So, we're fucked, right?

[INDY500]

Originally Posted by maycocksean

And where are the posts where you complained about Bush's big spending?

Never mind. . ..how about refuting David Frum's article. I'd be interested in that.

I had plenty to say about GOP spending (they had the congress too shamefully) as well as the war in Iraq and border security/amnesty.

Conservatives expressed their displeasure by staying home in 2006 & 2008. Those drops in Bush's favoribility and right track/wrong track polls weren't just Democrats speaking you know.

[dreamletter]

The USA will collapse, it's merely a question of when, not if. If the capitalist state the USA has created will not destroy it, it's dependance on a finite resourse (oil) will. And that looks to run out around 2035 at the human races current rate of consumption.

[BVS]

Originally Posted by INDY500

I had plenty to say about GOP spending (they had the congress too shamefully) as well as the war in Iraq and border security/amnesty.

Conservatives expressed their displeasure by staying home in 2006 & 2008. Those drops in Bush's favoribility and right track/wrong track polls weren't just Democrats speaking you know.

Sure, you all had plenty to say. You just never expressed it until a black man from Kenya took office, and then you took it to the streets.

You were patriots to keep quiet and support the war in Iraq, and you were patriots when you protested the Muslim President. Do I have it right?

Only someone who can't see this glaring hypocrisy would call this group "sane".

[kramwest1]

Funny, I only remember liberal radio people and NPR covering the budget tricks during Bush 2's presidency. The mainstream (lame-stream, Liberal, whatever ) media never bothered to educate the American people about the accounting tricks that put the 2 wars on our national credit card.
This neo-con neo-outrage over the nation's debt is pathetic.

[maycocksean]

Originally Posted by kramwest1

Funny, I only remember liberal radio people and NPR covering the budget tricks during Bush 2's presidency. The mainstream (lame-stream, Liberal, whatever ) media never bothered to educate the American people about the accounting tricks that put the 2 wars on our national credit card.
This neo-con neo-outrage over the nation's debt is pathetic.

To be honest I don't remember anyone complaining about the deficit during those years. I guess because times were good in general so people didn't pay much attention. . .

But I've always maintained that the hand-wringing about the deficit of late is disingenous.

[BVS]

Originally Posted by maycocksean

But I've always maintained that the hand-wringing about the deficit of late is disingenous.

Of course it is. These same individuals didn't raise one single voice about deficits or debt ceiling raises when other presidents including their heroes did the same exact thing. Why would that be?

They're just a very disingenuous and contradictory bunch. It's hard for me to have any respect for that.

[kramwest1]

Originally Posted by maycocksean

To be honest I don't remember anyone complaining about the deficit during those years. I guess because times were good in general so people didn't pay much attention. . .

I distinctly remember Al Franken, Rachel Maddow and NPR (probably ATC or TOTN) talking about the accounting trick of a supplemental budget item (Afghan and Iraq War budgets), not necessarily about the deficit.

[Earnie Shavers]

The racism thing is overblown, IMO. It’s absolutely there, most noticeable in the Kenyan/Muslim thing, obviously – can’t be denied - but most of this “political disagreement with the other side = the other side is trying to DESTROY my country so I must wage some weird patriotic religious crusade to save my country” thing was all there with Clinton, no?

Stupidity exists everywhere, ignorance exists everywhere – and plenty of the very basic elements of the Tea Party argument (small government) exist everywhere - but that’s not really what it’s all about, is it? You see it everywhere though, from the silly hysterical conservative book titles, to the utterly ridiculous world analysis of the Glenn Beck’s, to the full-on online conspiracies, to the cheap sloganeering-in-place-of-policy of people like Palin and Bachmann. It’s all nuts, but it’s either real from top to bottom, which is really scary… or simply... its real to the bottom and that works for the top, which is really sad. I think I can safely speak on behalf of the rest of the baffled Western Hemisphere here and say that either way, it's really fucking weird.

I mean, when you’ve got the idea of a good high speed rail network getting shot down as some kind of secret communist freedom-curbing antichrist plot, that just beggars belief. That’s immense stupidity wrapped in immense paranoia, and I can’t even begin to wrap my head around it.

[MrsSpringsteen]

Like Anderson Cooper says, DON'T MESS WITH MATT DAMON

He should run for office. And he should stay bald Did I say that already? Yes..


Matt Damon went on a populist hitting streak on Saturday, giving voice to progressive frustration simmering in the nation.

Damon, as has been previously reported, spoke at the Save Our Schools March, and afterward, ripped both a reporter who challenged the notion of motivated teachers and a cameraman who insisted 10% of teachers are bad at their jobs. He also took to task Republicans, the Tea Party and what he called the lack of shared sacrifice in both the economy and the just-passed debt ceiling bill.

