you to determine religion and morality for the rest of us? According to polling data, 86% of Americans are or claim to be religious, 86%!! Of course depending on where you get your polling data some 40-50% of this country believes in Pro-Choice, and 40- 45 % of this country supports Gay Marraige. Are you suggesting that portions of these church going folks don’t believe in religion, are amoral, and unpatriotic?? Or is your religion and faith better than there’s so therefore you know what’s best for them?

    George Washington also said;

    Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society.

    But George Washington didn’t say your Religion, and your Morality he was vague and left this up to the people…

    The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their Constitutions of Government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish Government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established Government.

    I believe he understood the varying religious principles which guide our morality and the ability to work through our differences. And yet you and other Republicans like you, as you stated with all your insults, feel you have the right to have written as, The Law Of The Land, the values that I would be forced to adhere to? But not necessarily you or the people you’d have me vote for!! Let’s finish your George Washington quote….

    Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens. The mere Politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connexions with private and public felicity.

    “The mere Politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and cherish them”…Of course I would hold any Republican to the values he would force feed me!!! Isn’t that excactly what some of you and Bob Barr would like to have the Government do, forcibly prevent my wife, or daughter from having an abortion? See I don’t criticize you for standing for the sanctity of Marraige, what I do criticize you for and Palin and others is for turning around and supporting a guy who says he believes as well, but has had three affairs. Someone who literally pushes Judgement of President Clinton while engaged in the same anti- Marraige acts, all the while lecturing the rest of us on the values and rights of Marraige! I guess Newt Gingrich would utterly fail your Litmus test for Patriotism as well as myself! I suppose you can manipulate your Religion and Morality to allow for Newt huh?

    Before I get to your last insult, here are some other great Goerge Washington Qoutes that I’m sure you feel we should follow….

    The friends of humanity will deprecate War, wheresoever it may appear; and we have experience enough of its evils, in this country, to know, that it should not be wantonly or unnecessarily entered upon. I trust, that the good citizens of the United States will show to the world, that they have as much wisdom in preserving peace at this critical juncture, as they have hitherto displayed valor in defending their just rights.

    Lastly, about being 100% irrelevant if I don’t support either of the two parties, George also said…

    The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.

    The common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

    Have to say I would have been honored to sit down and have a glass of wine with good old George Washington, maybe around harvest season.

    Make the most of the Indian hemp seed, and sow it everywhere!
    George Washington in a note to his gardener at Mount Vernon (1794)

  257. Michael Eden Says:

    Tyler,

    Your crap about the viscious infinite regress re: “judging me for judging you” doesn’t in any way, shape or form take away from THE FACT that you judged me even as you lectured me on my being intolerant for judging. Wear it. I’m not the one who lectured you on being judgmental; YOU were the one who lectured me and conservatives. WHILE YOU YOURSELF WERE BEING JUDGMENTAL, I might add.

    As for what you are claiming about “morality,” dude, all I can do is quote your very own words yet again

    I’ve always felt if I could get the Democrats out of my wallet, and the Republicans out of my mind, or morality than I would be free of Governent control completely

    – As if morality or religion should somehow be kicked out of political discourse.

    All I can do is quote George Washington who said to utterly refute you:

    Of all the habits and dispositions which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars.

    Your view is completely and profoundly wrong according to George Washington. And that is very simply obvious.

    Absolutely NOTHING you said or quoted Washington as saying in any way reduces that impact. As I will continue unpacking.

    You say:

    WHO are you to determine religion and morality for the rest of us?

    Now, I can simply turn that around and ask, “Who are YOU to determine religion and morality for the rest of us?” But that aside…

    So now you are quibbling over “morality” as if George Washington was a moral relativist who believed that torturing babies for fun might be moral if another culture believed that. BULLCRAP. That is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what the man who said that religion and morality were the TWO PILLARS upon which our entire society needed to survive was arguing. If religon and morality were/arecompletely private and everybody held their own view, THEN THERE IS NO POSSIBLE WAY EITHER COULD HAVE BEEN A PILLAR, IS THERE, YOU DUMBASS??? Washington called them “pillars,” in the sense that they were and are objective concrete supports that have substance and physically hold things together and hold things up. If everybody is entitled to his own individual morality, rather than morality being a concrete objective thing upon which every man – be he a politician or a pious man – should each/all affirm, then it can’t possibly be a “pillar.”

    You yourself are talking about “87%” of people believing in God, etc. That percentage was virtually ONE HUNDRED PERCENT when Washington was president; and he was APPEALING to that commonality.

    You started to quote Washington in this particular phrase, let me finish it:

    27 Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens. The mere Politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connexions with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

    Washington asked, “Where is the security for property”?

    So let me ask you, “Where IS the security for property” when Democrats believe that the State owns everything the people earn and has the power to allow them to keep only as much as the State allows. We didn’t HAVE a federal income tax when George Washington was president.

    You want to quote Washington to me? Which political ideology strayed the furthest from Washington on that???

    Washington said, “for life.” Abortion wasn’t the law of the land when George Washington was president. The Constitution didn’t by way of penumbras and emanations hold a “right to privacy” which guarantees the right for a woman to murder her own baby irrespective of how the father of that baby felt about it. Democrats have murdered 54 MILLION innocent human beings since Washington wrote the words, “for life.”

    Washington asked, “Where is the security … if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice?

    You look at what is going on right NOW as Obama forces the radical abortion agenda on the Catholic Church AFTER getting slammed 9-0 for attacking religious conscientious objection status and you try to argue that conservatives are the one who oppose Washington, you fool.

    When Washington talked about “exclusion of religious principle” he was saying that was a TERRIBLE thing for this nation to do.

    AND THAT IS THE CORE OF THE LIBERALS’ VIEW ON THE “SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE.”

    Is it your serious contention that George Washinton wanted to attack a deeply held Catholic religious belief that the Church had held for nearly three hundred years before Washington was even born???

    And when Washington said “reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle” he was DIRECTLY ATTACKING AND DENOUNCING YOU AND EVERY DAMN IDIOT LIBERAL WHO THINKS LIKE YOU. YOU were the guy who denounced the Republican Party for involving itself in the morality that Washington said was ESSENTIAL to this nation.

    Washington would have been on your side my butt. He would have been in his riding boots kicking your butt up one side and down the other. And yes, he would have been shouting “YOU ARE NO PATRIOT!!!”

    When Washington said that “The mere Politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish [religion and morality]” he was NOT arguing that everybody has their own private views and that therefore neither “religion” nor “morality” can mean anything, you dumbass. Washington was passionately arguing that religon and morality were and ARE objective things that should therefore mean the same thing to ANYONE whether one is a “politician” OR a “pious man.” And he was saying that ANYONE who says otherwise is NOT a patriot.

    You say “I am not telling you to go marry another man, or have an abortion…” because as we all know Washington was ALL for these things and wanted a society that imposed these “rights.” Except of course that is a lie straight from hell.

    I previously cited an article that revealed dozens of statements regarding the profound CHRISTIAN faith of our founding fathers. These were not a collection of men who were Buddhists and Hindus and Muslims. They were Christians. And when they asked, “What religion are you?” they were asking, “What Christian denomination do you belong to?”

    Many liberals try to make Washington a Deist. He most certainly was NOT. He was a Christian. There are whole books about his Christianity. And when he talked about religion and morality, he was referring to something very specific. It’s one thing to have a different view on baptism than someone else; it is quite a different thing to claim that “morality” is entirely subjective and varies from person to person. That is just garbage.

    All of the above discussion was one thing, but you proceed to go back to tried and true liberal rhetorical bullcrap:

    Your

    Before I get to your last insult

    whining feeds into one of my most annoying pet peeves about liberals. I am simply past sick of you pathetic liberal idiots trying to make their argument about my being “mean” rather than just sticking with the argument at hand.

    And frankly if I’m offended by somebody insulting me, I DON’T KEEP COMING BACK.

    That’s bad enough, but then you try to falsely imply that you are for “neither party” when every single word that has come out of your keyboard has been one denunciation after another of conservatives and the Republican Party. The reason you liberals do that, of course, is because they’re trying to falsely represent themselves as being fair-minded and objective and tolerant versus “extremists” like me. And notice that I go after THAT tactic that you are now using, too. But the reality of course is that you are NOT in the tolerant middle of some ideological line; you are well over to the left and you are as much a soldier for your ideology as I am. As your comments clearly reveal. I have naked contempt for those who WILL NOT honestly represent themselves.

    When I see those two rhetorical ploys together, it is past time to say goodbye and it becomes time to throw you out of my house.

    So get lost. You had your say. I’ve got considerably better things to do than to waste my time arguing with someone who plays your rhetorical bullcrap game about making yourself a victim while you falsely depict yourself as being some kind of “centrist” when you are anything but.

  258. Liebegone Says:

    Tyler,

    Don’t bother trying to educate Mr. Eden, he isn’t here to learn. Basically, if you prove him wrong he censors you. That is what he did with my posts when I’ve corrected him, with cites to irrefutable evidence regarding tax cuts and their effects on revenues. Michael is just very intimidated by truth. It must be a very hidey world he inhabits. He is pretty good at parroting what he’s heard on Fox, but can’t really do analysis. When confronted he just bans you from his blog. Interesting cat.

    As a true conservative, I recognize some things about our debt: First of all, I recognize that it is our debt: your debt, my debt, and Michael’s debt. It came into existence when our democratically elected officials again and again refused to match spending to revenue. Playing the blame game ignores the problems. Like it or not, when you live in the real world and in a democracy, a plurality of views get a seat at the table, and the debt incurred by our leaders is incurred on our behalf and we are morally obligated to pay it. That is called personal responsibility in the context of democracy.

    The relevant question is not whether this debt was incurred under a democrat or a republican president or congress. We’ve had mixed government for quite a while, and when we haven’t no party has had a super majority in the senate. In other words, it took collaboration between the ***tards to get us the debt we’ve got now.

    If you’re really intent on playing the blame game, in my humble opinion the deficits which accrued under Obama are probably more excusable as he came into an economy in utter free-fall and matching taxes to spending would have been politically impossible (and quite possibly disastrous economically). It would have meant huge tax increases and huge spending cuts, which would have had a devastating effect on money supply. Shock therapy, indeed! (Note, I’m not saying we shouldn’t have done that, I’m just saying no politician had the stomach for it.) On the other hand, under Bush there was a huge run up of the national debt in mostly good times. But, as I said, I think this blame game is pointless. It doesn’t fix the problem.

    So really, what we need to do is to elect people who have realistic ideas about how to match our revenue to our spending. This will mean both revenue increases as well as spending cuts. What we need is a trustworthy accountant to go through agency budgets with a fine tooth cone and cut the fat–which really exists in pockets all throughout the body politic. Waste is rampant in all agencies, and the bigger the agency the more likely there is waste. That means DOD. That means Homeland Security. That means DOE, OSHA, Department of Education, everywhere. I am somewhat in favor of a flat 5% cut in spending across the board. But having seen a thing or two about vested interests in political agencies, I’m willing to bet that it will be exactly the wrong 5% that will be cut. Maybe that is alright. But we will also need a 5% across the board tax increase too. That, my friend, is fiscal conservatism: Don’t live beyond your means.

    But you won’t hear Mr. Eden signing off on this. He is one of those who wants all that this country has to offer, but is not willing to pay for it. We’ve had 30 years of this nonsense, and look where it has gotten us! We’re in a giant hole.

  259. Michael Eden Says:

    Liebegone,

    I usually glance through my spam file before I empty it into the trash, and saw this. It is something like at least 20 comments you have written to my spam file – including threats like the one I retrived (why did I bring that one out? Because if some creep threatens me, I make that threat public and say, “Bring it on,” that’s why).

    The “irrefutable evidence” you claim you provided was not one iota better than the crap I let you publish prior to blocking you for being a creep. I’ll talk a little about what you assert in this comment in a little while, but let me talk about you, first.

    Why have you kept writing me comment after comment? Especially after threatening me the way you did? What is psychologically wrong with you?

    Let’s just take what you say here at face value and assume every word of it to be true for the moment:

    Don’t bother trying to educate Mr. Eden, he isn’t here to learn. Basically, if you prove him wrong he censors you. That is what he did with my posts when I’ve corrected him, with cites to irrefutable evidence regarding tax cuts and their effects on revenues. Michael is just very intimidated by truth. It must be a very hidey world he inhabits. He is pretty good at parroting what he’s heard on Fox, but can’t really do analysis. When confronted he just bans you from his blog. Interesting cat.

    So if you are 100% right about me, then WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU CONTINUE TO WRITE COMMENT AFTER COMMENT AFTER COMMENT AFTER COMMENT TO ME?!?!? I mean, why on earth would you waste your time with someone like that? And you have wasted an awful lot of time on me. This is at least the 20th comment that went to spam.

    I remember several years back helping an old widow have a garage sale. Nobody was coming (and she’s spent a LOT of time putting tons of stuff out); so I took a stool and went to the main drag of town with a big sign that said “garage sale” and the address. And I’d swivel from side to side as the lights changed. And it worked; lots of people started showing up. Well, a woman walked by and saw my sign and came up to me: “Yard sale! YARD SALE!!!” she shrieked. And then she proceeded to just go off on me for a good five minutes, just shouting at me. And I immediately realized that woman was nuts – probably on a bi-polar high.

    Well, here’s the point, Liebegone: I saw there was no point trying to argue with her, and just looked at her and kept my mouth shut before she was done ranting at me. And then she walked off and I never saw her again. And if you were actually correct about me – and YOU aren’t psychotic – that’s what YOU ought to have done. But it turns out that YOU are the equivalent of the crazy woman. Only in this case, you just can’t leave because you are frankly more nuts than that crazy woman was.

    It boils down to this, Liebegone: if you’re wrong about me, you are one unhinged loser; but if you’re RIGHT about me, you are an even BIGGER unhinged loser.

    And with all due respect, I caught on to that attribute about you right away, you pathetic unhinged loser.

    Let me say a little bit more about you and your unceasing rant and you’re being a “true conservative.”

    You’re a “conservative” my butt.

    What you are is an “Occupy” “OWS” fascist who has taken his “occupy protest” to conservative bloggers. Because just like them, you have a fundamental disrespect and disregard for other people’s property. Which is why you refuse to understand that this is MY blog and I have the right to argue with who I want to argue with. People I have discussions with are kind of like my inviting people into my home: I’ll talk to you so long, and then I’ll ask you to leave; or if you go too far I’ll TELL you to leave. But you don’t believe you should ever HAVE to leave. You think you have as fundamental of a right to my blog as I have. And if you want to dedicate your life to leaving comment after comment, I am thereby REQUIRED to leave aside what I want to do with my property and allow YOU to set my agenda for me.

    That’s not the way a conservative things, Liebegone.

    HERE’s how a conservative thinks: “That nutjob Michael Eden blocked me. All right, that’s his right; it’s his blog. And I’m gone. But he made me mad. So I’ll start my OWN blog and I’ll get my OWN message out.”

    But as I’ve been saying pretty much all along, you’re NOT a “true conservative.” And it wouldn’t take very long if you were to actually start your own blog before pretty much anyone with either a moderately healthy psyche or half a brain realized it by reading you as you started to write a bunch of articles and interact with your own comments that you would get as a result.

    A little more: I pointed out BEFORE I blocked you that the only politician you basically praised was Bill Clinton, whom you used to attack George Bush. which is to say you’re a “Slick Willie ‘Conservative'”; which is to say you aint no conservative. Now you are saying junk like this:

    If you’re really intent on playing the blame game, in my humble opinion the deficits which accrued under Obama are probably more excusable…

    Okay, so you’re an “Obama ‘conservative,'” too. Here’s what Obama has done with spending:

    Congressional budget chief offers dim outlook on economic growth, jobs
    By Jim Angle
    Published February 01, 2012 | FoxNews.com

    Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Elmendorf on Wednesday projected that economic growth will slow by next year and unemployment will rise before that — a forecast that Rep. Paul Ryan called ominous, grim and alarming.

    Elmendorf laid out the latest projections on the economy and deficits before the House Budget Committee on Capitol Hill.

    Ryan, R-Wis., who is chairman, raised alarm given projections that 2012 “will mark the fourth straight year of trillion-dollar deficits.”

    Trillions more dollars will be added to debt in the years ahead, putting a chilling effect on jobs creation today and committing the next generation to a diminished future,” he said.

    Prior to Barack Obama we had NEVER HAD A TRILLION DOLLAR DEFICIT IN THE HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC. WE HAVE NOW HAD TRILLION DOLLAR DEFICITS EVERY SINGLE YEAR OF HIS PRESIDENCY. And you defend that while attacking Bush??? Further, the last Republican passed budget had a deficit of $161 billion dollars (FY-2007) – as I have documented. Democrats TRIPLED the deficit the very next year BEFORE the economy imploded the following year. Now we’ve had Obama deficits as high as $1.6 TRILLION dollars. And you’re attacking the people with the $161 billion deficit and defending the guy who gave us four years of $trillion plus deficits. While calling yourself a “true conservative.”

    You NEVER mentioned or defended ANY actual conservative in your comments as you repeatedly attacked conservatives like Ronald Reagan – who was one of the key founders of the conservative movement. Instead you praise Clinton and Obama. And angrily label yourself a “true conservative.” And it’s a lot easier, obviously, for cowards like you who sneer at people who had the integrity to choose a side and fight for that side, isn’t it?

    Oh, and there’s the fact that you just keep coming back and back and back and back like the warped nutjob that you clearly are.

    When you talk about fiscal responsibility, you truly ARE an “Obama ‘conservative'”:

    Debt Ceiling: Cato Institute Says $2 Trillion in ‘Cuts’ Will Increase Spending by $1.8 Trillion

    Democrats have been falsely claiming to be “the party of fiscal responsibility” for YEARS. And it has all been a total lie.

    Obama promised to cut the deficit in HALF in four years. And instead during that four years he INCREASED it by $6 trillion.

    Obama demonized George Bush for trying to increase the debt ceiling. Does anybody remember that???

    “The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents – #43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.”

    And:

    “The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”

    Obama’s was the same kind of demonic dump blame on Republicans rhetoric as yours, Liebegone. And yours is just as false as his was.

    For the record, our actual debt isn’t the $16 trillion we keep hearing about: it is $211 TRILLION plus:

    “If you add up all the promises that have been made for spending obligations, including defense expenditures, and you subtract all the taxes that we expect to collect, the difference is $211 trillion. That’s the fiscal gap,” he says. “That’s our true indebtedness.”

    And virtually every penny of that debt has been due to DEMOCRATS and their incredibly flawed government takeover policies.

    As a further note, I recently went after a leftie who tried to blame Bush for the mortgage crisis that imploded our economy in 2008. That is total bullcrap, as I proceed to document.

    And you are as dishonest as Obama, Liebegone. And I won’t have it.

    So you can go to hell believing I’m afraid to debate you or whatever. But the bottom line is I’m trying to remain true to MY purpose for starting MY blog; and that was to write articles, not to waste my time endlessly engaging in arguments with fools who like fascists believe they have more of a right to my time than I do.

    So go ahead and write another 20 comments to my spam file. Make it 1000 for all I care.

  260. ASK Says:

    Right on, Michael… :)

  261. Michael Eden Says:

    Thanks, ASK.

    I’ve only had a couple of people who just keep posting comment after comment after being blocked. It is beyond weird, if you ask me.

    If somebody threw me out of their house, I’d go. And I wouldn’t come back. In fact they’d have a very hard time pleading with me to get to EVER come back again.

    With this guy, he’s outside banging on the door demanding to be let back in. When of course the more he bangs away the more I know I was right to shut the door on him.

    I probably should have just kept him in spam; but it sufficiently annoyed me that he’s lurking around in my septic tank waiting for the opportunity to defend other turds that I flush.

  262. ASK Says:

    Hmmmm, I dated someone like him. He wouldn’t take “no” for an answer and kept stalking me even after I refused to take his calls or respond to his emails and showing up at my work. Ended up having to get a restraining order. Wonder if it’s the same guy. LOL

  263. Liebegone Says:

    Michael,

    First of all, thank you for letting back into your blog. I thought your analogy to being requested to leave a house a nice way of putting your point.

    But blogging isn’t so similar to a house, it is more like a shouted conversation. Basically, if a person talks loudly enough for others to hear, they have effectively invited that other into their conversation. Yes, of course you can censor me. It is your blog. No one is saying that you may not. But the whole point of a blog (at least in my mind) is the sharing and testing of ideas. Anything else feels like, well, that thing the Sisters always told us would make us blind or grow hair on our palms.

    Let me ask you this. Say you are president tomorrow. How would you tackle this deficit?

  264. Michael Eden Says:

    ASK,

    Sadly, ASK, guys like you’re describing are a dime a dozen. So probabely not based on sheer probabilities (mind you, I know you were just kidding!).

    That’s actually an excellent analogy, however. That’s part of the reason I can’t understand the inner tickings of a Liebegone; if a woman were to tell me to get lost, I don’t think I could be out of her life fast enough. And if I wasn’t genuinely wanted by a woman, the last thing I’d want in the world would be to pursue her. But I’ve seen the type of guys you’re describing; and heard my share of female friends and co-workers describe them, too. At least I did as a young man.

    Hope you never meet another one like Mr. Restraining Order.

    I doubt if I’ll be quite so fortunate with my stalker-types as long as I keep blogging. It’s just part of what happens when you hang up your “open for business” sign.

  265. Frank Says:

    it’s so funny you right wingers accuse democrats of the very things you are guilty of. not sure where the clown who writes this blog gets his info but his numbers are comletely wrong.

  266. Michael Eden Says:

    Frank,

    You slandering lying snake. Look at what you do: you make a totally bogus assertion and offered how many examples of where I’m “completely wrong”? YOU CAN’T EVEN PROVIDE ONE.

    Let’s just put the Democrat Party’s culpability for our unpayable debt into numbers:

    “We have all these unofficial debts that are massive compared to the official debt,” Kotlikoff tells David Greene, guest host of weekends on All Things Considered. “We’re focused just on the official debt, so we’re trying to balance the wrong books.”

    Kotlikoff explains that America’s “unofficial” payment obligations — like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits — jack up the debt figure substantially.

    “If you add up all the promises that have been made for spending obligations, including defense expenditures, and you subtract all the taxes that we expect to collect, the difference is $211 trillion. That’s the fiscal gap,” he says. “That’s our true indebtedness.”

    Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff, to make it clear, is a noted economist. He is a research associate at the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research. He is a former senior economist with then-president Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers. He has served as a consultant with governments around the world. And he wrote about this issue of America’s true debt in a peer-reviewed journal of the International Monetary Fund (September, 2010). This isn’t a joke. This is our reality.

    And which party inflicted this ridiculously unpayable debt??? Which party inflicted the Social Security Ponzi scheme on us when there were in fact far better privatized equivalents at the time which would have been better funded and paid out better benefits? Which party took over sixty percent of our health care system with a government socialist scheme that is going to be completely BANKRUPT by 2017 at the latest???

    Which political party is completely responsible for these depraved government takeovers that will collapse and thus murder millions of elderly people whose only crime was being forced by the Democrat Party to pay into the Democrat Party’s boondoggle?

    Someone like you, who hates facts and will not bother with them, who makes twisted and false assertions based on lies, is simply not worthy to have any sort of discussion with whatsoever.

    So get lost.

  267. ASK Says:

    To Frank: Your accusations come across pretty strong. If you feel the need to insult “right wingers”, and the person that is providing this blog, that we do not know what we are talking about (re: the ‘blame game’…), then by all means please provide legit FACTS to support your point. If you wish to lash out at someone behind an alias, then you are going to have your arse handed to you. Promise.

    Waiting for your reply with FACTS to support your accusation….

  268. Greggo Says:

    Eden,

    Wow! I’ve spent a lot of time reading the comments on this site and I see that we “Right wingers” are all on the same page. You can’t argue with someone who can’t comprehend anything.
    The lefty’s really are brainwashed/indoctrinated. Very sad that the media is where they get all their information.
    I’m very happy to be on the right side and I thank God I wasn’t born with that left type of mental defect.
    Well, keep up the good work and don’t let the fools get to you. Just keep educating and your rewards will be exceedingly great.
    Oh no! Does this make me a racist??? LOL

  269. Michael Eden Says:

    Greggo,

    I regret to inform you that to many on the left, the simple fact that you have ever once voted for a Republican in your life is more than enough to qualify you as “racist.”

    And you can take that to the bank: because the party that fought a Civil War to maintain slavery, the party that was so dominated by the Ku Klux Klan that it had a national convention called “Klanbake” and the party that last had a sitting Senator who had been a Kleagle and Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan knows a racist when it sees one!

    Thanks for the encouragement, Greggo. It’s appreciated.

  270. Michael Eden Says:

    ASK,

    I have no idea how many “conservatives” leave such idiotic fact-free messages on liberal blogs, but anyone who makes such accusations without so much as producing a single shred of supporting evidence ought to be completely ashamed of themsleves regardless of his/her ideology.

  271. Liebegone Says:

    Michael,

    It is just disingenuous to call this deficit republican or democratic. Almost all of the debt has been accumulated since 1980. Since 1980 we have had divided government–mostly republican controlled whitehouse and democratically controlled congress (or at least one house of congress). The only way this debt could be created is that it was passed by both houses of congress and signed into law by a president. Thus, the debt is neither republican nor democratic–it is simply American. WE VOTED FOR THESE PEOPLE!!! It is your debt and mine, like it or not.

    Personal responsibility requires that we stop trying to blame each other for something which is clearly, factually, and objectively the responsibility of both republicans and democrats. It requires that WE do something about this debt of ours, and don’t simply pass it on to the next generation.

    It would be much more productive to start bandying about ideas to eliminate this debt than to sit here dishonestly blaming democrats or liberals for something which is, objectively, no more their fault than ours.

    So, I repeat, what are we going to do about our debt, Mr. President for the day?

  272. Michael Eden Says:

    Liebegone,

    Well, to be honest, I didn’t really mean to “let you back.” But your current submission asks a very legitimate question. If I were president, how would I tackle the deficit?

    With the caveat that if I were the best candidate for president in America, this nation would be in truly deep doo-doo and all, I’ll try to answer.

    Well, after another caveat: the president does not have constitutional power to spend; that power resides with Congress. So even the best president could not “tackle the deficit” alone.

    So what would I do?

    Well, the first thing I would do is borrow a page from Chris Christie and consider that I was coming into this as a one-term leader. The way the mainstream media works, a true conservative who governs as a true conservative will have an enormously difficult time getting re-elected. And if you worry about getting re-elected, you are going to cave.

    The second thing I would do would be to nominate Ron Paul to be the next Secretary of the Treasury. Or at least somebody “unknown” who could pass a vote and who would think the way Ron Paul thinks about currency. The Federal Reserve needs the biggest enema in the universe. Our currency has been so weakened by “quantitative easing” that we are risking the very real prospect of losing the dollar’s status as the world “reserve currency.” If that happens, the US goes bankrupt the very next day. We have got to get control of our money supply.

    For the record, I like Ron Paul, although I would not vote for him in the GOP primary (I would only vote for him if it was him or Obama) because of his stand on foreign policy. But when he’s talked about fiscal policy and the way he’s described trying to hold the line on the constant unconstitutional power grabs of the federal government, I can’t remember being in disagreement with him. I have never attacked Ron Paul in my blogging. I’ll say more about Ron Paul at the very end.

    The third thing I would do would be to do everything I could to reduce the burden in the areas of tax and regulation. Do we need an overhaul of our tax system? As badly as the Federal Reserve needs an enema. Can we eliminate most or even all of the loopholes as Democrats often talk about? Of course we can – as part of a massive overhaul package. We can lower tax rates significantly, lower capital gains in particular, and simply the tax system in a manner completely consistent with the principles of the Laffer Curve and completely consistent with the issue of “tax fairness.” We also need to realize that excessive regulation is destroying America’s ability to compete, with regulations amounting to a $2 trillion hidden tax on the economy.

    The fourth thing I would do would be to truly face up to the issue of the “third rails” of politics: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. These need to be reformed and reformed massively or America is doomed. Our actual debt is over $211 TRILLION. My own parents are on Social Security and Medicare. These were terribly flawed boondoggle ponzi schemes that Democrats cursed us with – and we could have done and still could do much better. We need to fulfill the promise of these giant lies for the generation(s) that depend on them to survive and but FIX THE SYSTEM in a way that ultimately replaces it.

    The fifth thing I would do would be to try to re-energize America’s dying manufacturing base. Right to work is a powerful way to that goal; unions have destroyed every single industry they have ever taken hold of. Other things to help us would be to aggressively tackle the competitive issues that have helped create such a massive trade deficit. Giving China “Most Favored Nation” status is despicable on every moral and economic level.

    The sixth thing I would do – and here in particular is the reason I would consider myself to be a one-term president – would be to fire every single federal worker that I could. Remember how Bush got viciously attacked for firing seven US Attorneys? I would borrow a page from Bill Clinton and fire EVERYBODY. One of my goals would be to break the spine of the federal government unions that even FDR said were un-American. The other goal would be to decimate the federal workforce by massive restructuring. Government is growing out of control; I would use the power of the president to turn the tide of ever-expanding government.

    I came up with that list basically off the top of my head, without really having thought about it. So I wouldn’t defend it to the death.

    I said I would say a little more about Ron Paul. Aside from the fact that his foreign policy makes him deservedly unelectable, I would also point out that he has put himself in a bind that he probably doesn’t understand. Let me describe it: 1) On the one hand Ron Paul would tell us that many of the power grabs that Obama as president has taken (e.g., many of his executive orders) are “unconstitutional.” So Ron Paul wouldn’t do stuff like that. But 2) on the other hand Ron Paul would have almost zero help from Democrats and not nearly enough from Republicans in Congress. So basically, a Ron Paul presidency would be a very weak one in which he wouldn’t be able to do anything but veto everything that came to his desk and create a government that basically completely shut down. Ron Paul would either need to moderate/compromise his positions to attract at least the Republicans, or he would need to face reality and realize that he needed to have a strong (Obama-ish dictatorial power-grabbing mindset) willingness to use every shred of his executive authority to enact his policies.

    I believe, as much as libertarians would bitterly disagree, that the next conservative president needs to use executive power to the hilt the same way Obama has to force the country in a conservative direction the same way Obama forced it in a liberal one.

  273. Michael Eden Says:

    As anyone can see, I took a shot at Liebegone’s challenge.

    I now say it is “disingenuous” to call this deficit anything other than DEMOCRAT.

    Two reasons:

    1) Our REAL debt was virtually ENTIRELY created by Democrats:

    “We have all these unofficial debts that are massive compared to the official debt,” Kotlikoff tells David Greene, guest host of weekends on All Things Considered. “We’re focused just on the official debt, so we’re trying to balance the wrong books.”

    Kotlikoff explains that America’s “unofficial” payment obligations — like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits — jack up the debt figure substantially.

    If you add up all the promises that have been made for spending obligations, including defense expenditures, and you subtract all the taxes that we expect to collect, the difference is $211 trillion. That’s the fiscal gap,” he says. “That’s our true indebtedness.”

    You want to talk about Reagan’s deficit, fine. Just make it the numerator and divide it by the $211 trillion debt that Democrats and Democrats ALONE imposed on this country. And then you can feel free to say that Republicans are “just as much responsible for the debt as Democrats” because Republicans were responsible for this tiny infinitecimal little fraction of the actual debt that Democrats cursed this nation with.

    2) The Democrats constant demonization of every single attempt by Republicans to be responsible on our debt/deficit:

    That ad in which Paul Ryan is depicted as forcing poor grandma in her wheelchair off the cliff is par for the course.

    Republicans are CONSTANTLY put in a position in which they are viciously attacked every time they dare to even try to do the right thing.

    Last year Democrats called the Republicans TERRORISTS for trying to get between Democrats and more spending. Democrats believe that anybody who tries to keep them from spending money are TERRORISTS.

    Why is that “excusable”???

    For Democrats to blame Republicans after these tactics is akin to my holding a loaded gun to your head, Liebegone, and forcing you to do something you don’t want to do. And then later blaming you for doing the thing I forced you to do.

    Do I blame Republcians for just not having the courage to do what we vote them into office to do? Of course I do. BUT I BLAME FAR MORE THE DEMOCRATS WHO ARE THERE TO SPEND AND WHO VICIOUSLY ATTACK ANY POLITICIAN WHO TRIES TO CUT SPENDING BY CALLING THEM TERRORISTS OR DEMONIZING THEM AS PUSHING GRANDMA OFF A CLIFF. Why don’t YOU, Liebegone???

    Now I have a challenge for you: please explain, as a “true conservative,” why you have been FAR more pro-Democrat than pro-Republican. Explain why you have attacked Ronald Reagan and upheld Bill Clinton – whose out-of-control spending resulted in the most massive takeover of the House of Representatives and the Senate in a hundred years – upon which time said Republican House and Senate proceeded to create the balanced budgets that Clinton took credit for? Explain why you have repeatedly attacked George Bush for his $4 trillion debt over eight years and then YOU said this –

    If you’re really intent on playing the blame game, in my humble opinion the deficits which accrued under Obama are probably more excusable

    – of Obama who took that debt to $6 trillion in only three years???

    Why do you excuse that, Mr “True Conservative”??? When you have demonstrated repeatedly that you have absolutely zero point zero “excuse” for Reagan or for Bush???

    How is it that a “true conservative” like you defends the first man in the entire history of the human race to have budget deficits well in excess of a trillion dollars for the first four years of his presidency???

    How in the hell is it that a “true conservative” such as yourself defends Barack Obama having compiled more debt and more deficit than any human being who ever lived after you attack Bush for compiling a THIRD of the spending/deficits per year???

    How is that????

    Oh, and btw, Obama’s last budget – you know, he’s that guy you’re “excusing”? – was such an abject disgrace that it got voted down 97-0 in his own party-controlled Senate!!! And now he’s got an even BIGGER budget with even MORE gimmicks that just landed with a thud such that Harry Reid is vowing to block any attempt to bring it to a vote. Obama is claiming $850 billion in savings from the wars – the wars that were funded by deficit spending to BEGIN with. How do you “excuse” that? Obama is claiming a GDP growth that NOBODY thinks will be even HALF what Obama is claiming. Obama’s budget is a purely partisan political psychotic break from reality. How is it that you “excuse” that as a “conservative”???

    Obama said this about the deficit in February 2009:

    “Today I’m pledging to cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office,” Obama said then. “This will not be easy. It will require us to make difficult decisions and face challenges we’ve long neglected. But I refuse to leave our children with a debt that they cannot repay — and that means taking responsibility right now, in this administration, for getting our spending under control.”

    Obama demonized Bush for increasing the debt ceiling: BEFORE HE DEMANDED THE THREE HIGHEST DEBT CEILING INCREASES EVER HIMSELF:

    “The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents – #43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.”

    And:

    “The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”

    Why do you find it “excusable” for Obama to so profoundly and fundamentally break his word??? This is a man who demonized Bush and then did TRIPLE whatever Bush did that he was demonizing. Why do you find such blatant hypocrisy “excusable”???

  274. Greggo Says:

    Eden,

    I’ve been listening to talk radio and other news sources today and I heard that this administration is trying to reduce our nuclear warheads to 300 from approx 5,000. What in God’s name is happening? Do you have any information about this?
    If president Osama gets re-elected, we’re done!!! Which language should I learn? Mandarin Chinese? Persian???

  275. Michael Eden Says:

    Greggo,

    Yeah, I got the same grim news this morning.

    Iran is desperately trying to get the bomb because it wants to be strong, and what does it see the American president doing? Not having the courage to BE strong; saying, “These weapons scare me and I want to make them go away and hope nobody sees how weak I’ve made America.” They see him as weak for a very good reason.

    What Obama THINKS – assuming the best that he’s not deliberately trying to undermine America so we can be the slaves of his Marxist masters – is that he can say to Iran, “Look, I’ve gotten rid of all of our weapons; you don’t need these!” And that Iran will say, “You’re right, messiah. We will turn all of our swords into plowshares.”

    Which is to say that at BEST, Obama is a hopelessly naive jackass. At worst, he is a clear and present danger to the United States of America and November will be a referendum on whether we want to continue to survive as a nation or not.

  276. Michael Hunt Says:

    All of you are asses. Lies and half truths. Mixing facts with your own soiled opinions, while looking down your noses at anyone not God fearing and white. This country is going to be fine, but not with your help. If you can call it that. Both sides are corrupt, neither is clean. Quit bitching and do something about it.

  277. Michael Eden Says:

    Michael Hunt,

    I can literally simply copy and paste my last comment to a moral idiot just like YOU who believes that dumbass fact-free assertions somehow ought to trump THE TRUTH.

    Who Spent More? Average Bush Vs. Average Obama Spending Per Day Proves Obama Most Reckless And Irresponsible EVER

    You slimebags who don’t even bother to TRY to produce a single bit of evidence to support what you are screeching never cease to amaze me. People like you have a shocking hatred of reality.

  278. Max NY Says:

    Funny, the people most against government spending are the ones receiving the most …

    “residents of the 10 states Gallup ranks as “most conservative” received 21.2 percent of their income in government transfers, while the number for the 10 most liberal states was only 17.1 percent.”

    I am a centrist, but this strikes me as a bit ignorant and hypocritical… Just like Republican politicians talk all day and all night about cutting spending, but was spending cut at all last time you had control of the Presidency, House and Senate? Nope, spending was increased massively through Bush’s prescription drug entitlement program and the Boondoggle of a War in Iraq.

    And why is it that once we start talking about cutting Military Spending, which is as large a fraction of spending as Entitlement Programs, those same “fiscally responsible” Republicans start getting their panties in a bunch?

    I’m all for cutting entitlements… and let’s cut unnecessary outdated military spending as well, and tax capital gains at the same level as wages (say 20% flat for both). We will still have the largest military in the world by an order of magnitude. I’d like to see a single “fiscally conservative” Republican come out for cutting military spending, aside from Ron Paul.

    So no, the so-called fiscal conservative Republicans will mortgage our future as fast or faster than the Democrats. They will just bleed our country through unfunded tax cuts for the ultra-rich, subsidies for oil companies, a fraudulent multi-trillion dollar war and all its no-bid rigged contracts…

  279. Michael Eden Says:

    Max NY,

    I’ve got to laugh at all of you leftists who are simply so pathologically dishonest you can’t admit what you are. You’re a “centrist” who pisses on Republicans and chats up liberal talking points as if they were gospel. You’re a “centrist” who throws a far leftist toad like Paul Krugman at me.

    Your a “centrist” the way I’m a beautiful supermodel. The word is “not.”

    Your point is not really worth my spending time responding to YOU, given that it is merely another leftwing talking point for you leftwing talkers to spread around.

    I’ve already responded to your argument before you came along, so I’ll just copy and paste from my response to another leftie:

    A few things to say about that:

    1) When I clicked on the chart it showed Florida as a “blue” state. Really? The last two governors have been Republican. It voted for Bush in both 2000 and 2004. It is clearly a red state now, having just elected another Republican governor last year. And it also voted for one of the most conservative Senators in the country (Marco Rubio) in 2010.

    Voting for Obama in 2008 doesn’t make a state “blue” for life. Florida is very much a red state now.

    So let’s just say that somebody was out to prove what they wanted to prove in your first link.

    2) There’s an interesting thing about federal income taxes and states: some end up paying a much higher amount than others because of where they live.

    I live in California – a blue state that has sky-high housing and cost-of-living costs relative to most red states. If you live in Massachusetts, your income is significantly higher than most red states, but it is purely artificial in the sense that you’ve got to pay 40% more for your housing and other costs of living.

    But the federal government doesn’t look at income adjusted by cost of living; they only look at the number on your paycheck.

    So the fact that liberals have screwed up their states and burdened them with higher costs doesn’t matter.

    Too damn bad for liberals and their blue states, isn’t it?

    3) Still another simple fact of the matter is that red states tend to be the states with the smallest populations (with a few notable exceptions such as Texas and FLORIDA). You look at a map and “flyover country” is ALL Republican. And another simple fact is that states with smaller populations get more representation due to our system; the smallest state gets the same number of senators as the biggest one. That means as long as we’re “redistributing wealth,” states with small but over-represented populations (i.e., Republican states) are going to keep getting more of the federal welfare.

    As long as we have federal welfare, the smallest states are going to keep getting more of that welfare on a per capita basis. If you don’t like it, vote for the party that is trying to reduce the federal welfare state. Vote Republican. Because that’s the only way what you’re pointing out will ever change.

    4) It is not hypocritical for Republican states to play the game as the libturds have created that game.

    For example, last year veterans got something like a $250 check from Uncle Sam. Personally, I was opposed to that stupid credit – just as I am opposed to most federal tax credits. But what would have happened if I and all other conservatives hadn’t taken the money? It all would have gone to liberals. And THAT would have taught those damn liberals a lesson?

    So, yeah, I took the money. I can give it to Republicans (and Republican states) if I want to. But as long as you’ve got that stupid system, you either take the money or you let the other side have it all. And that isn’t fair.

    5) So to the extent that red states get more money, I hope they suck idiotic Democrat states DRY.

    And if you DON’T LIKE THE WELFARE STATE, PLEASE VOTE REPUBLICAN SO YOU CAN HELP END IT.

    Personally, I would like nothing more than for red states to suck you liberals dry and then throw your dead dried out husk into the fire. That will leave them free to END your crappy liberalism once and for all.

    If you don’t like it, you’d better vote Republican.

  280. Anonymous Says:

    Hi Michael,

    I would like to give you some caring advice. Speak without offending and listen without defending. Your attacks on people are not helping you to make your point at all.

    If you have to attack a whole party with name calling, it turns your argument into childish bullying. If somebody doesn’t share your opinion, their stupid? You blocked one guy when he started fighting back, but he was just going to the same level you were.

    You mentioned being a follower of God, but do you really think God would approve of your verbally abusive treatment of people that don’t share the same opinion as you? Spewing such hate?

    Also, on a sidebar, one of the Ten Commandments is Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery. Newt Gingrich is a chronic adulterer. I mean if you are religious, I don’t think you would want him to be the President of this country.

    I am an Independent and research what all parties say and stand for. I also research their facts. But when any party turns into name calling, it takes away from any valid arguments they may have had.

    Name calling usually is from the insecurity and fear of the name caller. When people representing different opinions can have a calm, intelligent debate, it is so much more meaningful. It shows confidence, and that’s what people want to hear. Try it! We’ll (and you’ll) like it! :))

  281. Michael Eden Says:

    If somebody doesn’t share your opinion, their stupid

    Anonymous,

    Three things qualify one as “stupid” in my opinion:

    1) employing grammar that a smart fourth grader ought to be able to avoid (it’s “they’re stupid,” for the record).
    2) changing the subject from what the argument REALLY is about (“WHO SPENT MORE?”) to a chance to pursue a trivial opportunity to attack and blame (i.e., Michael Eden is a blue meanie, therefore we can disregard his arguments).
    3) trying to falsely assert that you are an “independent” and therefore somehow above petty partisan bickering.

    You, anonymous, are stupid by all three criteria.

    I recently wrote an article in which I talk about several of the tactics that the left routinely play that cause me to start grinding my teeth. Somehow, “Mister Independent,” you use every single one of them.

    Here’s one of those tactics:

    Now here’s the thing that annoys me. I’ve got a very clear premise that clearly matches my title: Democrats demonized George Bush for spending, but lo and behold Obama’s spending makes Bush’s spending look Lilliputian in just three years in office. But do liberals want to talk about Obama’s spending? Nope. That is pretty much the last thing they want to talk about when they comment to me.

    What is the real important subject as far as they’re concerned? In a word, it’s that I’m “mean.”

    And, you see, if I’m mean it means that facts don’t matter, so nyah, nyah, nyah. Or something to that effect.

    I tried to respond to somebody the other day that if Aristotle had a scowl, he’d be just as good of a philosopher as if he wore a smile. But that didn’t seem to wash. The “You’re a mean meany so I get to disregard all of your facts” meme continued to play and play like puppies who afterward can’t control their little bladders.

    If you were racing down the road at 120 mph and I had a scowl on my face when I shouted that the bridge had washed out, would it really matter whether I had that scowl and shouted? I mean, if you’re genuinely sane?

    Do you do that to me? Check.

    Here’s another one: the attack on me as a religious person. I point out in that article:

    The bottom line, for the record, is that liberals are giving me a play from the Saul Alinksy playbook. He said on page 75 of his Rules for Radicals (which was dedicated to Lucifer as “the first radical known to man”):

    Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more live up to their own rules than the Christian Church can live up to Christianity.”

    And, to an extent, this is true. For one thing liberals don’t have any rules or code of honor that binds them; they can be as vile as they wish: Lucifer sure won’t care. And the Kingdom Jesus established is a spiritual one. And you must therefore either recognize that strife and violence is a part of this world while you strive for the better one to come, or you simply bow your head to the next dictator that comes along. But it is very difficult to fight for a very political world in the here-and-now against a side that has no rules beyond “Rules for Radicals.”

    Do you do that to me? Check check.

    Btw, your line –

    Also, on a sidebar, one of the Ten Commandments is Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery. Newt Gingrich is a chronic adulterer. I mean if you are religious, I don’t think you would want him to be the President of this country.

    – is so over the top dishonest that it is simply beyond amazing. Let me get this straight: Newt Gingrich is an “adulterer,” so I should instead prefer a man who is responsible for millions of aborted babies instead???

    That and I have NEVER endorsed Newt Gingrich. At this point, I am planning to cast my vote for Rick Santorum when my chance to vote comes up.

    All you’re doing, “Mister Independent,” is further documenting that you have no religious virtue whatsoever; you and Saul Alinsky will use ANY tactic to hurt Republicans and help Democrats.

    A third one is victimism. I point out in that article:

    “Victimism” in this context is when a liberal practices a particularly bizarre form of psychological jujitsu in order to make themselves the victim in an argument or debate. You see, in their warped little minds, if they can manage to make themselves the victim, they win. It doesn’t matter how strong your case is or how weak theirs is otherwise; in liberalism the victim always wins. Period. And look; they’re the victim!

    So, of course, if I say something mean – (regardless of anything vile they previously said to me) – they become the victim and therefore they win the debate. Because that’s the way their world works.

    You can, of course, translate this into the larger socio-economic-and-political issues: victimhood means everything to the left. It is a cherished status to be sought above everything else – especially above facts.

    Do you do that? Yep, you have to point out that I “blocked one guy when he started fighting back.” Check check check.

    Somehow it never seems to occur to you in your “advice” that Democrats are DEMONIZING we conservatives at the very highest levels. Just the other day, Maxine Waters said:

    “I saw pictures of Boehner and Cantor on our screens (at the convention). Don’t ever let me see again, in life, those Republicans in our hall, on our screens, talking about anything. These are demons,” she told the crowd. “They are bringing down this country, destroying this country, because they’d rather do whatever they can do destroy this president rather than for the good of this country.”

    Vice President Joe Biden:

    Vice President Joe Biden joined House Democrats in lashing tea party Republicans Monday, accusing them of having “acted like terrorists” in the fight over raising the nation’s debt limit, according to several sources in the room.

    And let’s not forget Barack Obama himself demonizing Republicans as being people who want “dirtier air and dirtier water” and wanting to hurt children and even create more children with Down Syndrome and autism.

    But are you any kind of any actual “independent” who is outraged by that vicious and hateful behavior at the very highest levels of the Democrat Party and can at least have a slight degree of empathy for a conservative who is ready to fight back in the war that is going on for the soul of this nation? No.

