Up to 2 Million March on D.C. to Protest Big Spending

I agree, plus it keeps people working. When wealthy people start protesting I will know the end is near.

 

they are going all over the goddam country. these arent isolated little protests.

 

1. If Obama's healthcare plan is going to add to the debt, I'm not for it. And lets hope he sticks to his word that he won't sign it.

2. Its funny because THe money we spent on Bush's tax cuts, or on the two wars, could have paid for our country's healthcare!

I'm saying if you put a republican in Obama's situation starting in 2009, you would have the same thing. And i'm saying if you put Obama in the presidency in 2001 - 2009, we do better fiscally. Obviously speculation. But i've already talked about this previously, and have no intention of doing it again.

It just amazes me that after 8 years of extreme fiscal irresponsibility, the congressional republicans are acting outraged when the foundation of much of the mess we are in was laid by them.

 

You're making speculations that are based on absolutely no evidence. Worse than that, you're making speculations based on evidence and data that shows exactly the opposite of what you are saying. Again...

And again...

 

And these are all Obama's deficits, right? The country wasn't in a deep deficit and getting worse as he entered, right? Give me a break.

 

Obama himself acknowledges that the deficit will quadruple with his budget proposals. What more do you want as proof?

Now you're just building strawman after strawman.

The emotional ties to Obama from some of his supporters is frightening.

 

So you call my arguement a strawman. Yet you want to ignore the fact that we had many fiscal problems entering Obama's presidency. Problems that were going to continue to get worse and build up our deficit no matter what Obama did.

We couldn't afford the tax cuts. We couldn't afford the wars. Yet here we are. And now people want to argue that healthcare is too expensive? And that Obama is destroying our country with the deficits HE is racking up? And protest the spending NOW? That is a joke.

I'm hardly attached to Obama. I give him a C and acknowledge he has disappointed me. I'm also far from a Liberal. Just can't stand the right-wing.

 

I don't think you understand what a "strawman" is. You keep building them.

You keep wanting to justify quadrupling the deficit by stating that the previous President wasn't fiscally conservative.

It just isn't a reasonable debate tactic, and it looks pretty silly.

 

so we ask again: if these "tea partiers" are so principled, where the hell were they for the last eight years?

 

A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[1] To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.

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

What superficially similar proposition is he creating and refuting? He isn't creating a proposition at all as the conditions he cites existed before your argument came into play and he isn't refuting the existence of them!!!!

Also, have you even read the CBO report? I have. There's lots of good information in there about all of the assumptions made to the deficit. For example, the large outlay of money being spent on Iraq and Afghanistan -it's predicting troop levels 10 years out. Think that's realistic? We could just leave both of those countries and have plenty of money left over for health care and then some!

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/105xx/doc10521/08-25-BudgetUpdate.pdf

 

Well, here is a great example of one of his "strawmen":

He keeps building the strawman that I, or other fiscal conservatives, are claiming that we didn't already have large deficits before Obama.

And then he is arguing against that misrepresented position in order to justify Obama's insane spending.

It's ridiculous.


PS. !!!!

 

Are you using MrJayremmie's tactic of using Bush's terrible spending to justify Obama's quadrupling of the deficit?

I don't get this.

Doesn't it make sense that the level of protesting against government spending is proportional to the level of government spending?

 

But he's not arguing against the "proposition" that you claim he builds. He's stating that there were large deficits pre-Obama, and not arguing against that, which would be the core of a strawman argument. He's just saying that Obama is already starting in negative territory.

P.P.S. !!!

 

I find myself sympathetic to their cause and I ask the same question. The primary reason I never voted for President Bush was that I believed "compassionate conservatism" to be nothing more than statism with a sprinkling of religion.

I fully supported (and continue to support) his foreign policy. The cost of the two wars didn't bother me because I felt they were: a) necessary (the Muslim world respects strength more than accomodation); and b) in keeping with one of the few direct responsibilities of the Federal Government, which is to provide for the common defense.

Perhaps it's that President Obama took already reckless spending by the Congress and the Bush Administration, and took off the restrictor plate and flipped the nitro switch. I don't know. Perhaps it's that he's not pulled back the power of the Executive Branch, but expanded it. Perhaps it's that the Federal Government is now in, or wanting to be in, areas of our lives that we never dreamed possible. I would put the fact that he's half-black, however, pretty near the bottom of the list. It could just be that President Obama's profligate spending is the straw that broke the camel's back.

 

No, it's showing why it's a complete fallacy to describe the dire budget situation as "Obama's quadrupling of the deficit." ~90% of the deficit problem in Obama's budgets results from "pre-existing conditions" to borrow an unfortunate term from another debate. It's just intellectually dishonest to describe the gaping budget hole over the next day as a product of "Obama spending" when the vast, vast majority of the shortfall is a result of (a) a shitty economy, which was already in the crapper before Obama ever took office, (b) Bush's tax cuts, and (c) unfunded Bush-era spending sprees (especially on the horrible Medicare Part D drug benefit and on the two wars which are dragging on and on with no end in sight).

Yes, Obama is responsible for the stimulus package. Yes, he's responsible for a few other small spending bills. He says his healthcare plan will be deficit-neutral; if that proves not to be true, then you'll have more legitimate grounds for complaint. As it stands right now, "Obama spending" is responsible for about 10% of the budget mess... and apparently that 10% is the 10% that causes our principled teabaggers to experience a phase shift from not caring at all about any of it to being convinced that their country is going down the tubes and it's all Obama's fault.

 

Actually, President Obama was starting at zero with any deficit that could be tied to him. He has to live with a year or so of promised spending under President Bush. Of course he did vote for many of these spending bills under the Bush Administration, so he clearly agreed with them.

What he did inherit was a large debt. It has been his choice to make it much larger. Any spending that he proposes are all on him. He could present bills to lower spending, increase taxes or balance the budget. Instead, he is quadrupling the deficit. It's his choice, and it's a conscious one.

 

Oh god, don't mention anything more about money to these people. We already see how some ridiculously overreact (those signs are out of control) when talking about money. Throw in some protest fee and some are likely to commit suicide.

It amazes me that a protest to war can be rivaled with a protest about money. Americans and their money . . . don't fuck with it. Doesn't matter how good we have it, we want more.

I wonder what "god" would think about this protest?

 

You and I have gone back and forth on this before. You always jump to the conclusion that it is "simply about money" and people being greedy. And you are wrong. Dead wrong. Sorry.

 

What ever you say boss . . . they can call it what they want, it's about the money.


Didn't you accuse me of saying I always jump to the conclusion that it is about race?