In all seriousness I think your bet is a good one. Would you mind mentioning what you think good financial restructuring might be?

Military spending is welfare for General Electric, because they need the money more than we need the ships. Eisenhower was right that the military industrial complex would hijack our economy.

Those jobs that you said the Navy created by “dumping money into the economy” while building ships we didn’t need were “good jobs,” even though they were used to make something that did nothing for the economy as soon as the building of them ended? Did you know that most of those ships are now dog food cans? The Japanese are grateful to us for the recycled scrap that cost us so much and did so little.

But if, for example we had spent all that SAME money building schools and hospitals that had a continuing good effect on our country, that would be a bad thing? Because heaven knows, there is no return on investments in education and health. Of course, that would have cut General Dynamics out of the contract by distributing the jobs all across the country instead of confining them to Groton CT, and we can’t have that.

And we just dumped a trillion bucks into Iraq, and what we got for that was…the need to stay there and dump more money? What exactly is the return for the country on spending money breaking stuff and killing people? Would we do any better by spending that money building stuff and helping people?

The Republican Party has their panties in a bunch about deficit spending, but ALL THEY WOULD HAVE TO DO is propose an alternative and people might pay attention. If you have an alternative to the Obama program, please call the GOP at once and let them know. I’m obviously not as smart as you are and I don’t have one.

I’m betting on inflation taking place from this, and structuring my finances accordingly.

Who knew that if you deregulated banking the bankers would steal or lose lots of money? Only a lot of economists whose “liberal” leanings made their opinion suspect. I was reading on DKos precise analyses of what was going to happen two years before it did, written by a guy who used public information to accurately predict what the bankers failed to do. He did it for free, and they got millions for being wrong. I knew what was going to happen to the economy before Bush did, and planned accordingly. It’s not my fault that he didn’t read DailyKos.

Incidentally, I have found that DailyKos provides more accurate predictions of political and economic events than any other source. I am astonished at how those amateurs beat all the professionals, by years in some cases. I wonder how they do that? Reading DKos gives me an edge over all the conservatives who are afraid that The Great Orange Satan might steal their brains if they were to read it. It only steals conservative brains though, because they are used in the Friday night Satanic rituals. I would advise you to avoid the place at all costs.

Unfortunately you just don’t understand the NUANCE here RR. See, there are deficits and there are DEFICITS. How much deficit, and what you are taking out the loans for are important. Reagan had a deficit….building a 600 ship navy for instance, something that not only built jobs, but gave future value. Simply dumping money into the enconomy does nothing to build future strength.
Your concern for Bush “let(ting) his friends loot the treasury…” sounds a little disingenuous and downright vague, when we have Obama paying back his Union cronies by directing billions of “stimulus” dollars to the Unions over people who actually hold notes with the car companies.

So, for the record, you are good with Obama’s largest deficit in the history of mankind then?

Some of the smartest minds this country has were attracted to Wall Street. Paulson, Greenspan, Volcker… all very bright individuals, whether you agree with what they did or not. And look what happened. Look what Geithner presided over in his NY Fed Reserve District, and did little if anything to stem the tide. Smart does not mean right when it comes to politics, as I’ve seen written and heard a thousand times from people who hate Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, especially when one is betting the farm like Obama is doing, and in self-admitted uncharted waters.

If it’s only a case of IOKIYAR, why is it now ok to have been vocal about past deficits, but unconcerned about them now, just because you think this president is smart, especially when his deficits dwarf the previous president’s? Either we are both hypocrites, or neither of us are.

We all should’ve been more concerned before, but we definitely should all be concerned now.

And I’ve got a fair amount of skin in this game, as I’m sure you do too, as we all do, so kindly refrain from calling me a chickenhawk on this one.

I see you avoided the point of my original point, which was that IOKIYAR. Were you okay with the previous record holders, Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43, all Republicans? In your opinion, were Reagan and and Cheney right or wrong on whether deficits matter?

I would prefer that GW Bush hadn’t squandered Clinton’s SURPLUS, let the bankers bet (and lose) the mortgage, burned a trillion bucks with no return on the investment in Iraq, given tax breaks to billionaires, let his friends loot the treasury, and left us in a position where adding to the deficit was the only course available.

If you will recall, the alternative to Obama in office was McCain. Obama could spot him 60 IQ points and still beat him at tic-tac-toe. Now that we have seen the damage that a really stupid president can do, would you want another? In a crisis I’ll take the smart guy over the moron and hope for the best every time. I’ll make the same choice even when there isn’t a crisis, which was why I voted for Gore.

On the other hand, the Democratic rank-and-file I’ve read are pissed that Obama is acting too much like a Republican on a lot of issues. If we didn’t like that position when the Republicans are in charge, we still don’t like it now.