    Because you’re every bit as “independent” as I am. And I am fiercely on the exact opposite side from you.

    I would NEVER go onto a liberal website and pretend I was an “independent” in order to score cheap rhetorical points. Because, Mr. Saul Alinsky Tactic, I am – in spite of my shortcomings as a Christian – a far more virtuous person than you are. Because at least I tell the truth as I see it, rather than attempt to deliberately deceive people about who I am and what I stand for.

    When I see bait and switch comments like yours, I am just going to block you people. You don’t want to debate the issue; you want to change the subject to one that personally attacks me because by now it is beyond OBVIOUS that your president is spending us beyond bankruptcy. You don’t have any integrity whatsoever to represent yourself honestly. And you frankly make me nauseous by playing the same games over and over again.

    Allow me to add one more recent event to illuminate what you are doing to me: the media is crawling up Santorum’s rectal cavity hysterically claiming he “attacked” Obama’s Christian faith. And that is, the mainstream media and the Obama campaign tells us, utterly beyond the pale of decency. It doesn’t matter that the charge is completely untrue, and Santorum was attacking Obama for his radical worldview regarding energy rather than his view of Jesus. The claim that Santorum attacked Obama’s “Christianity” is enough; to hell with any actual evidence.

    Santorum didn’t attack Obama’s religion, Anonymous; BUT YOU MOST DEFINITELY ATTACKED MINE. You viciously tear into me for my faith.

    By the standard of the media denouncing Santorum, you are a truly wicked and vile human being, Anonymous. You are a hater beyond the pale of decency.

    What pisses me off the most about you hypocrites is how you go off on us for a tiny fraction of what you somehow feel entitled to attack us with every single day.

    So thank you for your “caring advice” and all, and please get lost.

  282. Anonymous Says:

    I truly feel sorry for you, Michael Eden. So much hate and anger within. I admire your passion and your intellect, but the polarized nature of your arguments along with your coarse behavior is incredibly outrageous. Facts, facts, facts you tout. Facts are facts, but your interpretation is simply an opinion, one that is, in your case, incredibly biased. I feel sorry for you because your are clearly a very intelligent person, but unable to look over the conservative filter you view the world through.

    During these times, we must spend our way out of this deficit. Most economists agree. Unfortunately, this makes the numbers look dismal. But what’s happening now? The GM financial report looks awesome, unemployment is trending downwards, stock market upwards…I like where this country is going.

    Obama is going to be re-elected. There’s little doubt about that, and this “dumbass liberal” could not be happier.

    -C

  283. Michael Eden Says:

    Anomymous,

    What a hateful and angry thing for you to say. Oh, and coarse, too.

    I wrote an article about people like you: https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/of-liberalism-victimism-avoidance-projection-and-other-personality-disorders/

    I never cease to be amazed how often you unhinged eight-years-of-Bush-derangement-syndrome people feel so self righteous in lecturing me about my “hate” and “coarseness” given what your side is saying about us EVERY SINGLE DAY. How do your heads not explode from all the hypocritical contradictions???

    I’m actually fine with your hate and anger and courseness; what I can’t tolerate is your abject hypocrisy in trying to say, “You right wingers are such haters!” when YOU LEFT WINGERS ARE SUCH HATERS. You people are quintessential hypocrites; it is your defining essence; take hypocrisy away and you would dematerialize.

    You say,

    Facts, facts, facts you tout. Facts are facts, but your interpretation is simply an opinion, one that is, in your case, incredibly biased

    And yet you couldn’t point to even ONE single instance in which I am “biased.” Not ONE.

    You damn idiots constantly allude to my errors or bias without even being able to muster up ONE SINGLE EXAMPLE.

    From there, you just resort to outright lies:

    During these times, we must spend our way out of this deficit. Most economists agree

    THAT IS A LIE:

    Failed President Alert: Economists Say Stimulus Did NOT Help

    Why Stimulus Didn’t Stimulate Economy: Because It NEVER HAS

    Anybody who thinks it is even remotely possible that your statement about economists has ANY merit whatsoever needs to go to this link in which hundreds of economists say it is pure BULLCRAP.

    So, yeah, you ARE a “dumbass liberal.” You demonize me while self-righteously and hypocritically posturing yourself as being above demonizing. Then you proceed to tell me I’m wrong without even being able to manage a single example to demonstrate it. And then you just go to the dumbass liberal playbook to pull out one of the most ridiculous lies in the arsenal.

    Obama may very well get re-elected because his “reverend” for twenty years had it right: “No, no, no! NOT God bless America! God DAMN America!”

    As for “unemployment trending downwards,” again, BULLCRAP: https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/where-are-the-jobs-obama-you-liar/

  284. Anonymous Says:

    “I never cease to be amazed how often you unhinged eight-years-of-Bush-derangement-syndrome people feel so self righteous in lecturing me about my “hate” and “coarseness” given what your side is saying about us EVERY SINGLE DAY. How do your heads not explode from all the hypocritical contradictions???”

    I actually voted for Bush…twice!! Your libero-normative assumptive comments only highlight your inherent bias.

    “I’m actually fine with your hate and anger and courseness;…”

    I believe you meant coarseness.. Your spelling has slipped. So unlike you.. I’ll let this one slide.

    “…what I can’t tolerate is your abject hypocrisy in trying to say, “You right wingers are such haters!” when YOU LEFT WINGERS ARE SUCH HATERS. You people are quintessential hypocrites; it is your defining essence; take hypocrisy away and you would dematerialize.”

    Funny, I said no such thing. Not once did I make any generalizations about right wingers. Again, you’ve painted a vivid picture in your head about me and my beliefs based purely on your negative biases, simply because of my disparate views. Your prejudices are clear.

    I merely stated YOU are full of hate and anger. I’d cite examples, but it’s pretty evident.

    “You say,

    Facts, facts, facts you tout. Facts are facts, but your interpretation is simply an opinion, one that is, in your case, incredibly biased

    And yet you couldn’t point to even ONE single instance in which I am “biased.” Not ONE.

    You damn idiots constantly allude to my errors or bias without even being able to muster up ONE SINGLE EXAMPLE.”

    Unlike you, I don’t have the time for such things.. A cop out response, I know, but hey it’s the truth. But if even you can’t admit to your own biases, then there’s really no point in trying to highlight them. You’re too obtuse to ever have a reasonable discussion with.

    “From there, you just resort to outright lies:

    During these times, we must spend our way out of this deficit. Most economists agree

    THAT IS A LIE:

    Failed President Alert: Economists Say Stimulus Did NOT Help

    Why Stimulus Didn’t Stimulate Economy: Because It NEVER HAS

    Anybody who thinks it is even remotely possible that your statement about economists has ANY merit whatsoever needs to go to this link in which hundreds of economists say it is pure BULLCRAP.”

    How about referencing sources that aren’t written by you, mmkay? Your source in that article is atrocious. Try referencing a real economist who actually understands the economy, perhaps Paul Krugman, a nobel laureate who is far smarter than both you and me:

    And btw, FDR inherited the economic blunder caused by HH. I don’t know why you think FDR caused the GD, but it’s well established it was Herbert Hoover who was responsible. You also reference a source from two UCLA economists that believe FDR prolonged the GD. That’s absolutely ludicrous. I don’t agree with a lot of what FDR did, but he certainly isn’t to blame for the 13 years of economic hell. Not even close.

    http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090101_fdr_prolonged_the_depression_really/

    http://rjgpublicthoughts.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2009/1/20/4068834.html

    “So, yeah, you ARE a “dumbass liberal.” You demonize me while self-righteously and hypocritically posturing yourself as being above demonizing. Then you proceed to tell me I’m wrong without even being able to manage a single example to demonstrate it. And then you just go to the dumbass liberal playbook to pull out one of the most ridiculous lies in the arsenal.”

    I am a lot of things, but a dumbass is certainly not one of them. I don’t think they let dumbasses into top tiered medical schools, but hey, what do I know haha.. Above demonizing I am though. I’ll give you that.

    “Obama may very well get re-elected because his “reverend” for twenty years had it right: “No, no, no! NOT God bless America! God DAMN America!”

    How about thank God you’re in no position to make a difference in this world.

    As for “unemployment trending downwards,” again, BULLCRAP: https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/where-are-the-jobs-obama-you-liar/

    Again, stop referencing your own articles… and no, they ARE declining.. Stop being so blind, ignorant, and polarized Michael. You’ll be a much better person for it :)

    http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate

    -C

  285. Michael Eden Says:

    The only part of your garbage that I’ll bother with is the following:

    As you quote me, I said:

    Facts, facts, facts you tout. Facts are facts, but your interpretation is simply an opinion, one that is, in your case, incredibly biased.

    And yet you couldn’t point to even ONE single instance in which I am “biased.” Not ONE.

    You damn idiots constantly allude to my errors or bias without even being able to muster up ONE SINGLE EXAMPLE.”

    And your “response”:

    Unlike you, I don’t have the time for such things.. A cop out response, I know, but hey it’s the truth. But if even you can’t admit to your own biases, then there’s really no point in trying to highlight them. You’re too obtuse to ever have a reasonable discussion with.

    I challenged you to provide just ONE example of what you assert AFTER pointing out you were too much of a liar and a coward to do so.

    And you say:

    Unlike you, I don’t have the time for such things.. A cop out response, I know, but hey it’s the truth

    EVEN AS YOU WRITE ME A LENGTHY COMMENT???

    Do you have any idea what a snivelling little weasel you are???

    You clearly have plenty of time to waste, you waste. I want you to notice that I’m not wasting so much as a nanosecond of my time going to visit you on your blog. You’ve got PLENTY of time.

    What you don’t have is any honesty or any arguments, you dishonest little cockroach.

    How DARE you try to weasel out of your lies by claiming you just don’t have time to defend them.

    But you’re not done demonstrating what a pathetic little fool you are. You go on to respond to my picking out this line from you:

    During these times, we must spend our way out of this deficit. Most economists agree

    which I conclusively documented to be totally untrue. That wasn’t “one economist,” you vile liar; COUNT THEM.

    YOU are the one who points to JUST ONE GUY.

    THAT ARTICLE I LINKED TO CITES HUNDREDS OF ECONOMISTS WHO ARE ON MY SIDE. And against my hundreds, you’ve got ONE – and you think that you somehow proved that “most economists agree.”

    As for the unemployment rate, you are just filled with something smelly: https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/real-unemployment-rate-under-obama-over-nineteen-percent-as-in-fdr-great-depression-number/

    Liberalism is like syphillus; untreated it drives the nasty people who get it insane.

  286. Steve Says:

    The president doesn’t make the laws that brought the massive debt… Congress does. Am I the only one who paid attention in class when they talked about checks and balances. The presedent is a glorified lobiest with the power to veto. Get educated people.

  287. Michael Eden Says:

    Steve,

    Actually, I happen to know that only Congress is authorized by the Constitution to spend money.

    Mind you, there’s the little fact that the United States has had little to do with the Constitution since Woodrow Wilson started pissing on it in 1913 with the Federal Reserve Act (and then pissed on it even more by creating a fascist state using WWI as an excuse). And the U.S.A. had even LESS to do with the Constitution after FDR turned American into a failed experiment in Keynesian-socialist economics. And now under Obama it has absolutely NOTHING whatsoever to do with the Constitution.

    I have repeatedly used the apparent fact that the president does not officially create debt by pointing to the fact that the last budget passed by Republicans only had a $161 billion deficit – compared to the $459 billion deficit the Democrats in Congress passed the very next year. And I very definitely used that argument to liberals who tried to blame Ronald Reagan for “his” deficit: Demomcrats controlled the House EVERY SINGLE YEAR of Reagan’s presidency.

    The problem with your argument is twofold:

    1) Democrats had complete control of the House AND the Senate for the first two years of Obama’s regime and Obama has never lost control over the Senate. Such that it is HIS party creating all of this massive debt. Further, the Republicans took the House in 2010, but every single time they have tried to cut spending DEMOCRATS demonized them for doing so.

    2) Barack Obama’s budget has called for even more spending than his own reckless Democrat Party. His last budget was so insane that it got voted down 97-0 in his own Democrat-controlled Senate. Harry Reid has vowed to prevent a similar fiasco from happening again by not allowing Obama’s insane budget to come to a vote. Oh, and if Obama’s budget were actually passed, it would increase our debt to $26 trillion in ten years!!!

    3) The Democrat Party is so reckless and so immoral that they haven’t even bothered to pass any kind of a budget whatsoever for well over three years.

    These three facts render your point rather moot and worthless.

    Get educated, Steve.

  288. Anonymous Says:

    spending increase

  289. Tyler Says:

    Mr. Eden,
    Have to say I’ve learned quite a bit from your blog, I may have been looking for ammunition to defend Obama and my vote, by asking google who spent more “Obama versus Bush Spending” and landing on your site, but nevertheless understand and appreciate some of your views. I forwarded your blog to my buddy with my posts included and was warned, by him, that I’m way out of my league! He, who is a High School History Teacher claimed that I was arguing with a College Professor, I would guess a Retired Military Officer or a Journalist, but whatever your passion or profession is I admire your efforts, though I may not completely agree. I myself work for the military, and teach wounded soldiers how to play golf so that they find enjoyment in a fun game, which may get their minds off what they’ve seen or endured? I say this only to give you a sense of my own confusion and hopes for a better America, despite what you may believe.
    For instance, why not Ron Paul who agrees with Washignton about limiting a Military Establishment? You stated you agree with most everything he believes but his stance on Foriegn Policy. Also, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, Obama is being ridiculed for apolligizing for the Quaran burning incident, but Bush did the same thing! Is all what we do anymore based on limiting or ridiculing the other side, wouldn’t that end up meaning that all anyone’s interested is seeing the other side fail, or insureing that your side is in power? Isn’t the “independent” position growing to find a middle ground devoid of Party Politics? What about ending Primaries and letting each Candidate run all the way to the White House on their own merits?
    Tyler

  290. Michael Eden Says:

    Tyler,

    I’ll try to stick to the factual issues you raise.

    I’m one of the people who has gone after Obama for his apology to the Afghanis who murdered two American soldiers. Call me crazy, but I have this weird belief that murder is worse than burning Korans that the Taliban had defiled with their own fanatic writings.

    As a Christian, I believe the Bible is the Word of God. But I also know that the Bible that I read is just a book; the printing press that pumped it out did not descend from heaven. And if someone burned my Bible, I would just go buy another Bible. What is going on in Afghanistan is an example of Islam being the imposition by force of a 7th century view of the world.

    You mention Bush having done the same thing (apologizing about Koran burning). Yes and no. It’s NOT the apologizing over burning Korans that conservatives such as myself find objectionable; it is apologizing to the people who just murdered our soldiers.

    I went back and verified it: Bush apologized for an instance that occurred in Iraq where a sniper was using Korans as target practice. The Iraq people were angry; but they didn’t then go out and murder American soldiers. That, and the fact that that sniper was deliberately destroying Korans that had NOT already been “defiled” by terrorists writing hate in them, both combine to make what Obama is now doing very different.

    If none of our soldiers ended up being murdered, then I would have zero problem with Obama issuing an apology. As it is, he was totally wrong to apologize to the people who murdered our soldiers. That’s the bottom line.

    Another thing I would say is that Obama demonized Bush as no president in my lifetime ever demonized his predecessor. Obama basically said that everything Bush did was wrong; and now he is saying that Bush did it, so he’s right??? Based on Obama’s own demagogic anti-Bush rhetoric, that merely makes Obama more evil that he did something the evil Bush did!!! So that’s not really very much of a defense, is it???

    And still another thing I would point out is that Bush apologized as a means to help him obtain VICTORY, versus Obama apologizing before he pulls out on the timetable for withdrawal that is tantamount to defeat. I could add that to my response to another guy re: “Bush’s war.”
    As for Ron Paul, I like the guy personally. He is THE most consistent candidate out there of ANY candidate in my lifetime.

    My biggest issue with Ron Paul is his position on Iran: I believe that Iran is a genuine existential threat to not only Israel, but the peace of the world. If Iran gets nukes and the means to deliver them, you can guarantee that Iran will push their new status to the breaking point: close down the Strait of Hormuz and send gas prices to $15 a gallon; launch a wave of global terrorist attacks; even attack Israel. The sky’s the limit on their insanity. And will we be willing to kiss a few American cities and millions of our citizens goodbye to deal with them? We simply cannot allow Iran to have nuclear weapons.

    And at least in his rhetoric, on that issue even OBAMA is more correct than Ron Paul (though I very much doubt that Obama will do anything to actually stop Iran from getting nukes). That’s how bad Paul’s position is.

    As for the part about the “all anyone’s interested is seeing the other side fail…” thing, I once wrote an article titled “Do Unto Obama As Liberals Did Unto Bush” (which was subsequently attacked by the Daily Beast and in a book on “Wingnuts” available here.

    In both cases, I was attacked for voicing a very simple premise: Republicans should attack Democrats the exact same way Democrats attacked us. And apparently the left acknowledges that they are truly morally evil, and that what they did was evil, and that Republicans who are morally superior to Democrats in every way imaginable shouldn’t act the way evil and vile Democrats act. Either that or else they are simply hypocrites completely without any shame whatsoever.

    Why shouldn’t we fight back the way the left fought us? How does it help us to allow the left to take vicious shots at us and then do nothing???

    Obama is right now whining about how the Republicans are “politicizing” his high gas prices. BUT OBAMA DEMONIZED BUSH FOR HIGH GAS PRICES!!! Why SHOULDN’T we fight back the same way??? The same thing with the debt ceiling or Bush’s $ 4 trillion debt; Obama DEMONIZED Bush. Why shouldn’t we demonize Obama???

    Democrats are attacking us with an unhinged frenzy at the highest levels. Obama says Republicans want dirtier air and dirtier water and we want more children with autism and Down Syndrome. Joe Biden called Republicans “terrorists.” Maxine Waters LITERALLY demonized us by calling us “demons.” Why would any honest and fair person demand that we not retaliate???

    We are in a war for our culture, and conservatives shouldn’t have the right to fight back??? How is that anything other than pathologically unfair???

  291. Seth Says:

    Well, as you have pointed out, we should most certainly attack Democrats the same way they have attacked us. However, they just like making it really hard for us to fight. They don’t believe in fair fighting. They have us put terrorists on trial in civilian courts, they court marshal navy seals for punching a terrorist in the face…………. I think I understand now. They think they are righteous, and noble, and think that they are the only ones with the right to fight back, while the rest of us have to sit there and take it.

    I know I didn’t cite my sources, and am not looking for an argument. I am merely a 18 y/o wanting to make an informed vote while putting my two cents in on this esteemed blog. thing. whatever it’s called.

  292. Michael Eden Says:

    Seth,

    To be honest, I can’t recall our previous exchange and simply can’t take the time to look it up right now.

    But I agre with your first paragraph, regardless of anything I said previously.

    Yes, Democrats have the mantra, “It’s not fascism when we do it.” Yes, if a Republican president tried to do to leftwing secular institutions what Obama is doing to the Catholic Church (forcing them to do things in direct opposition to their moral values), you can’t even imagine the outcry in the press. Yes, Democrats are defined by one overarching trait: abject personal hypocrisy.

    As for your second paragraph, yes, I demand people back up what they say. I try very hard in all of my articles to cite the evidence for what I am saying. And whenever somebody tries to correct me, they’d better be prepared to demonstrate that I’ve got my facts wrong and they can back that up.

    I congratulate you on caring about politics as such a young man. I certainly didn’t when I was 18 (though I was proud of my first commander in chief, Ronald Reagan). The bottom line: if young people like you don’t get involved, you won’t even HAVE a country by the time your thirty. Which brings me to another trait about Democrats: they claim to be fighting for the same people whom their policies are in actuality most hurting.

  293. Seth Says:

    Well, first of all, we have never had a previous exchange, and I’m sorry if I made it sound that way.

    And second, what more can I do to get involved?
    I would really like to have a country when I’m thirty!

  294. Anonymous Says:

    If Bush would’ve left all the things how they were, we wouldn’t be in this situation. Bush got the hot hand and ruined it. All the programs Clinton set up had us swimming in money but greed, selfishness, and arrogance got us to where we are today. Bush left and Obama is left to deal with the wrath of what that idiot Bush did.

  295. Michael Eden Says:

    Seth,

    You wrote, “I know I didn’t cite my sources…”, and I guess I jumped to a conclusion.

    I apologize for my error.

    You ask a great question: what can you do to get involved?

    I got into blogging to get involved. I wanted to 1) preserve a record of what Obama did to ruin this country and 2) try to persuade the persuadable that we are in grave danger under this failed president.

    You don’t have to be an “expert.” A lot of people make a difference by simply cross-posting articles that point out how badly Democrat policies are failing. Articles like that tend to get purged by the mainstream media – unless people like me (and maybe you?) preserve them.

    Another way to get involved is to volunteer for the campaign of a conservative politician (if you’re lucky enough to actually have one representing your area at any level). Here’s an article on “how to get involved.”

    You might be able to creatively think of an entirely different way. Young people are great at thinking outside the box us older fogies tend to end up in.

    I very much hope you can still have an America that isn’t a banana republic when your thirty.

  296. Michael Eden Says:

    Anonymous,

    Boy, you are astonishingly ignorant.

    Some facts to consider about how the streets were paved with gold under Clinton:

    Bill Clinton left George Bush in an incredibly deep hole. Clinton left Bush with the Dotcom bubble – the collapse of which vaporized $7.1 trillion in American wealth and resulted in the Nasdaq losing a massive 78% of its valuation. But that wasn’t all Clinton did. He had guttend the military and the intelligence budget and made America both weak and blind. And the ONLY reason Americans tend to forget how terrible the economy that Clinton left Bush with was the massive 9/11 attack which was also a HUGE blow to the U.S. economy. I wrote this in a comment to someone else:

    And the ONLY reason we don’t talk about that – aside that too many in the media are just as biased and as stupid as you are, Smith – is that Clinton had also GUTTED the Pentegon and intelligence budget, leaving America both weak (Osama bin Laden called Clinton’s America “a paper tiger”) and blind. Clinton did to the CIA budget what he did to the Nasdaq – just wiped it out – and left us exposed to the 9/11 attack.

    Osama bin Laden’s words in 1998 following the Clinton fiasco in Somalia where the US pulled out with its tail between its legs: “Our boys no longer viewed America as a superpower. So, when they left Afghanistan, they went to Somalia and prepared themselves carefully for a long war. They had thought that the Americans were like the Russians, so they trained and prepared. They were stunned when they discovered how low was the morale of the American soldier. America had entered with 30,000 soldiers in addition to thousands of soldiers from different countries in the world. … As I said, our boys were shocked by the low morale of the American soldier and they realized that the American soldier was just a paper tiger. He was unable to endure the strikes that were dealt to his army, so he fled, and America had to stop all its bragging and all that noise it was making in the press…”

    Here’s a little more about how we have Bill Clinton to thank for the massive 9/11 attack to go on top of his massive DotCom bubble collapse:

    Author James Risen won the Pulitzer Prize on Tuesday for his much ballyhooed New York Times report last December that revealed President Bush’s previously secret terrorist surveillance program – a revelation he uncovered while researching his book “State of War.”

    In the same book, however, Risen makes an equally explosive claim about President Clinton’s relationship with the CIA – which his editors at the Times have so far declined to cover.

    Upon taking power in 1993, Risen reports, the Clinton administration “began slashing the intelligence budget in search of a peace dividend, and Bill Clinton showed almost no interest in intelligence matters.”

    The agency cutbacks combined with presidential disinterest took their toll almost immediately.

    “Over a three-or-four-year period in the early-to-mid 1990s,” reports Risen, “virtually an entire generation of CIA officers – the people who had won the Cold War – quit or retired. One CIA veteran compared the agency to an airline that had lost all of is senior pilots . . . “

    After Clinton CIA Director John Deutch cashiered several senior officers over a scandal in Guatamala, the situation got even worse.

    “Morale [at the CIA] plunged to new lows, and the agency became paralyzed by an aversion to high-risk espionage operations for fear they would lead to political flaps. Less willing to take big risks, the CIA was less able to recruit spies in dangerous places such as Iraq.”

    And there’s the blindness that led to the 9/11 attack, combined with the fact that Clinton demonstrated to Osama bin Laden with the “Blackhawk Down” fiasco in Somalia that the U.S. was just “a paper tiger,” and ripe for a massive attack. That attack was planned, funded – and all the terrrorist assets were in the USA and even trained to fly in American pilot schools- during the Clinton misrule.

    So if you want to blame Bush for Obama’s mess, the least you could do would be to have the decency to blame Clinton for Bush’s mess. But you’re not honest enough to do that. Neither you, or your corrupt Democrat Party, or your mainstream media propaganda networks, have any integrity at all. Republicans took responsibility and admitted fault for their overspending. Democrats are like Cain in the Book of Genesis; they refuse to accept responsibility for anything no matter how guilty they are.

    Bush had an INCREDIBLY deep hole to recover from. Not that the liberal media propaganda will ever acknowledge that.

    Bush turned the economy around with his tax cuts, resulting in an unprecedented 52 months of uninterrupted job growth, the longest run on record. And Bush ended his presidency with basically the same unemployment rate that Clinton had.

    The real idiot is the guy who idiotically fails to understand stuff like that because he is too brainwashed by the media propaganda and can’t think for himself.

  297. Jack Herer Says:

    Dear,

    Michael Eden..

    I have read thru mostly all of your comments here and on some other articles.

    All I have to say is YOU ARE FUCKING STUPID, WORTHLESS, and YOU SHOULD JUST KILL YOURSELF BUDDY.

    OBAMA 2012 and he will win too, eat your heart out Michael Eden aka retard.

  298. Michael Eden Says:

    Jack Herer,

    I apologize to everyone for not editing the profanity out of this as I usually do. It just struck me as being better this time to simply preserve your words so people could see what incredibly vile people Obama supporters are.

    Other than the fact that you literally can’t make it through two sentences without the toxic filth pouring out of you,

    Other than the fact that you demonstrate once again that all the evil and all the hate come out of the soul of the left,

    You also manage to prove that LIBERALS DO NOT LIVE IN A WORLD OF FACTS OR ARGUMENTS, but in a world of rhetoric and insults. You tell me you’ve read through all those comments, etc., but were you capable of interacting with or trying to refute ANY of them? Nope, not you. That requires a level of humanity that has eluded you.

    It’s truly sad that the noble, decent people of the this country have their votes cancelled out by pathetic dregs such as yourself. But that’s the only way Obama can win, isn’t it?

  299. bSpittle Says:

    This is just stupid.

    You’re trying to blame Obama for bush spending as if the deficit reset to $0 when Obama was elected.
    It didn’t.

    94% of our debt is the result of republican policy.

  300. Michael Eden Says:

    bSpittle,

    Do you know what our deficit just for this last month was, you idiot moron?

    From the Washington Times, March 8, 2012:

    The federal government recorded its worst monthly deficit in history in February, according to a preliminary report Wednesday from the Congressional Budget Office that said the deficit in fiscal year 2012 is already more than half a trillion dollars.

    The CBO’s figures show that despite repeated efforts to trim spending, the government has borrowed 42 cents of every dollar it spent during the first five months of this fiscal year.

    The nonpartisan agency projected the government will run a deficit of $229 billion in February, the highest monthly figure ever. The previous high was $223 billion a year ago, in February 2011.

    Let me point out a little bit more here just for the factual record. The last budget a Republican Congress passed under a Republican president had a deficit of $162 billion dollars (FY-2007). The very next year after Democrats took over both the House and Senate, they increased that last Republican deficit by 180.86 percent to $455 billion. Which is to say that Democrats very nearly tripled the deficit that Republicans had in just one year.

    Now we are in TRILLION DOLLAR PLUS DEFICITS EVERY SINGLE YEAR OF OBAMA’S PRESIDENCY.

    Obama’s MONTHLY deficit for February ($229 billion) is 41.36% higher than the ENTIRE YEARS’ DEFICIT OF REPUBLICANS. And you STILL demonize Bush.

    I DOCUMENTED that Obama has spent THREE TIMES AS MUCH AS BUSH SPENT. But you are more incapable of understanding truth than my dog.

    You’re not just stupid; you are truly demon possessed to be that immune to reality.

    Just get lost. I’ve got far better things to do than to waste my time with someone like you.

  301. Anonymous Says:

    Michael Eden,
    Thank you very much for these posts. I can tell from reading your posts that you have specific goals to accomplish by doing this, and you are doing a good job of it. I want to do that too but have had many people confront me on “my approach” to trying to get the message out about what is happening to this country. I feel about to explode at times, because of the lack of interest in what is happening now to this country and that just because I dont say it “just right”, people dont want to hear it. I dont really know if it’s me or if they just dont want to admit what is really going on. I am so sad at the lack of civility and the huge divide that we have right now, in so many aspects of life. Sadly, this administrations seems to relish in this.

    Its so frustrating that people keep blaming Bush and wont look at the fact that Obama has been in office over 3 years now. OR, the racist rant, it is absolutely maddening, Every time I tell myself that I am going to let it go and not talk about it, I hear or read something that says “this is NOT the time to be silent about what is going on in this country, it is very important to try to inform others’ that are not aware of what is happening”.

    Thanks again for your posts and facts and links, it helps to have these facts. There are so many things going on, it’s hard to keep track of them all.

  302. Michael Eden Says:

    Anonymous,

    When you say, “I want to do that too but have had many people confront me on “my approach” to trying to get the message out” I know exactly how you feel. Day after day, I write articles filled with supporting documentation. And most of the criticism I get has NOTHING to do with the actual facts and everything to do with “my approach” in stating them.

    It’s like these people think it’s “rational” to ignore a man who says the bridge is out because he’s shouting. And since he’s shouting the bridge very obviously can’t be out and so they can speed up down the road where the bridge is out and they’re going to plunge into the river below and die.

    And the thing that I find so offensive about the “lack of civility” is the hypocrisy of one side that constantly demonizes the other for lacking civility even as they are more hateful than the side they are demonizing.

    And then you mention the fact that “blame Bush” (and “you must be a racist!”) seems to be an argument that can actually excuse Obama and the Democrat Party for EVER.

    Combine the three points you made (and I restated above) and you get to our problem: we are no longer capable of solving our problems or even being able to acknowledge that we HAVE problems. We now live in a world of rhetoric rather than a world of truth.

    I call this world “God damn America.”

  303. Independant Against Furher Paul Says:

    I love how you say all Democrats do is give insults when all you do is insult them.

    But it’s okay, because Obama is bringing the economy into an upturn with responsible spending, stopping the decline that happened due to Bush 43’s negligent spending.

  304. Michael Eden Says:

    I don’t have to waste too much time with you, because I’ve already wasted time with idiots just like you recently. So I’ll just copy and paste to your two idiotic statements:

    You say:

    I love how you say all Democrats do is give insults when all you do is insult them.

    I was responding to a guy who said the Occupy Movement was wonderful and not fascist at all. So I didn’t mention the recent comments in which Barack Obama said Republicans want dirtier air and dirtier water and that Republicans want more children with autism and Down Syndrome. I didn’t mention Democrat Maxine Waters calling Republicans “demons” or Joe Biden calling Republicans “terrorists.” But given that the Occupy movement represents the heart of the left and the Tea Party represents the heart of the right, let’s take a look at the vile toxic fascist heart of your side:

    There have been at least 6,705 documented arrests in 112 U.S. cities as of March 6, 2012. Versus how many for the Tea Party???

    How many scenes like this do we have to see before we can call a movement “fascist”??? How much evidence of violence relative to the Tea Party do we have to have???

    Show me crap like this coming from the Tea Party.

    What about the left-wing unions who called the Tea Party “sons of bitches” and said they were going to have a WAR with them and take those sonsofbitches out??? Who was the fascist there??? How about when union leaders plotted to implode America? Who was the fascist??? When the Democrats said they wanted to “get a little bloody”, who was the fascist??? Or how about when unions said “forget about the law”; who was a fascist??? Or when liberal professors tell conservative students to “fuck off” pretty much on a routine basis, which side is fascist???

    If Nazis, Socialists and communists actively join in with the Occupy movement because they have common goals, doesn’t that mean something??? Does it mean anything that 70 Democrats have declared themselves to be “socialists,” or that “fascism” is “national socialism”???

    How many acts of terrorism have Tea Partiers been arrested for??? See also here for more of that. And there are other incidents such as when a liberal threw a firebomb at an elderly lady at a pro-life prayer event. And yet Joe Biden actually called the “Tea Party” terrorist???

    How many acts of rape???

    How many ports and businesses did the Tea Party shut down? Versus all the blocking of businesses that the Occupy movement perpetuated against decent honest people??? And see here for more of the Occupy fascists hurting little people trying to earn a living.

    How many millions of dollars did the Tea Party cost the American people? Versus the MILLIONS the Occupy movement did with its violence and destruction of property???

    What did Nancy Pelosi say about the Tea Party? She lectured the nation that they were “Astroturf” and tantamount to Nazis:

    Interviewer: Do you think there’s legitimate grassroot opposition going on here?

    Pelosi: “I think they’re Astroturf… You be the judge. “They’re carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on healthcare.”

    She also said that Tea Party protestors were “un-American.”

    It didn’t matter that it was a DOCUMENTED FACT THAT LIBERALS INTENTIONALLY INFILTRATED TEA PARTY EVENTS TO HOLD VILE SIGNS AND SAY VILE THINGS TO CAMERAS:

    tea party crasher

    It also didn’t matter that liberals proceeded to show they were even MORE intolerant and violent than Neo-Nazis. Or that the same Democrats who demonized the Tea Party for swastikas suddenly thought they were okay to use.

    Tea Partiers were called “racists” REPEATEDLY on the evidence that most Tea Party protestors were white. It didn’t matter to you hypocrites that the Occupy movement was EVERY DAMN BIT AS LILLY WHITE AND THEREFORE AS “RACIST” AS THE TEA PARTY EVER WAS. It also didn’t matter if the left was caught telling a black Supreme Court judge to “go back to the fields” while they threatened to “string him up.”

    After all that garbage, your Liar in Chief still used his Homeland Security to demonize the Tea Party as “violent extremists” while the Occupy thugs were “peaceful protestors”.

    Other than the FACT that the Occupy movement is as fascist as Hitler’s “Occupy Poland” movement, try to remember all the demonization that you miserable leftists threw at the Tea Party. And then do a lot less whining and a lot more shutting the hell up.

    So, yeah, it’s not enough to say all Democrats do is give insults; you vermin are genuinely evil psychopaths.

    You then say:

    But it’s okay, because Obama is bringing the economy into an upturn with responsible spending, stopping the decline that happened due to Bush 43′s negligent spending.

    That is positively insane. And if you even bothered to TRY to interact with the SIMPLE FACTS I present in this article, it would be quickly apparent that you are worse than a fool. I previously responded to a similar idiotic statement:

    Do you know what our deficit just for this last month was, you idiot moron?

    From the Washington Times, March 8, 2012:

    The federal government recorded its worst monthly deficit in history in February, according to a preliminary report Wednesday from the Congressional Budget Office that said the deficit in fiscal year 2012 is already more than half a trillion dollars.

    The CBO’s figures show that despite repeated efforts to trim spending, the government has borrowed 42 cents of every dollar it spent during the first five months of this fiscal year.

    The nonpartisan agency projected the government will run a deficit of $229 billion in February, the highest monthly figure ever. The previous high was $223 billion a year ago, in February 2011.

    Let me point out a little bit more here just for the factual record. The last budget a Republican Congress passed under a Republican president had a deficit of $162 billion dollars (FY-2007). The very next year after Democrats took over both the House and Senate, they increased that last Republican deficit by 180.86 percent to $455 billion. Which is to say that Democrats very nearly tripled the deficit that Republicans had in just one year.

    Now we are in TRILLION DOLLAR PLUS DEFICITS EVERY SINGLE YEAR OF OBAMA’S PRESIDENCY.

    Obama’s MONTHLY deficit for February ($229 billion) is 41.36% higher than the ENTIRE YEARS’ DEFICIT OF REPUBLICANS. And you STILL demonize Bush.

    I DOCUMENTED that Obama has spent THREE TIMES AS MUCH AS BUSH SPENT. But you are more incapable of understanding truth than my dog.

    You’re not just stupid; you are truly demon possessed to be that immune to reality.

    And you TOO are too immune to reality to qualify as merely “stupid” given the simple FACT Obama has outspent Bush by an easy 3-1 margin.

    Btw, why is it that you lying, deceitful, disingenuous liberal cockroaches constantly falsely refer to yourselves as “independent” when you are so very obviously leftwing ideologues???

  305. Anonymous Says:

    Michael Eden,
    Re:
    “We are no longer capable of solving our problems or even being able to acknowledge that we HAVE problems. We now live in a world of rhetoric rather than a world of truth.”

    This statement from you, is what is making me crazy. The affirmation that you understood what I meant is nice though, even if it changes nothing. Sometimes I think it would be easier to be ignorant about all of this, it would be much less stressful.

    The not acknowledging anything is the damaging part. It is insidious. I would never, and am not now, comparing any type of behavior that this administration is doing to Hitler But the response or lack thereof, of the people in this country (and flat out denial), to see and say what is going on, is astonishing to me. Granted there are many that are very upset and that is somewhat comforting, but the excuses and denial of others’ is absolutely unbelievable.

    I don’t even have anger anymore at the people who support this, I simply care about this country and want the force of dividing everyone in this country, and bankrupting it, to stop.

    I just saw the bo video attacking Sarah Palin. They are so threatened by her because she tells the truth and frankly what she says on the video is so true about bo, it should be used by the GOP.

  306. NoName- - Says:

    I’ve been reading this article for a while and I thought to myself… what do you think the republicans would do if their candidate held office. What would they place in highest regards as far as getting this country to a state of safety… since i assume the current state of america is not what anybody ( both republican and democrats) want.

  307. Michael Eden Says:

    Actually, a lot of liberals would LOVE to see America completely collapse.

    You should read up on the Cloward and Piven strategy – and realize that these two traitors were actually HONORED by Bill Clinton. That last article is titled “Collapsing the System … on Purpose.”

    Then we had the SEIU guy CAUGHT ON TAPE giving a lecture on how to collapse the American economy.

    The goal in both cases was to implode and bankrupt America and then replace our republic with a Marxist regime.

    So I don’t agree that both sides want the same thing or that both sides want to create a prosperous America. It’s just not true.

    Obama himself has poo-pooed America as the greatest nation on earth; we’re just one United Nations country in the midst of many others. And it is only through international cooperation that we matter.

    Obama’s new Defense Secretary Panetta says internationalism trumps the “outdated and irrelevant” (liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s view) American Constitution or the lawful authority of Congress.

    The American flag as well as the celebration of Independence Day on July 4th are now documented to create Republicans because Democrats have degenerated into constantly pushing treason as offical American policy.

    Which is why the Democrats are trying to ban the Pledge of Allegiance, of course.

    So I simply deny your premise.

    What do Republicans want?

    They want to reduce taxes – because tax cuts actually INCREASE revenues and have ALWAYS increased revenues – for starters. Class warfare is not only un-American but it is flagrantly MARXIST.

    They want to reduce government spending BECAUSE WE DON’T GOT ANY MORE MONEY AND ONLY MORALLY INSANE IDIOTS (i.e. Democrats) SAY WE SHOULD SPEND MORE. Our borrowing now exceeds our entire GDP under Obama. And the US deficit just for the month of February was

    They want to reform Social Security and Medicare BECAUSE THESE PROGRAMS ARE BANKRUPTING AMERICA. Medicare will be bankrupt by 2017 and Democrats are doing everything they can to demonize Republicans who are trying to avert that bankruptcy. Meanwhile Social Security was a simply godawful program from the start and we are actually way over $200 TRILLION in debt rather than the $15 trillion we always hear about. Social Security is a ponzi scheme that is about to fall apart. And this nation didn’t have to experience this given the fact that private options would have provided better benefits to retirees without bankrupting the nation.

    Republicans want to harness America’s vast oil and natural gas resources while Democrats want gimmicks. Obama literally gave money to Brazil to drill for oil rather than allowing Americans to drill for American oil. Democrats want Saudi Arabia to drill more so we can be more dependent on foreign oil from our enemies rather than drill for our own oil. And Obama would rather give a hundred billion to green boondoggles than allow America to develop its vast natural gas resources.

    Republicans want to take away power from the federal government and allow the states to be the laboratories for Democracy as the founding fathers wanted. If a Democrat state does something truly stupid or truly evil, its citizens can vote with their feet. But Democrats want to make it so there is nowhere to run.

    Republicans want to take away the constant moral hazard of unemployment benefits and welfare for life for slackers. I’ve written about this several times before (see here and here). But a very good book titled New Deal or Raw Deal? about what FDR did to change America for the worse put it well:

    Throughout American history, right from the start, charity had been a state and local function. Civic leaders, local clergy, and private citizens, evaluated the legitimacy of people’s need in their communities or counties; churches and other organizations could then provide food, shelter, and clothing to help victims of fires or women abandoned by drunken husbands. Most Americans believed that the face-to-face encounters of givers and receivers of charity benefited both groups. It created just the right amount of uplift and relief, and discouraged laziness and a poor work ethic.

    The Founders saw all relief as local and voluntary, and the Constitution gave no federal role for the government in providing charity. James Madison, in defending the Constitution, observed, “No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity.” In other words, if relief, and other areas, were made functions of the federal government, the process would become politicized and politicians and deadbeats could conspire to trade votes for food” (New Deal or Raw Deal, page 76-77).

    Prior to FDR, the American people took care of their OWN, family by family, town by town, county by county, state by state. They had NEVER had welfare, and in fact found the very concept of welfare distasteful. And I’m going to tell you right now that they were better, stronger people than we are as a result of that moral superiority and that faith in THE PEOPLE and not the GOVERNMENT.

    Republicans would like to return to that mindset rather than government as God and as Savior and as Big Brother.

    I could go on and on if I had time. Republicans want a powerful military versus Democrats who are always trying to weaken it. Republicans want a warfighting strategy that does not give the enemy “timetables for withdrawal” that amount to “timetables for defeat.” Republicans want a president who talks about “victory” when Democrats want a president who would never dare think about actually winning a war.

  308. Joe Says:

    @Michael Eden. Did you notice that Obama made it sound like he is the one that ended the war and he set the deadline to bring the troops home by December 31, 2011, when it was Bush that signed that agreement in 2008. It’s funny how people “Democrats” get so bent when facts are presented. God help us if Obama gets re-elected again….

  309. Michael Eden Says:

    Joe,

    You mean Obama is blaming Bush while taking credit for what Bush did? That’s pretty damn evil.

    But yes, Obama has been taking complete credit for the BUSH energy policies that resulted in new drilling on federal lands even while Obama himself has basically shut down access to federal land and water to new drilling.

    In the same way, Obama took credit (as you point out) for the success of the Iraq War (Joe Biden: “I am very optimistic about — about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration.”). This from the people who DEMONIZED Bush over his successful surge strategy.

    And of course Bush handed over an Iraq that was doing great – and Obama pissed that success away by refusing to negotiate an agreement with THREE YEARS TO DO IT that would have kept our troops there the way they are in South Korea and Germany and Japan. And now it’s going to hell.

    When Obama is done screwing up Afghanistan, watch this little weasel blame Bush – even though it was OBAMA’S idea to get us bogged down in Afghanistan. Bush wanted to fight in Iraq when all the evil Democrats were demonizing Iraq and insisting on Afghanistan precisely because he knew Afghanistan was a bad place to get stuck.

  310. Cameron Says:

    Iraq and Afghanistan were both bad ideas. So much money is wasted on trying to police the world. Republican or Democrat…it doesn’t matter. You’re all American! Get behind that. I’m Canadian (I know I’ll get trolled for that) but from an outside perspective this is what I see. An incredibly resourceful and wealthy nation with friends all over the world who is running itself into the ground because it’s citizens are too busy fighting each other. Here’s an interesting fact for you that goes beyond the Rep vs. Dem debate. The US military budget for ONE YEAR exceeds that of the entire amount of funding NASA has received for it’s entire life! Think of the progress that could be made for all of humanity if even 1/10th of the military budget were redirected to them. THAT would be progress.

  311. Prometheus Says:

    “Facts” are basically interpretations based on political biases, when it concerns economic statistics. For instance, under the last 4 Democratic presidents the deficit has GONE DOWN and under the last 5 Republican presidents the deficit has GONE UP.

    I’m indexing as percentage of GDP and no matter how you spin it Bush’s policies are STILL being payed for: you can’t spend without paying the piper. You can toss in Congress, etc. for masturbatory sophistry but the basic conclusion is that Obama inherited an abject, historically-devastating economic mess from the Great Bush Depression, esp. in a time of WORLD global collapse. (And before you whine about it, the WORLD economy does matter — which is why FAUX News made it a clear point to exculpate Bush’s reign over high gas prices… even as they now impugn Obama for the exact same thing…)

    You can’t keep spending on wars, tax cuts, corporate subsidies/tax breaks, artificial bubbles (housing, dot.com., Wall Street) and expect that the rich will create jobs and “trickle down” the wealth (check out Regan’s percentage attribution to the national debt…) The stock market was half of what it is now and the unemployment trend from 2007 — 2008 was already rising exponentially.

    People like to blame/laud presidents based on the day they took office. OK. Bush took office with a huge surplus projected (which is — as you must know — how budgets are “written” & measured against actual %s of GDP, including private vs. public debt ratios.) Bush left office with a historically astronomical debt — especially factoring in how he not only went on a treasury rape with his budgets but ALSO the Clinton surpluses.

    And yes, you are correct that President Obama is in that historical stream of debt. However, as many economists as not credit the stimulus spending for saving the U.S. from The Great Bush Recession transmogrifying into the Great Bush 2nd Depression. The tax cuts, the catching up of the raptatorial/virtual speculation & deregulated financial industry to the reality of margin calls, the artificial numbers of the predatory housing & dot.com “growth” (which burst organically due to the yearrs of free spending and misinformation/fraud: there are no Congressional policies that could have possibly done that damage in a year; and wasn’t Bush the President who could veto things anyways?),the burgeoning world economic crisis, the political climate which let the Republicans do anything they wanted for 6 1/2 years, and the collapsing trade imbalance with China’s generous rise (which itselff is now subject to reality and is slowing) — all these things were a dynamic, extant and irrefutably large portion of the 2009 -2010 economic dynamics (well, that and the intractable, insane Party of No politics…)

    For every chart, percentage, rationale, interpretation, etc. regarding the economy one can equally — and with equivalent dint — produce a countermanding argument. But the basic fact is that Obama’s budgets include spending on serial obligations mostly — and his unfunded or “other” portions of budget are — excluding stimulus-related programs/appropriations — but is FAR less “extraneous” spending (however you choose to qualify it) than Bush’s legacy of debt accumulation.

    Just as a quick inclusion of a very simple measure of Republican versus Democratic presidential debt, I’ve included a chart. And again, I fully admit that any economic data can be spun to reflect any viewpoint. Mine differs from yours. Without name-calling and ad hominem, childish insults.