"I'm so disgusted," he told a reporter about the protracted negotiations. "I mean, no, I don't know what you do in the face of that kind of intransigence. So, my heart does go out to the President. He is dealing with a lot."

Still, despite any sympathy, he was furious with the negotiations' outcome, as well as the greater thrust of American economic policy.

"The wealthy are paying less than they paid at any time else, certainly in my lifetime, and probably in the last century," Damon said. "I don't know what we were paying in the roaring 20's; it's criminal that so little is asked of people who are getting so much. I don't mind paying more. I really don't mind paying more taxes. I'd rather pay for taxes than cut 'Reading is Fundamental' or Head Start or some of these programs that are really helping kids. This is the greatest country in the world; is it really that much worse if you pay 6% more in taxes? Give me a break. Look at what you get for it: you get to be American."

When asked whether he thought tax cuts helped create jobs, he was more than clear in his belief that they do not, and struck again on the inequality in the nation.

"I didn't go start a small business with my tax break, and I don't know anyone else who did. No, everybody's socking their money away," he said. "I was against those tax cuts. I thought they were ridiculous. So little is asked of the upper class anyway. I mean, what percent of them or their kids are fighting in any of these wars? What percent of their day is occupied by the fact that there are men and women in positions over the world, risking their lives. If you walk down 5th Avenue, there's no sense of shared sacrifice."

Damon has long been vocal politically; he campaigned with then-Senator Obama in 2008, though earlier this year he hit out at the President on education and economic policy.

"I really think he misinterpreted his mandate. A friend of mine said to me the other day, I thought it was a great line, 'I no longer hope for audacity,'" Damon told Piers Morgan in March. "He's doubled down on a lot of things, going back to education... the idea that we're testing kids and we're tying teachers salaries to how kids are performing on tests, that kind of mechanized thinking has nothing to do with higher order. We're training them, not teaching them."

And on economics, he told the UK's Independent, "I think he's rolled over to Wall Street completely. The economy has huge problems. We still have all these banks that are too big to fail. They're bigger and making more money than ever."

Damon has also come out in support of the recall effort against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who earlier in the year led a protracted struggle to strip state worker union members of their right to collectively bargain.

http://vimeo.com/27132302

[financeguy]

Originally Posted by dreamletter

The USA will collapse, it's merely a question of when, not if. If the capitalist state the USA has created will not destroy it, it's dependance on a finite resourse (oil) will. And that looks to run out around 2035 at the human races current rate of consumption.

I agree that the form of hypercapitalism as practised in the US is not sustainable.

[Earnie Shavers]

Interesting piece on this (from Australia) -
US debt ceiling deal: US debt deal the ultimate compromise | Crikey

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by INDY500

I had plenty to say about GOP spending (they had the congress too shamefully) as well as the war in Iraq and border security/amnesty.

Congress was only Democratic from 2006-8; you all had 6 years of free spending reign where you spent 5T and crusaded around the Middle East using the memories of innocent 9-11 victims to emotionally bully the American public.

Conservatives expressed their displeasure by staying home in 2006 & 2008. Those drops in Bush's favoribility and right track/wrong track polls weren't just Democrats speaking you know.

yes, but it wasn't about financial issues and spending. it was about the evident gross incompetence of the Bush administration when it came to Iraq, Iran, and especially Katrina. he lost the rational part of the GOP party because of his manifest inability to govern, not because he was spending too much.

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by kramwest1

I distinctly remember Al Franken, Rachel Maddow and NPR (probably ATC or TOTN) talking about the accounting trick of a supplemental budget item (Afghan and Iraq War budgets), not necessarily about the deficit.

i'd talk about the cost in here, but then i was reminded -- and thank goodness!!! -- about how we actually spend less on defense as a percentage of GDP than we did at the height of the cold war!

see how that works!

[LPU2]

Originally Posted by INDY500

I had plenty to say about GOP spending (they had the congress too shamefully) as well as the war in Iraq and border security/amnesty.

Conservatives expressed their displeasure by staying home in 2006 & 2008.

"They expressed their displeasure"? What, so no pictures of Bush with a bone in his nose?

[yolland]

Originally Posted by Earnie Shavers

Interesting piece on this (from Australia) -
US debt ceiling deal: US debt deal the ultimate compromise | Crikey

In the left media, the GOP and the Tea Party are a muscular bunch, asserting their will against a hapless centrist. In the Right media, Obama is a smooth ultra-leftist leaving the massive public programmes untouched while presenting himself as a negotiator. ...What can explain this double fantasy where each side defines itself by the imaginary strength of the other?

