Shorter AO: I don’t do facts, just take my word for it.

Clinton didn’t balloon the Fed, the GOP did. That’s a fact, and it’s one you can’t handle despite all your pathetic efforts.

Take your meds and grab a nap. Matlock is on at 5, gramps.

Oh contraire, my wing-nut friend. I advocate smaller, more responsible government. The Iraq clusterfuck has actually been more expensive than what it would have costed to provide some sort of baseline public health option to the American people. (In short, provide a public option on par with what US senators get in their health-care to the American people at a reasonable cost.)

Financial regulation? That’s really not that expensive. In fact, it more than pays for itself. The SEC was gutted under Chimpy. Simply hire smart people to enforce existing rules and regulations regarding stocks and securities.

The stimulus bill (and we need another one) was only necessary because you and your party shat the bed. When the economy is approaching a Great Depression level of sickness, you need to spend money to stimulate spending, consumption, hiring, and production.

But like I said, you just can’t avoid the fact that the GOP is the party of failed national security (9/11, two unfinished wars), bigger government (the Fed ballooned under your party), and more intrusive government (rampant violations of the Bill of Rights, continued efforts to tell adults who they can and can’t sleep with or marry).

Your modern GOP: bigger government, more expensive government, failed national security policy.

Like I said AO, there’s a reason younger Americans (the ones who will replace you when you die off soon) will never vote for the GOP. It’s because we want smaller, better, and more efficient government. We got a taste of that under Clinton, and we’re going to complete the deal under Obama.

Republicans VASTLY increase the size AND power of government.

Republicans also expand the power of corporations while limiting the power and freedoms of the American Citizenry.

Republicans want large government to listen to your phone calls, watch what you download, and track who you associate.

Republicans use large government powers to protect corporations and are currently trying to use government to protect corporate monopolies in the health care industry and protect corporate financial con artists.

Republicans also vastly increase the DEBT of the US government.

That’s been true under the last three consecutive Republican Presidencies as well as every time the Republicans have been in control of Congress.

Republican President Bush increased government debt by trillions at the US Treasury AND Republican Bush also indebted US through the back door of the Fed by trillions of dollars.

There still hasn’t been a full accounting of the Republican Debt through the Federal Reserve but it’s more than the massive debt Republican Bush incurred through the US Treasury and it’s rumored that Republican Bush added more debt at the Federal Reserve than the entire US debt added by the last three Republican Debtor Presidents.

You advocate a smaller government at the same time as you advocate government expansion into healthcare, financial regulation, economic stimulus, etc.
As bad as the Republican spending binge was it was smaller than what the Democrats would have done. You have no historical perspective.

Personally I’m all for smaller government, and he did the right thing by reforming welfare.

Why is it so shocking that people like me who want smaller, less intrusive, more responsible government vote Democratic? We certainly don’t (and never will) vote for the GOP, the party that talks about national security but allowed 9/11 to happen, the party that talks about financial responsibility but turned a budget surplus into a budget deficit, the party that talks about small government but adds on hopelessly incompetent appendages like the TSA and the DHS, starts reckless, expensive military occupations but can’t bother to finish them etc., etc.

People under 40 who want smaller, cheaper government vote for Democrats. People who want bigger government and less personal freedom (wire-taps, trying to legislate morality in the bedroom, suspension of first, fourth, and sixth Amendment rights) are free to vote Republican, because that’s what you guys stand for — bigger government, authoritarian rule, and tax cuts for George Soros.

Or were you not in charge of the whole shebang between 2001 and 2006?

That’s the funniest thing about you AO. You talk as if the first half of this decade never happened. But it did, and it’s entirely fresh in peoples memories.

GOP = disaster

Not Europe, not China, nor the oil rich mid east. Nothing in South America, Cuba is out. Russia isn’t the model you want. No Japan. The best economy is the world has Bill Clinto saying the age of Big government is over. Got it.

And another thing my uneducated friend, after the antebellum era would mean 1860 and after, a full ninety years before the advent of the Andy Griffith Show. Not to mention: How do you know what there is to “get” , unless you “get” it*?

Finally, are you implying that I am somehow handicapped by being elderly? Please tell me how that works… I can’t wait to hear that story. If anything, your comments are documented evidence that today’s youth are taking a full 40 years to reach maturity.

* Reruns of The Andy Griffith Show, and Mayberry, R.F.D. are on to this day.

Frank, no one born after the antebellum era is going to get that.

Here’s a simple fact: if conservatives had their way back in 2006, social security would be in the toilet along with the rest of this mess.

America ca. the 1990′s, when we had a competent president in charge.

You know what we can all agree on? What type of a country don’t we want to live in?

Easy answer: America ca. 2001-2008 under a moronic GOP president and miserable GOP leadership in Congress (till 2006) when the stock market dropped nearly half of its value, not to mention the fact that we suffered a devastating terrorist attack.

This is the albatross that the GOP has to deal with for the next three or four decades. When you guys have the keys to the car and the house, you fuck everything up. There’s no getting around this: you guys can’t lead, govern, or inspire greatness in our country.

But please, don’t let me keep you from criticizing Jimmy Carter.

“Republican President George W. Bush was sworn in on Sunday, January 20th, 2001.

On the following Monday, January 22nd, 2001 the US Debt was: $5,728,195,796,181.57

On the Monday, January 20th, 2009 the US Debt was: $10,626,877,048,913.08″

In right winger’s world, that’s someone elses fault. In right winger’s world it’s always someone elses fault.