    Gross federal debt
    This table lists the gross U.S. federal debt[41] as a percentage of GDP by number Congress since World War II.[42] The current gross federal debt as a percentage of GDP (83.4% at the end of 2009) is currently the highest it has been since the late 1940s. The debt briefly reached over 100% of GDP in the aftermath of World War II.
    Congress Session
    Years
    Start debt/GDP
    End debt/GDP
    Increase debt
    (in Billions of $)
    Increase debt/GDP
    (in percentage points)
    77-78
    1941–1945
    50.4%
    117.5%
    +203
    +67.1%
    79-80
    1945–1949
    117.5%
    93.1%
    -8
    -24.4%
    81-82
    1949–1953
    93.1%
    71.4%
    +13
    -21.7%
    83-84
    1953–1957
    71.4%
    60.4%
    +6
    -11.0%
    85-86
    1957–1961
    60.4%
    55.2%
    +20
    -5.2%
    87-88
    1961–1965
    55.2%
    46.9%
    +30
    -8.3%
    89-90
    1965–1969
    46.9%
    38.6%
    +43
    -8.3%
    91-92
    1969–1973
    38.6%
    35.6%
    +101
    -3.0%
    93-94
    1973–1977
    35.6%
    35.8%
    +177
    +0.2%
    95-96
    1977–1981
    35.8%
    32.5%
    +288
    -3.3%
    97-98
    1981–1985
    32.5%
    43.8%
    +823
    +11.3%
    99-100
    1985–1989
    43.8%
    53.1%
    +1,050
    +9.3%
    101-102
    1989–1993
    53.1%
    66.1%
    +1,483
    +13.0%
    103-104
    1993–1997
    66.1%
    65.4%
    +1,018
    -0.7%
    105-106
    1997–2001
    65.4%
    56.4%
    +401
    -9.0%
    107-108
    2001–2005
    56.4%
    63.5%
    +2,135
    +7.1%
    109-110
    2005–2009
    63.5%
    84.2%
    +4,521
    +20.7%
    111-112
    2009–2011
    84.2%
    99.6%
    +4,334
    +15.4%
    (Source: CBO Historical Budget Page and Whitehouse FY 2012 Budget – Table 7.1 Federal Debt at the End of Year PDF, Excel, Senate.gov)

  312. Michael Eden Says:

    “Facts” are basically interpretations based on political biases, when it concerns economic statistics. For instance, under the last 4 Democratic presidents the deficit has GONE DOWN and under the last 5 Republican presidents the deficit has GONE UP.

    Prometheus,

    It sure won’t take very long to show how truly full of crap you are. When you say, “interpretations based on political biases,” you must have been looking in the mirror and using yourself as the poster boy for “politically biased.”

    I’ll get to Bill Clinton, but I did a search on the phrase ‘Jimmy Carter deficit’ and immeidately found this from Time Magazine (which has had a Democrat bias for EVER):

    Carter’s Farewell Budget
    By Charles Alexander;William Blaylock Monday, Jan. 26, 1981

    The 1982 projections may overwhelm Reagan’s plans for cutting taxes

    The 1982 budget that Jimmy Carter sent to Congress last week was a cold slap of reality for Ronald Reagan on the eve of his Inauguration. The legacy of federal largesse that Reagan inherits is far worse than he had suspected, and the yawning budget deficit severely threatens his strategy to stimulate the U.S. economy by cutting taxes.

    The new budget does little to reverse the federal spending machine. Outlays in fiscal 1982 are slated to rise by 11.5%, to $739 billion, leaving a projected deficit of $27.5 billion. More than 75% of…

    So nobody is sitting higher on a “political bias” high horse than YOU are, Prometheus.

    I’ve already blown your absolute load of malarkey away. YOU ARE WRONG and you are either a liar or you are an ignorant tool of liars.

    I’ll go on with more about Jimmy Carter versus Ronald Reagan – and can simply copy and paste from comments I’ve made to this very article:

    Let’s go back over the Carter years and their fruit:

    When Ronald Reagan took office from Jimmy Carter, inflation was at a meteoric 13.3% and the country was in the throes of a fierce recession. There was a real question as to whether workers’ wages would keep up with the costs of living, which made people afraid to either spend or save. And nobody knew how to control inflation – which had risen from 1.4% in 1960 to the aforementioned 13.3% in 1980 – causing a real erosion of confidence in the future. Jimmy Carter answered a reporter’s question as to what he would do about the problem of inflation by answering, “It would be misleading for me to tell any of you that there is a solution to it.”

    Oh, and by the way, the interest rate was over 21%, and the misery index was 20.5% – which I believe was the highest EVER RECORDED.

    These were just terrible, godawful numbers. In many ways, Reagan inherited a far worse situation than did Obama.

    And, starting from this terrible place, Reagan not only proved that he HAD an answer for the inflation that neither Carter nor any Democrat had an answer for, but he turned our economy around from a “malaise” and “a crisis in confidence” to the most successful and confident economy in the world; a powerhouse economy that contined to grow for the next twenty years after he left office after he completely changed the trajectory from terrible to powerful.

    Look back at that chart. By the time Reagan left office in 1988, he had created growth of nearly 21% above what he had inherited. And by 1990, when the chart ends, Reagan had set the trajectory for 28% growth above the Carter baseline. And unlike you the American people overwhelmingly recognize Reagan’s greatness, given their pick of Ronald Wilson Reagan as THE greatest president IN AMERICAN HISTORY according to Gallup.

    But that’s not all that Reagan did. He won the Cold War – which of course was a world war against the most powerful enemy in human history – at the same time he was winning the economic war for the American people.

    The Soviet Union had become the mightiest military power in the history of the world while Jimmy Carter was confusing peanuts with the presidency. The USSR had committed acts of genocide that utterly dwarfed anything the Nazis did. They had expanded their influence all over the world. We had to commit vast military resources to Vietnam because of Soviet aid to N. Vietnam. The USSR had expanded into the Middle East, Africa, all of Asia, and were threatening to take over much of Central America right next door to us (to go along with Cuba).

    Reagan saw the handwriting on the wall and understood it. And he made it the major point of his presidency to defeat the mighty Soviet Union. And, amazingly, he succeeded.

    So let’s compare Reagan to another wartime president, FDR. Because that was what Reagan was: he was THE president who won the Cold War, the longest and most expensive war in American history.

    People like you love to say that Reagan tripled the national debt. That sounds bad. Until you consider FDR – the last president before Reagan who actually WON A WAR.

    Franklin Delanor Roosevelt raised the debt from $22,538,672,560.15 to $258,682,187,409.93.

    That is an increase of 1,048%.

    “Triple the National Debt”? FDR didn’t triple the national debt – he multiplied it by 11.5 TIMES. Which is to say that he nearly QUADRUPLED his TRIPLING of the national debt.

    I mean, OMG. If only FDR had only tripled the national debt!!!

    You want to blame someone for all the debt accumulated during the Reagan years, why not blame the Democrat Congress? Why not blame Tip O’Neal? He was the Democrat Speaker of the Democrat House Majority from 1977 until he retired near the very end of the Reagan era. He controlled the purse-strings FAR more than Reagan did. You know, because of that Constitution-thingy. The Constitution gives Congress, and Congress alone, the authority to write the budget and spend money. Remember, Reagan was the guy who wanted to just eliminate the Departments of Energy and Education (and one or two others as well). Reagan had to negotiate with Democrats and compromise with them to spend on THEIR projects – something neither FDR or Obama had to do.

    And it continues to strike me as just hilarious that you damnfool liberals still lecture us about deficits.

    When YOUR guy has THIS on his hands:

    “In the first 19 months of the Obama administration, the federal debt held by the public increased by $2.5260 trillion, which is more than the cumulative total of the national debt held by the public that was amassed by all U.S. presidents from George Washington through Ronald Reagan.”

    Notice that’s “THROUGH” Ronald Reagan, you miserable dubmass. Because Obama’s spending includes Reagan’s plus EVERY SINGLE PRESIDENT PRIOR TO REAGAN.

    And if we want to make comparisons to George Bush’s deficits:

    “…from the day Mr. Obama took office last year to the end of the current fiscal year, according to the Office of Management and Budget, the debt held by the public will grow by $3.3 trillion. In 20 months, Mr. Obama will add as much debt as Mr. Bush ran up in eight years.”

    As much as you fools demonize Reagan, he never came CLOSE to touching the deficits of your wonderful FDR. That is a fact.

    Now, having documented that Reagan won the Cold War, let’s talk about a man who benefitted from Reagan’s magnificent success – and pissed it away: Bill Clinton.

    Bill Clinton massively benefitted from the Republican Cold War victory. He despicably MASSIVELY cut the military and the intelligence budgets and made America both weak and blind and gave us the 9/11 attack. As I can again merely copy and paste from comments to this very article to document:

    That said, your argument that Obama isn’t to blame because he was just fxing Bush’s mess might not be the statement of a totally dishonest and depraved vermin, but you refuse to give the same benefit of the doubt to Bush, don’t you?

    Bill Clinton left George Bush with the massive Dotcom bubble collapse. That collapse that happened on Clinton’s watch wiped out 78% of the Nasdaq portfolio, and in fact vaporized more than 7.1 TRILLION DOLLARS in American wealth. And the ONLY reason we don’t talk about that – aside that too many in the media are just as biased and as stupid as you are, Smith – is that Clinton had also GUTTED the Pentegon and intelligence budget, leaving America both weak (Osama bin Laden called Clinton’s America “a paper tiger”) and blind. Clinton did to the CIA budget what he did to the Nasdaq – just wiped it out – and left us exposed to the 9/11 attack.

    Osama bin Laden’s words in 1998 following the Clinton fiasco in Somalia where the US pulled out with its tail between its legs: “Our boys no longer viewed America as a superpower. So, when they left Afghanistan, they went to Somalia and prepared themselves carefully for a long war. They had thought that the Americans were like the Russians, so they trained and prepared. They were stunned when they discovered how low was the morale of the American soldier. America had entered with 30,000 soldiers in addition to thousands of soldiers from different countries in the world. … As I said, our boys were shocked by the low morale of the American soldier and they realized that the American soldier was just a paper tiger. He was unable to endure the strikes that were dealt to his army, so he fled, and America had to stop all its bragging and all that noise it was making in the press…”

    Here’s a little more about how we have Bill Clinton to thank for the massive 9/11 attack to go on top of his massive DotCom bubble collapse:

    Author James Risen won the Pulitzer Prize on Tuesday for his much ballyhooed New York Times report last December that revealed President Bush’s previously secret terrorist surveillance program – a revelation he uncovered while researching his book “State of War.”

    In the same book, however, Risen makes an equally explosive claim about President Clinton’s relationship with the CIA – which his editors at the Times have so far declined to cover.

    Upon taking power in 1993, Risen reports, the Clinton administration “began slashing the intelligence budget in search of a peace dividend, and Bill Clinton showed almost no interest in intelligence matters.”

    The agency cutbacks combined with presidential disinterest took their toll almost immediately.

    “Over a three-or-four-year period in the early-to-mid 1990s,” reports Risen, “virtually an entire generation of CIA officers – the people who had won the Cold War – quit or retired. One CIA veteran compared the agency to an airline that had lost all of is senior pilots . . . “

    After Clinton CIA Director John Deutch cashiered several senior officers over a scandal in Guatamala, the situation got even worse.

    “Morale [at the CIA] plunged to new lows, and the agency became paralyzed by an aversion to high-risk espionage operations for fear they would lead to political flaps. Less willing to take big risks, the CIA was less able to recruit spies in dangerous places such as Iraq.”

    And there’s the blindness that led to the 9/11 attack, combined with the fact that Clinton demonstrated to Osama bin Laden with the “Blackhawk Down” fiasco in Somalia that the U.S. was just “a paper tiger,” and ripe for a massive attack. That attack was planned, funded – and all the terrrorist assets were in the USA and even trained to fly in American pilot schools- during the Clinton misrule.

    So if you want to blame Bush for Obama’s mess, the least you could do would be to have the decency to blame Clinton for Bush’s mess. But you’re not honest enough to do that. Neither you, or your corrupt Democrat Party, or your mainstream media propaganda networks, have any integrity at all. Republicans took responsibility and admitted fault for their overspending. Democrats are like Cain in the Book of Genesis; they refuse to accept responsibility for anything no matter how guilty they are.

    I’ve also written about the fact that Bill Clinton’s “magnificent balanced budget” was the project of the Republican Congress that won MASSIVELY in 1994 due to Bill Clinton’s incompetence. The Republican Congress ran on something called “The Contract with America.” Their VERY FIRST PLATFORM was to balance the budget. And they succeeded in doing so despite everything Bill Clinton tried to do to stop them.

    So another example of your naked political bias is that you give Bill Clinton rather than Republicans credit for their incredibly bold act.

    And all you’ve got to do is consider the past year. First of all, Barack Obama has given us $6 TRILLION in deficits in only THREE YEARS. Versus the hated Bush who gave us $4 trillion over EIGHT years. As I ask and as you show your bias in ignoring: WHO SPENT MORE??? Why try to deceive people with lies about history and ignore what is going on right in front of our eyes right now???

    Now I gave you your say and let you put out your bullcrap lies. And those lies stand refuted: Jimmy Carter handed Reagan a huge deficit. That is a documented fact of history which proves your assertion to be a lie.

    You don’t get to say garbage like that twice on my blog.

  313. Michael Eden Says:

    I like Canadians just fine – at least the conservative ones. Canada is now considerably less socialist than the United States because Canada starting getting tired of being failures just when America decided it wanted to be great big fat failures just like Europe in electing Obama.

    I disagree profoundly with you on Iraq. And one of the first few articles I ever wrote documented why you are wrong:

    Iraq War Justified: Lessons from Saddam’s History (Part 1)

    Iraq War Justified: Lessons from Saddam’s History (Part 1)

    Iraq War Justified: What the Chronology Reveals (Part 2)

    Iraq War Justified: What the Chronology Reveals (Part 2)

    Iraq War Justified: Paralysis, Corruption at U.N. Made Truth Impossible (Part 3)

    Iraq War Justified: Paralysis, Corruption at U.N. Made Truth Impossible (Part 3)

    Basically, the international weapons inspectors had been kicked out of Iraq – a country the size of Texas – for FOUR YEARS prior to Bush declaring war. We had absolutely no way whatsoever to know a damn thing about Saddam Hussein – who was a psychotic mass murderer who was documented as having murdered 400,000 of his own people – and his WMD program.

    America was forced to choose to either accept an Iraqi WMD program or go to war. And maybe you and maybe the UN didn’t care that Saddam Hussein had broken something like 19 UN resolutions, but somebody responsible had to give a damn.

    Because of Russia and France and China’s vetoing ANY resolution that had any chance of ever holding Iraq accountable, we were forced to go to war. And the same damn thing is happening as we speak with Iran.

    The United Nations itself participated in forcing a war with its incredibly corrupt and dishonest oil for food program that Saddam Hussein manipulated from day one.

    All of that and a lot more is in those three articles.

    As for Afghanistan, if you and your entire family and 3,000 of your friends are murdered by terrorists out of some terrorist regime, I suppose your government has every right in not seeing any loss and not giving a damn and not doing anything about it. To whatever extent your view is representative of “Canada,” I’ll simply say that Americans are clearly more honorable, noble and courageous in avenging our murdered dead than your country.

    The only caveat to that is that George Bush NEVER intended on getting us bogged down in Afghanistan; it was the DEMOCRATS and OBAMA who demonized Iraq and demanded a massive escalation in Afghanistan as a political kabookie theater designed to deceitfully make Democrats appear to not be cowards but to merely make the claim that America was fighting the wrong war (in Iraq when they wanted us in Afghanistan).

    Bush won Iraq and now Democrats are showing us how incompetent they are in waging their war in Afghanistan.

    Bush rightly understood that Iraq was perfect for us: an education population capable of developing and broad flat plains where our air and armor could maneuver and win. In total contrast to Afghanistan.

    I’m perfectly happy with the fact that we’ve got a huge military budget, Cameron. Because I know one thing for sure: as long as there are any Canadians like you, CANADA sure as hell aint going to protect us.

    And it was thanks to that giant military budget that you Canadians aint 1) speaking German and 2) aint speaking Russian today.

    For the record, I live in a community where there are a LOT of snowbirds who live in Canada. And most of them agree very vehemently with my conservative views. So I certaintly don’t have any troubles with Canada; it’s just liberals I can’t stand – and I don’t like the ones who live here, either.

  314. Cameron Says:

    Well if America didn’t want Saddam to have weaponized gas then why did you give it to him?

    “I’m perfectly happy with the fact that we’ve got a huge military budget, Cameron. Because I know one thing for sure: as long as there are any Canadians like you, CANADA sure as hell aint going to protect us.” – Protect you from who??? You think that everyone in the world is out to get you? There are some people out there who certainly don’t like America but that has nothing to do with how Americans live their lives…it has more to do with your corporations than it does your people.

    “And it was thanks to that giant military budget that you Canadians aint 1) speaking German and 2) aint speaking Russian today.” – How long ago was WW2? You’re still bringing that up? The rest of the world has moved on and you should too. The cold war is over. It’s time to start investing in your citizens and stop investing in kicking the little guys’ ass. You’re acting like a global bully and that ain’t cool.

    And as for Canada’s conservative government, there is a great deal of controversy over the previous election and it appears as though our present gov’t committed election fraud in order to gain a majority. Similar to Bush’s win in 2000.

  315. Michael Eden Says:

    How long ago was WW2? You’re still bringing that up? The rest of the world has moved on and you should too

    Cameron,

    Allow me to quote a great leader from WW2 to document that you are a pure and simple fool:

    “Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it” – Winston Churchill

    People who don’t want to fight the next totalitarian regime actually have the wisdom to keep the lessons of WW2 and the Cold War in mind. You very clearly are not one of them.

    As for the US giving weapons to Iraq, guess what? I can explain why in three characters: WW2. Ever hear of the Allies giving the USSR weapons to fight the Nazis? You’d be saying “Seig Heil!” with gusto if it hadn’t been for that obviously difficult decision.

    There are two worlds out there: the world as it really is (the one of common sense) and the ideological one that fools wish it was (your world).

    As a former US soldier who was around during the period when we were arming the Iraqis, I can tell you why we did it: the Iranians. US military policy was “A pox on both your houses.” We armed Iraq just enough to counterbalance Iran. Was it perfect? Was helping the Soviets beat the Nazis perfect? Of course it wasn’t – which is why ideological fools such as yourself who refuse to comprehend the real world could never stomach it. But given our foreign policy options, it was the best choice we had available at the time. Iran and Iraq kicked each others’ asses for eight incrdibly bloody years INSTEAD OF KICKING YOUR ASS mostly because of that very thing you’re bitching about.

    People like you who have never stood up and taken responsibility to stand for freedom always can and always will bitch about how the more courageous and more noble fight for your freedom. But if it was all up to you, you’d be a slave of the very next tyrant to rear his head – and you’d stay that tyrant’s slave only until a different tyrant came along to replace the previous tyrant as your master.

    As for the rest of your idiotic drivel, I can’t admit to being surprised: even CANADIAN liberals “blame Bush.” You liberals are equally warped wherever you spring up. I suppose it has to do with the fact that you all drink the same “Workers of the world unite!” brand of Kool Aid.

    One day soon the United States – and Obama will be a giant part of the reason why – won’t be around to fight your battles for you. And Western Europeans who still have enough moral sense to not want to be slaves are going to seriously miss the incredibly heroic role we played for freedom over the last sixty years.

  316. John Says:

    Question:

    Who are you considering to vote for in the coming election?

    My vote is leaning for Ron Paul.

    I would love to hear your input.

    John

  317. Disabled Vet Says:

    @Michael Eden:
    I pay no taxes. Does that make me a “slacker”? Oh yeah I’m also a disabled vet that gave up quality of life so your ass could enjoy the freedoms you do. I live in pain every day for your freedom to earn and pay taxes. I’d gladly be one of those 10% paying 70% of the bill if I could get out of bed in the morning and put on pants in less then 15 minutes, we should change places for a few days. You’d better think a little harder about who you’re calling a slacker next time you make a general statement like that. Look at what you have to say with the name calling, ect… Your just as bad as the people you’re calling out, regaurdless of who is right or wrong. Bush screwed us and Obama is kleeping with the tradition. The next guy will follow in their footsteps and if you think it’ll be any different then you sir are a fool at best. It boils down to a lesser of evils in the voteing both. I’d expect more form a man who claims to have served his country in Iraq. Surely you’ve had friends killed or injured in the line of duty and yet you forget that these people come home and continue to pay a price far greater then any monitary tax value. Hardly slackers.

    God bless our Vets!

  318. Michael Eden Says:

    Disabled Vet,

    Hey, Mr. Hoity-Toity self-righteous sanctimonious whiner, guess what?

    I’M a disabled vet too. And guess what? I could say the same thing about being “a disabled vet that gave up quality of life so YOUR ass could enjoy the freedoms YOU do.” And by the way, I live in pain every day for YOUR freedom to earn and pay taxes – not that you are taking advantage of the freedoms I suffered to provide for you.

    So, hey, maybe “you’d better think a little harder about who you’re calling a ________________ the next time you make a general statement like that.” Just to point out your personal abject hypocrisy in your very own words.

    If that sounds harsh and judgmental, all I’m doing is spoon-feeding you the exact same harsh and judgmental medicine you want to pour down my throat.

    That said, thank you for your service to your country. Not that I think you’ll thank me for mine given that you clearly would prefer to condemn me even as you lecture me on my daring to condemn anybody else.

    But while I’m at it, I’m also going to call you a liar: WHEN did I make a statement that EVERYBODY who isn’t working is a slacker whether they are seriously disabled – and particularly even if they are a seriously disabled veteran – or not???? Because I’d really like to see you provide that. The truth is I have never said anything that is even CLOSE to that.

    There are quite a few people in this country who have severe handicaps and aren’t able to work. Some days I have lunch at a Carl’s Jr. and I’ve see a woman bring in a group of developmentally-disabled adults who obviously can’t accomplish much in the workforce; and I thank God for the woman who is taking care of them and I DEFINITELY DON’T GO OVER TO THEM AND CALL THEM SLACKERS. Just to state that for the official record.

    Every time I go to the VA hospital in Loma Linda, service-connected-disabled as I am, I see somebody who suffered far worse than I have for his country. And it might surprise you that I don’t go up to those veterans and call them “slackers” either.

    I also see all kinds of able-bodied people who most DEFINITELY qualify for the term “slacker.” But apparently you would disagree with me on that and lecture me that there is no such thing.

    I further submit that the nation owes its veterans in a way that it doesn’t owe non-veterans. And that is because when you join the military, you not only have your life literally put at risk to advance government policy in a way that no civilian does, but you lose your personal freedom in a way that no civilian short of a convict can even imagine. Oh, and if you get injured – even if its the military’s fault – you have no right to sue the way civilians can sue their employers. And for those reasons and probably many others, veterans are in a class by themselves, and deserve benefits that non-veterans do NOT deserve such that there is no equivalence between veterans who suffered and welfare couch potatoes.

    Maybe you joined the military to fight for the right of millions of able-bodied people with no excuses to collect welfare benefits for life until we run out of other peoples’ money and collapse as a nation, but I didn’t.

    And also for the record, I did NOT serve in Iraq, have NEVER claimed to have served in Iraq (my commander-in-chief was Ronald Reagan and I was out of the Army well before Gulf War I), and whenever I talk about those veterans who did bring us victory in Iraq, I use the word “magnificent” to describe them rather than “slackers.”

    And as a P.S., there are people who are more disabled than either of us who have determined themselves to get up and take care of business and earn very good livings in a way that would put either one of us to shame. Just because they are the type of people who refused to EVER have an excuse no matter how good of an excuse they clearly have.

    As a fellow veteran, I wish the best for you and hope that you are able to deal with your disability and your pain because I truly understand both. But also as a veteran, I truly resent the hypocrisy in your attack of me as well as your mischaracterizations of me in that attack.

  319. Michael Eden Says:

    John,

    I actually came out and endorsed Rick Perry right after he announced his candidacy. I say that just to humbly point out that my endorsement is not worth much (if only he’d boned up on his debating skills BEFORE he entered rather than figuring he could learn the ropes on the campaign trail).

    I have never knocked Ron Paul in any of my articles. Ron Paul is dead right on a lot of issues and he is, I believe, the most consistent candidate out there.

    That said, I won’t be voting for Paul because of his foreign policy views – especially in regards to Israel and Iran.

    At the present time, I am in a state of being appalled over the Republican field. Rick Perry had the success of the state of Texas to run on; nobody else can even begin to touch that. That record exited me; and then he came out unable to debate and unable to avoid all the landmines the liberal media set for him and lost almost from the moment he started out of the gate.

    Here are my basic views of the remaining candidates:

    Mitt Romney’s Mormonism bothers me (there, I said it). If he is the nominee, this will be the first election where neither candidate for president is a Christian. I guess that’s part of the “God damn America!” that Jeremiah Wright described. I also do not trust Mitt Romney to be what he keeps telling us he’s going to be – a conservative – because he’s never really been one before, has he? As for his ‘plus sides,’ he has shown that he can raise money and he apparently is the least offensive candidate for the perennially-waffling independents who always end up deciding our elections these days.

    Newt Gingrich is without a doubt the most brilliant man in the race (most certainly including Obama) and far and away the best debater. He is also the most visionary thinker – and we will probably need creative thinking as we get closer and closer to the day we economically collapse and need “creative thinking” to figure out what the hell to do. As for his ‘down sides,’ he has an appalling amount of baggage and he has shown that he has a remarkable ability to twist logic to pretty much suit whatever is most convenient for Newt Gingrich at any particular moment.

    Rick Santorum is probably the closest to me of the three in ideology. That’s his plus. But like Newt, he hasn’t shown the ability to raise money (which a candidate for president simply has to be able to do in the real world) and too much of his voting record can be charactrized as ‘taking one for the team’ (which is why Senators usually don’t get elected president).

    I had pretty much come to the conclusion that I would vote for Santorum in my useless (California) primary where my vote would get swallowed up into meaninglessness. But as much as I hate to admit it, I am so dismayed by the endless three man race that will simply NOT END that I’m thinking of voting for Romney just because dang it we need to have an actual nominee before November or we’ll lose by default to Obama.

    That probably doesn’t help you much, but it doesn’t really help me much, either.

    I’ll say one more thing about Ron Paul:

    What is most interesting about the idea of a Ron Paul presidency is that the man would have ZERO base in Congress. He would not be able to get ANY of his ideas through a congressional vote. The ONLY way he could be effective would be if he started using his power to issue executive orders. But Ron Paul has consistently denounced such use of executive power. Which means the only way he could accomplish anything or govern would be to rely almost exclusively on a tactic that he has consistently said is both wrong and unconstitutional. And like I said, Paul has been consistent so I don’t think he would become an executive order tyrant.

    Which means that a Ron Paul presidency would amount to Ron Paul vetoing absolutely every single bill that came before him resulting in a complete shutdown of the federal government for as long as he remained president.

    Whether that would be good or disastrous I can’t say.

  320. Steven Says:

    Michael,

    I stumbIed onto your post after having a friend post a chart comparing spending to the president in office (a typical liberal talking point, “Look how Reagan and Bush spent all this money!”) I then spent a few hours reading this post and the comments to it, and I am impressed by what you have said.

    Its good to see that someone isn’t afraid to tell it like it is and to call people out for what they truly are: Liars and Hypocrites.

    You have definetly achieved your objective with me, as I now have some ammunition for the heated arguments that always happen between me and the liberal people I associate with.

    I also find it amazing, after reading all of these comments, how similar liberals are in their arguments. They never seem to have facts to back themselves up (obviously, because the facts would disprove their entire argument), they are typically judgemental hypocrites, and always seem to resort to hate speech when they come up short in the debate.

    Keep up the good work, I will continue reading and even refer some friends to your blog! I appreciate the fact gather and presentation, which seems to be more than many people (especially liberals) can seem to do these days.

  321. Michael Eden Says:

    Steven,

    I truly appreciate your comment and your support. It’s always encouraging to hear from someone like you.

    Prior to 2008, I had never really been all that much into politics. My “magic moment” was when I saw the Jeremiah Wright tapes and heard the “reverend” who had been Obama’s “spiritual advisor” and “mentor” and pastor for over 20 years preaching Marxism and racism and anti-American hate. It was almost as if I had a vision; I realized Barack Obama was a truly evil man.

    I stumbled into blogging because I frankly didn’t know what else to do to fight what Obama himself came to call his “fundamental transformation” of America.

    I have three basic goals: 1) to preserve a record. It is amazing how common it is for the media to purge articles that are unfavorable to liberals/liberalism. You go back to a link a few weeks or months later and it’s just gone like it had never existed. Nearly every time I go back to my old articles I discover links to mainstream media that have been purged – and when I can I try to find new links to those stories. The bottom line is that if people like you and me don’t preserve it, it is almost like the “Ministry of Truth” from the novel 1984.

    My second goal is to try to provide arguments – as well as the supporting factual documentation for those arguments – to people like you are at least favorably disposed to conservative ideas. One of the primary ways the liberal mainstream media has been able to control the narrative is by controlling the arguments and who gets to present them.

    As an example, take the debate between “science and religion” or the other way it is often framed, “creationsim versus science.” There’s no conflict between legitimate religion and legitimate science. Here are a couple of articles I thought of to help demonstrate that:

    Jastrow’s Mountain And The Skeptic’s Who Study All It’s Pieces

    Why (Pseudo) Scientific Atheists Are Wrong About The Essence Of Science

    Tolerant Leftist Academia Tries To Impose ‘Thought Reform’ On Christian Student

    Lest We Forget: Liberal Progressive ‘Science’ Was At The Core Of The Holocaust

    An example of this media phenomenon regarding how they cherry pick the “other side,” consider the way the media would routinely go to Jerry Falwell as the “voice of Christianity” in the subject of evolution. He was well-meaning, but he was a terrible pick. There are all kinds of Christians who hold impressive academic and professional credentials whom the media could have turned to had they wanted – but of course the media didn’t want to turn to Christians who could actually win the argument as they were trying to frame it.

    Jerry Falwell would come on every time the media called, offer a Bible verse and an opinion, and the media would easily frame their “debate” as science and reason and facts on the one side versus religion and faith and ignorance on the other. And all the PhD scientists who can use the best science and successfully argue Intelligent Design? They never got the call that Falwell got over and over again. And the media plays that same basic game on issue after issue all the time to frame the argument the way they want to and create a straw man or a bogey man that they can easily defeat.

    My third goal – which I have to admit is often polemic – can be summed up by an article I wrote titled, “Do Unto Obama As Liberals Did Unto Bush.” The idea is that we have to stand up and fight these people, and we have to be willing to mud wrestle with them. Because frankly all the poison and negativity wins (which is why so many political ads are negative). There are a lot of conservatives out there who just aren’t willing to get in the lefts’ faces the way they constantly get into ours. And too many times we have lost debates we could have won simply because we just wouldn’t fight to begin with.

  322. Luann Says:

    I am readly to just shed tears.. I am a sort-of democrat who used to be independent before GeorgeW. Here I am REALLY trying to understand, evaluate and compare. I want to get information presented to me that I can think about. I want to find wise people to help me interprett this information. To do this I seek out links like thiis, the problem is, they all resort to name calling and insults. Thinks like, “No wonder you call yourself anonymous..” I feel like I can’t get any REAL truth or explanation anywhere… only people who become fanatic and angry and try to impress THEIR truth on the reader.

    I am assuming that many of the commentators here are much wiser than me in politics. Just from reading the points and counter points I see that… but those of us who are confused and undecided can’t seeem to look to the more learned because no one will sit down and say, “there are two ways to look at this. Here is one perspective, here is the other. What are your thoughts and questions about these subjects.” Instead there is poison, insults and insistance that only ONE view is correct and the other view is ignorance.

    You, who understand economics and politics should be working togetther to help others understand both sides, not insulting each other. How insightful each of your points of view would be if not puncttuate by venom and discourteousness.

  323. Michael Eden Says:

    Luann,

    I’ll start by asking you a queston: if you were driving down a road in a blinding rain and somebody shouted at you, “The bridge is out, you idiot! Turn around or you’re going to die!”, what would you do? Apparently you would say that the person called you a name and therefore it couldn’t be the “REAL truth.” So you would drive to your death. Rather like an idiot, I might add.

    Whether I or anybody else “resorts to name calling and insults” doesn’t have ANYTHING to do with whether what I or whoever is arguing is true or false.

    I’ve written a lot of articles on this blog, and I have NEVER MERELY resorted to name calling. I offer facts and I offer an argument right along with my name calling. And frankly if you aren’t smart enough to read past any invective and see what the gist of that argument is, I frankly can’t help you.

    Maybe if somebody offered ZERO argument or facts but was polite you would be willing to believe the dumbest thing on earth. Because the fool who said it happened to be smiling, and isn’t that all that really matters???

    I would also point out a sad fact of political reality: negativity works. And after eight years of unhinged Bush derangement syndrome, I came to understand that Democrats tore Bush down one bloody chunk of meat at a time. So I put my fangs on.

    Lastly, you say:

    “those of us who are confused and undecided can’t seeem to look to the more learned because no one will sit down and say, “there are two ways to look at this. Here is one perspective, here is the other”

    For the record, I actually did sit down once and try to answer your question without “venom and discourteousness.” Here it is:

    What’s the Difference Between Democrats And Republicans?

  324. Zach Says:

    Eden, I very much enjoyed this article. And I agree with you on everything! I was wondering if you had made anymore of these about liberals in control of the public school system?

  325. Michael Eden Says:

    Zach,

    Here’s one: Republicans Care About Children; Democrats Care About Teachers’ Union Boondoggle

    Here are a few others that I found:

    More Hitler Youth-Stuff In Our Public Schools: Students Got Extra Credit For ‘Volunteering’ For Obama’s Campaign

    New Jersey Teachers’ Unions Show They Like Communism More Than Common Sense

    Leftist Thought Led To Fascism – And Is Doing So Again

    Public Schools Caught Indoctrinating Children Over And Over Again

    What Obama, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, And Freddy Krueger ALL Have In Common: Targeting Children

  326. Anonymous Says:

    shame, you lie

  327. Michael Eden Says:

    shame, you lie

    Anonymous,

    I have to admit it’s true: I once said that not EVERY liberal was stupid and evil and demon-possessed.

    I will never understand what you damn useless liberal fools think you’re accomplishing with your idiotic drive-by drivel.

  328. Fiona Says:

    I know this is an old article, but I really enjoyed reading it. Keep up the awesome work, sir.

  329. Michael Eden Says:

    Fiona,

    Thanks much. I deeply appreciate it.

    I started blogging to preserve a record of what Obama has done to America. So “old” or “new,” it’s all part of the same record of truth.

  330. Dave Says:

    You don’t figure out who spends more by looking at deficit. By that measurement Someone with no debt but spends their entire salary on boobs and beer is a conservative, but a father who had a bad year and with a mortgage and some credit card debt ended up paying out a little more than he made is a crazy spending liberal? You judge spending by spending not debt. The reason is if Obama spends the exact same as Bush but Bush tax cuts have lowered revenue and inflation has lowered the value of the dollar then the debt still rises. When you look at real spending you see a nice steady curve a little faster rise under Bush a little slower rise under Clinton and Obama. But you still need to take things into account. Don’t be lied to by people who are saying debt = spending it’s utter nonsense and when it’s politically more favorable to them they will say something else. Use your brain. Think! They haven’t made that illegal yet.

  331. Michael Eden Says:

    Dave,

    That is simply false and frankly looney.

    Yes, Obama’s deficits are massively higher than Bush’s. At least you agree with that.

    But Bush collected FAR more revenue with his tax cuts than Obama has by demonizing the Bush tax cuts. Bush took in more money and gave us what is on pace to be ONE-THIRD of the deficits.

    I document that Bush collected FAR more revenue because of his tax cuts at great length. It is simply a fact of history:

    Tax Cuts INCREASE Revenues; They Have ALWAYS Increased Revenues

    And the deficit side of Obama’s foolish policies is documented in this article.

    On a very basic level, you’re right – but you take a tiny bit of truth and proceed to pervert it with your warped mindset. If I make a billion dollars a year and I spend a hundred million, my “spending” is more than a guy who makes minimum wage and then goes on a giant credit card spree and buys uncontrollably. Fine. But who would you rather be? And who is acting more responsibly? I say it’s the guy who spent a hundred million and has nine-hundred million in the bank; you champion the guy who earns/collects NOTHING but spends uncontrollably way beyond his means.

  332. Anonymous Says:

    Michael Eden,
    You are so good and so very gifted at expressing the point so that it is easy to understand. I love reading this blog. Thank you very much for your effort.

  333. Michael Eden Says:

    Anonymous,

    I truly appreciate your gracious words on a number of different levels, particularly your words about “expressing the point so that it is easy to understand.”

    A lot of your more arrogant liberals would mock us both for that, because your garden-variety pseudo-intellectual loves being “erudite” and “sophisticated” rather than pursuing clarity. Part of the reason is the fact that their arguments sound dumber and dumber the more clearly explained they are.

    I once had a favorite professor tell me that if you really understand a concept, you will be able to explain it to others. And that the goal of every good teacher is to produce other good teachers.

    Thank you for YOUR effort in continuing to read.

  334. 9404Estee Says:

    All you people are doing is the same that our politicians are doing they are to busy arguing and pointing fingers at the other side to do what is best for our country.
    They are only interested in getting re-elected and do not want to make the tough choices to do what is best for the Country. Republicans won’t tax the rich and the democrats won’t give on entitlements. The country is doomed because they can’t give on either side.
    We are all going to go through a lot of pain later because we are not willing to sacrifice on either side.

  335. Michael Eden Says:

    9404Estee,

    We need to cut our spending and live within our national means. We can NEVER tax enough to cover the Democrat Party’s spending. Our real national debt is now over $211 TRILLION – and it is nearly entirely Democrats’ fault due to their failed policies over the last 75 years.

    You seriously need to read my article, “Tax Cuts INCREASE Revenues; They Have ALWAYS Increased Revenues” – or other similar articles – in order to better inform yourself on your criticism of Republicans.

    Increasing taxes on the wealthy does NOT increase the revenue to the federal government. THE OPPOSITE IS TRUE. Every single time we have cut tax rates, we have not only collected more revenue but the rich have paid a higher share of the overall taxes collected by the government.

    Why would you want the rich to find ways to shelter their income rather than give them an incentive to invest and create jobs???

    That said, QUESTION:

    What would the United States gain if in fact the government did confiscate the wealth of the so-called rich and taxed at 100% all the income above $200,000.00 per household per year?

    Using the latest statistics from the IRS, in 2004 there were 2.7 million adults with a net worth above $1.5 million. If the government were to seize all the wealth above the $1.5 million threshold, Washington would realize a one-time windfall of $4.0 Trillion — and no one would again attempt to accumulate wealth. Assuming it was applied to the national debt (unlikely with the Left in charge as they would spend it) the national debt would only be reduced from $14.5 Trillion to $10.0 Trillion.

    Assuming Michael Moore & Company decide that $200,000.00 per year is sufficient for any household, then in 2008 (the latest IRS statistics) the 6.9 million filers that had adjusted gross income above $200,000.00 would have forfeited all their income above that ceiling to the government. The one-time gain to Washington D.C.: $221.0 Billion; but in the future no one would work long enough to earn more than $200,000.00 per year. Tax revenues in subsequent years would never increase unless tax rates are raised which are self-defeating and historically results in even lower tax receipts.

    The long-term impact on the economy and the country would mirror that of the failed socialist nations throughout history.

    Thus class warfare rhetoric is just that, rhetoric. It is meant for the consumption of those gullible enough to support the ascendancy of the Socialist/Marxists into positions of power. The fact that it is used in conjunction with the so-called plight of the highly paid unionized government worker reveals: 1) a dearth of viable arguments to justify public sector unions; and 2) most importantly, the loss of a major source of funding for the Left and their organizations.

    As the Wall Street Journal puts it:

    Consider the Internal Revenue Service’s income tax statistics for 2008, the latest year for which data are available. The top 1% of taxpayers—those with salaries, dividends and capital gains roughly above about $380,000—paid 38% of taxes. But assume that tax policy confiscated all the taxable income of all the “millionaires and billionaires” Mr. Obama singled out. That yields merely about $938 billion, which is sand on the beach amid the $4 trillion White House budget, a $1.65 trillion deficit, and spending at 25% as a share of the economy, a post-World War II record.

    Say we take it up to the top 10%, or everyone with income over $114,000, including joint filers. That’s five times Mr. Obama’s 2% promise. The IRS data are broken down at $100,000, yet taxing all income above that level throws up only $3.4 trillion. And remember, the top 10% already pay 69% of all total income taxes, while the top 5% pay more than all of the other 95%.

    So why do you favor a policy of confiscation rather than a policy of encouraging investment???

    Allowing people to keep more of their own money – especially those who tend to be our most avid investors – creates an incentive for further investment and creates more economic/job growth. When the government confiscates your money, when Barack Obama decides that only HE is wise enough to decide where America’s wealth should go, we get Solyndra, we get ObamaCare with its $17 TRILLION funding gap, we get the failed stimulus, etc.

  336. Anonymous Says:

    Michael Eden,
    We need teachers like you.You could “teach the teachers”. I am serious, it is so upsetting to think about the infulence that they have on our children today. I have been thinking about why we dont have a “common sense party”, to counter the unions. I sat at my kitchen table at dinner for the 13 years that my two (adult now) kids went to public schools, listening to the brainwashing that the teachers were foisting upon them. I countered everything they said and tried to tell them that America is not “bad”, that all white people were not “racist”, that morals were not “judgements”, and on and on. It was disheartening and disgusting. I told both of my kids’ and my spouse (years ago), that what is happening today in our country would come to fruition, just because of what the school systems were spewing. The political correctness in this country is disastrous to it. My daughter finally got a conservative professor in college but it’s because she majored in economics. Oh it is so depressing listening to the fact that Obama is beating Romney in the polls right now. I dont know if I can take another 4 of him.

  337. Daniel Says:

    So sad to blame your countries problems on the leader. So sad to see the electorate blame the politicians. We are also doing that here in Australia and it doesn’t help. You get who you vote for. The Republicans aren’t going to save your American lifestyle, and neither are the Democrats. Even more obvious is that they aren’t going to do it with the hugely uneducated electorate – this applies to both USA and Australia. The people simply aren’t educated about the issues and instead blame the other side. So sad, but inevitable.

  338. Michael Eden Says:

    Daniel,

    Apparently it’s like the song for you: “no one ever is to blame.”

    The thing I find most amusing about people like you is how you get so self-righteous and hoity-toity about “blaming” the current political leaders, when just a few years ago when (in the USA) when a Republican was president you were filled with Bush derangement syndrome. And of course, the same is true in your Australia; you’ve got a liberal now – so how DARE anybody play the blame game now??? But that sure wasn’t the case when John Howard was Prime Minister anymore than it was the case when George Bush was president here.

    You people are hypocrites to your cores. You demonized your way to power, and now you complain that how dare anybody ever do unto you as you did unto them.

  339. tim Says:

    All I see here is a bunch of people so deeply entrenched in the same mantra of Republican vs. Democrat,mines better,yours sucks,let me tell you why,yada yada yada.They ARE THE SAME,PERIOD.Special interest,lobbyists and corporate America own the white house and the senate,Nothing gets done without a back room deal or a back room bribe,until we remove Wall street and the money from Washington,Remove the party mantra from everybodys mouths,nothing good will ever get done,by either party.Find some Independant to vote for,tell them all we are fed up with party politics,remove Republican and Democrat from the equation,this country was formed on the premise,BY THE PEOPLE AND FOR THE PEOPLE..not everything we have seen these past 48 years of my life.

  340. Michael Eden Says:

    Tim,

    So ramming through the massive Obama stimulus is the same as opposing the massive Obama stimulus; ramming through the unconstitutional ObamaCare agenda is the same as opposing the unconstitutional ObamaCare agenda; demagoguing one group of people with Marxist class warfare tactics is the same as standing for liberty and equality under the law; peace is the same as war; slavery is the same as freedom; ignorance is the same as strength, and so on and so forth.

    Sorry to hear that you have such a loathing of constitutional representative government, Tim. But as long as Obama and people like him keep regulating and taxing people, THOSE PEOPLE HAVE A RIGHT TO REPRESENT THEIR INTERESTS.

    At least until you fascists get your way.

    You see, if the people on Wall Street don’t have any freedom, YOU shouldn’t have any freedom either. Because the same principle that is used to squelch one group of Americans will be used to squelch ALL Americans down the road.

  341. Michael Wright Says:

    Dear Michael,
    I wonder how tired you are after responding to a lot of garbage talk. i got tired reading all the comments, but i finally made it to the end. I’ve realized that unless both sides can come together and work to better America, we will never understand each other. Unfortunately, that will probably never happen. I also want to say that you are doing a good job explaining things, but i just want to remind you to keep an open mind, because if someone finally says something of value, and your mind is shut, you might miss something that could potentially bridge a small gap.
    In all respect,
    Michael Wright

  342. Michael Eden Says:

    Michael Wright,

    I appreciate your comment. Often my crap-meter will start beeping when I read a comment coming from someone who insinuates that he or she is a moderate or independent – and therefore representing the voice of “reason” – and since that person disagrees with me, well, obviously I do NOT represent the voice of “reason,” do I??? Those pretensions simply annoy me to no end – particularly given that I don’t think that the people making those arguments are “moderate” or “indendent” for a second, but rather are Obama supporters who were screaming Bush haters just a few years ago and are now upset that the other side would turn their own tactic against them.

    I agree with you: if we could just get both sides to come together, this country could escape disaster. But I also agree with you that there is VERY little chance of that ever happening. The people who elected Obama didn’t WANT compromise or coming together; they wanted to drive home the most radical agenda in American history on the one hand while covering themsevelves with lofty but utterly empty rhetoric on the other hand.

    And it follows 8 years of Bush derangement syndrome, of course.

    I was appalled at how the left went after Bush on issue after issue and tried to demonize him. And we can go back and look at things like gas prices or the debt ceiling or Gitmo or a host of other things and see how OBAMA demonized George Bush – only to do not just the same but WORSE than Bush did. But the thing is the tactic works; the left tore Bush down one bloody chunk of meat at a time. Which is why I wrote an article titled, “Do Unto Obama As Liberals Did Unto Bush” (and see the comments to that same article here).

    I have documented numerous times from numerous issues that hate and true rabid rage comes almost EXCLUSIVELY from the left:

    Tea Party Vs. Occupy Protests: The Winners Of The Out-Of-Control Violence Trophy – For The Millionth Consecutive Time – Is The LEFT

    Vile Occupy Protests In Videos

    Call The Occupy Protest Movement And The Left That It Comes From What It Truly Is: Fascist

    Liberal Rallies Pimp Hard-Core Totalitarian Socialism

    Liberal Labor Unions: ‘Forget About The Law’

    Did Someone Just Say Cloward And Piven? Former SEIU Top Level Official Caught On Tape Conspiring To Implode America

    Why I Call Obama A Fascist

    Biden Didn’t Say Tea Party ‘Acted Like Terrorists’? Some Other Stupid Things Biden Must Not Have Said

    Newsflash: 43% Of Tea Party Caucus “Terrorists.” Versus 49% Of Entire Democrat Party.

    Demonic Democrats Compare Republicans To ‘Terrorists’ For ‘Obstructing’ Debt Ceiling Vote. LOOK HOW DEMOCRATS ARE VOTING!!!

    Racist America-Hating Obama Spiritual Leader And ‘Reverend’ Jeremiah Wright Points Out Obama Knew Damn Well What His Message Was For 20 Years

    Obama Fine With Unions Frothing To ‘Take The Sons Of Bitches Out’ In War With Tea Party

    Liberals Sabotaging Democracy With Rent-A-Protestor: What Does Protest Even Mean When Protestors Are Hired Hands???

