I'm saying, grandpa, that you are... I'M SAYING GRANDPA, THAT YOU ARE GETTING UP IN YEARS... No, not BEERS, YEARS. Oh, never mind. barfo
Insanity is a non-interventionist foreign policy coupled with fiscal responsibility and not being bought and owned by special interests? No. Insanity is electing Democrats because Republicans are none of those things, then electing Republicans when you find out the Democrats are worse.
We had an abysmal economy for a decade in the 1970s, made significantly worse by Carter's 4 years. Remember WIN? (Whip Inflation Now). Remember gas lines? The talking point is "we inherited the worst economy since the great depression."
I remember Gerald Ford's Whip Inflation Now slogan. Which of course wasn't what I actually said. barfo
Insanity is failing to observe how close to the political center the two main parties are, and positioning yourself at the political fringe and still thinking that one day the country will wake up and embrace your party. If you compromise and run on a platfrom of incrementalism, like the other parties do, then you'd have a shot at winning some elections. Or if you are happy just making a statement, keep running on radical change. Thinking you can have your cake and elect it too is insanity. barfo
I'm a bit confused by this. If we abolished the ENTIRE military (DoD is budgeted for $633B next year, including Afghanistan and Iraq contingency "overruns"), we wouldn't have enough to cover the expenditures of just Medicare/Medicaid's $742B (which, according to wiki, only covers 65 and older, or special cases). There isn't extra. Your "facts" are once again figments of your imagination. I'd like to see how "military presence overseas" accounts for "3/4 of the entire 'defense' community costs". Perhaps our definitions are not the same. But at present, it looks as if, again, you have zero clue what you're talking about in regards to the department of defense. Even with the President's proposed budget cuts for 2010, the deficit will be 1.17T. Yet, since the entire department of defense takes up $633B, it's a bit tough to say that the "entire overrun" is due to the military-industrial complex. Would you consider the stimulus an "exception"? You know, the 787 that Bushbaby pushed through in Obama's first months of office? I mean, wait....
It's a good read, but it seems that it contradicts your position. He said (back in Nov. 2008) that if unemployment hits 7.8% or higher, then we can start making comparisons to the 1930's. Well, we've hit that and then some. barfo
But Obama said we wouldn't if congress passed his stimulus spending bill. If unemployment goes to 80% are you going to be blaming the economy Obama "inherited?"
More on topic, if unemployment goes to 80% are you going to still be claiming the early 80's were worse? barfo
So you're quibbling that it would only provide healthcare for tens of millions of our most deserving citizens? Wow, I see why it's a stupid idea unworthy of consideration. wiki: The United States Department of Defense expenditures for fiscal year 2009 are $651.2 billion. This does not take into account military spending outside of the Department of Defense, which when included increases the figure to between $859 billion and $1.16 trillion. The United States and its closest allies are responsible for approximately two-thirds of global military spending (of which, in turn, the U.S. is responsible for the vast majority). Department of Defense spending accounts for 21% of the United States' federal budget, and approximately half of its federal discretionary spending, which comprises all of the U.S. government's money not accounted for by pre-existing obligations.[6][3] However, in terms of per capita spending, the U.S. ranks third behind Israel and Singapore[4]. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in 2003 the United States spent approximately 47% of the world's total military spending of US $956,000,000,000. Keep in mind this is a small piece of the pie when you take into account the related budgets of VA Hospitals bulging at the seams with deranged, disabled, and disrespected dying servicemen, the CIA, and the hundreds of billions of dollars which are routinely diverted each year from other agencies to payroll black operations and other illegal diversions and incursions performed by the military-industrial complex, and the cost of lost lives, rescue operations and rebuilding when our heavy-handed overseas presence is seen as a threat and it provokes terrorist attacks to our homeland. Our fixation on military might is ultimately a big reason why our health costs are the most ridiculous in the world. It's the main reason our businesses took a collective dive due to high oil costs this decade. It's as insane as Russia saying they might nuke some countries if they disagree with them. I'm all for self-defense and defense of our country, but it's a rare case indeed where a smart man/country can't make peace without using force. The Golden Rule actually works quite well, if and when it is implemented.
No. As an aside, who are the most deserving? Let's use your high-end figure of 1.16T for everything having to do with anything military-related in the US budget. Our deficit next year (as budgeted, not necessarily enacted) is 1.17T. So if you got rid of every single dollar spent toward anything remotely military-related, you still have a budget deficit. My point was to counter your contention that the military is the sole reason for the budget deficit. As opposed to hospitals with deranged and disabled people who haven't bled for our country? They're getting health care also. I can't speak to "hundreds of billions routinely diverted", but that VA stuff falls under DoD and VA spending. It's in there. Can you explain this connection a bit more? I don't get it. I would assume that a bigger reason our health costs are more is that we're among the most obese people in the world, per capita. I don't understand what the military had to do with subprime mortgages or unemployment---two leading causes of the recession. What does the military have to do with high oil costs? If you listen to some people (you among them), the Iraqi military action was only to steal oil, not make it more expensive for everyone and cause our domestic businesses to collectively dive. It takes two to apply the Golden Rule. In our history, we've generally been the 2nd party into the fight, and usually after the loss of American lives after we thought we'd "made peace without using force". My original point still stands. If you took every dollar away from the Department of Defense this year, you couldn't pay for Medicaid, much less "health care for everyone with money left over for infrastructure". And I don't think anyone's advocating taking every dollar from the DoD.
I don't have time to read this thread (or any off-topic ones, or 2/3 of the basketball ones) so I'll just tell you what the media won't. The health care plan is free!!! It doesn't cost $800M or whatever they say it does. Costs will rise so much when the baby boomers retire (damn them) that it will cost MORE to not insure all these new people (ER visits, etc.) than it will to insure them!! So it SAVES money. The same is true of the economic plan!! $800M or whatever the changing amount is? It's almost all LOANS. The only money that won't be returned is from the 2% of companies that will go under. But without the economic plan, most of them will, and banks will be out the debt that already exists, and people will lose their savings or the government will cover it--either way we won't get the money back, whereas by loaning companies supervised money to get them out of problems, the taxpayers will get it back. It's almost all LOANS, not grants. Both the health plan and the economic plan are free!! Yeeehawwww!!!!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJboVwW4T54 Don't want to bring this thread up again, but I found something interesting this morning.
Even Democrats are admitting that it's stupid to attack Fox News and The Chamber of Commerce: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1009/28638.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091029/ap_on_en_tv/us_tv_fox_apology Fox and the White House talk... I still don't see how anyone thinks CNN is near as bias. You would NEVER EVER EVER hear Fox say that to the Bush administration when they called out MSNBC. No contest here.