And as I said above, That doesn’t include all of the US debt incurred under Republican President Bush.

News Reference,
That’s why I grew to really hate them. Theoretically, a good conservative administration and congress would competently fix problems until government was barely needed anymore, like a good doctor, firefighter, boxer, butcher, baker, candlestickmaker…

But every time they screwed up, it seemed like they were trying to get us little people to believe that all government really is evil. But this also sent the message that all leadership, of any kind, big or small, was also evil. And now look at all the cynicism.

‘Put nothing in writing,’ Browner told auto execs on secret White House CAFE talks; Sensenbrenner wants investigation

Carol Browner, former Clinton administration EPA head and current Obama White House climate czar, instructed auto industry execs “to put nothing in writing, ever” regarding secret negotiations she orchestrated regarding a deal to increase federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-WI, is demanding a congressional investigation of Browner’s conduct in the CAFE talks, saying in a letter to Rep. Henry Waxman, D-CA, that Browner “intended to leave little or no documentation of the deliberations that lead to stringent new CAFE standards.”

Federal law requires officials to preserve documents concerning significant policy decisions, so instructing participants in a policy negotation concerning a major federal policy change could be viewed as a criminal act.

Waxman is chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. Sensenbrenner is the ranking Republican member of the panel.

Browner’s informal directive was previously reported by The New York Times. Sensebrenner’s letter is being made public tomorrow. A copy was made available to The Examiner by an official with knowledge of the controversy.

Sensenbrenner also wants a congressional investigation of why a global warming study by Alan Carlin, an EPA economist who is a career civil servant, was suppressed by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and other senior agency officials. The study warned of seriously damaging economic consequences for small businesses if the agency moved to regulate CO2 gases as illegal emissions under the Clean Air Act.

The CO2 gases, which are also produced by humans and other air-breathing creatures when they exhale, are viewed by global warming activists as contributing to the trapping of heat in the atmosphere when carbon-based fuels like oil and coal are burned. Carlin’s situation was previously detailed here by The Examiner.

When the study author requested that it be included in official EPA materials on the issue of whether the agency should adopt an “endangerment rule” to allow regulation of CO2, senior agency officials denied it. Al McGartland, director of EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics, told Carlin that his study was rejected because “your comments do not help the legal or policy case” for EPA’s decision to enact the endangerment rule.

In other words, according to Sensenbrenner, EPA officials purposely ignored the study simply because it did not advance their political policy agenda. Both President Obama and EPA’s Jackson have repeatedly promised not to make policy decisions on the basis of political or ideological considerations.

So how’s that “science-based policies” effort going, anyways?

They’re changing back to before Clinton and Carter? In my perfect world, D is government solution everything (including military action), R is government solution nothing (including fiscal responsibility).

They’d make a nice complement. But as things are, D & R are a clusterfuck of shiftng ideolgies.

I don’t know what goes on inside people’s heads – this seems like opinion to me. Maybe somebody else can run with this, unless DSC comes up with backup from centrist respected sources.

$10,626,877,048,913.08 ($10.6 TRILLION DOLLARS)

That doesn’t include all of the US debt incurred under Republican Bush.

Republican Bush kept a lot of the debt he incurred off the books through a variety of duplicitous means, including not paying for his multiple wars through the regular budget, delaying inevitable costs so they fell on the next President, and siphoning trillions out the back door of the Fed.

By some estimates Republican President Bush incurred as much or even more debt through the Federal Reserve’s back door as is recorded by the US Treasury.

So when right wingers talk about “quadrupling” the debt, they need to be asked first if they are innumerate (a failure to understand math) and then asked if they mean that the current US debt is now magically over $42 TRILLION dollars or that the current US debt is now magically over $84 TRILLION dollars?

(The $84 TRILLION dollar adds in the Fed’s rumored secret debt balance that Republican Bush kept off the regular books [and 'quadruples' all of it].)

Currently the debt is $11,515,064,224,509.82, which is NOT a “quadrupling” of the debt.

Quadrupling would be 400% of what the US debt was under Republican Bush.

Currently the US debt is not even 10% more than what existed under Republican President Bush.

And that could be significantly reduced if Republican Debtor Bush’s tax cuts DURING A TIME OF WAR were rescinded.

But of course right wingers know that.

Right wingers are just lying. It’s all they’ve got.

Which is why all the “change” rhetoric from Dems in the 2006 election and Obama in 2008 was utter bullshit.

“Most Ethical Congress Ever”

“Most Transparent Administration Ever”

“Prices tend to go up when demand from consumers exceeds the normal capacity of producers to supply goods and services.”
http://www.conservapedia.com/Inflation

Of course he has a choice. Even if you ignore the “stimulus” bill for a moment, the budget passed by Congress (and signed by Obama) was chock full of spending increases that can’t be justified in any way as fixing the economy. And despite Obama’s frequent claims otherwise, neither the Cap-and-trade or health-care-reform bills will do ANYTHING to fix the economy.

Obama is ramming through all this excessive spending, regardless of the long term consequences, because he knows that he only has a limited time window in which to operate. By the 2010 midterms, the Dems will no longer control Congress (or at the very least, will no longer have a filibuster-proof majority), and Obama’s ability to get then to rubber stamp his lavish spending sprees will come to a grinding halt.

Isn’t that where fiscal conservatism comes in? When was the last time a POTUS tried that? Clinton? Carter? Over the last 30 years (before Obama), why the hell was D doing what R was supposed to do? R has no credibility left here, and D can simply fall back on “Well, that’s what we’re supposed to do, isn’t it?”