    Liberal Black People Are Racist Bigots. And The Democrat Party And The Mainstrem Media Condones Leftwing Racist Bigotry

    Consider The Fundamental Incoherence And Hypocrisy Of The Left And The Occupy Movement

    Obama The Fascist Bringing America Dangerously Close To Totalitarianism

    Impending Fascism Alert: ‘In Obama’s 2nd Term, It’s On, Because We Don’t Have To Worry About Re-Election’

    Obama Dives Into ‘Racist’ Trayvon Martin Shooting Case (Please Try To Remember That ‘Racist’ Shooter George Zimmerman Is Hispanic)

    More Hitler Youth-Stuff In Our Public Schools: Students Got Extra Credit For ‘Volunteering’ For Obama’s Campaign

    What Leftists Are Best At: Socialist Obama Blames Bush For All His Problems; Socialist Greece Blames Germany For All Its Problems

    When Will The Mainstream Media Hold Barack Obama Responsible For Even A Fraction Of The Things They Demonized George Bush Over???

    Daily Show Utterly Destroys The Self-Righteous Hypocrisy Of ‘Blind To Their Own Demagoguery’ Liberals

    Liberals Attacked ‘Angry Black Women’ Margaret Thatcher, Sarah Palin And Michelle Bachmann Long Before Right Teed Off On Michelle Obama

    Barack Hussein Obama Marched With Über Racist New Black Panther Hate Group In 2007

    Fascism A Socialist Leftwing Ideology: Communism, Fascism, Labor Unions, Workers And Students Exploiting ‘Crisis’

    Liberal Paul Krugman Says Government Should Lie To American People About Space Aliens To Impose Liberal ‘Solutions’

    Christopher Hitchens And Billy Graham (Or Bill Maher Vs. Tim Tebow) As Missionaries For Their Religions. And Which One Was ‘The Intolerant Hater.’

    Colleges And Universities Forcing Kids To Go Through Marxsit/Postmodernist ‘Tunnels Of Oppression’

    Desperate Obama Begins Illegal Immigrant Amnesty By Fiat Hoping Hispanic Vote Will Carry Him

    Obama The Fascist: Let Me Keep Counting The Ways

    Fascist Dictator Obama Ignores Separation Of Power And Imposes His Will By Tyranical Fiat With NON-Recess ‘Recess Appointment’

    Obama Keeps Governing By Crisis; Used ‘Fast And Furious’ As Ploy To Take Away Our Right To Keep And Bear Arms

    In Obama’s God Damn America, Armed Illegals Stalk U.S. Border Patrol – With Weapons Supplied By Obama Administration

    The Inconvenient Truth About The Lilly White Occupy Wall Street Movement And The Media Propaganda That Ignores Truth Altogether

    No Winning Vs. Liberalism: Gingrich A Racist For Wanting To Give A Minority A Job But Not A Handout; Romney A Racist For Giving A Black Woman Money

    Liberals Attacked ‘Angry Black Women’ Margaret Thatcher, Sarah Palin And Michelle Bachmann Long Before Right Teed Off On Michelle Obama

    Obama, The Angry President Who Is Angry For All The Wrong Reasons And None Of The Right Ones

    ObamaCare Just Another Leftist Attempt To Bankrupt America (Cloward And Piven Alert)

    When Will American People Get Fed Up With Violent Occupy Fascists And The Democrats Who Endorse Them???

    Obama In Truly Deep Doggy-Do Following His Hateful Attack On Religious Freedom As Even LIBERAL Catholics Recognize He Is A Truly Evil Man

    Kirsten Powers Points Out That LIBERAL Men Are Far Worse Misogynists Than Rush Limbaugh Ever Was

    Leftists And Union Thugs Actually Threaten High School Kids For Daring To Chant (When Clearly ONLY Fascist Leftists Ought To Be Able To Chant)

    ‘We Won! We Won! They Pepper Sprayed Us!’ (Liberals Force Police To Respond So They Can Make Themselves ‘Victims’)

    There is no question that this is a war for the soul of America. Both sides are so totally disparate that one side can win ONLY by the other side losing.

    And liberals are trying to argue – even as they practice unhinged hatred on a daily basis – that it would be wrong for the conservatives to fight back. They want to make the “case” that political correctness give them a right to rage and hate, whereas it absolutely forbids their enemies from fighting back in any way.

    Conservatives need to make their stand right now.

    Obviously, your suggestion that I listen to people when they say something of value is beyond reproach.

    That said, my purpose in blogging was never to “bridge gaps,” but rather to inform and educate conservatives and conservative-minded independents about what is going on and in so doing urge them to become active and fight it.

  343. Anonymous Says:

    Michael Eden,
    Simply put, I just love reading your responses here. You are so very articulate. Conservatives really need to get down pat, exactly what you said. That they have to fight back and dismiss and denounce the claims of being racist or hateful or any of the number of just plain “labels” that liberals use.They have used that and it has been working for them for some time now, to try to shut people up. I have noticed that people are speaking up much more now (conservatives), and that gives me some hope. Thank you so much.

  344. Michael Eden Says:

    Anonymous,

    Thank YOU so much for that gracious comment.

    When it comes to the “racist bigot” stuff, I guess my gut reaction comes from knowing that deep down, when I look inside of myself, I know that I am not racist and that I was never raised to be racist. Which is to say, when somebody attacks me as racist out of sheer political ideological expediency to use as a weapon to try to shut me up, there’s a water and duck’s back thing going on.

    I look at the history of my Republican Party, and I look at the history of the Democrat Party, and it is the DEMOCRATS who ought to be ashamed of their incredibly racist past. And for people from that racist Ku Klux Klan Party to attack my party as ‘racist’ is simply demonic. So I just try to aim the mirror so the liberal Medusas see their own racist reflection.

    I agree with you that conservatives used to be daddy’s party of staid, commonsense people who shunned the type of hysterical moral meltdown that has characterized the Democrat Party since the 1968 Democrat National Convention in Chicago. Ever since then, the Democrat Party has been the hissy fit party of violence and rage.

    In 2008, we learned that those tactics work: Democrats spent the previous eight years tearing George Bush down one piece of bloody meat at a time and the Republican Party simply failed to stand up for themselves against an ocean of lies.

    One of the things I keep pointing out is that the 2008 collapse was triggered by the bankruptcy of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Look at the timeline: The Fannie Freddie collapse occurred on September 7, 2008; Lehman Bros collapsed a week later BECAUSE OF THE BILLIONS IN BAD SUB-PRIME MORTGAGE BACKED SECURITIES THAT FANNIE AND FREDDIE SOLD THEM AND WHICH FANNIE AND FREDDIE ALONE HAD THE LEGAL AUTHORITY TO SELL.

    I describe the process with a link here:

    The Role of the GSEs is to provide liquidity and stability to the U.S. housing and mortgage markets. Step 1 Banks lend money to Households to purchase and refinance home mortgages Step 2 The GSEs purchase these mortgage from the banks Step 3 GSEs bundle the mortgages into mortgage-backed securities Step 4 GSEs sell mortgage-backed and debt securities to domestic and international capital investors Step 5 Investors pay GSEs for purchase of debt and securities Step 6 GSEs return funds to banks to lend out again for the issuance of new mortgage loans.

    That’s what went wrong: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were incompetent and corrupt and greedy all at the same time. And they in turn sold bogus investment vehicles to other corrupt crony capitalist entities such as Lehman Bros. And when those sub-prime based mortgages that Democrats forced on the banking industry AGAINST THEIR WILL went bad, it was one collapse after another.

    And guess which politicians took more money from both Fannie and Freddie AND corrupt Wall Street entities like Lehman Bros. THAN ANYBODY??? Barack Hussein Obama. All of the actual facts were on our side.

    And dishonest Democrats literally tried to make the argument that Fannie and Freddie were somehow REPUBLICAN. When George Bush tried SEVENTEEN TIMES to reform and regulate Fannie and Freddie only to be blocked by Democrats each and every time.

    A 1999 quote from the New York Times points out who is responsible for the Fannie and Freddie time bomb that blew up our economy:

    Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.”

    We COULD have responded; and yes, we can still respond now.

    And we need to understand that the collapse Democrats started in the years leading up to 2008 is hardly over yet.

    Democrats throw up so many lies at the same time that there’s literally no way to correct them all. Through their mainstream media propagandists they tell America that Fannie and Freddie had nothing to do with the housing market collapse and at the same time they tell America that Fannie and Freddie were Republican so Republicans were to blame. Both are lies and both lies serve to refute one another.

    This is a nation in a world that is getting ready to eagerly worship the greatest false messiah big government socialist dictator of all time. The Bible calls him the beast. The Bible told us going on 3,000 years ago through Daniel and 2,000 years ago in Revelation that the world would reach the point of global/national delusion that the kinds of lies we’re seeing would be believed.

  345. Anonymous Says:

    Oh, how I wish you were a key advisor to the Republican nominee, or the head of the Republican party or someone who had the means to be on campaign ads that run every day all day long telling people these truths in plain and simple terms. I am not diminishing these blogs by any means, I am sure many people have learned from them and I am grateful that they are here. Thanks for your wisdom and work, it’s exhausting getting all of those facts and putting them out there, I told my friend, “why do Republicans care anything about the truth anymore, why don’t they just keep making up huge lies and keep saying them over and over and over, like the left has been doing?” But of course that’s not the thing to do. I am sharing with people, the stuff I learn from you, so I am trying to do my part.

  346. Michael Eden Says:

    Anonymous,

    Thanks again.

    There’s two things that occurred to me as I read your comment:

    1) Democrats have not bothered to even TRY to produce a budget for 1,086 days now. It is an absolute sick joke. And Republicans have responsibly produced a budget every single year that they have had stewardship over any branch of government. Why? Because the Republicans are the party of responsibility and the Democrats are the party of demagoguery. If Democrats actually created a budget, they would have to tell us what they actually stand for and make decisions and take responsibility – which they cannot do lest the American people see them for what they are and reject them. Meanwhile, the Republicans have their budget out there under Paul Ryan and the party of irresponsibility that will NOT produce their own budget is attacking it. And Barack Obama – who has produced two consecutive budgets that were so reckless and immoral that not even ONE DEMOCRAT would vote for it for two years in a row – is attacking the Republican budget. It is literally insane. But we are in a time in which standing for nothing might be politically successful than actually trying to stand for something and let the people know what you are going to specifically do if you are elected.

    2) Tangential to 1) above is the fact that Republicans DO stand for something and the Democrats stand for NOTHING. Take the Democrats demonizing “Bush’s wars” until Obama got elected. Where is all the anti-war crap? Where is Cindy Sheehan? Where are all the anti-war rallies that the perennially outraged left held throughout the Bush years??? Obama MASSIVELY expanded the Afghanistan war – and let’s not forget at least Bush WON his war that the left demonized to such an extent that Joe Biden said that the Iraq War would be one of the Obama administration’s “great achievements.” The cynicism and the sheer opportunism of Democrat “morality” never ceases to amaze me. And that cynicsm goes across the board on virtually every issue, such that Obama demonizes oil and then falsely claims that his administration is responsible for an increase in oil production even though he has gutted oil production in federally-controlled areas (offshore permits are down by a full third under Obama; and federal land permits are down by over 50 percent under Obama).

    Of course the reason that Republicans can’t lie is that much of the mainstream media are simply propagandists who have sold their integrity and their souls to the left. Republicans tell the truth because they have to; Democrats lie because they know a) that the media will protect them and b) that the American people will reject them if they actually tell the truth.

  347. True Brains Says:

    You Americans are the dumbest with your back and forth [deleted by moderator for profanity]. Both your party’s are the same 45% of your defeict is owed to the Federal Reserve which is made up of 18 Jew bankers. You call yourselves a smart Country ha the only Country in the world that DOESN’T print it’s own money but bases it’s system on a giant pyramid scam. You are all dumbasses without a clue and your downfall is right around the corner just like all the other empires before. Obama, Bush, Romney doesnt matter whos at the helm and you are all to stupid to realize it,you are all in a world of [deleted by moderator for profanity].

  348. Michael Eden Says:

    True Brains,

    Yeah, I know we’re dumbasses on in America. I’m sure it must be because of the Jews like you say it is.

    Too bad we’re not Hitler-worshiping zombies like you or things would be much better for us.

    Say heil to your Führer when you see him in the hot place for me.

    That part said, I’ve been saying we’re probably to a point where we are beyond falling off a cliff. Liberals are going to kill America just as similar-minded liberals have basically already killed Europe. And right now, rather than go through with the “austerity” that is absolutely necessary to have any chance whatsoever to save the European economies, the voters are reneging (after getting the bailouts) on their promises and voting for socialists. The collapse is coming and coming soon. Just as I’ve been saying.

    Now go dump hate on Jews somewhere else. I don’t tolerate Nazis on my blog.

  349. John Says:

    Hi Michael,

    On Facebook, I am sick and tired of seeing these pro Obama photos that commonly come up from someone who shared them. I would like someone’s informed opinion on them and if they are true, and if theres anything I’m missing. Just to let you know, I am not a Republican supporter or a Democrat supporter, just an independent sick of the Obama propaganda.

    Heres 3 of them :

    Truth for Teabaggers: 82% of our National Debt was spent by Republicans

    GOP war on women: 430 Republican anti-women’s health bills were introduced in 2012 alone. 1172 bills expected to be introduced at the end of 2012.

    In America, higher education cannot be a luxury. BARACK OBAMA. Its an economic imperative that every Family must be able to afford.

  350. Michael Eden Says:

    Democrats do one and only one thing well: sheer hysterical, deceitful, dishonest, depraved demagoguery.

    As for your question on:

    Truth for Teabaggers: 82% of our National Debt was spent by Republicans

    That couldn’t be much more of a laugher. Consider what I document here as well as the article you are commenting on. Just consider the massive money pit that ObamaCare ALONE is. Do you notice that I have a ton of facts and Democrats have a bumper sticker slogan???

    But it’s FAR worse than Obama spending a full third more than Bush did in less than half the time. That’s PEANUTS in comparison to the staggering REAL national debt that Democrats and Democrats ALONE have fatally poisoned America with.

    Take a look at this: Obama’s crony capitalist goon-thugs were the SAME people who almost killed America in 2008 and they’re at it again.

    Oh, and here’s an interesting factoid: Democrats have given their union thug-allies so many billions in unhinged pension slush funds that it defies imagination. According to the LA Times, California ALONE has a $500 BILLION unfunded pension liability.

    But even THAT is nothing: consider the SUPER-MASSIVE UNFUNDED DEBT BOONDOGGLES that Democrats perpetuated with Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. We are talking about debt exceeding TWO HUNDRED TRILLION DOLLARS!!! There is no possible way we can ever repay the debts that Democrats have saddled America with.

    Look up “Cloward and Piven” (I’ve written about it here and here) and understand that a collapse of America followed by Marxism has been the goal of the Democrat Party for forty years. When America collapses under the staggering weight of the debt that Democrats have poisoned America with, there will be a cry from desperate people that the government rescue them – and the government will do so by completely taking over “the state.”

    As for your question on:

    GOP war on women: 430 Republican anti-women’s health bills were introduced in 2012 alone. 1172 bills expected to be introduced at the end of 2012.

    Consider that Nancy Pelosi TODAY went in front of the microphones and accused the Republicans of “war on women” for wanting to pay for the student loan interest reduction by using funds from ObamaCare. Which is to say that ANY GOVERNMENT PROGRAM THAT THE GOP TRIES TO REDUCE FALLS UNDER THE CATEGORY OF “WAR ON WOMEN.” There is no possible way the Republicans can cut one penny out of the bloated trillion-plus-dollar-deficit Democrat spending without “attacking women” according to the Democrat Party’s vicious and hateful rhetoric.

    If the American people listen to Democrats, this nation is necessarily doomed to implode. And then American women will suffer as they have never suffered before. And the same Democrats who forced America to collapse by demonizing EVERY SINGLE ATTEMPT to reduce our insanely unsustainable debt will AGAIN be demonizing the people who tried to stop the collapse while the Democrat Party tried to force that collapse to happen all the more quickly.

    Consider that this whole “war on women” thing began under COMPLETELY FALSE PRETENSES. Sandra Fluke – a career liberal radical feminist activist – selected a Catholic university for no other reason than to SUE it. If that isn’t evil enough, she “testified” that women were called upon to pay an amount for birth control that was so obviously FALSE that it was unreal. She was claiming that women were having to spend $3,000 on birth control when it is a FACT that women can get birth control for $9 a month without forcing the Catholic Church to abandon a theology that they have held for 1,500 years. The “war” is a flat-out war against religious freedom. Period.

    Facts don’t matter to Democrats because these people are simply demon possessed. That’s the only possible explanation for how these people can be so completely warped. They have murdered 54 million innocent human beings in the abortion mills and it isn’t nearly enough for them.

    Your last one –

    In America, higher education cannot be a luxury. BARACK OBAMA. Its an economic imperative that every Family must be able to afford.

    – is simply axiomatically false. In America, higher education has ALWAYS been “a luxury.” The state NEVER paid for American university education for all students. The bottom line is that WE’RE not the ones who are “unAmerican,” THEY are by dictating that America do that which it has NEVER done before. Which simply becomes yet another way to “Cloward and Piven” collapse us given that government-backed student loan debt now exceeds a trillion dollars.

  351. James Smith Says:

    Just think about the principle and interest being paid on the 3 trillion dollar wars that Bush spent in order for us to get cheaper oil. That money was never budgeted and now is on the Obama’s budget and making him look bad. I know Obama has spent more money than Bush, but it is on green technology that will make us energy independent so we stop spending billions of dollars every year for oil in which we are hostage to Middle Eastern interests.

  352. Michael Eden Says:

    James Smith,

    That is pure unadulterated BULLCRAP and only idiots believe it.

    First of all presidents do not have the power to “pay 3 trillion dollars” without congressonal approval. PRESIDENTS DO NOT HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO SPEND OR TO REGULATE SPENDING; ONLY CONGRESS DOES. And you are simply and plainly ignorant to think otherwise.

    The New York Times recognized that Congress – and in this case the Democrat-controlled Congress – has the sole and unique “power of the purse.” If Democrats had wanted to cut off spending for the war, they could have done so and Bush would have been powerless to stop them. It is simply the most asinine of lies to claim that Bush used some nefarious means to spend trillions on the war.

    Every penny of the Iraq War was accounted for and correctly appeared on the public debt figure as it was incurred. The Iraq War was taken off the regular budget principally because the DEMOCRAT LEADERSHIP did not want to be put in a position of having to vote for something they knew they had to vote for and knew that crazy lunatics like YOU would attack them from the left. Hear’s another example of how full of crap you are:

    WASHINGTON: The US Senate will act on emergency funding for Iraq operations on Thursday, a day after anti-war Democrats vent their fury in two symbolic votes designed to pile political heat on President George W. Bush. [..]

    The vote will allow the Senate and the House of Representatives to produce a joint emergency war budget which Democrats hope to put on Bush’s table next week, to replace the version he vetoed over withdrawal timelines this month. […]

    “The details of the final emergency supplemental bill will be negotiated in the House-Senate conference. It is imperative that we get to conference as quickly as possible, which this resolution allows us to do.”

    On Wednesday, Reid will allow Democrats, who have vowed to bring troops home from Iraq, symbolic votes on choking off war funding by March 31, 2008, and on punishing Iraqi leaders for slow political progress.

    Notice that Reid and Pelosi had the actual budgeting done “in conference.” It wasn’t Bush who did that. It was DEMOCRATS who didn’t have the courage to stand for anything and played rhetorical games while men were fighting and dying for the country Democrats were undermining.

    Here’s another example of the fact that Bush did NOT “spend 3 trillion dollars that was never budgeted.”

    WASHINGTON (AP) — Just hours after floating the idea of cutting $20 billion from President Bush’s $142 billion request for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan next year, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad was overruled by fellow Democrats Thursday.
    “It’s nothing that any of us are considering,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told reporters.

    Conrad’s trial balloon to cut war funding would have affected the budget year beginning Oct. 1 and was separate from the ongoing debate over Bush’s $100 billion request for immediate supplemental funding for Iraq and Afghanistan.

    And here’s a direct quote from yet another example:

    Matt Stoller of OpenLeft is one of the bright online analysts and activists on the Democratic side of the aisle. He wrote recently about the move by Democrats to take Iraq ‘off the table,’ arguing that war opponents should not look past Iraq as a political issue. He says that while Iraq itself may no longer be viewed as negatively as it once was, it still imposes a real opportunity cost: dollars spent on Iraq cannot be spent on other priorities. Stoller wonders why Democrats are not at least testing the argument that Iraq has prevented–continues to prevent–the government from addressing other key priorities

    I preserved that article by OPEN LEFT writer Matt Stoller because I got an “invalid URL” notice even though I was able to access the article; which is to say that Open Left is going to purge it. But that article was written in December 2007 – nearly a full year after Democrats came to power and took over both the House and the Senate. IT WAS THE DEMOCRAT PARTY THAT TOOK THE IRAQ WAR FUNDING OFF THE TABLE. And they did so because if they voted against funding the war and leaving our troops high and dry in the field as left wing nutjobs like YOU wanted, THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN HELD TO ACCOUNT BY THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. They wanted to run on demagoguing the economy rather than demagoguing Bush as commander-in-chief in time of war.

    You are a liar.

    People like you simply disgust me.

    I block documented liars. There is no point trying to have a debate with somebody who doesn’t give a damn about arguing for the truth. So get lost.

    For the record, the Democrat Party documented that they are the official party of treason in America. Look at what they said before and during the Iraq War, only to cut and run on their own positions in an attempt to treasonously undermine a nation in time of war:

    Truth or Fiction
    Freedom Agenda
    Snopes

    Democrats are vermin who were for that war before they were against it. Democrats are the worst kind of backstabbing cowards.

    Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was probably the first traitor in his position to surrender to an enemy while our troops were fighting and winning battles:

    “Now I believe myself . . . that this war is lost, and that the surge is not accomplishing anything, as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday,” said Reid, of Nevada.

    House Majority Whip Representative James Clyburn said that good news in Iraq amounted to a problem for Democrats. THAT’S THE KIND OF VERMIN YOU ARE:

    House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said Monday that a strongly positive report on progress on Iraq by Army Gen. David Petraeus likely would split Democrats in the House and impede his party’s efforts to press for a timetable to end the war.

    “I think there would be enough support in that group to want to stay the course and if the Republicans were to stay united as they have been, then it would be a problem for us,” Clyburn said.

    Victory for terrorists and defeat and disaster for American troops fighting for us is good for Democrats because you people are just pure EVIL.

    And this was a war that 60% of Democrat Senators had voted for.

    I cite opposition to the Iraq War (which 60% of Senate Democrats voted for, only to repudiate and falsely claim Bush deceived them); opposition to the Patriot Act; opposition to Domestic Surveillance on calls from international terrorists; opposition to Gitmo, even though it is the only reasonable place to hold these people that no country wants; the demand for full legal representation in civilian courts for terrorists; opposition to even the reasonable use of profiling to weed out terrorists, etc,. I could go on. We now know that all of these things that Democrats treasonously opposed were necessary and vital for U.S. national security. BECAUSE EVEN OBAMA WHO WAS ONE OF THE TRAITOR DEMOCRATS HAS BEEN FORCED TO CONTINUE ALL OF THE ABOVE since he took office in stark betrayal of his many vile promises to do the exact opposite.

  353. Anonymous Says:

    James Smith,
    You must be kidding, Have you not heard about Solyndra? It is Solyndra and at the very least another “green energy” company that Obama took a risk on with taxpayers hard earned money that have all gone bankrupt, giving employees huge bonus’s (as they are going under) so that they will stay until all of the company is gone.

  354. Michael Eden Says:

    Anonymous,

    That’s another good point. I noted that you responded to James Smith with a slightly different tact as I responded with my own comment.

    Mind you, people like James Smith are utterly immune from reality.

    People like James Smith are the reason that the communist dictatorship goes on year after year in North Korea despite the fact that millions of its citizens are literally starving to death every year WHILE THE COUNTRY IS IN THE DAMNED DARK AGES.

  355. Anonymous Says:

    Michael Eden,
    The fact that so many people are “utterly immune from reality”, is terrifying to me. I just don’t get it, I cannot wrap my head around that fact. I understand people 24 and under. That gives them 13 years of regular school brainwashing, then 4 more of college, and 2 years to get their head on straight. I am being to generous I know, but beyond that I cannot give anyone else a pass for their ignorance or lack of caring what is going on. I am vocal and feel very strong so my 23 year old does not want to talk politics with me. I would’nt mind except that she is talking kind of like a liberal after getting out of college and a (liberal, I think), boyfriend. Sometimes I want to boot her right out of my life (though she has a good job and lives on her own), because I did help her out some with college and even though she has loans still, I feel like we helped her just to have her come out of it talking like a dumb liberal, who simply “does not get it”. It is just so frustrating, and I know that this is why Obama is going to young people, because those are the people that he can manipulate. I am looking forward to November but get depressed sometimes reading about how people believe that Romney is exactly like Obama. I do not believe it though I don; know alot about him, because I believe that Romney at least loves this country. Thanks again for your site and replies, I wish I were less a realist and not so serious, but then I fear I would be one of the people who are immune from reality.

  356. Michael Eden Says:

    Anonymous,

    My heart goes out to you. It must be awful to watch your own child philosophically seized from you by people who thought THEY and THEY alone had the right to indocrinate your kid.

    Some quotes from liberals who believe and practice exactly that:

    “How can we ever know how many children had their psychological and physical lives irreparably maimed by the compulsory inculcation of faith? Religion … has always hoped to practice upon the unformed and undefended minds of the young… If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world.” – Christopher Hitchens

    “If scientists can destroy the influence of religion on young people, then I think it may be the most important contribution we can make.” – Steven Weinberg

    How much do we regard children as being the property of their parents? It’s one thing to say people should be free to believe whatever they like, but should they be free to impose their beliefs on their children? Is there something to be said for society stepping in? What about bringing up children to believe manifest falsehoods? Isn’t it always a form of child abuse to label children as possessors of beliefs that they are too young to have thought out?” – Richard Dawkins

    “[S]ome children are raised in such an ideological prison that they willingly become their own jailers… Parents don’t literally own their children the way slaveowners once owned slaves, but are, rather, their stewards and guardians and ought to be held accountable by outsiders for their guardianship, which does imply that outsiders have a right to interfere.” – Daniel Dennett

    “Parents, correspondingly, have no god-given license to enculcate their children in whatever ways they personally choose: no right to limit the horizons of their children’s knowledge, to bring them up in an atmosphere of dogma and superstitition, or to insist they follow the straight and narrow paths of their own faith.” – Nicholas Humphrey

    Kenneth Miller admits that “a presumption of atheism or agnosticism is universal in academic life… The conventions of academic life, almost universally, revolve around the assumption that religious belief is something that people grow out of as they become educated.”

    And philosopher Richard Rorty argued that secular professors in the universities ought “to arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted, homophobic religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like their own.” He noted that students are fortunate to find themselves “under the benevolent Herrschaft of people like me, and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents.” He said to parents who send their children to college, “we are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than reasonable.”

    Oh, and here’s another reason as presented by a lesbian academic:

    Jonathan Haidt, who studies the intuitive foundations of morality and ideology, began his presentation by asking his colleagues where they placed themselves on the political spectrum. It turned out that 80% of the audience identified as liberal. Only a few dozen identified as centrist. And only three out of the 1,000 academics in the auditorium identified themselves as conservative.

    And another oh, as that article references something said in the New York Times:

    Anywhere in the world that social psychologists see women or minorities underrepresented by a factor of two or three, our minds jump to discrimination as the explanation,” said Dr. Haidt, who called himself a longtime liberal turned centrist. “But when we find out that conservatives are underrepresented among us by a factor of more than 100, suddenly everyone finds it quite easy to generate alternate explanations.”

    Given that liberalism is fascism, and fascists literally PURGE conservatives from universities, maybe one could understand why “the right is against” [fascist] colleges. They actively despise us and our values – and of course we’re “ignorant” and “hateful” if we don’t agree with them.

  357. Randi Says:

    Michael Eden, sir, you sure don’t know how to hold an intelligent debate without being annoying sassy and stubborn. I get it, you’re conservative, you hate Obama, he is the worst president ever, blah blah the whole Repub song and dance, but my God. I have never been on a blog as RUDE and irritating as yours. Geesh.

  358. Michael Eden Says:

    Randi,

    I can tell you why, too, you cockroach. It’s because I keep getting useless garbage such as YOUR utterly worthless post.

    I’ll have an argument with anybody who actually bothers to HAVE any kind of an argument. But what do I get? What did I just get from YOU???

    WHERE IS YOUR ARGUMENT ABOUT ANYTHING??? WHERE ARE YOUR FACTS???

    I write an article entitled “Who Spent More?” And I back up what I am saying with facts, facts, facts. And what is your pathetic whiny argument? Michael Eden is a mean meanie.

    Oh, okay. So the truth doesn’t matter anymore. Let’s go worship Obama some more.

    Allow me to point out that you are just one more cockroach liberal relying on the most worthless rhetoric imaginable. Because I took the time to write about bugs like you after I’d gotten about a thousand examples of people like you doing exactly what you do INSTEAD OF HAVING ANY FACTS OR ARGUMENTS WHATSOEVER:

    Now here’s the thing that annoys me. I’ve got a very clear premise that clearly matches my title: Democrats demonized George Bush for spending, but lo and behold Obama’s spending makes Bush’s spending look Lilliputian in just three years in office. But do liberals want to talk about Obama’s spending? Nope. That is pretty much the last thing they want to talk about when they comment to me.

    What is the real important subject as far as they’re concerned? In a word, it’s that I’m “mean.”

    And, you see, if I’m mean it means that facts don’t matter, so nyah, nyah, nyah. Or something to that effect.

    And I go on to link that tactic in blatherin rhetoric to your satan-worshiping prophet Saul Alinsky:

    The bottom line, for the record, is that liberals are giving me a play from the Saul Alinksy playbook. He said on page 75 of his Rules for Radicals (which was dedicated to Lucifer as “the first radical known to man”):

    Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more live up to their own rules than the Christian Church can live up to Christianity.”

    And, to an extent, this is true. For one thing liberals don’t have any rules or code of honor that binds them; they can be as vile as they wish: Lucifer sure won’t care

    So, yeah, I say, “This is what liberals do rather than bother to be able to come up with a single fact: they demonize and name-call.” And then what do you do??? Exactly what I said you do. Without bothering to have anything to say WHATSOEVER about the issue at hand – Obama’s insane spending – you personally attack me instead.

    I just got through writing an article about your utterly vile fellow roaches. You want evil? Go look in the mirror.

    Now get lost. I always respond at length to those I block to explain why I’m blocking them. You are not worth talking to because you don’t bother to actually argue the relevant facts; you just name call and slander.

  359. Anonymous Says:

    Michael Eden,
    Thanks for your reply and all of the excellent information about the brainwashing of the young adults. It is an absolute up hill battle to try to communicate with them and explain these facts, when they are at the age where the last person they want to speak to is an older person. Of course they know everything. Your response to Randi is right on target. It is amazing how when ever someone asks for a fact, or tries to debate with facts, the other person comes up with some dribble like Randi. And they think that this suffices as a response. It is happening all of the time, I suppose because our current administration does this daily, it’s acceptable. I know it happened before this administration, but it seems that the bar has been lowered so much. I just heard again that the biggest threat that this country has is our over-spending.Thanks again, and keep up the good work, it seems like it would be exhausting. I have tried to discipline myself to log into work instead (to get something productive done), as opposed to reading frustrating blogs and getting depressed and irritated, I have gotten a great deal of work done doing this instead, It helps that I love my job.

  360. Michael Eden Says:

    Anonymous,

    Your comment leads to an interesting conclusion: idiot teenagers and liberals share a common form of insanity: hit them with the facts and they both change the subject to something completely different and then start blaming you for that entirely unrelated thing.

    Democrats and Obama have turned the economy into a Vietnam-style quagmire. So what do they do? Well, Mitt Romney put his dog’s carrier on the roof forty years ago. Oh, and the Republicans (half of whom are women) have a war on women as proven by Sandra Fluke who claimed that birth control cost women a billion dollars a month. Let’s talk about those things instead of what matters.

    Psychologists call these things transferrence and projection (transfer the blame and then project the anger onto your target).

    Parents, like Republicans, are imperfect people. And teenagers and other immature folk like liberals take advantage of every imperfection to justify their childishness.

    Mature, responsible people like parents and Republicans demand spending within their means. People who have never bothered to actually live in light of reality will say you’re “mean” if you point reality out.

  361. MB Says:

    Name calling? Both sides are name calling here. This is disgusting. This kind of dialog is exactly what is wrong with this government. This is why so many of us are registering as independents. We don’t want to be associated with the nasty extremes on either side.

  362. Michael Eden Says:

    MB,

    Keep sitting in the middle of that cracking ice and tell me how all your indecision and unwillingness to commit to anything works out for you.

    The country and the world are going to hell all around you; and you sit there huddling in the middle where you don’t have to take any risks pissing on all the people who are trying to DO SOMETHING.

    Abortion is one example of how “independents” end up siding with liberals: conservatives and liberals are fighting over a baby. Conservatives say allow the baby to live, liberals demand the baby die. So an “independent” shows up and suggests we cut the baby in half. AND OF COURSE THAT MEANS THE BABY DIES AND THE LIBERALS ARE HAPPY. Because on a great many issues there’s no middle ground.

    One side says we need to significantly cut our spending before we become like Europe and have a debt crisis beyond our ability to deal with; the other side points to Europe where socialism has failed so wildly and argues that the only thing to do is spend EVEN MORE INSANELY. So the “independent” comes in and says how about if we spend only a LITTLE LESS insanely instead. And we go bankrupt almost as fast. One side says we need to cut taxes and reward the producers for creating jobs and economic growth; the other side says we need a Marxist Utopia because communism is so wildly successful compared to capitalism when the communists get to write the “news.” Which side are you one? The cut the baby in half side (i.e. on the wrong side, but in a gutless way where you don’t think you have to accept responsibility for anything).

    And because of people like you we live in a nation that has split 54 million babies down the middle in some “compromise.” Because independents LOOOVE compromise for the sake of compromise: cut those babies in half!!! And yet they’re all just as dead as they would have been if the liberals had had their way, aren’t they?

    That aside, you’re right: BOTH SIDES are name calling. But please remember your propaganda lesson and don’t forget to say that only Republicans can be held responsible for it.

    When I get comments from liberals saying I’m mean, I truly don’t give a damn because I see so much meanness coming from the left every single day I want to puke. And if liberals are outraged by the meanness they need to go to THEIR leaders and say, hey, knock it off. Otherwise it’s like a frustrated Nazi going to a Jew and saying, “Hey, it’s getting pretty dang nasty around here – why don’t you just give up so we can have some peace and quiet?” And the fact that they never have and never will confront their own side is why conservatives like me have decided it’s time to do unto Obama what liberals did unto Bush.

    The one thing I’m NOT going to do is sit idly on the fence and whine about how everyone around is fighting when there is clearly a war going on for our future all around me. I’m going to stand up for what I believe in.

    “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.” — The words of Jesus to the Laodicean church found in Revelation 3:15-16

  363. Tyler Says:

    I find it disgusting that you righteous wingers will ask people to fight your wars while hiding their identities and than come home to your America to be outcasts. You would let some of our soldiers die for your version of America! Shame on all of you!!!!

  364. Michael Eden Says:

    Tyler,

    Well, let’s see, you rabid hypocrite hater.

    Number one, I’m not hiding anything; and number two, I WAS A SOLDIER WHO SERVED.

    Number three, let’s do a quick scroll of history: WWI, declared and fought by DEMOCRAT with 53,000 US troops KIA; WWII, declared and fought by DEMOCRAT with 292,000 US troops KIA; Korea, declared and fought by DEMOCRAT with 34,000 US troops KIA; Vietnam, declared and fought by DEMOCRAT and ended by REPUBLICAN with 58,000 KIA. That’s 437,000 US troops who died for the Democrat Party’s version of America.

    That compares to the following wars waged by Republicans: Grenada, 19 KIA; Panama, 23 KIA; Gulf War, 148 KIA; Iraq War, 4,487; Afghanistan, 1,967 KIA. For a total of ONE POINT FIVE PERCENT OF THE SOLDIERS WHO DIED FOR THE REPUBLICANS’ VERSION OF AMERICA. VERSUS THE 98.5 PERCENT WHO WERE KILLED FOR THE DEMOCRATS’ VERSION.

    Oh, and I included ALL the US soldiers killed in Afghanistan up to yesterday. I really shouldn’t have – because 1,337 of those 1967 KIA (68 percent) were US troops who died for OBAMA’S VERSION OF AMERICA. If we redid the math, that would amount to Republicans being responsible for barely over ONE PERCENT of the casualities of the wars America has fought. And of course, if we were to go back to the CIVIL WAR – a war waged by Democrats against Republicans – well, the percentage of dead American soldiers killed by Democrats would be so close to 100 percent it would be unreal: because then ninety-nine point nine nine five percent of all US soldiers who have died on a battlefield did so for the Democrat Party’s version of America.

    Further, polls have documented that nearly three out of every four soldiers are REPUBLICANS.

    You disgust me, you cockroach. You’d be ashamed of yourself if you possessed the capacity of that virtue. You people live in a universe of lies. One day you’re going to be burning in hell for all eternity and you’re going to convince yourselves that you’re not burning in hell.

    Republicans have a documented history of fighting small wars so that our enemies take us seriously and we don’t have to fight large ones. Democrats have a documented history of disarming America and emboldening our enemies so that we are guaranteed to have to fight terribly bloody wars to restore the honor liberals stole from us.

    Now get lost. I won’t waste my time with demoniacs.

  365. Mike Says:

    HI Michael Eden,

    I find it ironic that most of these Liberals resort to saying your a “bigot,” “racist.” These liberals on here are complete morons and I fully agree with your article. It was very well written and had concrete facts and was straight to the point, good job. :)

    Regarding our debt though, I can say Bush wasn’t a good nor bad president, he has increased our debt but what president hasn’t? its a continuing cycle called an economy. Money is going to go up and down on the charts, however, its the presidents duty as well as congress’s duty to keep it at equilibrium which they are utterly failing to do. What irritates me is seeing Liberals put the full blame on Bush for this entire National Debt. That’s the same type of thinking that created WWII. Even though the Archdukes assassinations was the reason the war started, everything was blamed on Germany,

    I see the exact same thing happening right now and it really frustrates me to think that these people can’t figure out that cutting education, borrowing money which we can’t pay off, and increasing taxes is NOT going to work.

    There is no one reason we are in Debt like the liberals think, I.E. Bush. There are a multitude of reasons.

    1. When U.S multinational companies such as Wal-Mart, Microsoft, General Electric, and Caterpillar create over 10.3 million jobs overseas and cut back workers in america, its going to affect the economy. Those overseas workers do not pay taxes that contribute to the American Economy. Theses numbers are also from 2009, and only from 4 Multinational companies. I’m sure the jobs lost for Americans today by all companies is a much larger number.

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704821704576270783611823972.html

    2. Obama didn’t really borrow from china or any of these countries, but he sure as hell had a hand in it. The Secretary of the Treasury was appointed by Obama has part of his cabinet knowing that the person thinks like he does. By doing so the Treasury has issued Billions of Treasury bonds which are bought by foreign countries. Just look at this chart and see how much we now have to pay back. These countries have us by the balls.

    http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/tic/Documents/mfh.txt

    3. Another problem is Spending. Both from the citizens and government. The Government, Mainly Obama and Congress, have squandered billions of dollars on worthless programs that don’t benefit the economy or the people at all.

    http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/10/50-examples-of-government-waste

    Also, if we make tariffs higher for imported goods which we have a lot of imported goods, the price on the product is going to increase to make up for that tariff. So when the product increases in price, the customer buys less of it. A perfect example is Wal-Mart. They are so successful because of their incredibly low prices. No one wants to spend 2$ on a Candy bar which is almost what it costs here in California. Thus in return, customer spending decreases, so does Sales Tax money, retailer profit, and decreased production from manufacturers now that people are buying less of that product which hurts them as well.

    4. Another Problem is Foreign aid and illegal immigration. We donate around 25$ billion dollars or more in foreign aid to nations around the world. Why not use that money to better our own nation instead? such as the homeless? guess that never occurred to anyone.
    Now Illegal Immigration is another problem. No one really knows the exact number but its estimated to be between 12-20 Million Illegal aliens LIVING, not occupying America as of 2012. These Aliens are not registered citizens and feed off our welfare system which should be abolished and do not contribute back anything they work for. They do not pay taxes because they are not Citizens and just take jobs away from AMERICAN CITIZENS who need them. I hate the argument saying who would replace those jobs then, what? America didn’t have farms back then because we didn’t have illegal aliens? also why don’t we put prisoners to work, they are overflowing and just make gangs and drug rings inside the prisons, so why not put them to forced labor as punishment. Prisoners have it much easier in America.

    Well that’s it for now. Oh yeah i’m 18 years old, not that it should matter but a lot of liberals tend to say im to young and and just an ignorant punk to know what im talking about, as opposed to an adult who would say the same thing.

    Oh yeah and Michael Eden,

    I loved what you said to Randi that gave me a good laugh. Keep up the good fight.

  366. Michael Eden Says:

    Mike,

    We Mikes should stick together. How else can we complete our plot to take over the world?

    In most respects you are very right. For one thing, the president does not have the authority to spend under the Constitution; rather, the Congress does. On that narrow view, you can’t truly blame a president for spending and debt. And yes, you are also right about the fact that it is the Federal Reserve that is officially in control of monetary policy, etc.

    That said, Democrats blamed Bush for the spending, and turnabout is not only “fair play,” it is utterly essential in this culture war to the death that we are locked into for the soul of this nation.

    Democrats currently say that Obama isn’t responsible for the spending or the terrible economy now, because House Republicans have blocked him since 2010. That is, of course, a load of hooey unless you want to take the blame completely off Bush for the economic disaster in 2008 and put it entirely on Democrats. Because Democrats had total not only of the House but the Senate as well from 2007 until 2010 when Republicans took back HALF the Congress.

    So you need to realize the completely self-contradicting arguments that we get every single day from the Democrats. And somebody has to fight back given that avalanche of deceit.

    Was there a race to go offshore when Bush was president? Yes, but the pace to race offshore has dramatically increased under Barack Obama. Manufacturing jobs (the jobs that invariably go overseas) are down 5% since Obama took office. So, yeah, we’ve gone from bad with Bush to worse with Obama.

    And I can assure you that if Obama had got his way and imposed the union agenda and imposed cap-and-trade the way he wanted to and tried to do, it would have been a mad scramble to get the hell away from Obama’s economic holocaust. Obama’s best economic argument is actually, “I failed to do much of what I tried to do.”

    There’s another thing that you need to understand: do presidents have the constitutional authority to spend? No. But do they have a significant hand in spending? You bet they do. And if you look at Obama’s budgets – budgets which have not receieved so much as a SINGLE DEMOCRAT VOTE the last two years and which have NEVER passed – what you find is that year after year, Obama’s budgets call for MORE SPENDING than Congress wanted. Versus the Bush budgets, which called for LESS spending than Congress wanted.

    Further, it’s the Federal Reserve does not act willy nilly; they are trying to accomodate the reality of the president’s policies. Obama passed a massive $3.27 trillion stimulus and obviously SOMETHING had to be done to “pay” for it. So you had quantitative easing: QE 1 and then QE 2 and pretty soon QE 3 to invent money out of thin air by adding zeros in the federal reserve computers.

    The bottom line is that Obama demonized Bush for spending $4 trillion in eight years; and that same rat bastard weasel will have spent over $6 trillion in just four years.

    My mantra is “Do unto Obama as liberals did unto Bush.” And so I’m going to hold Obama accountable to the exact same standards that Democrats held Bush accountable to.

  367. Dave D. Says:

    You’re article is quite biased. Blind to only what you want to see, if a republican was in office right now, you would be defending the spending. John McCain was a smart candidate, pick Palin as a running mate was a surefire way to lose the election.

    Now, its blame the black guy. You act as if your president, and yes, he is your president is just wheeling the barrow of cash from taxpayers and throwing it away. Congress has passed these bills, a president is merely a mouthpiece of the people. The house and congress are the real monsters here. Both sides of the aisle are all rich, old white guys who are the ones actually drving this country into the ground.

    To say that Bush had no hand in the debt is ignorant, under his administration, they wiped out the surplus that Clinton built up, started two wars, allowed banks and morgage companies to give toxic loans and spent more time on vacation than any other president in US history.

    Did Obama not inherit most of this debt?

    I truly hope you dont think that Mitt Romney is going to be the white knight to come and save the economy because you are sadly mistaken. Ron Paul doesnt stand a chance. So that leaves us with our current president, but once again, puppet for the people.

    If you want real change, elect people in congress and the house that have the people and the well being of the country in mind rather than lining their own pockets and agendas to further their political careers. Both sides, republican and democrat are equally shitty, they both want the same thing but a different means to the end. You and I dont fit into that equation, but we suffer the most for all their misjudged greedy decisions.

    I hold no party affilation, i am simply an american who lives in the real world, struggling to make ends meet, even with a college degree. I stand by my president regardless of party, and when you dont, as a citizen, you come off as a un-american sore loser.

  368. Michael Eden Says:

    Dave D.,

    You are so disgusting it’s lower than “pathetic.”

    First you say, “You’re article is quite biased. Blind to only what you want to see, if a republican was in office right now, you would be defending the spending.”

    Almost immediately after you say, “Now, its blame the black guy.” Because of course if the Marxist in office were a WHITE liberal Democrat, I would be carrying the same messiah-worship crush for him as you do. It’s not that maybe I disagree with the president’s polices in your rabidly biased demonization; it’s that I’m just a racist, pure and simple.

    Conclusion: you are nakedly, rabidly biased. You are the very thing you set out to attack me as being. You are a hypocrite without a scintilla of shame or honor or honesty. There is no point in trying to have any kind of discussion with someone like you who on the one hand presents himself as some self-righteous defender of “objectivity” while he is in fact on the other hand actually worse than the guy he’s denouncing.

    So don’t call me “biased,” you liberal toad. If you want to demonize somebody for “bias,” just do it in front of a mirror. Or better yet, a storefront window so everyone can see what a raving nutjob you are.

    Fortunately there are people like me around to raise the truth against biased propaganda-citing hacks such as yourself.

    You continue with your naked bias, arguing that Clinton gave us a surplus and Bush pissed it away. You don’t bother to consider that Clinton was so unpopular as president after his first two years in office due to his liberal policies that the American people gave the party of Clinton a historic smackdown that is still talked about to this day in 1994. Remember that? It was called “The Republican Revolution”??? The Republicans ran on a platform called “The Contract with America.” The VERY FIRST PLEDGE:

    “1. THE FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY ACT: A balanced budget/tax limitation amendment and a legislative line-item veto to restore fiscal responsibility to an out- of-control Congress, requiring them to live under the same budget constraints as families and businesses.”

    It is CONGRESS which ultimately has the authority to spend, you abject dumbass; and CONGRESS under the Clinton “balanced budget years” was COMPLETELY under Republican control. So why didn’t you give the Republican Party ANY credit? Other than the fact that you’re shrieking “BIAS!” in front of that storefront window for all to see?

    I wrote about the Clinton myth in my article, “Obama Turns To Clinton To Advance The ‘Democrats As Party Success’ Myth As His Economy Turns to Crap.”