My tentative opinion on this would be that it is neither the quality of the leaders, nor their parties, nor their strategies, that frustrate many partisan people, but the very structure of the American political system, that makes an expression of general will the exception rather than the rule. I’ve oft remarked here that people who live inside Westminster or European systems really don’t understand the radical nature of the US system, in which there is a genuine separation of powers, not the pseudo-separation of Westminster ones (de facto combined executive/legislative branch, weak judiciary).

See, this is why what LJT said earlier about reading FYM (or substitute whichever supposed window into 'real' America) to "clarify" and "conceptualise" what's actually going on here is a noble but hopeless endeavor. We can't conceptualize any of it either, because when you live inside the bubble all you can really see are the competing talking points, not some reassuringly objective sociological explanation for why so many seemingly nice people seemingly no dumber than humans anywhere else will subscribe to such distortions.

In fact, among the snobby-elitist highly educated classes here (liberal or conservative), it's not uncommon at all to hear people sigh "God, I wish we had a parliamentary system." I hear it multiple times a week. But that's the ultimate in crazy really, because the only way to get there would be to scrap the Constitution and attempt a total rewrite, and fuck, you want to talk conditions for an ACTUAL second civil war, that's it right there.

The Right want [a parliamentary system], but as they cannot criticise the Constitution, they have no way of speaking about it. Hence they focus obsessively on myths of distortion and sabotage — from Obama’s birth certificate, to the obsessive argument that Al Franken stole the Minnesota Senate race. Faced with the most divided government possible—chambers in control of separate parties, President and the lower house from different parties—they cannot square the chaos, with the idea— implicit and explicit in US life—that the founders’ acts were driven by providence, that the US system is literally a godly creation. Fallible humans—demonic liberals have betrayed the vision.

For a Left whose interest in the minutaie and logic of the system is often close to nil, Obama fails because—well, because he takes the office seriously. What American liberals want is another FDR, whose most audacious attempt to take an end-run around the constitution was his scheme to double the size of the Supreme Court in the late 30s, the additional justices all being good Democrats.

These are both off-base hyperbole, though. Most contemporary Americans, period, are completely unaware of FDR's SCOTUS scheme and in any case would never trust a politician who actually considered that a legit tactic. And saying conservatives subconsciously want a parliamentary system is like concluding from the silly continued romanticization of Reagan/JFK/Clinton/whoever that Americans subconsciously want monarchy--okay, that's cute in a Thomas Friedman kind of way, but ultimately it's circular thinking that gets you nowhere trying to understand where and how the current system breaks down.

I'm not in the habit of reading foreign takes on US politics with an eye to pinpointing cultural perception gaps, but FWIW I do often get an annoyed/amused sense, particularly in coverage from continental Europe, of a tendency to confuse our national penchant for gee-whiz cowboy bluster (which isn't necessarily benign) with some kind of creeping fascist impulse, which in truth we're totally lacking in the needed romantic-tribal outlook to pull off. Rundle's read is much closer to reality IMO, it's just that he's taking the easy route by effectively ascribing it all to The System. I think the heavy contamination of our campaign politics with corporate and special-interest money, for one, explains the increasing tendency for presidents (and to a slightly lesser degree representatives) to 'stand for' disappointingly little besides staying in power, as well or better than does the inherent limitations of presidential-vs.-parliamentary systems.

[Canadiens1131]

BLOOP BLOOP incoming hypocrisy warning:

Reminder: 44 Percent of Tea Partiers Are on Medicare - Politics - GOOD

[MrsSpringsteen]

Uhoh

[BVS]

So let's remove THEIR government healthcare, that should free up a couple billion.

If we keep doing this, we'd have us in a surplus in no time, debt crisis solved.

[Earnie Shavers]

Originally Posted by yolland

"God, I wish we had a parliamentary system."

I don't know if you could ever know which is the better system overall, but it would be awesome if you guys had the full on debates and PMQ's, weekly face to face battles between the President and his opposition, and most importantly, more swearing in your House of Reps. There needs to be more fucks and shits in US political discourse. All this passive aggressive stuff has got to go. You need proper agro. Things will be much better if Obama can just call some of these people dickheads to their face, live on C-SPAN, once a week, every week.

[yolland]

Well, the debt ceiling debacle did give us hobbits, trolls, terrorists, tar babies, yogurt-covered moons and sugar-coated Satan sandwiches. Surely that must count for something?

I agree something like PMQs would be awesome, but I kinda doubt there'd be much audience for it; too much about game and strategy and process, too little about storybook moments and iconic pizzazz.