    Republicans RAN on balancing the budget in 1993 when Clinton’s budgets were anything but “balanced.” They WON in a landslide, capturing both House and the Senate in the biggest landslide election of the 20th century. And they FORCED Clinton to cut spending and balance the budget over Clinton’s objection.

    Let’s see what happened after that:

    It was those Republicans who were most responsible for the good times that resulted. They are most certainly responsible for the budget surpluses that Democrats have congratulated themselves for ever since. The very first item on the Republicans’ agenda was the Fiscal Responsibility Act.

    One quick example of these Republican changes was welfare reform. In his 1996 State of the Union, after losing even more fights, Bill Clinton was famously forced to admit, “The era of big government is over.” And Republicans were making that statement true by passing welfare reform legislation and an avalanche of other cost-cutting measures that made a budget surplus possible.

    Two welfare reform bills were passed by the Republican Congress, which Clinton vetoed. Then a third bill was passed by the Republicans, which Clinton finally signed. The National Organization for Women noted:

    “There is little difference between the welfare bill (H.R.4) which the president vetoed in January and the new plan H.R. 3734/S 1795.”

    An analysis by Steven Dawson for the Saint Louis University Law Journal observed that:

    “In fact, President Clinton vetoed two largely similar prior versions of the bill.”

    All rhetoric aside, Bill Clinton was FORCED to sign welfare reform into law by the Republican Congress. Just as he was FORCED into a balanced budget, and any subsequent budget surplus.

    But after being literally dragged into signing it, Bill Clinton took credit for it as though it had been his idea all along. And the media duly reported that slanted history as a matter of “fact.”

    That said, we can also point out that “the Clinton budget surplus” also had a lot to do with budgetary smoke and mirrors.

    And like I said, the same media that will never give Republicans credit for something good will never give Democrats blame for something bad.

    Hey, thank you for playing our “bias” game – and you are the clear winner for not mentioning ANY of those facts.

    But let’s take a look at MORE facts you didn’t bother to acknowledge, you biased, leftist propaganda hack:

    I can just quote myself refuting the same stupid argument from another liberal:

    That said, your argument that Obama isn’t to blame because he was just fxing Bush’s mess might not be the statement of a totally dishonest and depraved vermin, but you refuse to give the same benefit of the doubt to Bush, don’t you?

    Bill Clinton left George Bush with the massive Dotcom bubble collapse. That collapse that happened on Clinton’s watch wiped out 78% of the Nasdaq portfolio, and in fact vaporized more than 7.1 TRILLION DOLLARS in American wealth. And the ONLY reason we don’t talk about that – aside that too many in the media are just as biased and as stupid as you are, Smith – is that Clinton had also GUTTED the Pentegon and intelligence budget, leaving America both weak (Osama bin Laden called Clinton’s America “a paper tiger”) and blind. Clinton did to the CIA budget what he did to the Nasdaq – just wiped it out – and left us exposed to the 9/11 attack.

    Osama bin Laden’s words in 1998 following the Clinton fiasco in Somalia where the US pulled out with its tail between its legs: “Our boys no longer viewed America as a superpower. So, when they left Afghanistan, they went to Somalia and prepared themselves carefully for a long war. They had thought that the Americans were like the Russians, so they trained and prepared. They were stunned when they discovered how low was the morale of the American soldier. America had entered with 30,000 soldiers in addition to thousands of soldiers from different countries in the world. … As I said, our boys were shocked by the low morale of the American soldier and they realized that the American soldier was just a paper tiger. He was unable to endure the strikes that were dealt to his army, so he fled, and America had to stop all its bragging and all that noise it was making in the press…”

    Here’s a little more about how we have Bill Clinton to thank for the massive 9/11 attack to go on top of his massive DotCom bubble collapse:

    Author James Risen won the Pulitzer Prize on Tuesday for his much ballyhooed New York Times report last December that revealed President Bush’s previously secret terrorist surveillance program – a revelation he uncovered while researching his book “State of War.”

    In the same book, however, Risen makes an equally explosive claim about President Clinton’s relationship with the CIA – which his editors at the Times have so far declined to cover.

    Upon taking power in 1993, Risen reports, the Clinton administration “began slashing the intelligence budget in search of a peace dividend, and Bill Clinton showed almost no interest in intelligence matters.”

    The agency cutbacks combined with presidential disinterest took their toll almost immediately.

    “Over a three-or-four-year period in the early-to-mid 1990s,” reports Risen, “virtually an entire generation of CIA officers – the people who had won the Cold War – quit or retired. One CIA veteran compared the agency to an airline that had lost all of is senior pilots . . . “

    After Clinton CIA Director John Deutch cashiered several senior officers over a scandal in Guatamala, the situation got even worse.

    “Morale [at the CIA] plunged to new lows, and the agency became paralyzed by an aversion to high-risk espionage operations for fear they would lead to political flaps. Less willing to take big risks, the CIA was less able to recruit spies in dangerous places such as Iraq.”

    And there’s the blindness that led to the 9/11 attack, combined with the fact that Clinton demonstrated to Osama bin Laden with the “Blackhawk Down” fiasco in Somalia that the U.S. was just “a paper tiger,” and ripe for a massive attack. That attack was planned, funded – and all the terrrorist assets were in the USA and even trained to fly in American pilot schools- during the Clinton misrule. Further, because of Clinton’s disastrous gutting of the military and intelligence budgets at the very time that Osama bin Laden was preparing to attack us, America was both weak (militarily unprepared for attack) and blind (unable to detect the attack).

    Between the massive recession caused by the Dotcom bubble collapse that occurred under Clinton, and the 9/11 attack which was planned, organized and prepared completely under Clinton’s watch, the United States faced a HUGE hole as Bush took office.

    So if you want to blame Bush for Obama’s mess, the least you could do would be to have the decency to blame Clinton for Bush’s mess. But you’re not honest enough to do that. Neither you, or your corrupt Democrat Party, or your mainstream media propaganda networks, have any integrity at all. Republicans took responsibility and admitted fault for their overspending. Democrats are like Cain in the Book of Genesis; they refuse to accept responsibility for anything no matter how guilty they are.

    I also notice how you utterly fail to mention the gigantic role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the 2008 collapse:

    AEI Article: How Fannie And Freddie Blew Up The Economy

    Barney Frank And Democrat Party Most Responsible For 2008 Economic Collapse

    https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/2009/08/03/who-really-exploded-your-economy-liberals-or-conservatives/

    https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/2009/12/31/with-eyes-finally-wide-open-reconsider-why-the-economy-collapsed-in-the-first-place/

    https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/2009/07/08/biden-we-misread-the-economy-and-its-all-the-republicans-fault/

    Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created by Democrats. It was perennially staffed with Democrats. It had the sole power to bundle mortgages into the “mortgage backed securites” and then sell those securities to the private market under the guise that they were government and therefore AAA. It got massively into subprime loans to literally piss into those mortgage backed securities even as it made it impossible to tell a good security from a bad one. It forced banks to make utterly STUPID loans that went belly-up.

    Watch these videos to see that Fannie Mae was responsible, and Democrats were responsible for preventing ANY regulation at ALL on Fannie Mae: http://digitalartpress.wordpress.com/2009/03/22/video-proof-democrat-party-warned-responsible-for-fannie-mae-freddie-mac-economic-crisis-repost/

    https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/barney-frank-video-proves-democrats-at-core-of-2008-economic-collapse/
    The mainstream media will never report the truth. They are biased, dishonest, corrupt propagandists. All we can do is keep presenting the facts in the only venue available that still accepts them.

    Oh, and since you wanted to demonize me because I oppose a radical socialist president – and therefore I’m “blaming the black guy” – let’s consider your Clinton from the very same article I started with about the “Clinton Myth”:

    What this country needs is a return to “it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”

    It doesn’t matter that Clinton once recognized that Obama is little more than a Chicago thug [i.e., “blame the black guy” alert].

    It doesn’t matter in this Obama-era of race-baiting that Obama played the race card on Clinton [i.e., obviously to complain about Obama playing the race card against your wife is racist because Obama is black; therefore another “blame the black guy” alert].

    It doesn’t matter that Bill Clinton subsequently demonstrated that he frankly deserved to be labeled as a racist when he outraged Ted Kennedy by telling him regarding Obama, “A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.” [i.e., Oops. That’s not even blaming the black guy; that’s just naked racism from the leader of the Democrat Party]. Or that Clinton essentially said, “MAYBE joining the Ku Klux Klan was wrong” in honoring the former Kleagle and Exalted Cyclops Robert Byrd [i.e., a racist reference to the FACT that the Ku Klux Klan was the terrorist arm of the Democrat Party which attacked blacks and white REPUBLICANS].

    So you just take your racism and GET LOST, you biased bigot. You didn’t mention a single ONE of the DOZENS of facts I just mentioned; so HOW DARE YOU CALL ME BIASED????

    Anybody wanting to accuse me of “bias” had better have all of his facts straight and provide a very clear record of history rather than a biased, bigoted distorted one like Dave D. tried.

    I refute turds and then I BLOCK them. I will not waste any more of my time “debating” with a demagogue who demonizes me for doing the VERY SAME THING HE DOES IN HIS VERY NEXT SENTENCE.

  369. Anonymous Says:

    Michael Eden,
    Re :
    “Conclusion: you are nakedly, rabidly biased. You are the very thing you set out to attack me as being. You are a hypocrite without a scintilla of shame or honor or honesty. There is no point in trying to have any kind of discussion with someone like you who on the one hand presents himself as some self-righteous defender of “objectivity” while he is in fact on the other hand actually worse than the guy he’s denouncing”.

    And this:
    “Fortunately there are people like me around to raise the truth against biased propaganda-citing hacks such as yourself.”

    You are spot on! It is basically impossible to speak with people who are so hypocritical like this and the worst part is that there are so many people like this around. It is disgusting. Obama does it daily, probably every minute. He continuues to attack people for what he is doing daily. It is very sad, I cannot wait for November,

    You are not alone in this, as you said fortuntely there are like minded people around you, and me. Thanks for taking him to the shed, he needed it. Obviously no one else does that to these people.

  370. Michael Eden Says:

    Anonymous,

    Nothing annoys me more than abject hypocrisy. And given the fact that the overwhelming majority of liberals just swim in hypocrisy, I truly don’t like having anything to do with them.

    Among other “facts” is the fact that I state everywhere I can state it that I am writing as a CONSERVATIVE from a CONSERVATIVE PERSPECTIVE. And I would argue that I STILL am less “biased” than most of the mainstream media “news” that claim to be “objective.”

    The most incredible thing of all is that I truly doubt that people like Dave D. even realize what they’re doing. Just like Froma Harrop. It’s like there is a massive disconnect in their brains that keeps them from recognizing truth or reality.

    I was just about to write a story about how the media is drooling all over the story of how a very young Mitt Romney is reported to have bullied some kid (whom they’re saying was homosexual even though the man lived his entire life and died without having EVER claimed he was homosexual). What they don’t bother to report is that a young Barack Obama told the story of how he himself bullied a young girl. And of course now we also find rather huge factual errors in the biased and slanted story on Mitt Romney – with zero apologies.

    It is just a constant source of astonishment how psychotically hypocritical the leftwing media propaganda is on a constant, daily basis.

    This is what we’re up against:

    Andrea Mitchell Forgets That Mainstream Media ‘Journalists’ Aren’t Supposed To Consider Themselves Members Of The Obama White House When The Camera Is On

    Mainstream Media Lynching Of George Zimmerman Pretty Much Confirms Everything I’ve Said About Both Liberalism And ‘Journalism’

    ‘As For Fox News, Let Her Die In Her Anger’: Interesting How Terrorist Traitors And Democrats Share The EXACT Same Attitude Toward The Mainstream Media

    One Journalist Boycotts Mainstream Media That Celebrates Comic Who Attacks Conservative Women FAR Worse Than Rush Limbaugh Ever Did

    Trying To Imagine How Left Would React If US Military Started Indoctrinating Troops To Respect The Bible

    Sarah Palin To Barack Obama: If Rush Limbaugh Was Offensive, Then WHY Are You Taking Money And Help From Bill Maher???

    Kirsten Powers Points Out That LIBERAL Men Are Far Worse Misogynists Than Rush Limbaugh Ever Was

    Bush Vs. Obama On Gasoline Prices In One Very Simple Picture

    When Will The Mainstream Media Hold Barack Obama Responsible For Even A Fraction Of The Things They Demonized George Bush Over???

    Of The Corrupt And Dishonet Democrat Party And The Corrupt And Dishonest Mainstream Media Propaganda That Serves Them

    The Intentionally False Picture In The Latest Employment Report

    The Inconvenient Truth About The Lilly White Occupy Wall Street Movement And The Media Propaganda That Ignores Truth Altogether

    Mainstream Media Propaganda: Some Things They WON’T Tell You

    Fox News ‘Most Trusted’ By TWICE The Percentage Of Second-Place PBS

    Liberals Attacked ‘Angry Black Women’ Margaret Thatcher, Sarah Palin And Michelle Bachmann Long Before Right Teed Off On Michelle Obama

    But this one’s my very favorite:

    Daily Show Utterly Destroys The Self-Righteous Hypocrisy Of ‘Blind To Their Own Demagoguery’ Liberals

    There is such a sea of lies to correct, so much flat out deceit, that it is beyond unreal.

    And if conservatives like you and I try to correct the propaganda, we’re “biased,” of course.

  371. Anonymous Says:

    I am an independent voter, I do not believe in one party but feel we should vote for who would be the best president. Unfortunately, I voted for obama and have been sorry. to Idonotcare- you are an idiot. you democrats are always crying racist and blaming bush when you cannot find a good reason to fight back. obama has done a terrible job and it is obvious he has gotten us deeper in debt not out. of course, it takes a long time to get things right but it should not get worse to get better. obama and his family love to spend our tax dollars to go on expensive vacations when the economy has been bad. I think he is a deceptive liar and wished I had never voted for him, he is ruining our country!

  372. Michael Eden Says:

    Anonymous,

    Good for you to come to your senses and change your ways.

    We conservatives can’t demand everybody become a Republican; what we CAN do is keep responding to the avalanche of lies that Democrats and their mainstream media propagandists keep trying to spread.

    So maybe at least sixteen multimillion dollar vacations so far is too many???

    Democrats point out that Bush went to his ranch. One MAJOR difference is that it was very easy for the Secret Service to secure that well-established site and cost very little in extra money – unlike sending out giant advance teams to secure godawful locations that involved occupying every tall building for miles around, etc. The Obamas, unlike the Bushes, just don’t give a flying damn.

    And yeah, the Obama who repeatedly promised the American people he would cut the deficit in half during his first term BUT INSTEAD ADDED SIX TRILLION DAMN DOLLARS TO IT is a liar straight from the pit of hell. He demonized George Bush for a debt ceiling hike AND THEN SHOVED THROUGH THE THREE LARGEST DEBT CEILING HIKES IN THE HISTORY OF THE ENTIRE HUMAN RACE. Obama demonized George Bush for giving us $4 trillion in debt over eight years AND THEN GAVE US $6 TRILLION IN DEBT IN THREE YEARS.

    This is and will continue to be God damn America until we rid ourselves of this wicked man.

    All we can ask of Independents is that they understand reality and reject this failure who ran on a completely fraudulent agenda. And I thank you for taking that step.

  373. Luke Says:

    This comment post shows why America is in shit. All you guys are fools.

  374. Michael Eden Says:

    Luke,

    I just responded to a different guy on a different article, but pretty much the same comment works equally well for you.

    Please go look in a mirror when you talk about anybody being a fool.

    You don’t have a single reason to offer for your snide, snotty, arrogant and yet tragically imbecilic view. And when you respond to an article that offers FACTS and SUPPORT and you come in shooting with nothing more than a lame-ass opinion, well, that word “fool” was created for just such as you.

    I’ve got nothing but abject contempt for you liberal drive-by-fool swine who have nothing whatsoever but sheer stupidity as their rationale for their opinions.

  375. Jerry Says:

    Michael, I have liberal friends that know nothing about Romney, but they criticize him. They pay no attention to Obama and the terrible job he is doing. They were born democrats and will die democrats. They will not listen to reason or pay attention to facts. It’s like wrestling with a PIG, it irritates the hell out of him and you get muddy

  376. Michael Eden Says:

    My evangelical church has a sizable number of women who take part in the Republican Women organization. I happen to be very good friends with the woman who chairs the local organization. I was standing nearby one Sunday in church when she and another woman invited one particlar woman to a meeting. That woman – ordinarily a nice lady – completely transformed. It was as if she had just been asked to eat the flesh of her own children or something. She sputtered, “My HUSBAND was a DEMOCRAT!” while the two Republican women looked on with shock and horror.

    The sheer anger in that woman – and you would have had to have been there to witness how her face and her eyes turned – and the complete absence of any kind of rational response stuck with me. And I’ve seen a fair number of similar occurances. I’ve also heard the response, “My FATHER was a DEMOCRAT!” plenty of times. And the most common one of all was, “I was born a Democrat; I’ll DIE a Democrat!”

    And I’m thinking, “That’s pretty much why the Nazis fought so hard even after their cause was hopeless. Many in the Hitler Youth were BORN Nazis, you know.

    I was raised in a household with two Republican parents. But they didn’t burst my happy little childhood bubble with rants against Democrats. I actually didn’t have any idea what party my parents belonged to until I was well into my teens. And they taught me to think for myself.

    I was in the Army as a young man and I voted for Ronald Reagan in my first election (I wasn’t old enough to vote for him in 1980) because I understood the foreign policy positions between Mondale and Reagan. And I wanted Reagan’s foreign policy and I did NOT want Mondale’s. I correctly understood that the USSR had been a threat to the United States since the WWII-Truman era when the Soviets erected the Iron Curtain by seizing helpless nations in order to grow by force. And the USSR had been a threat through the Eisenhower years, the Kennedy years, the LBJ years, etc. And presidents both Democrat and Republican had understood that.

    Until something wicked happened to the Democrat Party in the mid-1960s.

    The Democrat Party has since gone so far off the rails on every issue there is that it is simply unreal. They’ve murdered fifty-four million babies; they’ve opened our borders to illegal immigration in a shocking way; they’ve looked to Europe and to socialism even long after it was obvious that Europe was a failure BECAUSE of socialism. Etc.

    And the only damn thing keeping the Democrat machine going is moral stupidity.

  377. Jaqy Newcomer Says:

    If your country was bankrupt under Bush. Collapse of the banks and wall street. What financial solution would you come up with to save the country and the economy?

  378. conservative Says:

    What do you expect when tax revenue declines to levels that were seen in the mid 2000s?

    Automatic spending (passed long before Obama) on Social Security and Medicare continue to grow,

    Automatic stabilizers in unemployment insurance increase during recessions.

    And it makes no sense to compare an increase in the ratio of government spending to GDP during a recession, because the denominator (GDP) decreases and automatic spending increases… What do you expect, even the most ardent deficit hawk would be up to his/her eyeballs in deficit spending during this last recession.

    There are plenty of things to not like Obama about, but deficit isn’t one of them.

  379. Michael Eden Says:

    conservative,

    What is it with you damn dishonest liberal cockroaches that you can’t just call yourself what you clearly are?

    I get this crap all the time; you liberal roaches think if you call yourselves something like “moderate” or even “conservative” and then spout leftist views that people will start believing that actual “conservatives” and actual “moderates” are somehow out of the mainstream.

    What it actually shows is just how deceitful liberals are. You’ve got zero integrity.

    That said, your liberal talking point amounts to this: we clearly can’t compare Obama’s record to Bush’s because Obama has screwed up the economy so massivelty that we’re in a recession that will last as long as he is president. And of course since we’re in a recession throughout Obama’s entire regime whereas we only got into a recession on Bush’s watch AFTER DEMOCRATS TOOK CONTROL OF BOTH THE HOUSE AND THE SENATE IN 2006 that there’s no way to do a fair comparison.

    The fact of the matter is that conservatives – real ones, not the fake piece of crap “conservative” that you falselty profess yourself to be – have been warning that a) given Obama’s massive stimulus that sucked all the money out of the private market so Obama could “invest” in crony capitalist boondoggles like Solyndra to benefit his campaign donors; and b) that demonizing rich people with Marxist class warfare, you know, the people who actually create jobs would result in rich people pulling back; and c) that constantly threatening to raise taxes on successful people would cause them to shelter their money rather than put it out in the economy for Obama to confiscate would result in less revenue; and d) the fact that Obama has created a nearly $2 trillion hidden tax in the form of regulations that stifle growth would all create a climate in which tax revenues would SUCK.

    So here you are getting EXACTLY what you created and now you’re arguing that since you got the failed results of your stupid policies that it’s not fair to compare the Obama presidency to one that actually created growth.

    Obama has given us $6 trillion in spending in less than four years versus Bush who was demonized for giving us $4 trillion in spending in EIGHT years. Obama is giving us budget deficits that are well over a trillion dollars every single year for as long as budgets are being calcuated twenty years from now.

    And you actually have the chutzpah to argue that we can’t blame Obama for this WHEN OBAMA VICIOUSLY DEMONIZED GEORGE BUSH AS UNPATRIOTIC AND A FAILED LEADER FOR DOING A THIRD OF WHAT OBAMA HAS DONE?!?!?

  380. Michael Eden Says:

    Jaqy Newcomer,

    I don’t understand your question given the first sentence, “If your country was bankrupt under Bush.” doesn’t make sense.

    Overall, I can only say this: there comes a point when a system is so screwed up that it can’t be saved. And we may very well already be at that point.

    From my perspective as a “free market guy,” I look at the banks and I don’t see very much “free market”; I see quasi-government institutions that amount to crony capitalism. When you see “too big to fail” and you see “profits are kept by the elites while losses get ‘redistributed’ to the taxpayers, what else can you call it? I see the Federal Reserve system and there is zero free market.

    I see that Dodd-Frank was sold as preventing the very crap that is going on all around us (e.g. the Facebook fiasco, e.g. the $5 billion loss at JP Morgan) didn’t do a damn thing to prevent the fraud and losses we’re seeing. Maybe thousands of pages of new regulations aren’t the answer, after all.

    I see top, TOP level Wall Street executives going into the Obama administration. I see that the four biggest banking entities gave heavily to Obama in 2008. I see a swinging door between Wall Street and government where executives go from one to the other and then from one to the other over and over again to contaminate both the banks AND the government.

    And I see the left demonizing the failure of Wall Street and the banks as a “failure of capitalism” when capitalism has almost NOTHING whatsoever to do with what is going on.

  381. Carl Says:

    not that I am some great thinker, but it seems to me the ideal world is one in which each and every person is free to live their life as they see fit without interference from any outside forces. No one can tell him what he should believe, how he should spend his money, or how to put his house in order. No one could tell him that as oportunity knocked he couldn’t embrace it. This would be the standard existence, unless that individual decided he could take from others to better himself ( A catch all for robbery, murder, rape, and other various dastardly deeds). At that point some sort of authority would have to step in to put him in his place. This seems to me to be pretty well in line with the right wing side thinking, if overly simplistic.

    My fear though is that if you could magically make the world this way, people would soon be disatisfied with this and soon government would be filled with people wanting to inform and then force others on what they should be doing. And x number of years later we find ourselves where we are now. THe rank and file of the nation have some control over their lives, so long as they toe the norm those in politics set for them. Stepping outside of that brands you as requiring re education. Cleansing the government of the parasites is near impossible. Sweeping them out of one area just leaves room from more when you turn to somewhere else. Truly getting up and arms to force a change always destroys the innocent in greater numbers vs those who caused the problems.
    Voting the otherside into office (depending which side you are on) seems to have no overall positive gain, at least in my lifetime.

    So then it falls to the general population to get along as best they can under the gaze of washington. We are resigned to never returning to a better time, but instead just attempting to manage our daily affairs as best we can to maximize our happiness and wondering if a new generation is even worth bringing into existence.

    Then everyday we encounter people both up close and personally and at a distance from varying medias, who tell us how we can fix our problems, what we need to to do to live right, and that they are the ones to fix everything. Marxists seem to make sense on paper, at least till you realize that you have to trust the work ethic of everyone to survive ( real life has shown me that this will always fail). Socialists seem nice, wanting to help everyone out ( but why is it that I help society, but when I stumble society has no time for me?). Fascism, yeah that never works out, but lots of people get the priveledge of being killed. Capitalism seems to be the best thus far, but when the powerful veer the ship of state its the people that get dumped overboard. Theocracy leads to an us or them mentality, and the “them” never make out well.

    The best I can do is try to survive without screwing anyone over, lending a hand to those I see actually needing it, but denying those I can tell are faking it. I try to keep my home nice without doing it at the expense of my neighbor. Periodically denying myself something I want because I don’t want to forget the value of struggle, but also periodically giving myself and my family reward to remind us of the value of work. I try and be kind to everyone I meet, and try to learn why some people make me so irritated I forget myself. The only human truth I accept without question is that no one person or group has all the answers. Anyone who tells me that they do, either at the end of a spear or handshake is a fool.

  382. Michael Eden Says:

    Carl,

    We can only marvel at the American founding fathers’ wisdom when we consider these issues. They understood that on the one hand they had to protect the people from the state and from the tyranny that resulted from a state that is allowed to have too much power. They also understood on the other hand that they had to protect the magnificent political system they created from the people. And they understood that there was no protection – no matter how perfect a political system might be – from bad people.

    Our problem is that we are going the way most of the world has already gone and becoming bad people.

    Bad people WANT other peoples’ stuff. They believe that they have “rights” that are in fact “wrongs.” And they want somebody else to pay for it all.

    But the threat of bad people goes far deeper than just money. Bad people believe lies. They WANT to believe in lies. They hate the truth. While good people might be fooled for a short while, bad people live in a state of being deception in which they both want to deceive and to be deceived. These bad people don’t accept reality; they deny reality and fabricate their own reality.

    When such people reach sufficient numbers and hold power, there is no way to protect yourself, your family, or your nation from their cancer. A law as written could be right from the mind of God, but these people hate God and hate the law and merely “interpret” it to mean whatever the hell they want it to mean.

    Sadly, America is either at that point or very nearly at that point.

    Which is why I frequently say “the beast is coming.”

  383. Carl Says:

    Seems to me that the United States is both at its greatest right now, and teetering on the cliff of oblivion. Great in its power and ability to influence the world, great in its seemingly limitless wealth ( in terms of how much the federal beaurocracy can come up with), and great in its ability to calm the populace by patting it on the head and getting them to believe everything is fine. Many people know everything is not fine, on both sides of the aisle. I am a person who always looks to history, near and far, to seek examples and situations similar to what I think I see now. That of course leaves lots of variation, because what I see and you see could be 180 degrees different or 360 to where we both agree.

    What I see today, and who knows if you agree, is a high tech, high speed version of the fall of the Roman Republic. In the last years of the republic the unity began to fray and the senators and people began to look for someone to save them from their fears. Up until then there are parallels between the US and Rome. Both rose from humble beginings, both expanded an “empire” far and wide at the expense of their neighbors. Both fought hard against a powerful enemy. Both began as democracies run by an elite, and both, in theory, expanded that elite into the plebian population. And in the end of it, the republic turned to strongmen to make things right again ( Sulla, Crassus, Pompey, Ceaser). But as we all know the last of those strongmen, Octavian, founded a “benevolent” despotism that led to more strong men fighting each other at the expense of the empire until it rotted away in strife and decadence. But all through the whole of it were small farmers in the italian and other countrysides trying to just survive.

    I see our country at this tipping point, we are looking to Obama ( at least I suppose some people still are) to fix the nation and return us to prosperity that evidently happened in some prior gilded age. The Problem as I see it is there is no going back. History marches ever forward. We have already had some strongmen, and some notably not strongmen. I see Reagan as a very strongmen, and one who generally did what was right. Like you said he had to make compromises, and no president is perfect so I am sure in the service of the greater good he made errors. I am in my mid thirties, so my biggest memory of him is his post challenger explosion speech to the nation. I see Bush Sr. as principled but hampered by indecision at home and an inabilty to understand the population like his predecessor. Clinton was an idealist, I feel his efforts would have worked great if the people always were kind and honest. Since people tend not to be en masse, it was doomed to failure. Much of what Clinton did was stupid because as smart as he was in many ways he should have seen the end results of taking work, responsibility, and drive from the people. I will admit to dislikeing Bush Jr as president. I think I would love to have him as neighbor, talking over the fence over a beer. Helping each other out, and the occasional cookout. I do not think he took it seariously enough, but he was not stupid as many think he was. Then there is Obama. I would call Reagan and Clinton strongmen, but both did so in the desire to improve, however misguided. Obama was ill prepared for the Gladiatorial combat of Washington. All his efforts were based on peope being nice and listening attentivly. When you mess deeply with peoples lives, they will not do that. No one will lay down and let you take a lot of what they have because someone else needs it. Despite liberals wanting to do that I would bet money when push came to shove they would rebel. Therefore, the reworking of the medical system, Financing the TARP monstrosity, and seeking to keep the government charge card hot from use is like Sulla riding into Rome and forcing the senate to do his bidding, or like others using the bread and circuses to distract the horde while they rape the nation.

    Where am I going with all this? I don’t think it can be stopped, we are teetering on the cliff of our decline. Other nations are rising to take our place. Other cultures are becoming more relevent in the worlds affairs, Our military is so bloated because of our position in the world ( the US military is another thing bankrupting us, but without it the world would swallow us), and our own people have essentially given up. Some care passionatly, like you, most are tired of the mess, noise, and lack of improvement so they have abdicated their civic responsibility.
    Because of all of these things, just like Rome before us, we will change. The question is will we collapse and fade away into the dirt, or will an American Emperor step forward. Anyone who takes those reigns will for a time right the ship of state, but it is just delaying the inevitable. No nation lasts forever, each rots and implodes in its turn, each is replaced by the next, and it marches on for eternity.

  384. Michael Eden Says:

    Carl,

    I’m with you overall, but I have to disagree with your very first sentence, that “the United States is at its greatest right now.”

    I certainly agree with you that we are “teetering on the cliff of oblivion,” but I would argue that we are past our greatness and that we have already begun to fall toward oblivion with astonishing speed.

    We were probably at the peak of our greatness after the collapse of the Soviet Union and after the triumph of Desert Storm.

    When Bill Clinton took over, he proceeded to radically dismantle both the military and the intelligence system that protected us and projected American power worldwide. Clinton left America both weak and blind. It was because of HIS disastrous pullout of Somalia after the “Blackhawk Down” moment that Osama bin Laden declared that America and American troops were “paper tigers” who would flee if they were bloodied.

    Clinton also spent eight years being totally blind to the growing threat of radical Islam and Islamic fascism that hit us eight months into the Bush presidency.

    Bush had to turn on a dime and rebuild a military and an intelligence capability that Clinton had taken apart. We were nowhere NEAR ready for that war. And we’ve paid for it.

    Democrats demonized Bush over his use of “Private Military Companies.” He had no choice. During the Gulf War, private contractors constituted about one in fifty positions; after Clinton’s dismantling of the military, PNCs represented one in ten of all positions in Iraq. We simply didn’t have an army that was capable of fighting. And Democrats simply wouldn’t let us build one. And so the fact of the matter is that the very PNCs that the liberals most demonized such as Blackwater were in fact in Iraq BECAUSE OF LIBERAL POLICIES.

    Now, under Obama, we have already basically gutted out military as it is – that according to DEMOCRAT Secretary of Defense Panetta – and if the sequestration that will rob another half trillion from the military happens as Obama vows it will with a veto threat, the US military will be at its weakest level since BEFORE WWII when we were ripe for attack. And we will NOT be able to fight two wars at the same time for the first time in decades. Again, both of those claims according to DEMOCRAT Secretary of Defense Panetta.

    So I think it’s wrong to claim that we are at our greatest now. We’re already well on the way to oblivion.

    But I otherwise agree with the substance of what you are saying.

    I am a Christian, and I believe strongly in Bible prophecy. The Bible told us 2,600 years ago that a figure known as “the beast” or “Antichrist” would arise in the last days and lead the world into a big government tyranny that I would argue is exactly what the Democrat Party has been pushing for along with liberals and socialists worldwide.

    I also believe that the only barrier to the coming of that global dictator was the strong America that existed until only a very short time ago.

    In the near future, America WILL collapse – primarily because Obama was the anvil that broke the camel’s back – and the world will collapse without America’s leadership and power. And it will be out of the ruins that the Bible will demonstrate that it was God’s prophetic Word all along.

    We may or may not be coming to the same conclusion through very different perspectives, but it certainly does seem that we both agree that America is about to collapse.

    P.S. our real debt is no paltry $16 trillion: it is over $211 trillion. And virtually every penny of that staggering, unpayable debt that will implode us was due to DEMOCRAT policies.

  385. Carl Says:

    What is fun about this is that I nominally considermyself liberal. Problem is thatmany liberal policies work in the lab and not in the field. So at the end of it I guess I am more of realist tempered by some idealism. Like I said it would be great if everyone could be nice and be their brothers keeper, and ensure everyone gets a piece of the pie. However, reality show us that if there is pie availible peope will slaughter each other for it. That leaves the true role of government to me, to act a s a barrier so the people can do their thing so long as they follow sensible rules and regulations. THe government is the balance between corporate greed ( I only cite my company in this, as many corporations are good) and bad behavior. That role is or should be limited, they can not constantly level the playing field so to speak. We as Americans need to fight for it and struggle to achieve as nothing free is worth keeping.

    I have to agree with you that we are on the anticline of greatness. Upon thinking about it more, the body has been stabbed but the head just isn’t aware of it yet. Since we are the body, we can see the blood.

    I have to say in the interests of disclosure, I am not a christian. I have great respect for most christians because of the positive example they set for others, excluding the idiots use the bible as a viscous bludgeon but thats another whole topic. I personally do not believe in anything supernatural on earth. However, just because I do not believe in the ressurection does not mean that Jesus was anything but enlightened and worthy of a following trying to live up to his example. FYI non christian does not mean aethist. Harsh aetheists are annoying as all get out, just because they often equate their lack of faith with a polar opposite religion. Its not, and they can go away,.

    So yes, I think in lots of things we agree and come to it from different paths. I would only qualify I don’t think it is only the dems who are guilty. Perhaps I ama cynic, but I do believe that most peope who seek office have ego issues and are more interested in dictating to others and stealing from the national pie. I find people of conviction on the street much more credible whether I agree with them or not.

    So kudos to you on a pleasant conversation, Its been fun.

  386. Michael Eden Says:

    Carl,

    The term “neo-conservative” was coined to describe liberals who had been “mugged by reality.”

    Based on what you say in your first paragraph, I’m not quite sure that you “get” what genuine conservatism stands for. I might be wrong about that, but allowe me to unpack it anyway.

    Conservatives are very definitely NOT for the philosophy of “if there is pie availible people will slaughter each other for it.” Rather, conservatives actually are MORE generous with their wealth and their time than liberals are. It is simply a documented fact:

    These extreme examples of Gilded Age ostentation on the part of those who, in Edmund Burke’s words, “pretend to a great zeal for the poor” are not atypical. They are especially egregious examples of a consistent gap between liberal rhetoric and conduct. Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute and author of “Who Really Cares,” has found that “studies have consistently shown that people on the political right outperform those on the left when it comes to charity.” Those describing themselves as “very conservative” gave 4.5 percent of their income to charity; the “very liberal” gave 1.2 percent. The “conservative” or “very conservative” made up 42 percent of the population surveyed but gave 56 percent of the total charitable donations; the “liberal” and “very liberal” were 29 percent of those surveyed but gave just 7 percent of donations. This disparity cannot be explained by religion: “secular conservatives are now outperforming their secular liberal counterparts.” Conservatives also do more charitable volunteering.

    A few more links:
    http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=2682730&page=1
    http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=159_1211924035
    http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/03/conservatives_more_liberal_giv.html
    http://brighthall.aol.com/2008/12/22/study-conservatives-more-generous-than-liberals/
    http://dailycaller.com/2010/09/23/surprise-conservatives-are-more-generous-than-liberals/

    So it’s not just that it isn’t true that liberals are more generous or compasionate or what have you; it’s that it’s actually the other way around: CONSERVATIVES ARE MORE GENEROUS AND MORE COMPASSIONATE. And they prove it by their deeds.

    That isn’t to say that no liberal can be generous or that every conservative is generous, but if you compare the category of “liberal” to the category of “conservative,” conservatives are more generous with both their time and their money. More on why later.

    The bottom line is that conservatives very much stand for the idea of taking care of their fellow man in need. But what they DON’T believe is that when an ideological government confiscates peoples’ money and then “redistributes” it to subsidize poverty and failed lifestyles, you just end up getting more poverty and more failed lifestyles. Further, when government sucks money out of the private economy, the economy invariably shrinks rather than grows. And that is because people who invest and give their own money are FAR better at getting the best “bang for the buck” than government bureaucracy will EVER be.

    I think the fact that a private company just very successfully launched into space and docked with the space shuttle is one of very, very many proofs that the private sector can do things far better and far more cheaply than inefficient government bureaucracy can. Government’s “war on poverty” has accomplished NOTHING at the cost of TRILLIONS of dollars. Worse, it has kept generations stuck in a vicious cycle of government-subsidized failure.

    I have an article, “Tax Cuts INCREASE Revenues; They Have ALWAYS Increased Revenues,” that simply documents the plain historic FACT that lowering tax rates INCREASES government tax revenue. It is as simple as this: when people are allowed to keep more of what they produce, they have an incentive to produce more.

    This exchange during a debate between moderator Charles Gibson and Barack Obama is telling:

    MR. GIBSON: You have however said you would favor an increase in the capital gains tax. As a matter of fact, you said on CNBC, and I quote, “I certainly would not go above what existed under Bill Clinton, which was 28 percent.”

    It’s now 15 percent. That’s almost a doubling if you went to 28 percent. But actually Bill Clinton in 1997 signed legislation that dropped the capital gains tax to 20 percent.

    SENATOR OBAMA: Right.

    MR. GIBSON: And George Bush has taken it down to 15 percent.

    SENATOR OBAMA: Right.

    MR. GIBSON: And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased. The government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down. So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?

    SENATOR OBAMA: Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.

    I would argue that if you actually want to be a compassionate liberal YOU OUGHT TO BE FOR LOW TAXES. BECAUSE YOU COULD INCREASE GOVERNMENT REVENUE AND HELP MORE PEOPLE. Tragically, Obama-liberals are NOT for helping people; they are for increasing the power and scope of government; they are for Marxist redistribution.

    Karl Marx expressed the economic essence of communism when he said: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Good luck trying to distinguish this central economic statement of Marxism with Obamanomics. I challenge you to do so.

    I would rather be a poor capitalist than a poor communist any damn day of the week. In North Korea, where true communism rules, the whole nation is literally dark at night and people burn their own feces for fuel while they slowly starve. Why on earth would anyone prefer that system who cares about the poor???

    Capitalism has done more to create wealth for ALL the citizens of a country than any socialist bureaucracy EVER has. America’s poor live like KINGS compared to most people in the world today. Why be more like the countries whose poor truly suffer???

    I think you should read my entire article in which this quote from Burton Fulsom’s “New Deal or Raw Deal” is quoted. But here is Fulsom talking about charity and what has happened to it:

    Throughout American history, right from the start, charity had been a state and local function. Civic leaders, local clergy, and private citizens, evaluated the legitimacy of people’s need in their communities or counties; churches and other organizations could then provide food, shelter, and clothing to help victims of fires or women abandoned by drunken husbands. Most Americans believed that the face-to-face encounters of givers and receivers of charity benefited both groups. It created just the right amount of uplift and relief, and discouraged laziness and a poor work ethic.

    The Founders saw all relief as local and voluntary, and the Constitution gave no federal role for the government in providing charity. James Madison, in defending the Constitution, observed, “No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity.” In other words, if relief, and other areas, were made functions of the federal government, the process would become politicized and politicians and deadbeats could conspire to trade votes for food” (New Deal or Raw Deal, page 76-77).

    We actually used to take care of our own in America. Prior to the New Deal, America had NEVER had a forced-government welfare system. That generosity has been poisoned and will continue to remain poisoned until the government gets the hell out of our lives and allows the American people to keep their own money and share it with their neighbors in need instead of pissing it away on bureaucratic boondoggles that are designed to a) keep people dependent on the government and to b) keep people voting Democrat.

    It has been BECAUSE conservatives are overwhelmingly more likely to be Christian that they give. They give more BECAUSE they are Christian. Jesus told us to care about the poor. He did NOT tell us to care about creating bigger and more socialist government.

    Based on what you write, I think you would enjoy this article: Matthew Parris: As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God.

    A great book to read on this subject of the positive impact of Christianity is Dinesh D’Souza’s “What’s So Great About Christianity.

    There are obnoxious Christians just like there are obnoxious atheists. I myself have occasionally been astounded by a few Christians who used the Bible more like a club to manipulate people than anything else. That said, Christianity is the only religion or group in the world in which you have to admit you are an imperfect sinner in order to join; and there is that proverb that if you ever find a perfect church, you wouldn’t be allowed to join it or else it wouldn’t be a “perfect church” any more.

    I myself acknowledge that I am very much an imperfect sinner. I long for Heaven not only because I believe that Jesus Christ will give me a brand new immortal body that is incapable of disease or death, but even MORE because I believe that Jesus Christ will give me the perfect Christlike virtue that I have always longed for and never attained. It’s a truly wonderful hope to hold, fwiw.

    Some “digs” about Christianity come down to this: Christianity holds that there is truth and everything else is lies, that there is good and evil and right and wrong. If you pose moral absolutes (e.g., “It is wrong to torture a child for fun”) you are being automatically intolerant of every view that holds differently. The Bible has a great deal to say about the nature of good and evil and what is “sin” and what is righteous. The other example of Christianity being “intolerant” is Jesus Christ’s self-profession that He and He alone is “the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me” (John 14:6). According to Jesus, HE is the ONLY way to God or to Heaven. And if you’re going to uphold Jesus as a great moral teacher – and it would very much seem that history and the Western Civilization that is largely based on Judeo-Christian values assumes that to be true – than you have to wrestle with what Jesus actually said about Himself and about the Bible that is so frequently attacked (see Matthew 5:17 and 5:18.

    One of the things that Dinesh D’Souza spends time developing is that free market “capitalism” itself was the direct result of Judeo-Christianity. And that we would not have had “free markets” or “capitalism” or the success that they has so benefitted those who lived in the nations that practiced them apart from Christianity. It is very much worth reading.

  387. Anonymous Says:

    Just reverse the bush tax cuts to reduce the deficit. At least that is a start. We couldn’t afford them to begin with. And who blew up the budget surplus that Clinton left for bush?

  388. Michael Eden Says:

    Anonymous,

    a few things.

    First, just how was it that we GOT the “budget surplus that Clinton left for Bush”???

    The first two years of Bill Clinton’s presidency – very much like the Obama presidency – was an abject fiasco. In 1994, the Republican party kicked Bill Clinton and the Democrat Party’s ass in a mid-term election sweep that can only be labeled “historic.” The Republicans swept Democrats out of power in the House and the Senate. And guess what the Republican Party’s NUMBER ONE platform – as documented in their Contract with America – was??? BALANCING THE BUDGET. Republicans DRAGGED Bill Clinton to cutting spending and balancing the budget. In some cases, like welfare reform, Republicans literally passed bills over Clinton’s repeated vetos. But you’re going to have the chutzpah to give Clinton credit for that? You drink your media propaganda Kool Aid by the gallon, don’t you?

    Bill Clinton was famously forced to say, “The era of big government is over.” That is a flat-out repudiation of Democrat Party ideology and an flat-out embrace of Republican ideology. And to whatever extend Clinton should get credit for anything, it was recognizing the superiority of Republican principles. For you to insinuate that “Clinton left a budget surplus” and that said “surplus” somehow upholds Democrat principles is a flat-out lie. You don’t get to do that here.

    I document what I’m saying about Clinton and the “balanced budget” here.

    Let me go on. A significant part of the “budget surplus” that Clinton gets “credit” for came out of the guts of the military and the intelligence establishments. Bill Clinton gutted them both in what he called a “peace dividend” (because his Repubican superiors Reagan and H.W. Bush won the Cold War). Clinton decimated our ability to defend ourselves: we were both weak and blind because of Bill Clinton. Clinton also gave us the scourge of Osama bin Laden. It was after Clinton’s fiasco in Somalia often called “Blackhawk Down” that Osama bin Laden concluded that America was a weak “paper tiger” and declared war on America.

    I document just a few of the facts that prove that above paragraph <a href="Why did we get attacked on 9/11? Let’s find out in the words of the man who attacked us after Bill Clinton’s abject fiasco commonly known as Black Hawk Down in Somalia:” target=”_blank”>in a response found here.

    Why did we get attacked on 9/11? Let’s find out in the words of the man who attacked us after Bill Clinton’s abject fiasco commonly known as Black Hawk Down in Somalia:

    “Our boys no longer viewed America as a superpower. So, when they left Afghanistan, they went to Somalia and prepared themselves carefully for a long war. They had thought that the Americans were like the Russians, so they trained and prepared. They were stunned when they discovered how low was the morale of the American soldier. America had entered with 30,000 soldiers in addition to thousands of soldiers from different countries in the world. … As I said, our boys were shocked by the low morale of the American soldier and they realized that the American soldier was just a paper tiger. He was unable to endure the strikes that were dealt to his army, so he fled, and America had to stop all its bragging and all that noise it was making in the press…” — Osama bin Laden

    Our military was weak as a result of Clinton’s cuts. How about our intelligence that is tasked with seeing an attack coming??? Clinton gutted that too:

    Author James Risen won the Pulitzer Prize on Tuesday for his much ballyhooed New York Times report last December that revealed President Bush’s previously secret terrorist surveillance program – a revelation he uncovered while researching his book “State of War.”

    In the same book, however, Risen makes an equally explosive claim about President Clinton’s relationship with the CIA – which his editors at the Times have so far declined to cover.

    Upon taking power in 1993, Risen reports, the Clinton administration “began slashing the intelligence budget in search of a peace dividend, and Bill Clinton showed almost no interest in intelligence matters.”
    The agency cutbacks combined with presidential disinterest took their toll almost immediately.

    “Over a three-or-four-year period in the early-to-mid 1990s,” reports Risen, “virtually an entire generation of CIA officers – the people who had won the Cold War – quit or retired. One CIA veteran compared the agency to an airline that had lost all of is senior pilots . . . “
    After Clinton CIA Director John Deutch cashiered several senior officers over a scandal in Guatamala, the situation got even worse.

    “Morale [at the CIA] plunged to new lows, and the agency became paralyzed by an aversion to high-risk espionage operations for fear they would lead to political flaps. Less willing to take big risks, the CIA was less able to recruit spies in dangerous places such as Iraq.”

    The 9/11 attack was the result of the joke that the military had become as a result of a Bill Clinton who gutted the military budget. Bush I took Reagan’s mantle and won the Cold War and defeated the Soviet-armed Iraqi regime; Bill Clinton tore that great, powerful military apart. And we paid dearly for it. And every single penny that Clinton saved by dismantling our military and our intelligence Bush had to pay a thousandfold.

    So right from the start, if a Democrat wants to say Clinton had a surplus, YOU SHOVE THAT SURPLUS UP THEIR BUTTS BY POINTING OUT WHERE IT CAME FROM AND WHAT IT RESULTED IN. It came from weakening the military and our intelligence apparatus and it resulted in the horror of 9/11 and the wars that necessarily followed.>/blockquote>

    Thanks to Bill Clinton, all of the terrorists who attacked America on 9/11 were in the country and received their financing before Bush took office. Thanks to Bill Clinton, America was weak and blind and ripe for attack. Thanks to Bill Clinton, Osama bin Laden decided America was an easy target.

    But hey, he saved us a lot of money by gutting the military and the intelligence establishments, right? It’s like saving your familiy a ton of money by cancelling all of the insurance for everything.

    Clinton’s “savings” cost us TRILLIONS of dollars and thousands of lives. But people like you will never hold him to account for it.

    Further, if you’re going to blame Bush for the “mess that Obama inherited,” the damn LEAST you can do is blame Bill Clinton for the mess that BUSH inherited. In addition to the massively expensive 9/11 attack and the massively expensive wars that followed that attack, Bill Clinton ALSO left George Bush with the Dotcom bubble collapse. That collapse wiped out the stock market and vaporized $7.1 TRILLION in American wealth (which is MORE than the 2008 collapse, fwiw). 78% of the Nasdaq valuation was eradicated by Clinton’s Dotcom bust.

    You’re completely ignorant about that, aren’t you, Anonymous??? You just mindlessly blame Bush and pretend that the two failures before and after Bush were wonderful.

    So much for your “Clinton surplus” crap.

    But you’re even more wrong than that. You’re one of those idiots who think that the more we tax people, the more we collect in taxes. Because you are too pathologically ignorant not to understand that people start to protect themselves from higher taxes and that higher taxes reduces economic growth.

    I write about and document that in an article titled, “Tax Cuts INCREASE Revenues; They Have ALWAYS Increased Revenues.” EVERY SINGLE TIME we have cut tax rates we have increased federal revenues. Every single time we have increased taxes we have REDUCED federal revenues. But people like you are totally immunized from reality by your Marxist worldview. Truth keeps biting you in the ass and you keep thinking truth is a bad thing that can be washed away with your ocean of lies.

    Ronald Reagan famously mocked liberalism, saying, “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

    When you increase taxes, you punish wealth. You say that what people like me work for and earn really doesn’t belong to us; it belongs to the government, and the government that owns me and owns my labor and wealth is gracious for allowing me to keep an increasingly tiny fraction of my output. You say that rich people shouldn’t take the risks of investing or hiring or trying to grow the economy because you’re going to come after them with the full power of the IRS if they try to and take away what they risked for to earn.

    And the economy contracts. And now Obama has moved Reagan’s famous axiom to the point where he’s regulating and subsidizing damn near everything. And you utterly pathologically STUPID liberals can’t even begin to comprehend why it isn’t working except to blame Bush more.

    Just to further document what an abject collosal nincompoop you are with your “just reverse the Bush tax cuts to reduce the deficit” idiocy, the CBO just warned us that if we did what morons like you say to do, America will fall off a “fiscal cliff.”
    That’s what people like you give us every single damn time we listen to you, fool: a short walk and a long drop off a fiscal cliff.

  389. Trae Barlow Says:

    I’m juts going to throw some facts out here.
    A) I believe both Bush and Obama were/are failures.

    B) Clinton left Bush with a SURPLUS.

    C) Bush left Obama a 10+ trillion dollar DEFICITE.

    So… when you say ‘the debt has increased fast under Obama than it has under Bush’ you are correct… but you are not taking into account that Bush started out with 5 trillion dollars, blew that, and then went 10 trillion into debt for a grand total of 15 trillion in overspending.

    Obama hasn’t gotten there yet, and I’m not one to judge (i’m sure he will), but Id imagine it takes some time to cut back on spending after living so high on the hog (15 trillion spent) for 8 years.

    If the trends continue (they will) however, Obama will have likely spent more than what Bush did. The difference right now being Obama has only had 4 years to spend our money and Bush had 8.

    If you’re not going to accept this logic (10>10+4.5*2 & 4*2>4) then I don’t see why I should even waste my time trying to talk to you. However if you can add to this statement (10>10+4.5*2) logically, with reason, and without spewing insults, slurs and curses. Please be my guest. Id like to know more about how our government is failing us.

    And if you’re curious why I’m posting anonymously, it’s because I’m not such an idiot such as to share all of my personal information on Facebook with every single private domain/individual on the internet (starthinkingright.wordpress.com).

  390. Michael Eden Says:

    Trae Barlow,

    I respond to people like you all the time. I can just copy and paste comments by now

    But first let me say this:

    I’ve got a bunch more, but I’ll just say this:

    1) Bill Clinton actually did NOT give us a “surplus.” The fact of the matter is that the national debt increased every single year of Bill Clinton’s entire presidency:
    Fiscal Year Debt in Millions

    10/1992 – 9/1993 $4,411,488
    10/1993 – 9/1994 $4,692,749
    10/1994 – 9/1995 $4,973,982
    10/1995 – 9/1996 $5,224,810
    10/1996 – 9/1997 $5,413,146
    10/1997 – 9/1998 $5,526,193
    10/1998 – 9/1999 $5,656,270
    10/1999 – 9/2000 $5,674,178
    10/2000 – 9/2001 $5,807,463

    How can that be if Clinton gave us a “surplus”????

    Clinton played games with the public debt versus the intra-governmental holdings to create an ILLUSION of a surplus. The national debt figures do not lie: Clinton NEVER gave us an actual surplus.

    Further, just yesterday we saw IN THE LIBERAL LOS ANGELES TIMES an open acknowledgement that Barack Obama gave America debt like it has NEVER SEEN under Bush or Reagan or any other Republican you might want to demonize:

    Quote:

    Total debt, of which publicly held debt is a major part, has increased about 50% since Obama took office, according to the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Public Debt. […]

    The nation’s debt load has historically hovered at 38% of GDP, the nation’s total output of goods and services, but inched up to 40% at the end of 2008 before Obama took office.

    The public portion of the debt load is expected to rise to 73% of GDP by Sept. 30 and, if the George W. Bush tax cuts and other policies remain in place, soar to 200% in 2037, according to the report.

    For you idiot liberals to come here and keep trying to assert lies which are simply factually untrue gets more ridiculous every single day.

    Yes, Bush gave us $4 trillion in debt in eight years. And that was very, very bad. But the debt that was $10 trillion when Obama took office is $16 trillion now. And the guy you rabidly defend has given us $6 trillion in debt in half the time that Bush gave us $4 trillion in debt.

    Bush’s $4 trillion debt (over eight years) vs. Obama’s $6 trillion debt in only FOUR years. There’s your 50% increase, exactly as even the LA Times is reporting.

    Over eight years of Obama, it gets far worse: because at his current rate, Obama will have given us $12 trillion in debt versus Bush’s $4 trillion, and Obama will have early in his second term given America more debt than every single president from George W. Bush to George Washington COMBINED.

    HOW THE HELL CAN YOU COMPLETE IDIOTS NOT UNDERSTAND THAT????

    Now here is what I said to another of you idiots recently to put things into perspective:

    Anonymous,

    a few things.

    First, just how was it that we GOT the “budget surplus that Clinton left for Bush”???

    The first two years of Bill Clinton’s presidency – very much like the Obama presidency – was an abject fiasco. In 1994, the Republican party kicked Bill Clinton and the Democrat Party’s ass in a mid-term election sweep that can only be labeled “historic.” The Republicans swept Democrats out of power in the House and the Senate. And guess what the Republican Party’s NUMBER ONE platform – as documented in their Contract with America – was??? BALANCING THE BUDGET. Republicans DRAGGED Bill Clinton to cutting spending and balancing the budget. In some cases, like welfare reform, Republicans literally passed bills over Clinton’s repeated vetos. But you’re going to have the chutzpah to give Clinton credit for that? You drink your media propaganda Kool Aid by the gallon, don’t you?

    Bill Clinton was famously forced to say, “The era of big government is over.” That is a flat-out repudiation of Democrat Party ideology and an flat-out embrace of Republican ideology. And to whatever extend Clinton should get credit for anything, it was recognizing the superiority of Republican principles. For you to insinuate that “Clinton left a budget surplus” and that said “surplus” somehow upholds Democrat principles is a flat-out lie. You don’t get to do that here.

    I document what I’m saying about Clinton and the “balanced budget” here.

    Let me go on. A significant part of the “budget surplus” that Clinton gets “credit” for came out of the guts of the military and the intelligence establishments. Bill Clinton gutted them both in what he called a “peace dividend” (because his Repubican superiors Reagan and H.W. Bush won the Cold War). Clinton decimated our ability to defend ourselves: we were both weak and blind because of Bill Clinton. Clinton also gave us the scourge of Osama bin Laden. It was after Clinton’s fiasco in Somalia often called “Blackhawk Down” that Osama bin Laden concluded that America was a weak “paper tiger” and declared war on America.

    I document just a few of the facts that prove that above paragraph <a href="Why did we get attacked on 9/11? Let’s find out in the words of the man who attacked us after Bill Clinton’s abject fiasco commonly known as Black Hawk Down in Somalia:” target=”_blank”>in a response found here.

    Why did we get attacked on 9/11? Let’s find out in the words of the man who attacked us after Bill Clinton’s abject fiasco commonly known as Black Hawk Down in Somalia:

    “Our boys no longer viewed America as a superpower. So, when they left Afghanistan, they went to Somalia and prepared themselves carefully for a long war. They had thought that the Americans were like the Russians, so they trained and prepared. They were stunned when they discovered how low was the morale of the American soldier. America had entered with 30,000 soldiers in addition to thousands of soldiers from different countries in the world. … As I said, our boys were shocked by the low morale of the American soldier and they realized that the American soldier was just a paper tiger. He was unable to endure the strikes that were dealt to his army, so he fled, and America had to stop all its bragging and all that noise it was making in the press…” — Osama bin Laden

    Our military was weak as a result of Clinton’s cuts. How about our intelligence that is tasked with seeing an attack coming??? Clinton gutted that too:

    Author James Risen won the Pulitzer Prize on Tuesday for his much ballyhooed New York Times report last December that revealed President Bush’s previously secret terrorist surveillance program – a revelation he uncovered while researching his book “State of War.”

    In the same book, however, Risen makes an equally explosive claim about President Clinton’s relationship with the CIA – which his editors at the Times have so far declined to cover.

    Upon taking power in 1993, Risen reports, the Clinton administration “began slashing the intelligence budget in search of a peace dividend, and Bill Clinton showed almost no interest in intelligence matters.”
    The agency cutbacks combined with presidential disinterest took their toll almost immediately.

    “Over a three-or-four-year period in the early-to-mid 1990s,” reports Risen, “virtually an entire generation of CIA officers – the people who had won the Cold War – quit or retired. One CIA veteran compared the agency to an airline that had lost all of is senior pilots . . . “
    After Clinton CIA Director John Deutch cashiered several senior officers over a scandal in Guatamala, the situation got even worse.

    “Morale [at the CIA] plunged to new lows, and the agency became paralyzed by an aversion to high-risk espionage operations for fear they would lead to political flaps. Less willing to take big risks, the CIA was less able to recruit spies in dangerous places such as Iraq.”

    The 9/11 attack was the result of the joke that the military had become as a result of a Bill Clinton who gutted the military budget. Bush I took Reagan’s mantle and won the Cold War and defeated the Soviet-armed Iraqi regime; Bill Clinton tore that great, powerful military apart. And we paid dearly for it. And every single penny that Clinton saved by dismantling our military and our intelligence Bush had to pay a thousandfold.

    So right from the start, if a Democrat wants to say Clinton had a surplus, YOU SHOVE THAT SURPLUS UP THEIR BUTTS BY POINTING OUT WHERE IT CAME FROM AND WHAT IT RESULTED IN. It came from weakening the military and our intelligence apparatus and it resulted in the horror of 9/11 and the wars that necessarily followed.>/blockquote>

    Thanks to Bill Clinton, all of the terrorists who attacked America on 9/11 were in the country and received their financing before Bush took office. Thanks to Bill Clinton, America was weak and blind and ripe for attack. Thanks to Bill Clinton, Osama bin Laden decided America was an easy target.

    But hey, he saved us a lot of money by gutting the military and the intelligence establishments, right? It’s like saving your familiy a ton of money by cancelling all of the insurance for everything.

    Clinton’s “savings” cost us TRILLIONS of dollars and thousands of lives. But people like you will never hold him to account for it.

    Further, if you’re going to blame Bush for the “mess that Obama inherited,” the damn LEAST you can do is blame Bill Clinton for the mess that BUSH inherited. In addition to the massively expensive 9/11 attack and the massively expensive wars that followed that attack, Bill Clinton ALSO left George Bush with the Dotcom bubble collapse. That collapse wiped out the stock market and vaporized $7.1 TRILLION in American wealth (which is MORE than the 2008 collapse, fwiw). 78% of the Nasdaq valuation was eradicated by Clinton’s Dotcom bust.

    You’re completely ignorant about that, aren’t you, Anonymous??? You just mindlessly blame Bush and pretend that the two failures before and after Bush were wonderful.

    So much for your “Clinton surplus” crap.

    But you’re even more wrong than that. You’re one of those idiots who think that the more we tax people, the more we collect in taxes. Because you are too pathologically ignorant not to understand that people start to protect themselves from higher taxes and that higher taxes reduces economic growth.

    I write about and document that in an article titled, “Tax Cuts INCREASE Revenues; They Have ALWAYS Increased Revenues.” EVERY SINGLE TIME we have cut tax rates we have increased federal revenues. Every single time we have increased taxes we have REDUCED federal revenues. But people like you are totally immunized from reality by your Marxist worldview. Truth keeps biting you in the ass and you keep thinking truth is a bad thing that can be washed away with your ocean of lies.

    Ronald Reagan famously mocked liberalism, saying, “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

    When you increase taxes, you punish wealth. You say that what people like me work for and earn really doesn’t belong to us; it belongs to the government, and the government that owns me and owns my labor and wealth is gracious for allowing me to keep an increasingly tiny fraction of my output. You say that rich people shouldn’t take the risks of investing or hiring or trying to grow the economy because you’re going to come after them with the full power of the IRS if they try to and take away what they risked for to earn.

    And the economy contracts. And now Obama has moved Reagan’s famous axiom to the point where he’s regulating and subsidizing damn near everything. And you utterly pathologically STUPID liberals can’t even begin to comprehend why it isn’t working except to blame Bush more.

    Just to further document what an abject collosal nincompoop you are with your “just reverse the Bush tax cuts to reduce the deficit” idiocy, the CBO just warned us that if we did what morons like you say to do, America will fall off a “fiscal cliff.”
    That’s what people like you give us every single damn time we listen to you, fool: a short walk and a long drop off a fiscal cliff.

  391. AmericanCitizen Says:

    I’ve read every comment so far (it took awhile). I’ve noticed that you repeat your arguements ALOT to those who do not bother reading your previous comments and links supporting your claims. Kinda not surprised with some of your comments directed back at them. All and all, interesting debate you have here. For me personally, not the biggest fan of Bush, but cannot deny that the spending is absolutely outrageous under the current administration with no buget plan in sight. And the personal attacks are getting sickening as well. But being that so many people are swayed under the liberal agenda (just look at the occupy movement and the hate spewing), do you think its possible to vote out Obama? I voted for McCain last time and that still didn’t help stopping Democrats…..

  392. Republican's let corporations steal more your money from you everyday than taxes will ever take from you! Says:

    Bush initiated the stimulus package- republican’s were for it at that time, when Obama passed it they freaked out. “Obamacare” is really “Bobdolecare” Republican’s loved it when it was Dole’s, Romeny implemented it as governor, Republican’s hate it after Obama passed it. Most of Bush’s debt was “deferred” (eg. bothe the wars he didn’t pay for, the Medicare PDP program he didn’t pay for) so saying Obama’s responsible for that portion of the debt is like saying Bush was responsible for the budget surplus CLinton left behind.

    But, you know, looking at things historically is, obviously, not a conservative ability.

  393. Michael Eden Says:

    Bush signed a stimulus, it’s true. From there on, you are pretty much 100% wrong.

    Let me just say at the outset that Bush most certainly did NOT “initiate” the Obama stimulus package in 2009. Wrong. Your argument that Republicans were for the same thing that they were then against under Obama is a complete lie, and I block liars. But I’ll refute you point by point first.

    So let’s begin with your first point:

    Bush initiated the stimulus package- republican’s were for it at that time, when Obama passed it they freaked out.

    With the stimulus that Bush DID sign, who was the sponsor? Republicans, you say? Sorry, you dumbass turd: it was NANCY PELOSI. It was an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote BECAUSE IT WAS A BIPARTISAN BILL. And at $149 billion it cost NOWHERE NEAR as much as either Obama’s first OR second stimulus.

    On your idiotic retard view of the world, if Republicans vote to buy a $12,000 economy car, they are somehow morally obligated to buy a $900,000 Bugatti Veyron. If they buy a sandwich off the value menu in McDonalds, they should splurge on the $150 a plate filet mignon at the best restaurant in town. One logically entails the other to fools like you.

    The bill you refer to cost $149 billion – a tiny fraction of the $3.27 TRILLION that the CBO said the Obama stimulus would cost (and that doesn’t include the subsequent stimulus Obama demanded for $447 billion plus interest – and that Bush stimulus featured bipartisan agreement between both parties. Unlike the Democrat boondoggle from Obama rammed home by Democrats on a purely partisan vote.

    As a final point, how did that stimulus work? Did it fix the world? No? It was useless? Well, let’s double down, triple down, quadruple down, never learn our lesson no matter how many times the same thing fails over and over again. Because we’re Democrats, and Democrats are moral idiots par excellence.

    For the record, you moral idiot, Republicans approached Obama in January 2009 ready to negotiate on that stimulus in 2009, but Obama wouldn’t have any of that. “I won,” he said. “And elections have consequences,” he said. That was his tone, you liar. And he rammed home a bill that only got Democrat support because UNLIKE THE BUSH SIGNED BILL IT HAD NOTHING FOR REPUBLICANS TO SUPPORT.

    And fascist rat bastards like yourself say that if Obama says the sky is polka dot, any Republican who doesn’t agree that the sky is polka dot is a racist. Democrats had total control of Congress between 2006 and 2008 when our economy turned from great into crap. Democrats opposed Bush on everything under the sun. They even played politics with the war and with our soldier’s lives, such that a victory for our troops in Iraq constituted a disaster for Democrats. But Democrat obstructionism was FINE with you back then. Your quintessential essence is hypocrisy, pure and simple.

    Since then, Obama’s rabid partisan ideology is so unhinged that not even ONE SINGLE DEMOCRAT in either the House or the Senate would vote for Obama’s insane budgets for the LAST TWO YEARS.

    Your next assertion:

    “Obamacare” is really “Bobdolecare” Republican’s loved it when it was Dole’s, Romeny implemented it as governor, Republican’s hate it after Obama passed it.

    Your crap about ObamaCare is RomneyCare or whatever? Well, if ObamaCare was BobdoleCare, and if ObamaCare was a good thing, THEN WHY DIDN’T YOU COCKROACH LIBERALS SUPPORT BOB DOLE??? Again, YOU HYPOCRITES!!! You did the very thing you’re now demonizing us for, only you did it first to start the war. On your VERY OWN PRESENTATION, you cockroach Democrats wouldn’t support Bob Dole just because Bob Dole was a Republican even though he had this wonderful health care that you wanted. So here you are actually coming to me saying, “You Republicans are so bad that you are actually doing what we cockroach Democrats did. And nothing can be more evil than acting like a Democrat!” Get out of my face, you hypocrite turd. And again, THAT’S JUST ON YOUR OWN VIEW.

    Republicans have a way to solve the healthcare fiasco: 3 steps: 1) health savings accounts, because it is now an abundantly illustrated facts that if you’ve got cash you can save HUGE on healthcare. We were right, YOU WERE WRONG!!! 2) Tort reform, because lawsuits and liability insurance are driving medical costs through the roof. But you Democrats have been bought and paid for by trail lawyers and you would see America burn with trillions of dollars of lawsuits that benefit your damned lawyer special interests. And 3) Allow insurance companies to be able to compete across state lines. Right now, in many states there is no competition at ALL. And even in California, there are only five or six insurers who don’t have to compete with one another. Republicans want to bring in competition and reduce the price the way competition has reduced the price for everything else. But Democrats won’t have any of it. Oh, no, these weasels who demonize us for being obstructionists obstructed us at every single turn. HYPOCRITES!!!

    With RomneyCare, if anything, you’re even WORSE. Conservatives have been outraged over RomneyCare AND Romney all along. “RomneyCare” isn’t conservative Republican policy; it’s what YOU turds do. Why don’t you read my article from December of last year when I predicted Mitt Romney would end up being the GOP nominee and how I felt about it and why I felt the way I did? Mitt Romney has one “virtue”: he won’t be quite as bad as Obama. As a conservative, RomneyCare is anathema – BUT YOU AS A LIBERAL SHOULD LOVE ROMNEY!!! So here you are, a hypocrite turd who hates Romney and RomneyCare because Romney is a “Republican” giving me a lecture for not liking ObamaCare because Obama is a Democrat? And aside from the little fact that we hate ObamaCare because its even worse socialism than RomneyCare, you are a hypocrite who first does the very thing he then demonizes his opponent for doing.

    You assert:

    Most of Bush’s debt was “deferred” (eg. bothe the wars he didn’t pay for, the Medicare PDP program he didn’t pay for) so saying Obama’s responsible for that portion of the debt is like saying Bush was responsible for the budget surplus CLinton left behind.

    From there, you repeat this bogus liberal talking point about “Bush didn’t pay for his wars,” Bush didn’t pay for anything. BULLCRAP! It was DEMOCRATS who who wanted to take the Iraq War funding off the regular books so they wouldn’t have to either vote for the war and piss off liberals or vote against the war and piss off independents. As I document below. Further, every penny of the wars was accounted for in the debt that IS attributed to Bush.

    That is pure unadulterated BULLCRAP and only idiots believe it.

    First of all presidents do not have the power to “pay 3 trillion dollars” without congressonal approval. PRESIDENTS DO NOT HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO SPEND OR TO REGULATE SPENDING; ONLY CONGRESS DOES. And you are simply and plainly ignorant to think otherwise.

    The New York Times recognized that Congress – and in this case the Democrat-controlled Congress – has the sole and unique “power of the purse.” If Democrats had wanted to cut off spending for the war, they could have done so and Bush would have been powerless to stop them. It is simply the most asinine of lies to claim that Bush used some nefarious means to spend trillions on the war.

    Every penny of the Iraq War was accounted for and correctly appeared on the public debt figure as it was incurred. The Iraq War was taken off the regular budget principally because the DEMOCRAT LEADERSHIP did not want to be put in a position of having to vote for something they knew they had to vote for and knew that crazy lunatics like YOU would attack them from the left. Hear’s another example of how full of crap you are:

    WASHINGTON: The US Senate will act on emergency funding for Iraq operations on Thursday, a day after anti-war Democrats vent their fury in two symbolic votes designed to pile political heat on President George W. Bush. [..]

    The vote will allow the Senate and the House of Representatives to produce a joint emergency war budget which Democrats hope to put on Bush’s table next week, to replace the version he vetoed over withdrawal timelines this month. […]

    “The details of the final emergency supplemental bill will be negotiated in the House-Senate conference. It is imperative that we get to conference as quickly as possible, which this resolution allows us to do.”

    On Wednesday, Reid will allow Democrats, who have vowed to bring troops home from Iraq, symbolic votes on choking off war funding by March 31, 2008, and on punishing Iraqi leaders for slow political progress.

    Notice that Reid and Pelosi had the actual budgeting done “in conference.” It wasn’t Bush who did that. It was DEMOCRATS who didn’t have the courage to stand for anything and played rhetorical games while men were fighting and dying for the country Democrats were undermining.

    Here’s another example of the fact that Bush did NOT “spend 3 trillion dollars that was never budgeted.”

    WASHINGTON (AP) — Just hours after floating the idea of cutting $20 billion from President Bush’s $142 billion request for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan next year, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad was overruled by fellow Democrats Thursday.
    “It’s nothing that any of us are considering,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told reporters.

    Conrad’s trial balloon to cut war funding would have affected the budget year beginning Oct. 1 and was separate from the ongoing debate over Bush’s $100 billion request for immediate supplemental funding for Iraq and Afghanistan.

    And here’s a direct quote from yet another example:

    Matt Stoller of OpenLeft is one of the bright online analysts and activists on the Democratic side of the aisle. He wrote recently about the move by Democrats to take Iraq ‘off the table,’ arguing that war opponents should not look past Iraq as a political issue. He says that while Iraq itself may no longer be viewed as negatively as it once was, it still imposes a real opportunity cost: dollars spent on Iraq cannot be spent on other priorities. Stoller wonders why Democrats are not at least testing the argument that Iraq has prevented–continues to prevent–the government from addressing other key priorities

    I preserved that article by OPEN LEFT writer Matt Stoller because I got an “invalid URL” notice even though I was able to access the article; which is to say that Open Left is going to purge it. But that article was written in December 2007 – nearly a full year after Democrats came to power and took over both the House and the Senate. IT WAS THE DEMOCRAT PARTY THAT TOOK THE IRAQ WAR FUNDING OFF THE TABLE. And they did so because if they voted against funding the war and leaving our troops high and dry in the field as left wing nutjobs like YOU wanted, THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN HELD TO ACCOUNT BY THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. They wanted to run on demagoguing the economy rather than demagoguing Bush as commander-in-chief in time of war.

    You are a liar.

    I don’t mention anything about the Bush prescription drug plan above, but it’s the same thing. Every penny got added to the debt and is on Bush’s tab. Bush DIDN’T pay for it, that’s true. But what you conveniently or stupidly don’t understand is the fact that the Democrats had a rival plan that ALSO wasn’t “paid for” and which cost FAR MORE than the Bush plan. So it doesn’t matter that you’re twice as guilty as we’ll EVER be; all you need to do is keep up the slanders. As a final point on the Bush prescription drug plan, CONSERVATIVES NEVER WANTED IT. That crap that you’re demonizing us for is what YOU do. And I go back to your “BobdoleCare” thing and point out that when you demonize Bush for trying to provide drugs, YOU’RE DEMONIZING BUSH JUST BECAUSE THE SOCIALISM WAS BUSH SOCIALISM AND YOU HATE BUSH. Again, you are a hypocrite.

    One final point: you’re mad about the fact that Bush didn’t pay for the prescription drug program? Seriously, with a straight face? ObamaCare currently already has a $17 TRILLION funding gap and the damn thing hasn’t even been implemented yet.

    You hypocrite.

    And just to talk about the Clinton “surplus,” you assert:

    …for the budget surplus CLinton left behind.

    You do the same thing with the talking points on Clinton giving us a “surplus.” Too bad nobody ever makes you explain how Clinton managed to give us a “surplus” when our debt went up every single year of his presidency. It’s too bad that nobody ever makes you explain how the “surpluses” never occurred until Republicans swept into power in 1994 and forced Bill Clinton to say, “The era of big government is over.”

    So explain it. Because AGAIN I can just copy and paste an answer:

    I respond to people like you all the time. I can just copy and paste comments by now

    But first let me say this:

    I’ve got a bunch more, but I’ll just say this:

    1) Bill Clinton actually did NOT give us a “surplus.” The fact of the matter is that the national debt increased every single year of Bill Clinton’s entire presidency:
    Fiscal Year Debt in Millions

    10/1992 – 9/1993 $4,411,488
    10/1993 – 9/1994 $4,692,749
    10/1994 – 9/1995 $4,973,982
    10/1995 – 9/1996 $5,224,810
    10/1996 – 9/1997 $5,413,146
    10/1997 – 9/1998 $5,526,193
    10/1998 – 9/1999 $5,656,270
    10/1999 – 9/2000 $5,674,178
    10/2000 – 9/2001 $5,807,463

    How can that be if Clinton gave us a “surplus”????

    Clinton played games with the public debt versus the intra-governmental holdings to create an ILLUSION of a surplus. The national debt figures do not lie: Clinton NEVER gave us an actual surplus.

    Further, just yesterday we saw IN THE LIBERAL LOS ANGELES TIMES an open acknowledgement that Barack Obama gave America debt like it has NEVER SEEN under Bush or Reagan or any other Republican you might want to demonize:

    Quote:

    Total debt, of which publicly held debt is a major part, has increased about 50% since Obama took office, according to the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Public Debt. […]

    The nation’s debt load has historically hovered at 38% of GDP, the nation’s total output of goods and services, but inched up to 40% at the end of 2008 before Obama took office.

    The public portion of the debt load is expected to rise to 73% of GDP by Sept. 30 and, if the George W. Bush tax cuts and other policies remain in place, soar to 200% in 2037, according to the report.

    For you idiot liberals to come here and keep trying to assert lies which are simply factually untrue gets more ridiculous every single day.

    Yes, Bush gave us $4 trillion in debt in eight years. And that was very, very bad. But the debt that was $10 trillion when Obama took office is $16 trillion now. And the guy you rabidly defend has given us $6 trillion in debt in half the time that Bush gave us $4 trillion in debt.

    Bush’s $4 trillion debt (over eight years) vs. Obama’s $6 trillion debt in only FOUR years. There’s your 50% increase, exactly as even the LA Times is reporting.

    Over eight years of Obama, it gets far worse: because at his current rate, Obama will have given us $12 trillion in debt versus Bush’s $4 trillion, and Obama will have early in his second term given America more debt than every single president from George W. Bush to George Washington COMBINED.

    HOW THE HELL CAN YOU COMPLETE IDIOTS NOT UNDERSTAND THAT????

    Now here is what I said to another of you idiots recently to put things into perspective:

    Anonymous,

    a few things.

    First, just how was it that we GOT the “budget surplus that Clinton left for Bush”???

    The first two years of Bill Clinton’s presidency – very much like the Obama presidency – was an abject fiasco. In 1994, the Republican party kicked Bill Clinton and the Democrat Party’s ass in a mid-term election sweep that can only be labeled “historic.” The Republicans swept Democrats out of power in the House and the Senate. And guess what the Republican Party’s NUMBER ONE platform – as documented in their Contract with America – was??? BALANCING THE BUDGET. Republicans DRAGGED Bill Clinton to cutting spending and balancing the budget. In some cases, like welfare reform, Republicans literally passed bills over Clinton’s repeated vetos. But you’re going to have the chutzpah to give Clinton credit for that? You drink your media propaganda Kool Aid by the gallon, don’t you?

    Bill Clinton was famously forced to say, “The era of big government is over.” That is a flat-out repudiation of Democrat Party ideology and an flat-out embrace of Republican ideology. And to whatever extend Clinton should get credit for anything, it was recognizing the superiority of Republican principles. For you to insinuate that “Clinton left a budget surplus” and that said “surplus” somehow upholds Democrat principles is a flat-out lie. You don’t get to do that here.

    I document what I’m saying about Clinton and the “balanced budget” here.

    Let me go on. A significant part of the “budget surplus” that Clinton gets “credit” for came out of the guts of the military and the intelligence establishments. Bill Clinton gutted them both in what he called a “peace dividend” (because his Repubican superiors Reagan and H.W. Bush won the Cold War). Clinton decimated our ability to defend ourselves: we were both weak and blind because of Bill Clinton. Clinton also gave us the scourge of Osama bin Laden. It was after Clinton’s fiasco in Somalia often called “Blackhawk Down” that Osama bin Laden concluded that America was a weak “paper tiger” and declared war on America.

    I document just a few of the facts that prove that above paragraph <a href="Why did we get attacked on 9/11? Let’s find out in the words of the man who attacked us after Bill Clinton’s abject fiasco commonly known as Black Hawk Down in Somalia:” target=”_blank”>in a response found here.

    Why did we get attacked on 9/11? Let’s find out in the words of the man who attacked us after Bill Clinton’s abject fiasco commonly known as Black Hawk Down in Somalia:

    “Our boys no longer viewed America as a superpower. So, when they left Afghanistan, they went to Somalia and prepared themselves carefully for a long war. They had thought that the Americans were like the Russians, so they trained and prepared. They were stunned when they discovered how low was the morale of the American soldier. America had entered with 30,000 soldiers in addition to thousands of soldiers from different countries in the world. … As I said, our boys were shocked by the low morale of the American soldier and they realized that the American soldier was just a paper tiger. He was unable to endure the strikes that were dealt to his army, so he fled, and America had to stop all its bragging and all that noise it was making in the press…” — Osama bin Laden

    Our military was weak as a result of Clinton’s cuts. How about our intelligence that is tasked with seeing an attack coming??? Clinton gutted that too:

    Author James Risen won the Pulitzer Prize on Tuesday for his much ballyhooed New York Times report last December that revealed President Bush’s previously secret terrorist surveillance program – a revelation he uncovered while researching his book “State of War.”

    In the same book, however, Risen makes an equally explosive claim about President Clinton’s relationship with the CIA – which his editors at the Times have so far declined to cover.

    Upon taking power in 1993, Risen reports, the Clinton administration “began slashing the intelligence budget in search of a peace dividend, and Bill Clinton showed almost no interest in intelligence matters.”
    The agency cutbacks combined with presidential disinterest took their toll almost immediately.

    “Over a three-or-four-year period in the early-to-mid 1990s,” reports Risen, “virtually an entire generation of CIA officers – the people who had won the Cold War – quit or retired. One CIA veteran compared the agency to an airline that had lost all of is senior pilots . . . “
    After Clinton CIA Director John Deutch cashiered several senior officers over a scandal in Guatamala, the situation got even worse.

    “Morale [at the CIA] plunged to new lows, and the agency became paralyzed by an aversion to high-risk espionage operations for fear they would lead to political flaps. Less willing to take big risks, the CIA was less able to recruit spies in dangerous places such as Iraq.”

    The 9/11 attack was the result of the joke that the military had become as a result of a Bill Clinton who gutted the military budget. Bush I took Reagan’s mantle and won the Cold War and defeated the Soviet-armed Iraqi regime; Bill Clinton tore that great, powerful military apart. And we paid dearly for it. And every single penny that Clinton saved by dismantling our military and our intelligence Bush had to pay a thousandfold.

    So right from the start, if a Democrat wants to say Clinton had a surplus, YOU SHOVE THAT SURPLUS UP THEIR BUTTS BY POINTING OUT WHERE IT CAME FROM AND WHAT IT RESULTED IN. It came from weakening the military and our intelligence apparatus and it resulted in the horror of 9/11 and the wars that necessarily followed.>/blockquote>

    Thanks to Bill Clinton, all of the terrorists who attacked America on 9/11 were in the country and received their financing before Bush took office. Thanks to Bill Clinton, America was weak and blind and ripe for attack. Thanks to Bill Clinton, Osama bin Laden decided America was an easy target.

    But hey, he saved us a lot of money by gutting the military and the intelligence establishments, right? It’s like saving your familiy a ton of money by cancelling all of the insurance for everything.

    Clinton’s “savings” cost us TRILLIONS of dollars and thousands of lives. But people like you will never hold him to account for it.

    Further, if you’re going to blame Bush for the “mess that Obama inherited,” the damn LEAST you can do is blame Bill Clinton for the mess that BUSH inherited. In addition to the massively expensive 9/11 attack and the massively expensive wars that followed that attack, Bill Clinton ALSO left George Bush with the Dotcom bubble collapse. That collapse wiped out the stock market and vaporized $7.1 TRILLION in American wealth (which is MORE than the 2008 collapse, fwiw). 78% of the Nasdaq valuation was eradicated by Clinton’s Dotcom bust.

    You’re completely ignorant about that, aren’t you, Anonymous??? You just mindlessly blame Bush and pretend that the two failures before and after Bush were wonderful.

    So much for your “Clinton surplus” crap.

    But you’re even more wrong than that. You’re one of those idiots who think that the more we tax people, the more we collect in taxes. Because you are too pathologically ignorant not to understand that people start to protect themselves from higher taxes and that higher taxes reduces economic growth.

    I write about and document that in an article titled, “Tax Cuts INCREASE Revenues; They Have ALWAYS Increased Revenues.” EVERY SINGLE TIME we have cut tax rates we have increased federal revenues. Every single time we have increased taxes we have REDUCED federal revenues. But people like you are totally immunized from reality by your Marxist worldview. Truth keeps biting you in the ass and you keep thinking truth is a bad thing that can be washed away with your ocean of lies.

    Ronald Reagan famously mocked liberalism, saying, “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

    When you increase taxes, you punish wealth. You say that what people like me work for and earn really doesn’t belong to us; it belongs to the government, and the government that owns me and owns my labor and wealth is gracious for allowing me to keep an increasingly tiny fraction of my output. You say that rich people shouldn’t take the risks of investing or hiring or trying to grow the economy because you’re going to come after them with the full power of the IRS if they try to and take away what they risked for to earn.

    And the economy contracts. And now Obama has moved Reagan’s famous axiom to the point where he’s regulating and subsidizing damn near everything. And you utterly pathologically STUPID liberals can’t even begin to comprehend why it isn’t working except to blame Bush more.

    Just to further document what an abject collosal nincompoop you are with your “just reverse the Bush tax cuts to reduce the deficit” idiocy, the CBO just warned us that if we did what morons like you say to do, America will fall off a “fiscal cliff.”
    That’s what people like you give us every single damn time we listen to you, fool: a short walk and a long drop off a fiscal cliff.

    P.S. Your name that you gave yourself – “Republican’s let corporations steal more your money from you everyday than taxes will ever take from you!” – is of course just another liberal talking point (in assertion form devoid of any proof just like all your other talking point assertions). Bottom lines: consider which president is ripping off the American people:

    The Solyndra President. Well, make that the Solyndra-EverGreenSpectraWattFirst SolarSolar TrustAbound SolarBrightSourceLSP EnergyEner1SunPowerBeacon PowerECOtalityA123Uni SolarAzure Dynamics President. Not to mention all the other now-bankrupt green energy crony-capitalist businesses that have stolen more than $2 billion dollars of the American people’s money.

    And few Americans have any idea whatsoever how transparently corrupt Barack Obama is.

    Eighty percent of all green energy loans provided by the American people’s stimulus money were given to crony capitalist-fascist Obama donors. Obama is using the American people’s money as a political slush fund to reward his friends:

    A new book by Hoover Institution fellow Peter Schweizer details the startling extent of the cronyism that has pervaded President Obama’s “green jobs” push. According to Schweizer, 4 out of every 5 renewable energy companies backed by the Energy Department was “run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers.”

    Those companies’ “political largesse is probably the best investment they ever made in alternative energy,” Schweizer explains. “It brought them returns many times over.”

    Such is the inevitable consequence of large government interventions in private markets. Leaving aside the losses associated with transfers of funds from self-sustaining industries to ones that rely on government support, such interventions also encourage unproductive business activities by making “subsidy suckling” far more profitable than run-of-the-mill business expansions or product improvements.

    Doug Ross spotted the relevant excerpt of Schweizer’s book (h/t Ben Domenech’s Transom):

    When President-elect Obama came to Washington in late 2008, he was outspoken about the need for an economic stimulus to revive a struggling economy… After he was sworn in as president, he proclaimed that taxpayer money would assuredly not be doled out to political friends…

    …But an examination of grants and guaranteed loans offered by just one stimulus program run by the Department of Energy, for alternative-energy projects, is stunning. The so-called 1705 Loan Guarantee Program and the 1603 Grant Program channeled billions of dollars to all sorts of energy companies…

    …In the 1705 government-backed-loan program [alone], for example, $16.4 billion of the $20.5 billion in loans granted as of Sept. 15 went to companies either run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers—individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party. The grant and guaranteed-loan recipients were early backers of Obama before he ran for president, people who continued to give to his campaigns and exclusively to the Democratic Party in the years leading up to 2008. Their political largesse is probably the best investment they ever made in alternative energy. It brought them returns many times over.

    …The Government Accountability Office has been highly critical of the way guaranteed loans and grants were doled out by the Department of Energy, complaining that the process appears “arbitrary” and lacks transparency. In March 2011, for example, the GAO examined the first 18 loans that were approved and found that none were properly documented. It also noted that officials “did not always record the results of analysis” of these applications. A loan program for electric cars, for example, “lacks performance measures.” No notes were kept during the review process, so it is difficult to determine how loan decisions were made. The GAO further declared that the Department of Energy “had treated applicants inconsistently in the application review process, favoring some applicants and disadvantaging others.” The Department of Energy’s inspector general, Gregory Friedman, … has testified that contracts have been steered to “friends and family.”

    …These programs might be the greatest—and most expensive—example of crony capitalism in American history. Tens of billions of dollars went to firms controlled or owned by fundraisers, bundlers, and political allies, many of whom—surprise!—are now raising money for Obama again.

    So it really doesn’t matter to Obama whether these crony capitalist boondoggles go bankrupt or not; what matters is that he gets a percentage of the billions of dollars of the American people’s money in the form of campaign contributions.

    Now, I take that kind of time to deal with people whom I block. I respond to every point they make and then they’re flushed down the toilet.

    You can’t think beyond your talking points, and beyond asserting talking points you offer NOTHING to any conversation. So I wasted more than enough time on you already. Get lost.

  394. Michael Eden Says:

    AmericanCitizen,

    It would be interesting, given your reading and your noting all the times I stated my arguments over and over again, if any liberal every bothered to actually RESPOND to them. I think not.

    It’s enough to drive a sober man to drink, to drive a sane man nuts, etc.

    In many, if not most, respects, George Bush was NOT a conservative. His “compassionate conservatism” and his “No Child Left Behind” and his “Prescription Drug Act” are a few examples. Bush’s biggest failure of all was his abject refusal to respond to the attacks of the left. And yet they hated him (as some überrightwing ideologue) as something he clearly was NOT and had never been.

    The stuff that the left hated Bush the most for – his war on terror and in particular his “attack” on civil liberties – Obama is doing every bit as bad and in fact WORSE. Not that 99.9% of the Democrats aren’t abject hypocrites. You’ve got a very few principled liberals who care, but the rest of them hated Bush because they hate Bush and now support Obama for doing things that would have driven them rabid frothing insane if Bush had done them.

    As for Obama losing, it is, I think, a pretty fair-sized probability. If America votes to re-elect Obama, it will amount to America voting to slit its own throat and commit suicide.

  395. gmc Says:

    GREAT article. I am neither an Obama hater nor was i a blind supporter of Bush. Both sides made some mistakes and both sides filibuster the hell out of making decisions. What I don’t like is that Liberals seem to always portray as the good guys and that they never was unkind to President Bush who many highranking (D) officials regarded as affable and a gentleman…..ugly comics and cartoons and MSNBC commentators were aggregiously rude but in this day and time it’s unheard of and if someone says anything awry – it’s a national tragedy. And as a black man, I AM SO SICK of people thinking i should support him because of something as menial as skin color. AND, I AGREE – Bush’s failure was not to respond to he attacks……then again that’s what an affable guy does. thanks for the great read……gonna read it again and share.

  396. gmc Says:

    ……and glad you seem to not be one of those “Christian politicians”…..those are the worst. I believe in Jesus and His saving power but not to use Him to advance politics. thanks again….

  397. Michael Eden Says:

    gmc,

    I’m not sure what you mean by “Christian politicians.” It might be if you read more of what I’ve written you would conclude I AM one.

    I’ll say this: on the one hand, I am certainly not in favor of a Christian theocracy. In that sense I’m certainly not a “Christian politician.” That said, I can’t think of anyone who DOES want a Christian theocracy.

    I DO believe that the United States of America was founded upon Judeo-Christian values. While I don’t think that America should be governed “by the Bible,” in the narrowest sense, I DO believe that America was and should again be governed in accordance with the Judeo-Christian principles. People should not have to BE Christians, but they should live as though they were in many respects.

    I am pro-life and view the 54 million abortions this nation has allowed as a holocaust. That might alone be enough to turn me into a “Christian politician” on your view. But the fact of the matter is that every single law presupposes a moral foundation. And to say that you don’t want a Christian foundation merely means you prefer some other morality over the Christian worldview.

    Years back, Republicans and Democrats largely agreed over morality and disagreed over spending money. These days it often seems to be turned on its head: BOTH sides spend like crazy, and the moral issues that used to unite us now bitterly divide us.

    Dennis Prager calls himself a “Kennedy liberal.” On his presentation, the Democrat Party largely abandoned any traiditonal roots in 1968 and never looked back.

    Your first comment – the longer of the two – is quite fair and balanced. The Democrats demonized Bush in every way imaginable; their hypocrisy ought to be revealed now that we see how THEY are spending, and how THEY are bogged down in war, and how THEY are seeing global bitter division. But it’s just blame-Bush-blame-Bush-blame-Bush. At this point there is absolutely no sign that these people will accept any scintilla of responsibility for how they have governed.

    I’ll say this to you: for the first time in my life these last few years, I’ve been dealt with in a racially biased manner as a white man. Obviously, not to anywhere near the extent that an older black man who has truly experienced racism has, but I’m hearing more about what “white people” think or believe than I ever have in my life. And I don’t like it.

    It sucks to be pigeonholed.

    I profoundly agree with what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said: a man should be evaluated by the content of his character rather than by the color of his skin.

    Ultimately, there are black people I joyfully fellowship with every week and greatly admire as friends and in fact as mentors; there are white people I frankly can’t stand to be around. I look at the color of one’s ideas long before I consider the color of his or her skin. That is simply how I was raised.

  398. James Brown Says:

    Where to begin…

    I won’t sit here and spell out quotes. I don’t have the time. Instead I will depend on my education.

    I am a republican because I believe in less government. However, I believe all politicians are crooks and I don’t trust any of them. Republican or Democrat. I am an engineer and I base all my views on fact.

    Michael Eden…well spoke. However, I don’t realize how it became a racial issue. It could be my mistake because I didn’t read the whole thread. If that is the case… my bad.

    With that being said, Bush’s greatest mistake was being naive and too trusting. For one, he trusted Donald Rumsfeld. As you can all recall, Rumsfeld was also the secretary of defense for George senior. From the beginning, Donald always wanted to get Saddam out of power. He couldn’t do it with his dad, so he used his son.

    To move on…

    I can’t believe the crap OBAMA has pulled in the last couple of weeks. I feel that our government no longer has “checks and balances”. At 35 years of age, I have completely lost all faith in our governing body. This is sad.

    1. Obama bypasses Congress and allows 800,000 illegal immigrants to live in the US without deportation by way of a Presidential Order. I feel for these people. I really do. Many have gone to war for our country, pay taxes, etc. However, it were their parents that came to this country illegally with their kids. Obama has now given countless of other families an “avenue” to want to come to the States. By the way, Indiana now has a law suit against the federal government of $130 million dollars. This money is to pay for illegal immigrants (cost of health care, prisons, public schooling, etc.)

    2. Obama grants Eric Holder “Exucitve Privelage” for Fast and Furious. This is after the White House held the position they had nothing to do with the operation.

    3. OBAMACARE. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office initially estimated the cost over a 10-year period to be at $940 billion, but later revised it to $1.7 trillion. Others give a much higher number, including the Cato Institute with its estimate of $3 trillion.

    That is the last thing we need. Goverment spending more money and adding bureaucray to the mix. The way I look at it… Socialism is two steps away from Communism – and we all know how that turned out. It looks good on paper, but not so much in practice.

    As a country… we need to increase taxes across the board and decrease spending. California spending $68 Billion on a high speed train from LA to San Francisco is not the way to go. Better to spend the money on public education.

    I am not saying that Mitt Romney is the best choice. Like I said before, they are all crooks. However, it seems like the best choice since I have to pick an idiot

  399. Michael Eden Says:

    James Brown,

    I’m not a guy who would fight to my death for either Bush presidency. So I’m not going to be trying to defend Donald Rumsfeld, either.

    I don’t agree with you that “all” politicians are crooks. Maybe you don’t actually think that yourself. But, yeah, the overwhelming majority are just what you say.

    There are two political machines. Neither machine is particularly “honest” or “virtuous” or even “patriotic.” But where we’re at since 1968 when the Democrat Party became the party of genuine evil in America is that the Republicans – as awful as they often are – are honest and virtuous and patriotic in the comparison.

    I don’t particularly consider myself a “Republican” in the sense that what I really am is a Christian first and a conservative second. I believe that our founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights should be literally interpreted in light of their historical context – which also makes me a strict constructionist.

    I disagree with you that we need to “increase taxes across the board.” I know what you are trying to achieve and agree with your ultimate goal, but I think raising taxes is the wrong way to try to get there and the effort will fail. Why do I say that? Read this article: Tax Cuts INCREASE Revenues; They Have ALWAYS Increased Revenues.

    The fact of the matter is that the US government collects far more in revenues with lower tax rates than it does with higher tax rates. As I document, that has been proven again and again. We had Clinton, Bush II and Obama. Which president collected the most federal income tax revenues? Bush. If you allow people to keep more of what they earn rather than penalizing them and punishing them for earning, if you allow people to keep more of what they earn for risking their money in investing, you will get more people earning and more people investing. I hope when you think about it and read that article you’ll realize that’s true.

    I agree with your last words about Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney is a turd. But standing next to Obama and being compared to him, he smells like a rose.

  400. pac10chris Says:

    Obama inherited spending that was 89% greater than where Clinton had left it. Averaging spending is an extraordinarily dishonest way to evaluate presidents. It’s like saying a pilot is good because his average altitude is higher, even though he put the plane in a nosedive before bailing out.

    Here’s how presidents have affected spending as a % of GDP:
    Reagan inherited 33.6% spending and increased it to 34.9%
    Bush Sr inherited 34.9% and increased it to 36.3%
    Clinton inherited 36.3% and DECREASED it to 33.3%
    Bush Jr inherited 33.3% and massively increased it to 42.6%
    Obama inherited 42.6% has DECREASED it to 40.3%

    TARP let Bush make loans off-the-books that prolonged economic stress until after Obama took office. It was like taking medicine that delayed pain until the next guy sat in the dentist chair.

    Bush quintupled the deficit, more than doubled the national debt, and nearly doubled unemployment during his 8 fiscal years. The big republican plan over the last 10 years? Borrow trillions so the richest Americans can enjoy historically low tax rates during war time. Once republicans got power they flip-flopped on campaign finance reform and then they flip-flopped on balancing the budget. All so they can pander to rich donors at the expense of the country.

  401. Michael Eden Says:

    pac10chris,

    In a word, BULLCRAP.

    Obama passed a massive stimulus that was billed at $862 billion but which actually cost the American people and their children’s children’s children’s children $3.27 TRILLION. Oh, but Obama rammed that piece of crap that robbed us blind and did nothing to help the economy through during the period of Bush’s last fiscal year, so “Bush did it” on you dishonest roach’s theories. To add to that sort of thing, Bush left HALF the $700 billion in TARP money for Obama to spend. Obama spent the money and Obama voted for TARP, but the spending was ALL “Bush’s fault” including the money that Obama voted for and spent as president.

    Obama also assumed that the spending for the Iraq War would have continued forever if Obama messiah hadn’t ended it. Never you mind that we left Iraq on the timetable that BUSH negotiated; so all the spending gets dumped onto Bush and all the credit for “cutting spending.”

    You dishonest roaches have in fact IGNORED Bush’s first seven years in office and pretended that the numbers of the last half of his final year are the sum total of his entire presidency. So you artificially created a “basline” of Bush’s spending that is entirely based on not only the last few months of Bush’s term but in fact extend into Obama’s term because, after all, it was “Bush’s fault” and so you can blame Bush for Obama spending even though Bush didn’t spend it and Obama did.

    The fact is here. Obama is spending at a rate THREE TIMES what Bush spent. Obama inherited a national debt of $10 trillion and it is $16 TRILLION now. Bush spent $4 trillion over 8 years; Obama has spent $6 trillion in less than FOUR.

    Further, I document that the last Republican budget passed by Republicans had a deficit of $161 billion. The very next year Democrats exploded it that to a $459 billion defitic. And Obama’s first year in office gave us a deficit of a staggering never before seen $1.42 trillion. Then his second year his deficit actually went higher, to $1.6 trillion. Since then, dishonest Democrat cockroaches have refused to pass a budget for more than three years so it’s hard to measure just how stratospheric their spending has been. Those are facts.

    USA Today calculated that the real deficit is $5.6 trillion a year under your turd prince.

    ObamaCare alone has a $17 TRILLION funding gap. And that’s just a starter of the face-full of hell your messiah is destroying America with.

    Obama has increased food stamp dependence by 53% since he took office (30 million under Bush to 46 million under your messiah) as he has devasted the economy and created more poor and more government dependence than anyone in history. And you want to claim that Obama is cutting spending, you weasel???

    For the record, food stamp dependency has increased 70% since Democrats took over Congress and destroyed America.

    Here’s another one. Bill O’Reilly just announced the statistic that Obama has increased the non-military federal workforce TEN TIMES as much in four years as Ronald Reagan did in EIGHT. Here’s a link documenting the largest ever federal payroll in history under this guy you dishonestly say cut government so much.

    As for your lie about Bush “making loans off the books” that blah, blah, blah, that’s the point where I decided to block you. I’m not going to argue with liars who don’t even bother to try to document any of their lies.

    I’ve taken the time to expose that lie before. Bush did NOT take spending off-budget; DEMOCRATS in Congress who did not want to be demonized by their base for voting for the war but didn’t want to be attacked by independents for voting against the troops did that. And when you make a ton of bogus assertions without bothering to even so much as substantiate ANY of them without even a link to your Daily Kos that is your source for all of your lies, you are not worth arguing with. Because any fool can pump out a bunch of lying crap.

  402. Anonymous Says:

    I like how Eden sits behind his computer while talking all kinds of shit. Typical internet toughguy…would love for you to call me a “dumbass liberal” to my face. Some of us “bleeding hearts” actually know how to fight.

  403. Ryan Flanery Says:

    “What is it with you damn dishonest liberal cockroaches that you can’t just call yourself what you clearly are?”

    This coming from a so-called “evangelical christian”

    You’re a joke dude. I would love for you to talk all that nonsense to my face. Some of us “bleeding hearts” actually know how to fight, and I would knock all of your hypocritical god-faring teeth out. You’re probably some fat, disgusting slob sitting behind his computer with watching kiddie porn, when not playing the super tough internet guy.

    You’re a pathetic human.

  404. Michael Eden Says:

    Ryan Flanery,

    Let’s see. The guy who is so morally outraged by my insult has the following to say in his very next paragraph immediately after attacking my religion:

    – “You’re a joke dude.”
    – “I would knock all of your hypocritical god-faring teeth out.”
    – “You’re probably some fat, disgusting slob sitting behind his computer with watching kiddie porn.”
    – “You’re a pathetic human.”

    You are the same quivering pile of obnoxious slime who is bothered with my name-calling, are you, you HYPOCRITE???

    Liberals LOVE to make themselves victims. It is their quintessential nature. But there’s another component to their vile nature – hypocrisy – such that they literally cannot help demonizing their opponents even worse than they just got through whining about.

    I describe pukes like this particular puke in my article available here.

    Now, you are clearly nobody worth having any kind of a conversation with whatsoever. So having given you your say and having already wasted enough of my time interacting with your rabid little roach brain, buh-bye.

  405. Michael Eden Says:

    Anonymous,

    I have absolutely no doubt that you are without any question THE toughest, most macho manly-man who has ever got on the internet to whine to somebody’s blog.

    What the hell am I supposed to do? Put down a number as to how much I bench press are or how toot my horn as to just how tough I am? Maybe argue that in fact my kung fu is considerably better than your kung fu?

    I frankly have considerably better things to talk about.

    And better people to talk to.

    P.S. For the record the IP address shows that this is the same cretin also known as Ryan Flanery who boasts about what an incredibly macho stud he is in the other recent post to this article. So it is simply pathological with this turd.

  406. Garrett Says:

    Micheal Eden you really are a joke. As soon as you resort to insults in an arguement you should just quit. The problems are country is facing can not be pinned on a single party and you trying to do so just further shows the problems with our partisan politics. What do you actually hope to accomplish by sitting around calling people “dumbass liberals”? Oh and I liked when you said Gingrich should be president with Romney as a V.P. ……MOON BASE

  407. Michael Eden Says:

    Garrett,

    You pathetic turd. You write:

    Micheal Eden you really are a joke. As soon as you resort to insults in an arguement you should just quit

    Why can’t you follow your own advice, you fool? How the hell am I supposed to respond to an abject DUMBASS who tells me I’m wrong for insulting people after literally begining the very same sentence by insulting me? Just how in the world do all you fools’ skulls not explode from trying to contain all the massive self-contradictions???

    You are responding to a fact-based and fact-filled article on the subject of “Who spent more? Bush or Obama?” And you add what to that? Do you present so much as a SINGLE fact or argument to overcome what I provided (between insulting lame dumbasses such as yourself)???? NO.

    So understand, all you idiot Garretts of the world. Why do I resort to “insults”??? BECAUSE THE LIBERAL FOOLS WHO KEEP ANNOYING ME DON’T OFFER A SINGLE SOLITARY SHRED OF ANYTHING THAT CAN BE MET BY FACT OR REASON. That’s why. I can’t respond to jackasses like you with reason BECAUSE YOU IGNORE REASON AND ARE INCAPABLE OF INTERACTING WITH REASON.

    Let me define dumbass liberal: they are all the people who do all the things that you do (e.g., make yourselves the victims who decry my inusults either just before or just after INSULTING ME; e.g., pretend that your some kind of moderate when anyone who reads you immediately understands that four years ago you were rabidly frothing at the mouth at Bush and now it pisses you off that we actually dare to do to you what you did to us; e.g., not bothering to actually have any argument whatsoever while idiotically pretending that you actually have a point besides your personal attack).

    I wrote an article that described you people to a ‘t’: https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/of-liberalism-victimism-avoidance-projection-and-other-personality-disorders/

    Now get lost, you joke.

    As a P.S. re: Gingrich and Romney, I suppose dumbass is referring to a response I offered in a comment on December 7, 2011:

    Between the two front runners (by now it is looking like Romney vs. Gingrich), I prefer Newt Gingrich, with Romney as his VP.

    I’m not real happy about Gingrich. But you have to bet on the horses that are in the race.

    To his credit, Gingrich is a) brilliant and b) full of out-of-the-box ideas. And this country will desperately need out of the box ideas if we’re going to pull out of the crisis we have been plunged into. Gingrich has also wisely decided c) to follow Reagan’s 11th commandment and not attack his fellow Republicans while d) keeping his attacks focused on Obama like ALL of the candidates ought to be doing. I also like the fact that e) Gingrich is a man who has a lifetime of experience, versus Obama who had never done anything prior to running for the Senate and then immediately running for the presidency.

    I’ll allow others to decide how mockworthy those words were, or whether Garrett is just a slandering liar that he can’t not misrepresent people with whom he disagrees.

    On March 17, 2012 I also offered (after pointing out my “endorsement” wasn’t worth its weight in doggy poop):

    Here are my basic views of the remaining candidates:

    Mitt Romney’s Mormonism bothers me (there, I said it). If he is the nominee, this will be the first election where neither candidate for president is a Christian. I guess that’s part of the “God damn America!” that Jeremiah Wright described. I also do not trust Mitt Romney to be what he keeps telling us he’s going to be – a conservative – because he’s never really been one before, has he? As for his ‘plus sides,’ he has shown that he can raise money and he apparently is the least offensive candidate for the perennially-waffling independents who always end up deciding our elections these days.

    Newt Gingrich is without a doubt the most brilliant man in the race (most certainly including Obama) and far and away the best debater. He is also the most visionary thinker – and we will probably need creative thinking as we get closer and closer to the day we economically collapse and need “creative thinking” to figure out what the hell to do. As for his ‘down sides,’ he has an appalling amount of baggage and he has shown that he has a remarkable ability to twist logic to pretty much suit whatever is most convenient for Newt Gingrich at any particular moment.

    One of the fascinating things I have noted on this blog is the way liberals and “moderate Republicans” (i.e., RINOs) have told conservatives to pick a moderate because he would appeal to the masses. But then the moment the race begins, Democrats proceed to slander the “moderate” and do everything they can to “fundamentally transform” him into some kind of right wing bogeyman. The goal of the Democrat slander campaign is based on the fact that conservatives already rightly know that a Romney (McCain, fill in the blank here) isn’t really a conservative, and so are turned off and de-energized, and the fact that most Americans are now truly ignorant people who are swayed by Democrat attack ads and mainstream media propaganda. And thus conclude, “Oh, that Romney is far too ‘right-wing’ for me!”

    For better or worse, at this point, it’s either Romney or it’s Obama. And I’ll crawl through hell over broken glass to vote for Romney whether I’m happy with him or not.

  408. Annette Says:

    If someone could just give a REAL answer without allowing there personal feelings to overshadow and/or influence “truth” and “logic,” there wouldn’t be any finger-pointing other than at “ourselves.” Blame Obama if you want, but he’s not responsible for this. It appears that until accountability is recognized or rememberance of how we got “here,” ( “And I’ll crawl through hell over broken glass to vote for (Bush) Romney whether I’m happy with him or not.”) history is destined to repeat itself with far worst consequences.

  409. Michael Eden Says:

    Annette,

    I see you added “Bush” to my own statement. Which is kind of interesting from someone who just got through lecturing me about “allowing there [sic] personal feelings to overshadow and/or influence “truth” and “logic.””

    It was out of your personal animosities rather than any “truth” that made you selectively edit that way, lady.

    How about a little “truth” and “logic” for you.

    Truth 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kuTG19Cu_Q

    “The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents – #43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.” — Barack Obama, 3 July 2008

    Now, you don’t mind lies. You don’t mind personal attacks. You don’t mind slander. As long as it comes from the left. I believe you’ve already made that clear. But truth #1 is that Barack Obama demonized George Bush and promised the American people that if we elected him:

    Truth #2: Obama promised that he would cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term:

    “Today I’m pledging to cut the deficit we inherited by half by the end of my first term in office,” Obama said. “Now, this will not be easy. It will require us to make difficult decisions and face challenges we’ve long neglected. But I refuse to leave our children with a debt that they cannot repay, and that means taking responsibility right now, in this administration, for getting our spending under control.”

    Fact (“logic”): Federal deficit for 2008 that Obama inherited: $459 billion. Deficits since Obama took office: 2009: $1.413 trillion; 2010: $1.293 trillion; 2011: $1.300 trillion; 2012: $1.327. George Bush didn’t pass the stupid stimulus that will cost the American people $3.27 TRILLION and which didn’t do anything but create a political slush fund for Obama to use for his political cronies.

    Fact (“logic”): Let’s consider that Obama rammed his stimulus through ($862 billion) and put it on Bush’s fiscal year budget tab even though Bush didn’t pass it and Republicans most certainly didn’t vote for it. Obama rammed a giant Omnibus bill through his Democrat Congress for another $410 billion that very few Republicans voted for. That’s also on the 2009 budget deficit. Obama of course blamed Bush for the entire $700 billion for TARP even though Obama voted for it and even though Bush gave Obama fully half of it ($350 billion) to spend in his own administration. Obama rammed through the federal takeover of GM and the $24 billion that went into that bailout. Even as Obama praises himself for it and exploits it to attack Republicans, in actual fact he attributes every single penny that paid for that bailout to Bush’s presidency even while he lies like a snake in misrepresenting its costs and benefits. Obama rammed his ObamaCare through Congress that same year and promised it would cost ONE-THIRD the $2.6 trillion it will now cost. And on top of that Obama calculated that the Iraq War would go on forever unless Obama ended it such that ending the war was “his savings” even though in fact Bush had negotiated the Iraq withdrawal before leaving office. Obama in citing the end of the Iraq War as “his savings” implicitly claims that he is saving $100 billion a year even though that’s an outright lie because Bush had already won the war and negotiated the withdrawal of forces. Obama deceitfully and dishonestly saddled all of that debt and bogus assumption onto Bush in order to fabricate a huge “Bush deficit” that Obama actually compiled and then conveniently made that “Bush deficit” his baseline for “Bush’s deficit”. Rather than the actual Bush record over eight years.

    Obama does that because he can’t lie and fabricate Bush’s actual real deficits. As an example, the last budget deficit that was passed by George Bush under Republican leadership was for only $161 billion for Fiscal Year 2007. Obama doesn’t want you to think about that kind of leadership; he wants you to think about “Bush’s debt” with all of Obama’s very own vile spending packed onto it after HE took office in 2009. That just continues the trend of a president who has proven pathologically incapable of assuming responsibility for anything: it doesn’t matter if Obama did it, it’s “Bush’s fault.”

    Fact (“logic”): “Today I’m pledging to cut the deficit we inherited by half by the end of my first term in office.” Today the deficit is 189 percent higher than the one that Obama inherited when Obama promised the American people it would be 50 percent lower.

    Truth #3: Bush added $4.8 trillion to the national debt over eight years in office (it was $5.768 trillion the day Bush II assumed office). Obama has added $6 trillion in just his first four years.

    Fact (“logic”): “The National Debt stood at $10.626 trillion the day Mr. Obama was inaugurated.”

    Fact (“logic”): The national debt is currently at $15.913 trillion and soaring faster than the eye can follow.

    Fact (“logic”): That’s an increase of $5.287 trillion under Obama’s watch. Which aint anywhere near over yet even if he isn’t re-elected. This time last year the national debt was $14.3 trillion (July 28, 2011). At Obama’s rate of debt spiralling, the national debt will be $941 billion higher than it is right now by January 20, 2013. Which means it will be $16.9 trillion by the time he’s gone even if he gets his ass kicked out of office the way he so richly deserves given his own lies and rhetoric.

    I said $6 trillion in four years. And yes, Obama will have increased the debt by MORE THAN $6 trillion in just four years: from $10.6 to $16.9 trillion. And it might be even worse than that because this fool is clearly completely out of control.

    That’s what “truth” and “logic” in the minds of non-stupid people results in, Annette.

    It always offends me that self-righteous, hoity-toity sanctimonious slimes come to my blog and condemn me for not being “independent” when in point of fact they are far-leftist extremist. If you are NOT a far-left extremist, Annette, my condemnation for you is even worse: because you are a pathologically stupid person who just sits there and stupidly takes in ever form of propaganda without ever once bothering to think or consider the “truth” and “logic” that you just got through harping me about for yourself.

    Your “It’s Bush’s fault is a demon-possessed lie.”

    Don’t come to my blog and try to pass off lies and stupid thinking as “truth” and “logic.” Because I don’t tolerate liars and stupid people.

  410. Truthbetold Says:

    It is unimportant as to who spent more. It was how much damage was done with the spending that’s important. Republicans have been creating and executing policy(Reaganomics 101) that has created an America that cannot survive on the original blueprint that was forged by our for-fathers. The wealthy will barricade themselves in their gated fortresses as the dwindling middle class and starving poor break down the gates and set the American Aristocracy in flames. You dwell on the numbers but forget who was spending in the past and for what reasons.

  411. Michael Eden Says:

    Liesbetold,

    You are a poster boy for why I hate trying to have any kind of discussion with a liberal.

    It wasn’t “unimportant” when Barack Obama said this:

    “The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents – #43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.” — Barack Obama, 3 July 2008

    It wasn’t “unimportant” when Obama promised this:

    “Today I’m pledging to cut the deficit we inherited by half by the end of my first term in office,” Obama said. “Now, this will not be easy. It will require us to make difficult decisions and face challenges we’ve long neglected. But I refuse to leave our children with a debt that they cannot repay, and that means taking responsibility right now, in this administration, for getting our spending under control.”

    But now, when the fact that your messiah is a documented liar, hypocrite and fraud, it’s “unimportant.”

    You damn liberals have no standards, no integrity, you stand for nothing besides whatever the hell is convenient for you at any given moment. You live by constantly shifting rhetoric and you make up your own facts as you go along.

    I wrote a new article about spending to further document that Obama is spending THREE DAMN TIMES MORE THAN THE BUSH THAT YOU HYPOCRITES DEMONIZED FOR SPENDING.

    But of course you don’t have enough honesty, decency or integrity to own up to what you said before when you were demonizing Bush. Because that would take some shred of human virtue.

    Ronald Reagan is THE greatest American president according to the largest and best-known Gallup polling – and I mean the “greatest” by five points over LINCOLN. So I’m not talking to an American; I’m talking to a fool.

    Ronald Reagan saved America. Ronald Reagan turned America around. Ronald Reagan brought our labor participation rate – which is by far and away the best measure of how many Americans are WORKING – to the highest increase of any president in history.

    I know there are many liberal dumbasses, so I’ll explain the obvious. You take that percentage increase between 63.5% and the 66.8% that Reagan brought it up to and you multiply that difference by the population and that’s how many millions of jobs Reagan created. Now do it again to Obama’s plunge and mulitply that to get how many millions of jobs that fool destroyed.

    Barack Obama has taken that labor participation rate and vaporized all the gains that Reagan made possible. It’s now the lowest in over thirty years since Reagan took it from the Carter toilet and brought America back.

    And you talk about the founding fathers when you people hate them. When we had the founding fathers, AMERICA HAD NO FEDERAL INCOME TAX. Which party does that sound more like to you???

  412. Charles Says:

    Dumbass, why dont you consider the MASSIVE drop in revenues due to the economic cliff the US fell off due to Bush’s policys. The downslide started mid 2007, sorry new president takes the helm in jan. 2009! Ship was sinking, obama just trying to bail out the water with resistance from all Republicans ! I hope gets on so we can blame everything on him…

  413. Michael Eden Says:

    Charles Dumbass,

    Five things:

    1) When George Bush took office, we had suffered the DotCom bubble collapse and Bush inherited a terrible recession (a couple of facts: America lost $7.1 trillion in wealth and the Nasdaq valuation lost 78% of its value). On top of that, America suffered the 9/11 attack because Bill Clinton had annihilated the military and intelligence budgets and capabilities in order to brag he “balanced the budget.” The 9/11 attack created an even DEEPER recession because the American people were afraid to travel to vacation or do business for a long time afterward. Bush started out in a hell hole. But did you defend Bush, Charles? No, because you’re a demon-possessed cockroach hypocrite and you will only see the world as a leftwing ideologue. It’s like the gas price spike: when Bush was president, the rise in prices were all Bush’s fault because Bush was president:

    But now Obama’s the president and the fact that gas prices have averaged FAR more during Obama’s presidency (gas prices have averaged $3.25 under Obama versus only $2.33 under Bush) isn’t Obama’s fault at all. The same thing is true of our spending and debt and the same damn thing is true of liberal hoity-toity issues like Gitmo. At some point every liberal skull will explode from trying to contain all the contradictions.

    I wrote an article right after the election that pretty much sums up my views: “Do Unto Obama As Liberals Did Unto Bush.” It comes down to this: by your own measure shall ye be measured. You don’t get to attack Bush and Republicans for eight years by going after Bush like rabid pit bulls attacking bloody meat and then get sanctimonious with us. Dumbass. Especially when by any measure: GDP growth, jobs, household wealth, deficits, spending, debt, consumer confidence, or any other measure, the economy did FAR better during the eight years of Bush than it EVER has under Obama.

    As we speak, only 14% of Americans think their children will be better off than they were, versus 65% who think their children will be worse off. That is the lowest it has EVER been. Why is it Bush’s fault that in the fourth year of Obama Americans overwhelmingly believe the nation is heading in the wrong direction under Obama’s policies??? Even if Bush did everything terrible; shouldn’t Obama have been able to improve from terrible??? But he hasn’t; he’s made “terrible” MORE terrible.

    2) Do you know what sane people do (my bad – of COURSE you don’t know what sane people do!) if they have less revenue? THEY SPEND LESS, YOU DUMBASS. But somehow your messiah never got the sanity memo so instead of spending less he imposed spending after spending measure and imposed levels of bureaucrats and regulators that this nation has never seen. You people are like the millionaire’s son who pisses away his inheritance and then says, “Well, it’s not like that means I’ve got to spend less or anything; I’m ENTITLED to spend more. I think I’ll go buy a Ferrari and crash it after a drunken party And then I’ll celebrate ‘my recovery’ by buying another Ferrari.”

    Even if everything you said was true – and it’s not – we should be spending LESS. But what is your messiah doing? He’s spending three times more and blaming Bush. That is morally and rationally insane.

    Liberals have a GSA-view of the universe. But as Margaret Thatcher once famously said, “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples’ money.”

    3) Then there’s the fact that Democrats were nearly TOTALLY to blame for imposing all of the idiotic conditions that led to your “Massive drop in revenues.” “Bush’s policies?” Bush tried SEVENTEEN TIMES to reform and regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before it collapsed, you abject dumbass. Bush began trying back in 2003, and even the New York Slimes records that conservative economists were predicting back in 1999 that these stupid and immoral Democrat policies would explode the economy:

    New York Times, Sep 30, 1999: “Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits. […]

    In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980′s.

    From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,” said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ”If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.”

    Barney Frank stated:

    These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

    Just before the bankruptcy and collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2008, Barney Frank said THIS:

    REP. BARNEY FRANK, D-MASS.: I think this is a case where Fannie and Freddie are fundamentally sound, that they are not in danger of going under. They’re not the best investments these days from the long-term standpoint going back. I think they are in good shape going forward.

    Dumbass, IT IS A DOCUMENTED FACT OF HISTORY THAT FANNIE MAE AND FREDDIE MAC COLLAPSED ON SEPTEMBER 7, 2008 BEFORE ANY OTHER PRIVATE SECTOR PLAYER. Merill Lynch and Lehmen Brothers went down AFTER the GSEs and BECAUSE they suddenly found themselves holding billions of dollars in worthless Fannie and Freddie mortgage backed securities. That was because Fannie and Freddie had bundled thousands mortgages together into their securities such that there was no way to separate the toxic debt from the good debt. The entire system collapsed because the entire mortgage financial system suddenly became “toxic” due to that inability of the market to distinguish good debt and risk from toxic debt and risk. ONLY Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to bundle those mortgage backed securities and then sell them to the private sector. THAT was what caused the housing mortgage collapse that led to our 2008 economic implosion. At the time of their collapse, the GSEs controlled 70% of all new home purchases. It was that supermassive black hole of Democrat stupidity and depravity that imploded America in 2008.

    I’ve preserved all of that and more here.

    If the above isn’t bad enough, Obama has decided after demagoguing the crisis his party started in 2008 that 2008 never really even happened: he’s going right back to the policies that blew up the housing mortgage market in the first place.

    If that isn’t enough, consider that between Democrat-imposed Social Security boondoggle and the Medicare and Medicaid boondoggles, the REAL national debt is well over $211 TRILLION. Our real yearly debt under Obama is nearly $6 trillion in the red every single year until America implodes and dies when our credit rating goes down again and our interest rates skyrocket. And when you add to that the unfunded pension liabilities of liberal states like California and Illinois, we are well and truly screwed with Democrats being virtually entirely responsible for every penny of our unpayable and unsustainable debt that will necessarily bankrupt and kill America. And all of this government takeover has been imposed in the name of helping the poor when history proves it has done the exact opposite.

    And you’re going to blame Bush, you lunatic?

    So you can take your “fell off due to Bush’s policies” and stuff them right up your idiot pie hole. Bush’s policies gave us an average 5.26% unemployment rate. When your messiah lives up to his lies come back and talk to me.

    4) But let’s consider that in conservative states like Texas and Nebraska and North Dakota, the economies are surging and people from liberal states are moving to red states in DROVES to get jobs they won’t ever be able to get from retards like Democrats. These red states and several other red states have balanced their budgets. So why can’t Obama balance his damn budget instead of giving us four consecutive years of over a trillion in deficit for the first time in the entire history of the entire human race???

    5) Obama told the American people that his policies would result in 5.6% unemployment by now and there would therefore be millions of Americans paying lots and lots of taxes. Obama promised us his policies would generate 4.3 percent GDP growth. Where was that promised economic recovery that would have obliterated the recession, you dumbass? You wouldn’t need to be making your dumbass excuses now if your messiah hadn’t lied to the American people. Now Obama has to rely on pure crap to sell his lies, just like you. But instead your antichrist messiah has given us the worst labor participation rate since Jimmy Carter broke America and Ronald Reagan had to put it back together again. And if you compare Obama’s policies to Reagan’s policies you can understand why Reagan GREW the economy after everything went to hell and Obama is just going from bad to worse. So on your very “dumbass” view YOUR messiah is a “dumbass.” Either that, or it’s now your view that Obama LIED when he said he had a solution and he LIED when he projected that his policies would turn the economy around. I guess what you’re saying is that it’s really “Bush’s fault” that Obama is a lying fool.

  414. Lynn Says:

    Sorry to change the tone a bit, but this is the best sight I have looked at on the comparison of the Bush and Obama budget. I have seen a couple of sights that claim the opposite, that Obama spent less than Bush, but I can’t figure out how they came up with that. You likely have seen the articles.

  415. Michael Eden Says:

    Lynn,

    Oh, yeah, I’ve seen them. All it takes to make that claim (that Obama spent less than Bush) is 1) pathological dishonesty; 2) hatred for reality; and 3) a determination to live in a bubble world of lies.

    The facts are simply overwhelming: the debt was $10 trillion when Obama took office; now it is $16 trillion.

    Obama demonized George Bush for spending $4 trillion over eight years, and now Obama has spent $6 trillion in just four years.

    Math is the worst nightmare for liberals.

  416. Play2k Says:

    The axis of evil.. Obama/Pelosi/Reid and their band of Alinsky radicals.. WHEN WILL THE COMMERCIAL COME OUT? It is “George Bush” payback time. Fighting fire with fire.

  417. Michael Eden Says:

    Play2k,

    What you are saying is completely true.

    Look at the left just come hysterical unglued at this guy Todd Akin. I mean, this man is worse than Hitler every dared to be, the way they decry him.

    And in contrast the Republican Party is either too polite or too afraid of being politically incorrect to point out that the Democrat Party is the party of genuine evil that has now murdered over 54 million innocent human beings – nine times the total of Adolf Hitler himself. They can’t even say that Barack Obama’s political ideology is so similar to Marxism that it is beyond unreal.

    Karl Marx said as the central statement of his economic Marxism, “”From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Just how the hell is Obama any different???

  418. Jen Says:

    PLEASE LOOK AT THE FACTS!
    This is from MarketWatch ” Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s.”
    That’s an annualized increase of just 0.4%.

  419. Michael Eden Says:

    Jen,

    PLEASE LOOK AT THE FACTS!

    What you are parroting from your idiot liberal talking points is complete bullcrap.

    Your Marketwatch article essentially depends on the following theory: that Barack Obama was NOT the president in 2009 and it was George Bush wearing an Obama mask who: 1) passed the $862 billion stimulus; 2) passed a giant $410 billion omnibus bill a few months later; 3) spent $350 billion in TARP money that Bush left to Obama but actually spent himself wearing his Obama mask; 4) bailed out GM to the tune of another $28 billion wearing his Obama mask and gave Obama the credit; etc. To wit: your idiotic article blames Bush for $1.65 TRILLION in spending that suddenly became “Bush’s fault” even though Obama spent the damn money. Oh, and it also projected that the Iraq War – which Bush had already won and already negotiated the pullout from – would have gone on forever had Obama not “saved” that money that would have been spent forever.

    Oh, and that damned ObamaCare. We should have known that that evil Bush actually passed that. It was just too damn vile and evil to have been Democrats, right? Anyway, add ANOTHER $2.6 trillion (THREE TIMES MORE than Obama promised when he rammed it through over the objections of the American people):

    ObamaCare cost three times more than promised

    So, by blaming it all on Bush, you cockroaches get an utterly dishonest “baseline.” And then from all this money that Obama spent but demonically blames on Bush, Obama spent less the next couple of years.

    Fortunately, I’ve dealt with your idiot talking point before, so all I’ve got to do is a quick copy and paste for the facts above:

    How about a little “truth” and “logic” for you.

    Truth 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kuTG19Cu_Q

    “The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents – #43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.” — Barack Obama, 3 July 2008

    Now, you don’t mind lies. You don’t mind personal attacks. You don’t mind slander. As long as it comes from the left. I believe you’ve already made that clear. But truth #1 is that Barack Obama demonized George Bush and promised the American people that if we elected him:

    Truth #2: Obama promised that he would cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term:

    “Today I’m pledging to cut the deficit we inherited by half by the end of my first term in office,” Obama said. “Now, this will not be easy. It will require us to make difficult decisions and face challenges we’ve long neglected. But I refuse to leave our children with a debt that they cannot repay, and that means taking responsibility right now, in this administration, for getting our spending under control.”

    Fact (“logic”): Federal deficit for 2008 that Obama inherited: $459 billion. Deficits since Obama took office: 2009: $1.413 trillion; 2010: $1.293 trillion; 2011: $1.300 trillion; 2012: $1.327. George Bush didn’t pass the stupid stimulus that will cost the American people $3.27 TRILLION and which didn’t do anything but create a political slush fund for Obama to use for his political cronies.

    Fact (“logic”): Let’s consider that Obama rammed his stimulus through ($862 billion) and put it on Bush’s fiscal year budget tab even though Bush didn’t pass it and Republicans most certainly didn’t vote for it. Obama rammed a giant Omnibus bill through his Democrat Congress for another $410 billion that very few Republicans voted for. That’s also on the 2009 budget deficit. Obama of course blamed Bush for the entire $700 billion for TARP even though Obama voted for it and even though Bush gave Obama fully half of it ($350 billion) to spend in his own administration. Obama rammed through the federal takeover of GM and the $24 billion that went into that bailout. Even as Obama praises himself for it and exploits it to attack Republicans, in actual fact he attributes every single penny that paid for that bailout to Bush’s presidency even while he lies like a snake in misrepresenting its costs and benefits. And on top of that Obama calculated that the Iraq War would go on forever unless Obama ended it such that ending the war was “his savings” even though in fact Bush had negotiated the Iraq withdrawal before leaving office. Obama in citing the end of the Iraq War as “his savings” implicitly claims that he is saving $100 billion a year even though that’s an outright lie because Bush had already won the war and negotiated the withdrawal of forces. Obama deceitfully and dishonestly saddled all of that debt and bogus assumption onto Bush in order to fabricate a huge “Bush deficit” that Obama actually compiled and then conveniently made that “Bush deficit” his baseline for “Bush’s deficit”. Rather than the actual Bush record over eight years.

    Obama does that because he can’t lie and fabricate Bush’s actual real deficits. As an example, the last budget deficit that was passed by George Bush under Republican leadership was for only $161 billion for Fiscal Year 2007. Obama doesn’t want you to think about that kind of leadership; he wants you to think about “Bush’s debt” with all of Obama’s very own vile spending packed onto it after HE took office in 2009. That just continues the trend of a president who has proven pathologically incapable of assuming responsibility for anything: it doesn’t matter if Obama did it, it’s “Bush’s fault.”

    Fact (“logic”): “Today I’m pledging to cut the deficit we inherited by half by the end of my first term in office.” Today the deficit is 189 percent higher than the one that Obama inherited when Obama promised the American people it would be 50 percent lower.

    Truth #3: Bush added $4.8 trillion to the national debt over eight years in office (it was $5.768 trillion the day Bush II assumed office). Obama has added $6 trillion in just his first four years.

    Fact (“logic”): “The National Debt stood at $10.626 trillion the day Mr. Obama was inaugurated.”

    Fact (“logic”): The national debt is currently at $15.999 trillion and soaring faster than the eye can follow.

    Fact (“logic”): That’s an increase of $5.287 trillion under Obama’s watch. Which aint anywhere near over yet even if he isn’t re-elected. This time last year the national debt was $14.3 trillion (July 28, 2011). At Obama’s rate of debt spiralling, the national debt will be $941 billion higher than it is right now by January 20, 2013. Which means it will be $16.9 trillion by the time he’s gone even if he gets his ass kicked out of office the way he so richly deserves given his own lies and rhetoric.

    I said $6 trillion in four years. And yes, Obama will have increased the debt by MORE THAN $6 trillion in just four years: from $10.6 to $16.9 trillion. And it might be even worse than that because this fool is clearly completely out of control.

    Jen, what makes people like you truly evil is your complete willingness to believe even the most STUPID and ridiculous lies just because somebody tells you to and you are pathologically incapable of thinking for yourself. People who believe blatant lies the way YOU believe blatant lies are morally capable of anything because your soul SWIMS in lies.

    Again: all anybody has to do is look at the national debt the day Obama took office and the national debt today to know that Jen is a craven liar who is repeating the most craven lies.

  420. daddy love Says:

    Counting deficits from the day “President Obama took office” is both misleading and incorrect, as is counting Bush deficits from the day HE took office. The federal fiscal year runs from October 31 to September 30, and thus between January 20 and October 1 the federal government was running on the appropriations for fiscal year 2009 (FY2009), for which the budget proposal was written in the Bush White House and all appropriations were passed in 2008. he CBO projected on January 7, 2009, that, including spending authorized under the Bush administration for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and government takeovers of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the deficit would total $1.2 trillion. According to the CBO, the actual FY 2009 deficit was $1.4 trillion. So Obama and his Congressionally-passed stimulus was the only addition to the FY2009 deficit, to the tune of $200 billion, some of which was reduced federal revenue form the hundreds of thousands of job losses which were still at around 600,00 per month as of 1/2009.

    Similarly, Bush had little or nothing to do with the low deficits of FY2001, which came from Clinton’s budget.

    So to get Bush’s “real” number, subtract the $128 billion surplus from Clinton’s FY2001 and add on the $1.2 trillion deficit that was his in FY2009. Then take Obama’s number from your estimate and subtract Bush’s $1.2 trillion contribution, and you have some real numbers.

  421. Michael Eden Says:

    daddy love,

    That is such bullcrap it is beyond unreal.

    It is your assertion that it was President Damn Bush who passed the $862 billion stimulus on February 17, 2009 is it?

    It is your assertion that it was President Damn Bush who did that $79 billion bailout for Government Motors and their union Democrats in 2009?

    It is your assertion that it was President Damn Bush who signed that $410 billion Omnibus bill in March of 2009?

    It is your assertion that it was President Damn Bush who left $350 billion in TARP money to President Damn Bush who spent it in early 2009???

    It is your assertion that it was President Damn Bush who rammed that damned $2.6 trillion ObamaCare – Ooh, I’m sorry, GorgieCare bill – down our collectivist throats?

    It’s really amazing to me what a lousy bunch of Marxists you liars truly ARE. Obama passes all these things, takes credit for them, but when it’s time to be financially responsible for his own damn bills it’s more “Bush did it! Put all the garbage I did and took credit for on Bush’s bill!!!”

    George Bush actually HAD a budget for FY-2009. It was of course decried by you cockroach Democrats for its CUTS. It had a deficit of $400 billion, you lying weasel. And It didn’t have any of the above crap that you seem to think Bush was responsible for.

    Get the hell out of here, you turd.

  422. Anonymous Says:

    What he (Michael) said! Michael, why can’t people undersand these cold hard facts? I just got in to a discussion with a (very small business) owner, while other customers were walking in and around, who went on to spew that Bush should have been killed, and all of his staff should be in prison today, blah blah blah. His wife, behind the cash register piped in and spoke about the evil bankers, and evil oil companies and blah blah blah. Yes, that’s a smart move to make, argue with one customer loudly, while others’ are walking around in your store. When their business fails, as it is very new, who will they blame? Bush! It was astounding. I did not bring politics up, there was a used TV on and the ownere commented to me “you could watch the democratic convention”. I just cannot wrap my head around this type of thing that keeps happening to people. The owner said that obama could not get anything done to balance the budget “because no one would work with him”. When I pressed him, the owner finally said “when he had the majority the first year, even some democrats would not work with him”. That’s when I said ” I rest my case, we need a leader who can get people to work with him/her”, And I walked out. Sadly, I kinda hope that this business fails, since they have no common sense or clue that you don’t do that type of thing in front of other customers. They might as well hang a sign – “only obama supporters welcome”. Ha!

  423. Michael Eden Says:

    I see Democrats like the ones you met all the time on this blog.

    I am constantly reminded of “1984” and “Two Minutes Hate” and “Emmanuel Goldstein.” And of course Bush=Goldstein. It doesn’t matter how wildly Obama has failed; he will always be able to demagogue the true psychotic liberal no matter how terribly society is breaking down just as “Big Brother” could by crushing the spirit of the people and giving them another target to hate. I think of North Korea: you’ve got a country that is literally dark at night because they have no functioning industry whatsoever due to their failed socialism. The people literally have a requirement to scrape so much of their own feces out of the ground for the government to use for fuel. But they LOVE their Dear Leader just like Democrats love theirs.

    This “Republicans are obstructionists” argument might hold an ounce of water if Democrats had the basic integrity to admit that “Democrats were obstructionists” when Bush was president. Obama wants to whine about having had TWO FULL YEARS OF LOCKSTEP MAJORITY IN BOTH BRANCHES OF CONGRESS and then having the Senate in his pocket?

    What about Bush? The poor sucker tried SEVENTEEN TIMES to reform Fannie and Freddie – the entities that caused the collapse of the financial industry – to no avail because of complete Democrat obstructionism. And guess which party was running BOTH THE HOUSE AND THE SENATE before, during and after the 2008 meltdown?

    It is generally impossible for insects to carry rabies. But to be a Democrat today is to be a rabid cockroach, pure and simple.

    I’d help that business fail by never giving it any more business myself.

  424. Anonymous Says:

    I will never walk into that store again. It’s so dumb because almost no business’s make it in such a small town, and you would think that they would realize that. I suppose not, based on what you say (and I believe it because I keep hearing it now days). Seriously, he sounded like one who would worship obama and if need be, scrape his feces out of the ground for him. Thanks again for your site, I still look forward to your posts and conversations with others’.

  425. Michael Eden Says:

    Seriously, he sounded like one who would worship obama and if need be, scrape his feces out of the ground for him.

    It sounds like he would either treasure it always by placing it on his mantle or just plain eat it.

    For the record, I wouldn’t want to touch any of Bush’s do-doos. I wouldn’t even have wanted to touch any of Reagan’s do-doos.

    Liberals have increasingly become people who are driven almost entirely by emotion and leader-worship and irrational anger at their opposition.

  426. Anonymous Says:

    I do not know where you are getting your information from but you are so wrong. George W. Bush spent the most and him and his party are the one’s that put us where we are now. You are just a Obama hater.

  427. Michael Eden Says:

    Anonymous,

    You are just an Obama worshiping nutjob.

    I don’t waste my time with fools who look at a thousand facts and have absolutely none of their own and say, “You must be wrong because Obama is my Jesus.”

    Get lost, you idiot loser.

  428. Sam Welt Says:

    Mr. Eden.
    How far are you going to go to prove that you have no answers and can only complain about someone that has tried to be bipartisan while people that are very partisan, dare I say, like you, criticize him without even trying to help out today, when we all need it most. Did you ever really give him a chance?
    You can say that you will vote to fix the problem but you are partially responsible every day, like we all are every day out of the year. How will you help us, today?
    You can say that democrats are the problem but they are at least not initially and outrightly venomous on a forum that you made public although that seems to change after constant attacks by you.
    America has hope every day of every year and when people work together maybe the world will be a better place. You can take this however you choose, but I’m glad that your forum is public and I hope it can create change through bringing people together not dividing them more and I hope that, that is what you actually want.

  429. Michael Eden Says:

    Sam Welt,

    Either you were just born yesterday or you are a fool.

    Giving you the benefit of the doubt, let me presume you JUST hatched and therefore are simply ignorant about what the “bipartisan atmosphere” was like when Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi were “helping” George Bush.

    On Iraq:

    Between the Lines: A Big Problem for Democrats
    by Joseph Farah

    Posted: 08/08/2007

    A ranking Democrat has finally admitted what we all should have realized: The worst nightmare for the party of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid would be victory for the United States in Iraq.

    In an interview with the Washington Post, Democratic Whip James Clyburn was asked what his party would do if Gen. David Petraeus reports in September that the surge strategy is working very, very well.

    “Well, that would be a real big problem for us, no question about that,” said Clyburn.

    Your cockroach Democrats were SO partisan and SO vile that EVEN OUR TROOPS WINNING A WAR WAS SOMETHING THAT THEY OPPOSSED.

    On Bush’s attempts to undergo major necessary reforms:

    The Left now acts as if this never happened. For instance, in a recent television appearance, liberal commentator Bill Press argued that–rather than noisy disagreement–”Americans want discussion” on health-care reform. Who could disagree with that sentiment–except, perhaps, the Obama administration, which pushed Congress to rush through legislation by early August? This timeline was clearly aimed at preempting discussion and presenting the public with a “done deal” on health reform. As one protester put it, the president spent more time choosing a dog than he did discussing health-care reform.

    Likewise, Mr. Press complained that opponents hadn’t put their own reform plans on the table. “The people who are there to protest–what are they for? Are they for the status quo? The Republicans haven’t put any other plan on the table.” But did congressional Democrats offer their own alternative to President Bush’s 2005 Social Security plan? When a fellow Democrat asked Rep. Nancy Pelosi when their party would offer its own Social Security plan, her answer was “Never. Is that soon enough for you?” Democrats would not even negotiate until personal retirement accounts were taken off the table. Why should Republicans act differently today, regarding the “public option”?

    On the REAL reason our economy collapsed in 2008:

    Michael Barone
    Democrats Were Wrong on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
    October 6, 2008

    Seventeen. That’s how many times, according to this White House statement (hat tip Gateway Pundit), that the Bush administration has called for tighter regulation of the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Congress has cooperated only once

    So, Mr. Just Hatched Yesterday who is simply too ignorant to understand that what goes around comes around, YOU CAN BITE ME.

    But we know that you weren’t born yesterday, and what you really are is a fool and a hypocrite. You spent eight years hating Bush and backstabbing and undermining every single thing the man tried to do. And then you rabid little vile cockroaches actually have the elephant balls to call the Republicans “obstructionists” when you had 2 full years of total domination of the Congress under Obama and even now control the Senate. Whereas poor Bush had both barrels of total Democrat obstructionism and didn’t whine a hundredth as much as you despicable slime.

    So there’s that.

    There’s also something called “integrity.” Our political system isn’t based on what fascists like YOU think it ought to be where we follow our Führer. Especially when that Führer is as wildly failed as yours is.

    Obama got EVERYTHING HE WANTED HIS FIRST TWO YEARS IN OFFICE. BECAUSE NANCY PELOSI OWNED THE HOUSE OF REPS AND HARRY REID OWNED A FILIBUSTER PROOF SENATE.

    And you people failed. Your ideas are godawful.

    Which is why the American people rejected you in a historic asskicking in 2010.

    Now the Republican Party is trying to govern according to what THEY promised the American people, and fascist fools like you decry them and say that the 2010 election is irrelevant because only the 2008 election of your messiah should matter.

    For the record, the Republican Party is the ONLY party that has passed a damn budget in 1,226 days. Your party is an abject disgrace.

    The Democrat Party and the Republican Party have utterly different visions of the future. One party wants increasing levels of Marxism and the other wants increasing levels of free market enterprise. On YOUR view, bipartisanship means that the Republican Party does whatever your messiah and Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi want. On MY view, that is bullpoop.

    We’re going to have us another election that will decide which vision this nation goes in. Sorry, but that’s how our system works.

    If we win, we get to say what your messiah said to the Republicans when they came to him hat in hand and ready to negotiate: “elections have consequences” and “I won.”

    The WaPo story is just one more example of just how PATHETICALLY HYPOCRITICAL you are to get in my face given what your messiah did:

    The roots of Obama’s demise
    By Marc A. Thiessen
    Monday, October 25, 2010

    The decline of the Obama presidency can be traced to a meeting at the White House just three days after the inauguration, when the new president gathered congressional leaders of both parties to discuss his proposed economic stimulus. House Republican Whip Eric Cantor gave President Obama a list of modest proposals for the bill. Obama said he would consider the GOP ideas, but told the assembled Republicans that “elections have consequences” and “I won.” Backed by the largest congressional majorities in decades, the president was not terribly interested in giving ground to his vanquished adversaries.

    So I submit that if we win in November, we should govern by Obama’s example and pretty much tell the other party to go spit and then ram one thing after another down their throats.

    If I’m wrong about you, and you truly want bipartisan cooperation, then you will show that in November by VOTING THE MOST PARTISAN AND DIVISIVE PRESIDENT IN US HISTORY OUT OF OFFICE.

  430. Mandy Says:

    You are insane. I can’t even bother to read your posts, because they are full of so much rage & anger. It still perplexes me how you even argue tooth and nail against the people who agree with you.

    *awaits 4000 word essay about how I am a democrat, anti-Christ, Obama kills the whales and is responsible for EU’s financial problems*

  431. Michael Eden Says:

    *awaits 4000 word essay about how I am a democrat, anti-Christ, Obama kills the whales and is responsible for EU’s financial problems*

    Mandy,

    Nope. I’ll simply point out that 1) you are a vile hypocrite who starts out by asserting “you are insane” and then immediately proceeds to demonize me for attacking people. You call me out for my rage and anger while showing the fangs of your OWN rage and anger. You slandering hypocrite! And 2) you point out that you don’t even read my blog and yet that doesn’t stop you from coming to incredibly sweeping conclusions and further that 3) you clearly don’t give one flipping damn about facts or you would have at least provided JUST ONE to try to document what you are asserting corresponds to some reality. There’s 4) that I write a serious article making a factual point and all YOU are capable of is a personal attack against me. And I’ll throw in a 5) that you are clearly way too full of yourself in thinking you’re somehow worth 4,000 words from ANYBODY, let alone me. When I could have just written ONE word about you – “HYPOCRITE” – and completely captured your entire essence.

    Get lost, loser. That way I’ll never have to waste a single word on you ever again.

    P.S. If I had just one nickel for every loser liberal who comes to my blog to dump hate on me while literally simultaneously self-righteously demonizing me for being a hater, I’d be richer than Bill Gates.

  432. impeachobama2012 Says:

    We need to remove Obama from Office. He is will drive this nation in to the ground with debt and/or allow a world war to occur because of his cowardice and avoidance. We have become a weak country under his lack of leadership and I have never been more frightened for our future. A quote by my (very wise) uncle: “It seems to me that things have changed immensly since JFK. When he was president I actually beleive the media did a pretty fair job of reporting. Now most of the media is democrat and pushes that agenda. The democrat party has gone so much farther left since JFK that it is hard to beleive it is the same party. There never used to be a big difference in being a democrat or republican. JFK famous quote “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country” is the good example. You wouldn’t catch a democrat saying something like that now! The democrats have now gone so far left that they want the government to do everything for them to a point of not even being rational in what they want their country to do for them. It boils down to the working people taking care of a lot of people that aren’t going to work. I feel sorry for you younger people as it is going to be a heavy burden if Obama is re-elected.”

  433. Michael Eden Says:

    impeachobama2012,

    If Obama is reelected, everything he did – gutting the military, spending the country into bankruptcy, dividing the country by race, by gender, by sexuality, by age and obviously by class, etc. will have been validated. And America’s collapse will be guaranteed and will happen within the next ten years.

    As for JFK, it is amazing how the media have fabricated a “liberal” out of this man who was a hawkish cold warrior and a tax cutter. Here are a few lines from JFK on the latter I recorded on my article on tax cutting:

    “It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now … Cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.”

    – John F. Kennedy, Nov. 20, 1962, president’s news conference

    ——————————————————————————–

    “Lower rates of taxation will stimulate economic activity and so raise the levels of personal and corporate income as to yield within a few years an increased – not a reduced – flow of revenues to the federal government.”

    – John F. Kennedy, Jan. 17, 1963, annual budget message to the Congress, fiscal year 1964

    “In today’s economy, fiscal prudence and responsibility call for tax reduction even if it temporarily enlarges the federal deficit – why reducing taxes is the best way open to us to increase revenues.”

    – John F. Kennedy, Jan. 21, 1963, annual message to the Congress: “The Economic Report Of The President”

    ——————————————————————————–

    “It is no contradiction – the most important single thing we can do to stimulate investment in today’s economy is to raise consumption by major reduction of individual income tax rates.”

    – John F. Kennedy, Jan. 21, 1963, annual message to the Congress: “The Economic Report Of The President”

    ——————————————————————————–

    “Our tax system still siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power and reduces the incentive for risk, investment and effort – thereby aborting our recoveries and stifling our national growth rate.”

    – John F. Kennedy, Jan. 24, 1963, message to Congress on tax reduction and reform, House Doc. 43, 88th Congress, 1st Session.

    ——————————————————————————–

    “A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced federal budget. Every taxpayer and his family will have more money left over after taxes for a new car, a new home, new conveniences, education and investment. Every businessman can keep a higher percentage of his profits in his cash register or put it to work expanding or improving his business, and as the national income grows, the federal government will ultimately end up with more revenues.”

    – John F. Kennedy, Sept. 18, 1963, radio and television address to the nation on tax-reduction bill

  434. Mark Remington Says:

    Bottom line is this: Which of these candidates has a better plan to get us out of this mess? We can go back and forth on who’s to blame, and no one will ever convince anyone. That said, it is kinda hard to argue with a chart, or a graph that clearly shows that Obama has spent like a drunken sailor on shore leave, compared to every other administration prior, including the Bushs. Look, George B. spent a hell of a lot of money. But Obama has spent a hell of a lot more! This is indisputable. This is documented fact. We can say ‘Oh it’s becasue Obama inherited Bush’s problems’, but that really isn’t a fair arguement. First of all, every president has ‘inherited the problems’ of his predecessor. So right off the bat, it’s a bogus arguement! Secondly, I recall very well Obama taking office and promising this and that, and I for one, have not seen a single one of his promises come to pass, other than Obamacare. I can without any doubt say that I have less spending money now than I did 4 years ago, and I have to chalk that up to inflation, which is a direct result of Obama policy. So, for me, I KNOW Obama’s plan doesn’t work for me, because I can no longer afford things that I was able to just 4 years ago. I can’t speak for the rest of the nation, the rich, the poor, whoever, I can’t speak for y’all, but for ME, Obama’s plan has basically destroyed all my savings, I can no longer put into my 401k (so I can’t plan for my future, which would be right in line with Obama, fuck tomorrow, spend everything NOW), I can’t afford to even put gas in my car to get to work, I have to ride a bike to work now. So, on a very personal level, yeah, Obama’s plan has really stuck it to me, and I don’t trust a word out of his mouth now. Beleive me, I really wanted Obama to succeed, truly. I bought into the ‘time for a change’ platform of Obama. I was an Obama supporter, without a doubt. Then we’ve had 4 years of Obamanomics, and look at the results! Deficit higher than ever, we don’t even TRY to balance the budget anymore, and I can’t afford to eat anything but pasta and Ragu! I’m serious! Ok. So, we KNOW Obama lied to us, and we KNOW his plan has not been working, it really and truly has made our nation weaker, and it really and truly has affected average Joe’s like me in a desperately negative way. We KNOW this. What we don’t know is how Romney’s plan would work. People are always saying “it didn’t work under Bush, why would it work now?” Well, two errors are in play here. One, Romney is not Bush. His economics are NOT the same as Bush’s, and anyone who bothers to investigate can see this. So to say Romney won’t work because Bush didn’t is frankly stupid. Just because they happen to belong to the same party does NOT mean they are the same guy with the same policies, surely we can all see this. Secondly, the fact of the matter is, the American economy was actually pretty strong in the Bush years. So even if Romney is a carbon copy of Bush (which he clearly isn’t), it STILL WOULD BE BETTER THAN THE CURRENT POLICY which is not only bankrupting the nation, but it is breaking the citizenry. So, going back to my opening sentance, who has a better plan to help us get back on track? A career politician who has flat out failed 4 years in a row, or a businessman who understands economics and how to make money and how to motivate people, a guy who has proven time and time again to be a winner. This doesn’t really seem that tough a choice really. Oh, and just to get this out of the way, I am not a republican, I’m actually a non-party person. But this guy has got to go, I don’t care what party he is in. I only look at the facts, and determine what they mean to me, personally. I’m not an economist, I don’t claim any scholarship, or position, or anything at all. I just look at the facts, and what the candidates are saying, and make a logical decision based on that. I am in no way influenced by either party. I just look at the facts, nothing more, nothing less. If one starts from a truly neutral position as I have, I am quite sure you would come to the same conclusions I have. Problem is most people have already made up their minds, and closed their minds, and so don’t see facts as facts.

  435. Michael Eden Says:

    People are always saying “it didn’t work under Bush, why would it work now?” Well, two errors are in play here. One, Romney is not Bush. His economics are NOT the same as Bush’s, and anyone who bothers to investigate can see this. So to say Romney won’t work because Bush didn’t is frankly stupid. Just because they happen to belong to the same party does NOT mean they are the same guy with the same policies, surely we can all see this. Secondly, the fact of the matter is, the American economy was actually pretty strong in the Bush years

    Mark Remington,

    I like to hear from people like you who voted for Obama in 2008 but are publicly saying he betrayed you and no way in hell you’d vote for him again now. People like me voted against in 2008 and you can definitely count on us to vote against Obama again now. But Obama got elected against people like me; whereas if enough people like you come out and vote Obama is DONE.

    In a way, you’re worth two votes: you’re a vote that Obama got in 2008 that is now gone for him; plus you’re a vote Republicans didn’t get in 2008 but we now have.

    So I welcome you to the coming battle with all my heart. It’s people like you who can finally truly turn the evil tide that has been flowing against America.

    Some of the best communicators for conservativism come from former liberals, and that is because they used to think like liberals and therefore understand liberals better and know how to reach liberals with the message of why conservatism WORKS.

    I highlighted what you wrote in the middle of what was an excellent comment in order to highlight that there is still a THIRD reason that saying “voting for Romney is voting for Bush.” You hit two really critical ones very well: that they are clearly different people and no Romney is NOT Bush’s clone any more than Obama is Marx’s clone; and that Bush’s policies – which produced things like 5.26% unemployment – was actually REALLY GOOD compared to Obama’s failure. Liberals are talking about Obama having 30 months of job growth like he’s marvelous; but the same liberals demonized Bush even after he had 52 consecutive months of job growth. But let me add to that this one: every single time somebody tries to say that voting for Romney is voting for the policies that got us into this mess, BRING UP RONALD REAGAN. Because what liberals really want to do is equate Republican policies with “Bush=failure” when Republican policies equal “Reagan=greatest president in history.”

    And what would you like better: 10% GDP growth and over a million jobs being created a month, or Obama???

    Your last words remind me of the “Two Minutes Hate” in the Novel 1984. The people were lied to and frothed their hatred for Emmanuel Goldstein (the rival Big Brother fabricated) on cue. History shows again and again just how often human nature has been perverted to do exactly that.

    Today I see so many people – not just kids but adults – who are constantly plugged into their iPods. It never ceases to amaze me. Just how shallow are these people that they are so incapable of just listening to their own inner thought life for a dang second??? So many people have abandoned the ability to THINK for themselves and they’re left to thinking whatever their favorite celebrity or recording artist tells them to think. And I agree with you: there’s no point wasting time on such people.

    I’m glad to hear that you’re with the program. You did a very good job summarizing what the real issues are facing this country.

  436. mama Says:

    …and when president G.W.Bush (junior) took office, the country had no deficit (first time in 40 or 50 years). Two terms later we had 600000 unemployed people every month, and the country was basically bankrupt. Ooo, and we had larger government than ever.

  437. Michael Eden Says:

    mama,

    I’m so glad you aren’t my mama, and I pity any kid who can’t say the same.

    You leave out a little bit about what G.W. Bush (junior) came to office to find:

    Bush came to office with something called the Dotcom collapse that Bill Clinton gave him: that Dotcom bust recession vaporized $7.1 TRILLION in American wealth which was very nearly as bad as the 2008 recession.

    Bush came to office facing a Nasdaq portfolio – a major measure of American economic health – that lost 78% of its value due to Bill Clinton’s recession.

    How did Bill Clinton get a surplus? Why, he gutted the military and the intelligence capability of America so we would be weak and blind to, oh, say the massive 9/11 attack. And as a result of Bill Clinton crawling out of Somalia a man named Osama bin Laden concluded that America was a weak paper tiger that was ripe for attack.

    You don’t mention any of that, you lousy mamma.

    Nor do you mention that if we were basically bankrupt after Bush spent $4 trillion in EIGHT YEARS, how are we not TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY BANKRUPT AFTER OBAMA SPENT $6 TRILLION IN JUST FOUR YEARS????

    Nor do you mention that Obama took that “larger government than ever” and proceeded to make it 25% LARGER than your “larger than ever.”

  438. maudiebell smith Says:

    I want to make a copy of this article

  439. Michael Eden Says:

    maudiebell smith,

    Please do.

    If you want to make a copy of the comments, too, you’ll probably need a whole lot of paper, though.

    :)

  440. Anonymous Says:

    This post is a bunch of lies.. Clinton left a surplus

  441. Michael Eden Says:

    Just can’t get away from stupid people, can I?

    U.S. National Debt

    09/30/1993 – $4,411,488,883,139.38

    09/30/1994 – $4,692,749,910,013.32

    09/29/1995 – $4,973,982,900,709.39

    09/30/1996 – $5,224,810,939,135.73

    09/30/1997 – $5,413,146,011,397.34

    09/30/1998 – $5,526,193,008,897.62

    09/30/1999 – $5,656,270,901,615.43

    09/30/2000 – $5,674,178,209,886.86

    09/30/2001 – $5,807,463,412,200.06

    These are official Treasury Dept taken from the Treasury’s site. The numbers between 1993 and 1999 are here and the numbers from 2000 to 2001 are here.

    I want you to notice, you deluded dumbass, that every single year of the Clinton presidency the national debt went UP. THAT IS A FACT. In the very real world, Bill Clinton never left us with so much as a penny of “surplus.” Every single year of Slick Willie’s presidency, we got more debt and then more debt.

    Bill Clinton assumed office in 1993. Two years later, in 1994, the people were so angry at the fact that “Clinton gold” turned out to be Iron Pyrite that they voted overwhelmingly for Republicans in the greatest historic asskicking of all time. Clinton lost both the House and the Senate to Republicans, and in fact never got either back for his entire presidency.

    Bill Clinton said “the era of big government is over” in January 1996, which put the kibosh on liberal ideas for the rest of the Clinton presidency as Clinton governed as a moderate Republican from that point on.

    In 1997, the Taxpayer Relief Act was passed by the Republican House and the Republican Senate before being signed into law by Bill Clinton. As a result of those REPUBLICAN TAX REFORMS, federal income tax revenues surged just as they ALWAYS surge when the American people are allowed to keep more of their own money and invest that money far better than bureaucratic government EVER has or ever WILL. And as a result, we actually briefly got to a federal budget surplus. Because of Republicans and because “the era of big government was over” and because Democrats had had their asses kicked and ONLY because of those things.

    It’s interesting. Republicans controlled both the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate when we actually got our “balanced budget.” And yet historically somehow the mainstream media gave Bill Clinton and the Democrat Party ALL the credit and the Republican majorities that had actually passed all the legislation that created that balanced budget zero credit. It’s particularly amazing given the fact that Barack Obama controlled the White House, held a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, AND controlled the House of Representatives his first two years in office, but the failure of the Obama economic policy is blamed on the fact that for two of Obama’s first four years Republicans held the House. Basically, Democrats can never be blamed and must be given all the credit; whereas Republicans cannot receive any credit and must be given all the blame.

    The same people who constantly lecture the Republicans about “obstructionism” somehow never recall the years when George Bush was confronted with massive Democrat obstructionism. Obstructionism, was, of course, good and noble when Democrats were blocking virtually every single thing Bush tried to accomplish. It is only evil if Republicans try to block anything their messiah Obama wants to do.

    Now, sadly, 9/11 happened because Bill Clinton left America weak and blind. Why did America get attacked on 9/11? Because Bill Clinton showed so much weakness in 1993 in Somalia that a man we would one day know very well said:

    “Our boys no longer viewed America as a superpower. So, when they left Afghanistan, they went to Somalia and prepared themselves carefully for a long war. They had thought that the Americans were like the Russians, so they trained and prepared. They were stunned when they discovered how low was the morale of the American soldier. America had entered with 30,000 soldiers in addition to thousands of soldiers from different countries in the world. … As I said, our boys were shocked by the low morale of the American soldier and they realized that the American soldier was just a paper tiger. He was unable to endure the strikes that were dealt to his army, so he fled, and America had to stop all its bragging and all that noise it was making in the press…” — Osama bin Laden

    Osama bin Laden began to prepare for a massive attack on America. Oh, yes, he and his fellow terrorists hit America again and again: they hit the World Trade Center for the first time in 1993. In 1996 they hit the Khobar Towers where hundreds of American servicemen were living. In 1998 two embassies in Africa (Kenya and Tanzania) were bombed and destroyed by terrorists. And in 2000, terrorists hit and severely damaged the U.S.S. Cole. And Bill Clinton proved bin Laden’s thesis correct by doing exactly NOTHING.

    Meanwhile, all throughout the Clinton presidency, al Qaeda was preparing to strike us. They brought in all the terrorists who would devastate us with their second attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11 2001 during Bill Clinton’s watch.

    America was both weak and blind due to Bill Clinton’s gutting both the military and our intelligence capability. And of course, being blind and unable to see what was coming would hurt us deeply:

    Author James Risen won the Pulitzer Prize on Tuesday for his much ballyhooed New York Times report last December that revealed President Bush’s previously secret terrorist surveillance program – a revelation he uncovered while researching his book “State of War.”

    In the same book, however, Risen makes an equally explosive claim about President Clinton’s relationship with the CIA – which his editors at the Times have so far declined to cover.

    Upon taking power in 1993, Risen reports, the Clinton administration “began slashing the intelligence budget in search of a peace dividend, and Bill Clinton showed almost no interest in intelligence matters.” The agency cutbacks combined with presidential disinterest took their toll almost immediately.

    “Over a three-or-four-year period in the early-to-mid 1990s,” reports Risen, “virtually an entire generation of CIA officers – the people who had won the Cold War – quit or retired. One CIA veteran compared the agency to an airline that had lost all of is senior pilots . . . “

    After Clinton CIA Director John Deutch cashiered several senior officers over a scandal in Guatamala, the situation got even worse.

    “Morale [at the CIA] plunged to new lows, and the agency became paralyzed by an aversion to high-risk espionage operations for fear they would lead to political flaps. Less willing to take big risks, the CIA was less able to recruit spies in dangerous places such as Iraq.”

    And so we were hit on 9/11 and were completely blindsided by the attack because Bill Clinton gutted the military and the intelligence budget leaving us weak and blind. And of course our spending skyrocketed because of the DotCom economic collapse that Bill Clinton left for George Bush that happened on Clinton’s watch but gutted $7.1 trillion in American wealth (almost as much as the Great Recession, btw) and which collapsed the value of the Nasdaq Valuation by fully 78% of its value as Bush was still trying to clean all the porn that the Clinton White House had left on the White House computers. And so Bill Clinton handed George Bush a massive recession and like whip cream on top of his economic disaster he handed George Bush an even more massive terrorist attack.

    But, hey, don’t worry. Barack Obama is making all the same mistakes that Clinton made and then a whole bunch of even dumber mistakes that Clinton didn’t make.

    Anyway, as you keep hearing that Obama will pave the streets with gold because Bill Clinton paved the streets with gold, please realize #1 that Clinton hardly ever paved the streets with gold and #2 realize that Barack Obama has not and will not govern the way Bill Clinton governed.

    YOU are a bunch of lies. And I just documented it.

    Now I purge liars, and you being a liar will henceforth be banned from the realm.

  442. impeachobama2012 Says:

    Michael, of course you will continue to have a bunch of dumbass liars try to steer blame away from Obama. Instead of living amongst the dead, we live amongst a bunch of dumbass lying Liberals that will never take accountability for their dumbass decisions. I live in a dumbass Liberal state and cannot believe the ignorance that lives/breaths in this state. I worked the election polls as a Poll Challenger and the ignorance that Obama is the Savior continues here. The election has proven that American does not want to give up their “Sugar Daddy”….

    Since the election, my neighbors have their flag flown at have mast knowing our country is on the road to death and decay. I see Hillary is now trying to promote gun control and Diane Feinstein has introduced a bill where all assault weapons are to be turned in. She did that just awhile after the election also. Why doesn’t the media report on this?

    Would you be able to produce a blog regarding the potential loss of our our 2nd Amendment? We need to get the word out on this… and so much more.

    I appreciate your continued diligence and ability to follow up with the FACTS to show the truth, not just these dumbass LIberals coming in and spouting emotional crap. If these Liberals want a Socialist government, then they should move to North Korea, Cuba or Venezuela….Don’t try to make our great nation something our forefathers died making it independent of a Socialistic country…

  443. Michael Eden Says:

    impeachobama2012,

    I just went ahead and turned the comment you are referring to into an article. I conclude that article with these words:

    Do you know what bothers me the most about Obama’s reelection? It’s that we have entered a profoundly different reality as a nation. Barack Obama did NOT get reelected because he gave us a strong economy. And both the polls before and AFTER the election document that many of the people who actually voted for Barack Obama believed that Mitt Romney would have given us a better economy.

    Obama’s economic policy was a complete unmitigated disaster. But what you need to understand is that a terrible economy makes for good politics for Democrats. Because the worse the economy gets the more that increasingly amoral Americans will demand a stronger government safety net and welfare state. Such that the worse Obama does economically the better he and Democrats will actually fair politically.

    I agree with you that something like that is what we are both describing. We’re in a vicious circle that will continue until we circle right down the drain into the sewer of history.

    This is the point where we can write America’s obituary. Because the more Democrats mess up the economy, the more amoral Americans will now turn to Democrats to provide more welfare and more government dependency because the economy is messed up.

  444. Anonymous Says:

    Michael Eden, do you have an opinion on what the Republicans should do about the debt decisions to be made by the end of the year? I am so depressed about the state of this country and the election results. Hope all is well with you.

  445. Michael Eden Says:

    Anonymous,

    I’ve got a code in my node, as they say. But I am well, thank you.

    I am able to escape being depressed about the state of this country ONLY by remembering that my citizenship is in heaven and that unlike liberals I’ve got somewhere to go whereas this world is all they have and all they ever will have.

    Otherwise I’d be pretty down, myself. Because this country is going to fall down so hard when the implosion comes.

    I think given the way the majority of the way people who live in the United States (notice I don’t say “citizens”) feel, how the media depicts most stories in terms of liberal narratives, and just the deteriorated nation and people we’ve seen since 2008 that the Republicans have two choices:

    1) They can do the right thing, and get clobbered by it in the uberliberal media. And probably get successfully blamed for the fiscal cliff and therefore responsible not only for the last four failed years of Obama, but the NEXT four failed years of Obama. See what I’m saying? Obama has imposed impossible demands on Republicans, refusing to give on ANYTHING, and then demonizes Republicans for not compromising because it shouldn’t matter that OBAMA isn’t compromising. And if Republicans vote the way their basic philosophy requires that they vote, the next four years that follow will be entirely Republicans’ faults, and therefore Obama will get to be the most popular president while having the most colossally failed economic record of all time at the same time.

    2) Or they can blink, flinch and then cave in to the belief that the more rich people you demonize and tax, the more people will want to become rich people so they can get demonized while they get they taxed up their asses.

    Democrats WANT to go over the fiscal cliff, as I’ve documented. I’ve been saying it all along: liberals hate America, and would gleefully turn it into a dunghill if that’s what it took to get and keep complete power. I’ve been predicting over and over again that when the implosion came because we were spending too much damn money and Democrats wouldn’t allow Republicans to stop it so we went bankrupt and turned into a banana republic, yeah, it will be the Repubicans’ whose “crime” is not being able to stop let alone slow down the insane spending.

    The way the Democrats are putting it, the Republicans are stopping them from collecting trillions more in revenue if they could only attack the rich with truly punitive taxes. It’s a lie. Do you know when the United States collected the most revenue in history? And when we collected the LOWEST? Hint: In 1962 we had a top income tax rate of 93%.

    The answer? America had the highest revenues IN HISTORY. Tax cuts for the rich INCREASED the taxes that the rich paid. Why? Because the low tax rates encouraged them to invest more and work harder in their businesses. They were incentivized to take some risks because they got to keep what they earned. And so – proving the Democrats were completely wrong – we collected more tax revenue under George Bush in 2007 than any year in history.

    And here we are under Obama and all his demagogic lies with the lowest tax revenues since Democrats were evil back in 1963.

    It is simply a factual statement to say that cutting tax revenues has dramatically INCREASED tax revenues every single time it has ever been tried (four times out of four so far).

    I actually think the fiscal cliff is preferrable to what the Democrats have in store for America if Obama gets what he wants.

    I think the Republicans should stand on taxes and demand real spending cuts in exhange for any “revenue increase” via elimination of loopholes. And be willing to go over the cliff if Democrats insist on an insane list of demands. Even though they’ve already been set up as the fall guys in the media account.

  446. Anonymous Says:

    MIchael Eiden,
    Thanks for your opinion, I so enjoy reading it, and the facts that you never fail to present. I agree very much with this from you:

    “think the Republicans should stand on taxes and demand real spending cuts in exhange for any “revenue increase” via elimination of loopholes. And be willing to go over the cliff if Democrats insist on an insane list of demands. Even though they’ve already been set up as the fall guys in the media account.”

    I am beginning to think that the Republican party will be melt into the Democratic party, (since they are too nice and have no spine), and maybe the Tea Party will form it’s own 3rd Party and win. I never thought that I would believe that this would be possible, but unless Republicans “grow some” and stand up to what they are confronted with, this country is doomed. If the people who stand for principle and are not “afraid” of being called all of the names everyone comes up with, start their own party and run, I think that they would win.

    In the mean time, yes, give the psychopathic liar and all of his minions EVERYTHING they want, and see what happens. Let them own it. Thanks again

  447. Anonymous Says:

    Oh I meant to say Michael Eden, not Eiden, sorry.

  448. Michael Eden Says:

    Anonymous,

    Basically here’s what is going on: Barack Obama, in the name of “transcending the political divide” and “compromise” is out to completely break the Republican Party in the most cynical and demonic way imaginable. If Republicans cave and give up tax hikes, they will have given all Democrats cover for all future tax hikes forever. Democrats will vote for tax hike after tax hike and claim, “Even the Republicans agree that we should tax the piss out of the American people, so you can’t blame us.” Meanwhile, Republicans will invite their own political obits as the Tea Party rightly runs against them in primary races. And of course if the Republicans DO hold firm, America will go into the economic toilet and Obama will proceed to go from spending his first four years as president not being responsible for his economy because of “Bush” and the second four years not being responsible for his economy because of the “Republicans in Congress.” Americans will suffer terribly, but Obama will have his straw man to demonize.

    I think the Republicans are better off simply passing the Bush tax cut for ALL Americans and telling Obama if he wants to take the country into depression, they can’t stop him.

  449. Anonymous Says:

    You’re a moron!

  450. Michael Eden Says:

    Anonymous,

    I mock cowards like you who don’t have anywhere near the brains to make an actual argument, and rely on name-calling like a kindergartner snot-nosed little punk instead of having something intelligent to add to anything.

    Now get lost, turd. Because I also block you.

    So the most “intelligent” thing you will ever say on this blog is something a pre-schooler could have said. Because you literally aint no smarter than that.

  451. Yuriy Moskalenko Says:

    No you’re actually a [deleted for profanity] idiot.

  452. Michael Eden Says:

    Again, words by a pathetic turd who isn’t capable of anything a four-year old little brat isn’t capable of.

    Get lost, loser.

  453. Yuriy Moskalenko Says:

    Hahaha your mother should have aborted you down a toilet like a turd you waste of earth space. I can’t believe you live in California, [deleted by moderator due to profanity] republicant, move to Texas and stand your ground against Nutjob rednecks. Kill yourself. I bet you won’t even have the balls to post this reply on here.

  454. Michael Eden Says:

    Yuriy Moskalenko,

    Apprently I’m living rent-free in your head now. It will be the closet thing you’ve probably ever had to a conscience.

    I now realize that you just have a filthy, diseased mind and can’t restrain your profanity any more than an animal can build a space ship. It must be hard having so little impulse control.

    I also see that you are just as worthless as I said before. Note that I specifically pointed out that you had no argument at all, that you simply weren’t smart enough to actually have an actual point, and that all you were capable of was name-calling much the way a spoiled-rotten little kindergartner brat would only be so capable. And here you are documenting it yet again even after I pointed it out to you.

    It’s interesting. Pew just did a study that documented that liberals are far more intolerant than conservatives on the internet. And here you are to provide further proof. You aren’t smart enough to make an actual argument and debate on the facts. You can’t interact with the truth. What CAN you do? You can act like a four-year old and blather off a bunch of stupid names. Like a spoiled little brat. You implicitly acknowledge in your diatribe that the only way you could ever win an argument with me based on actual facts is if I were to somehow die. And you hate me for it.

    I actually would be quite happy in Texas. Why wouldn’t I want to live in a state that actually has a functioning economy?

    Now please stop typing back when my voice that’s living in your head talks to you. Just talk back to the voice, instead.

  455. Yuriy Moskalenko Says:

    Ok this isn’t my first time emailing you and replying to your “blog”. You’ve posted a lot of my replies that I replied with using various accounts. And everytime no matter who, me or any other person that sends you a reply, you are always on the attack with lies and right wing spin. You always think you’re right and no matter what anyone else says they’re wrong. You may not even understand this because you’re so twisted up in your mind that you’re some intelligent “god” and you’re amazing. You actually rarely tell the truth. When you sit in the right wing bubble and have hate for a black President even after he took over in the middle of the bush recession. As PBO took office, the GOP planned obstruction. How did that end up for you guys? The nation has woken up and we are leaning heavily left mainly because of the nutjobs in the GOP that attack women, gays, poor, elderly, but keep those oil company tax breaks when the oil industry is the most profitable industry of them all worldwide.

    Now have some balls and post this. Can’t wait for your twisted reply, [deleted by moderator due to profanity].

  456. Michael Eden Says:

    Yuriy Moskalenko,

    Still lacking any kind of impulse control regarding your filthy mouth, I noticed. Was that a word your mom taught you?

    Yep, I’m living rent-free, right in your head, in the place where your reasoning capability should have been.

    Why do you post using various accounts? Why are you liberals so personally dishonest? Did you use your “porn star name” (first pet’s name, name of first street you lived on) to fraudulently conceal your identity like Sheila Jackson got busted for doing in an administration that laughingly praises itself for “transparency”???

    I’ve never misrepresented myself in my entire life. You admit to having made a regular pattern of it just on my blog. I don’t like dishonest people. Which is probably why I react to you in all of your lying, deceitful avatars.

    I mean, stop and think about it: you are literally saying, “I keep lying and cheating and pretending I’m somebody else, and for some mysterious reason you don’t like it.” I mean, dude, it’s my blog. But fascist that you are, you actually believe you’re entitled to my blog and entitled to use any deceitful means to get by deceit what you think you’re entitled to.

    I’ve come across quite a few trolls like you on my blog. I always wonder what pathetic lives you people must endure for you to spend all of your time constantly fabricating new identities for yourselves because your real one is so ugly and so worthless.

    I challenged you to provide an argument. You posted to an article titled, “Who Spent More?” which contained numerous facts. You make a petty assertion that “I am always on the attack with lies and right wing spin,” but that’s NOT an argument, you dumbass. If your argument was that I was a liar, you would have at least tried to produce examples of me lying to substantiate your assertion. That’s what an argument is: it is a reasoned justification for a position as supported by factual evidence. The fact remains that I am NOT a liar, and your inability to cite so much as a SINGLE example of me lying is actually a proof that I am not a liar. And that you are a liar for so accusing me without so much as a shred of justification other than your rabid liberal hate.

    Like I’ve said: you don’t have an argument. You don’t have any facts. And you hate me because I’ve got an argument and I’ve got facts to support my argument.

    Stop and look at yourself. You attack me, stating that:

    everytime no matter who, me or any other person that sends you a reply, you are always on the attack with lies and right wing spin

    But these were YOUR VERY FIRST WORDS TO ME as Yuriy Moskalenko:

    No you’re actually a [deleted for profanity] idiot.

    Okay, maybe the very second thing you said to me was better:

    Hahaha your mother should have aborted you down a toilet like a turd you waste of earth space. I can’t believe you live in California, [deleted by moderator due to profanity] republicant, move to Texas and stand your ground against Nutjob rednecks. Kill yourself. I bet you won’t even have the balls to post this reply on here.

    So here you are decrying me as attacking when your very first words to me were a vicious personal attack. I’m a bad person because I attack people who start out viciously personally attacking me. And to add to your chutzpah, you are the very person who started out by viciously personally attacking me who is now reprimanding me for fighting back after you attack me. How is a rational being supposed to react to that kind of “conversation” that you wanted to engage in???

    I’ve got to laugh at your characterization of me as a hater when you literally just got through telling me that my mother should have aborted me and that I ought to kill myself. Have you ever looked at yourself in the damn mirror after all of your labeling of people you disagree with to realize that you are twenty times worse than the people you are labeling? You hypocrite?

    Here’s another galling way that you are nothing more than a loathsome, vile hypocrite.

    You say:

    “You always think you’re right and no matter what anyone else says they’re wrong.”

    Have you not made it abundantly clear that you think YOU’RE right and that I’m wrong? And yet you condemn me for doing the exact same thing you are doing literally while you are doing it! Why? Because I disagree with you, and you always think you’re right. And unlike you, I actually produce REASONS and ARGUMENTS and FACTS to support why I think I’m right. Whereas as you have amply documented, you have nothing more than your fascist opinions in a fact-free bubble on your side.

    This is why I so despise dealing with you people who are so dishonest at such a profound level. You lecture me about how judgmental I am and how wrong it is for me to be judgmental. And I ask, “Is it wrong to judge?” And you say, “YES!!!” And then I ask, “So then why are you judging me?” And rather than realize you’ve caught yourselves in your own trap and acknowledge your hypocrisy, you immediately will proceed to laughably state, “I’m not judging you.” When it is beyond obvious that you are judging me. And that you think you’re right and I’m wrong after telling me how wrong I am to think I’m right and you’re wrong. AND AGAIN AT LEAST I OFFERED SOME DAMN FACTS.

    You simply cannot have an argument with pathologically dishonest people who refuse facts and who deny obvious realities and who constantly shift their positions (I’ll talk about that in a moment). Which is why I move on.

    You have now repeatedly documented that you are not morally or mentally capable of interacting with the arguments and facts I produce. The fact that I write an article on “Who Spent More?” and you can’t say one damn thing about spending proves that. Instead, as you also prove, you merely immediately resort to name calling and slander. AGAIN, WITHOUT FEELING LIKE YOU SHOULD OFFER SO MUCH AS A SINGLE DAMN FACT.

    Again, the title of the article you have now repeatedly posted to is, “Why Spent More? Average Bush Vs. Average Obama Spending Per Day Proves Obama Most Reckless And Irresponsible EVER.” And yet a thorough examination of your posts will document that you never bothered to say so much as ONE damn thing about spending or anything I was arguing. So you decry me as thinking I’m a “god” because I produce an argument supported by facts, when YOU clearly worship your own mindless opinions.

    Your “you are intolerant” garbage is laughable, too. I think of your messiah Obama. Just six months ago, the man was saying he opposed homosexual marriage. Now it is literally tantamount to black civil rights. Which means just six months ago Obama was opposed to black civil rights, according to your endlessly evolving demagoguery. Obama has been like that on issue after issue, saying in 2008, “I am not going to take your guns away” when he is now leading the charge to do the very thing he said he wasn’t going to do. It’s why Al Gore – who is now wealthier than Mitt Romney after all the demagoguing you roaches did because of his money – just sold his television station to a filthy oil emirate connected to terrorism and then tried to avoid paying the higher 2013 taxes that he said the rest of us ought to pay. which is to say that your previous presidential candidate is such a damn hypocrite on so many damn levels it is beyond a joke. Sorry if I prefer something substantial and eternal like the Word of God to build my world view upon rather than the constantly shifting sand of your liberal ideology which ultimately stands for nothing but giving government all power over our lives.

    I can understand why you want Big Brother to make all your decisions for you, given your posts to me. If I had the moral and intellectual stupidity you have displayed, I’d want the government to take care of me like some kind of farm animal, too.

    I have now given you three opportunities to make an actual argument rather than childishly calling me a bunch of names or just about as childishly attacking me with a bunch of assertions that you clearly can’t substantiate with any actual facts. So I won’t bother to deal with your next post that says, “I dare you to post this” or “have some balls and post this.”

    Because you are very clearly just a waste of time.

    Now get lost for good. I always provide a detailed explanation for why I block people. And you just had yours. I’m not going to respond to you again, because strike three, you’re out.

  457. conjecture Says:

    For me too believe you i would not suggest to use articles that might contain baseless conjecture or being bias. I need a good base with real evidence from directly from the parliament.

  458. Michael Eden Says:

    I need a good base with real evidence from directly from the parliament

    conjecture,

    Then get the hell out of America and go to where they HAVE a parliament.

    I just mock you people who bitch and whine about “articles that might contain baseless conjecture or being [sic] bias” when you are unable to find so much as a SINGLE example of either.

    Liberals are demoniacs who believe if they can just rush in and label something with their lies, they can somehow undermine its credibility.

    Any reasonable person would instantly dismiss YOUR credibility for insinuating that something is somehow not true just because you don’t like it when you don’t have a single fact or argument to base your partisan ideological case upon.

    Now get lost. I block turds like you.

  459. Anonymous Says:

    the cost of the
    2001 and 2003 tax cuts as well as the Medicare
    prescription drug benefit passed in the last administration contributed significantly to turning
    the surpluses of the 1990s into the record deficits of the following decade.

    Click to access cutting.pdf

    It seems the response is “the white house is liars!”.

    Also, Clinton left the Bush administration notes about Al Quida, they chose to ignore them.

    I guess everyone is just lying though. None if it is true!

    “LIAR LAIR LIAR PANTS ON FIRE” is all I ever hear.

    I often wonder why Repubs talk about small govt like they actually believe in it. They just passed / introduced bills in the house to put security cameras in eveyones homes and charge ISPs with snooping through public e-mails: Not exactly a task for “small govt”.

    I hate software pirates as much as the people they steal from (as I am a content creator), but at the same time I would hate for my company/business secretes to become public knowledge for my big business competitors to use against me.

    Maybe republicans would have more support if they weren’t so hostile towards the Bill of Rights.

    Guantanamo and the revocation of Hubris Corpus were acts of Tyranny. Republican supporters like to talk about “socialism” as an economic model, but they are blissfully oblivious to the fact that the thing that makes living in a socialist society horrible is the lack of individual liberties.

    As if living in a Capitalist society is going to be any better than living in a Socialist one just because people get paid different. It’s just as possible to be told where to work and what to think and say and do in a Capitalist economy as it is a socialist one.

    In case that is to complicated for you simple minded folks

    Economics != Political Power Structures.

    PS: Why is it Democrats are the only ones who ever vote against unconstitutional breaches on civil liberties while Republicans overwhelmingly vote for anything that increases the power of govt?

  460. Anonymous Says:

    Michael Eden

    I hate to break this to you, but most of your sources are not credible scholastic sources. Most of those are tabloids. You need to start considering where you get your information. “startthinkingright.com” “repulblicanreason.com” hmm I wonder if it’s going to be biased propaganda or fair and balanced information?

    No person of intellect or deserving respect takes information in tabloids like the National Inquirer seriously (not calling it stupid or moronic as you cite those who disagree with you). Sorry if this comes of as harsh but but it’s true.

    I’m also a bit put off by your use of insults and foul-language in your speeches. More disturbingly, you don’t even seem to know what you’re saying or that you’re doing it because you fault people for doing it BACK to you AFTER you do it to them. Then you try to play off like some moral crusader after spewing foul curses and insults as if it’s benieth you. If it were really beneath you, you wouldn’t be using those tactics yourself. I’m reminded of a proverb from the Bible, “you should remove the thorns from your own eyes before trying to remove splinters from those of others.”

    If you’re just trying to troll, you shouldn’t dish it out if you can’t take it.

    That is all i have to say, I don’t see any reason to have a discussion with a foul mouthed bigot that thinks tabloids and propaganda publications owned by organisations with a vested interest in politics would deliver a fair and balanced account of history.

    I suggest going to .gov sites and looking at the information as it is recorded by official govt offices.

  461. Michael Eden Says:

    I hate to break this to you, but most of your sources are not credible scholastic sources. Most of those are tabloids. You need to start considering where you get your information.

    Anonymous,

    You dishonest hack.

    For starters, where are YOUR “credible scholastic sources” to substantiate YOUR assertions? Oh, I see, you vile hypocrite: if a conservative says the sun is shining, then he’d better have some liberal source to confirm that the sun is shining. Meanwhile, a liberal NEVER has to comply with the very bullcrap that they insist their opponents must rigidly adhere to. So you get to say my work isn’t credible because I don’t have “credible scholastic sources” but of course you don’t have to produce the very thing you say I have to produce for your own bullcrap assertions.

    For the record, I provided a ton of documentation to support every single thing I said. Where’s YOUR proof, hypocrite???

    But I’m hardly done with you yet.

    I hate to break to break this to you, you dishonest liar. But you refuse to so much as TRY to produce a SINGLE example of where my “tabloid” sources are false in ANY way, shape or form. Rather, you make a bogus assertion that my sources are somehow illegitimate, and from there you proceed to commit the worst fallacy in logic which is so basic that they call it “the genetic fallacy.”

    I’ll go to Wikipedia to document what you just did:

    The genetic fallacy, also known as fallacy of origins, fallacy of virtue, is a fallacy of irrelevance where a conclusion is suggested based solely on something or someone’s origin rather than its current meaning or context. This overlooks any difference to be found in the present situation, typically transferring the positive or negative esteem from the earlier context.

    The fallacy therefore fails to assess the claim on its merit. The first criterion of a good argument is that the premises must have bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim in question.

    That is precisely what you did, and it is precisely why I will not waste another second on you.

    You try to tie me into the National Enquirer because that’s the way slanderers like you operate. Well, you dishonest tool, it just so happens that it wasn’t that long ago that the National Enquirer was right and ALL your pompous liberal “sources” were liberal ideologues for refusing to print the truth. And your very own example of the National Enquirer actually serves to prove how completely full of crap people like you truly are.

    Begone, turd. The next time you want to question somebody, at least have an actual FACT that someone capable of understanding logic would agree is an actual FACT.

  462. Michael Eden Says:

    Anonymous,

    Seriously? I’m supposed to carefully read through every single word of a pdf file that you wave your hand at as somehow proving that the Bush tax cuts were what vaporized the so-called “Clinton surplus”???

    THAT’S your proof and how you prove your assertions?

    I can just imagine engaging in argument or debate your way. I’m having an argument with somebody over religion. So what do I do? I post a link to THE ENTIRE BIBLE and say: “You’re wrong. And my link proves it.” Because, you see, I’m a liberal, and therefore I can’t be expected to have to produce the specific PART of the Bible that might actually support my position. Nope.

    Truth, reality and facts to liberals are as far apart as the east is from the west.

    And for the record, this is the same turd who just whined that somehow my sources – you know, the sources I actually produced in a form that a reader could read without spending two hours – were somehow not valid??? You know, the guy who didn’t bother to produce any “credible scholastic sources” of his own to support that assertion???

    How about the fact that the “Clinton surplus” never actually existed in the first place?

    The Wall Street Journal recently documented that the so-called “Clinton surplus” was never anything more than a projection based on assumptions that never happened:

    Quote: “That $5.6 trillion surplus never existed. It was a projection by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in January 2001 to cover the next decade.

    There never WAS a “surplus.” And to further prove that, the national debt increased every single year of the Clinton presidency, just as it did under Bush.

    So you are trying to somehow “prove” that Bush’s tax cuts somehow turned a “surplus” that never even existed in the first place into the deficit that it in fact was all along.

    What a turd.

    P.S. to your P.S. You say:

    PS: Why is it Democrats are the only ones who ever vote against unconstitutional breaches on civil liberties while Republicans overwhelmingly vote for anything that increases the power of govt?

    Seriously? Your that much of an idiot? The Republicans voted 100% AGAINST the Obama stimulus that expanded the size, power and scope of government by $3.27 TRILLION. They were just as against the ObamaCare “train wreck” which completed the big government takeover of our entire health care system.

    So, your claim that “Republicans overwhelmingly vote for anything that increases the power of govt” is officially falsified. You are a liar.

    So, as usual, if you even HAD any actual point, you are simply too ignorant and too dishonest to bother to produce any evidence whatsoever for it besides your idiot assertions.

  463. Anonymous Says:

    Eden = Douchebag

  464. Michael Eden Says:

    Anonymous,

    I never cease marveling at the cowardice (you’d never say that crap to my face because you ARE a coward) and stupidity of the left.

    I will never understand why liberals believe garbage like “Eden = Douchebag” is or should be effective. I will never understand why liberals refuse to bother with “facts” and rush to personal insults every single time.

    All I can do is block you cowardly liberal idiots one at a time and then wait (never very long!) for the next cowardly liberal idiot to come along.

  465. jonnobols59 Says:

    I’m coming into this several years after the initial post. Anybody who posts under “Anonymous” is curious indeed. Also, pls keep in mind that Bush and Obama are POLITICIANS. In my view, politicians are nothing more than slaves to the special interest groups they sold their souls (or what was left of them) to in order to get elected…
    I’m not bashing anybody, and I welcome your bashing me… unless you’re “Anonymous,” in wh. case blank you and the clogs you staggered into town on…

  466. Michael Eden Says:

    jonnobols59,

    You’re right and you’re wrong. Your right in that both parties are supported by machines that basically want to keep the game playing and alter the rules to make it easier for their side to win the game.

    You’re wrong in that your clear inference is that both parties are the same. Because no, they’re not.

    These two parties have profoundly different worldviews, profoundly different values, and profoundly different solutions. One party has the platform of being for free markets, the other party has the platform of exalting the state over the free markets; one party is the party of religious values, of life, the other party has the platform of basically killing God in the public discourse and killing babies in the womb. One party wants to build a strong and powerful military, the other party has now destroyed our Army, destroyed our Navy, and destroyed our Air Force to levels we haven’t seen in well over sixty years.

    You need to decide where you stand in that divide, and you need to support those with whom you stand even as you do everything you can to hold them accountable to their promises.

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