Great, so instead of just having to worry about getting your teeth punched out if you piss someone off in a bar, now you can get shot by some drunk idiot with a concealed weapons permits. I wonder what twisted logic it takes to make passing such a bill into law. Have their been increases of robberies inside Arizona bars? Come on...

Arizona is still the wild west. The whole fucking state thinks it's still 1840, and some gang of outlaws might wander into the neighborhood bar any minute and shoot the place up. You never know when you might need that Glock to fend off the James Gang.

The honeymoon is just about over for Obama....your sugar Mama!

How the hell does he get away with picking a justice nominee who blatantly says she as a "wise latina woman" would make better decisions than a white woman. Just replace "wise Latina woman" with "wise white man" and the liberals would want to exile the white man to another country. Talk about double standards.

Just because there has never been a Latina woman appointed to the Supreme Court...she gets a free pass. Next they will be confirming a one-legged midget because there has never been a one-legged midget appointed as a justice.

I am sure there are other latina woman Obama could have picked....he just won't admit he made a mistake and didn't check her out enough.

Here is another example of here calculated, spin answers.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_pl699

Listen, give us a break with your small-minded temper tantrums. Climb back under that rock where you've been blowing Clarence Thomas.

Beachman; You do remember the one nomination "W" chose for the court. At least Obamas pick is more qualified than the Harriet Miers choice your boy tossed out there.

You know the one nice thing about Beachman posting on the board like he does, is that it saves us from having to listen to whatever rant Savage, Rush, or any of the other foaming at the mouth sworn enemies of the middle class are spouting off at on hate radio.

" Next they will be confirming a one-legged midget because there has never been a one-legged midget appointed as a justice."

Beachman, I think that you mean a one legged midget who has never got laid. In which case, you have my vote for the Supreme Court.

One of the truly satisfying things about having Obama as our president is to enjoy the tortured writhing and shrieking of miserable creatures like Beachman.

Have a nice day.

Hey Beachbitch have you got laid yet? (And remember those high bastions of Republicanism do not count, i.e., alter boys and bathroom encounters.) Here's to waiting for the next "morally-superior" politician - be they Republican or Democrat - to self-implode. No one self-destructs as exquisitely as a politician - except for Beachman of course!

EA

El Pussy- Don't worry about me getting laid.....just think of all of those tax dollars "Obama your Sugar Mama" is taking from your pocket so you can pay for your Barney Franks (the Pimp) male whores he supllies you.

Roadglide-

That "wise Latina woman" is just wrong to make that statement on various occasions. Can't you just admit that she is wrong. That is what is wrong with this country....there is no right or wrong any more....there is only "Right and Left"

Are you going to let Obama just steamroll every program he wants just because he is a far left liberal....even if it is wrong for the country.


National Health care is already available to anyone who goes to the Hospital....Hospitals can not turn them away. There are many examples of people without health care insurance abusing the system. When will you liberals get it through your thick skulls.....if you give free access to everyone for health care that the system will be so overwhelmed.....everyone will go to the doctor or hospital or the smallest of any problem!

Leechman said:

"National Health care is already available to anyone who goes to the Hospital....Hospitals can not turn them away. There are many examples of people without health care insurance abusing the system. When will you liberals get it through your thick skulls.....if you give free access to everyone for health care that the system will be so overwhelmed.....everyone will go to the doctor or hospital or the smallest of any problem!"

Are you stupid or retarded? Use of hospitals is part of what has caused costs to skyrocket. And nobody is calling for "free access" for all, you nitwit. You are dumber than a tree stump.

Have any of you guys watched Paster Rev. James David Manning. This man of g-d, from New York, was on Russian T.V. this morning explaining why Obama is the 3rd Anti-Christ and that white racists voted him into power to fool blacks. BTW Manning is Black. I personally think the right Rev. Manning is angling for a job at Fox news.

Perhaps Rev. Manning = Beachman????????

Beachman; When Bush and Darth admit that they mislead the US into invading Iraq, and totally blew the response to 9/11, I will back off of you and your statements.

The way i read the "wise Latina Woman" statement is that she has certain life experiences that say a white man such as myself might not know about. We as Americans try to say that we are the melting pot of the world, but fail to look past the point that race in America is a touchy subject. Most of the people that are bitching about this issue are dejected, angry, poorly educated white men. I work with Asians, Hispanics, African Americans, White guys, women, straight, gay, married, single, etc, and the only people at work that I hear a negative thing on this issue is the old angry white guy that listens to talk radio every chance he gets, is that YOU??

RG.

There we have it.....a President who smokes who names a fat if not obese person to be the Surgeon General (And and a fat if not obese Supreme Court Justice nominee when was diagnosed with juvenille diabetes and still is fat or obese) all while insisting that we pay higher taxes for mandate National Health Insurance. And you Liberals find nothing at all disturbing about all of this.

I am still curious what Khun Mor has to say about this great plan Obama is trying to force upon us?

I say if this is such a great National Health Care program that they should have a pilot program for 1-2 years for all government employees
in Washington D.C. including the White House, all employees (Cabinet, staffers,employees, etc.) both the House and the Senate including all staffers, employees, etc,) and the Supreme Court (staffers, employees, etc.) It would be the perfect place to run a pilot program where they can control all aspects of the plan. In a year or 2 we can see if it is a success or not.

Is there a cure for "old angry white man" issues?

Is Beachman old? Maybe. But he sounds like a dumb kid.

Dementia. It's sad. Pity the poor lad. Imagine how depressing it would be to have shit for brains. To find yourself repeating the same things over and over. Most sensible people, if made aware that this was happening to them, would euthanize themselves.

I'm beginning to think what we have here is the Curious Case of Beachman Butthole. He started out life as an angry old senile white man, but is now living through his juvenile years.

It might make a good movie, although one completely devoid of any sex.

I suspect Laguy may be a fictional character created by MB. I can not prove my suspicion but neither can anyone disprove it.

Well, that would be poetic justice given that another member of this board once told me--no shit--he thought Beachman was a fictional character that I created to make Republicans look stupid.

(Message edited by LAguy on July 17, 2009)

I still believe with all my heart that Beachman is not a real character, because no one is that stupid.

Beachman (aka LA Guy) always shows up when things are slow and then he revives a thread that has been dead. Then the first one to respond is guess who? LA Guy?

QED.

Speaking of people who should be fictional characters, check this (confirmed Republican) guy out. I wonder which Club Hombre handle he operates under:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-08-18-judge-sentenced_x.htm

I cannot prove my suspicion that he is I am Sancho, although I cannot (and don't want to) disprove it either.

You want to talk about a hypocrite, I give you Mark Stanford, here is a guy that crucified Clinton for getting a bbbj from a fat girl in the oval office, then turns down Federal money for his State because it went against his "fiscal conservatism" ethics. Now it comes out that he flew down to South America first class, while his aides flew in coach. The only reason he is paying any of the money back is because he got caught. What a dumbass!!

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/jul/17/us-sc-governor-travel-071709/?nation&zIndex=133569

So Beachman, what do you have to say about this?? Or do we have to bring John Ensign into this conversation???

I still like the penis-pump judge (link in my post above) even if I can't prove he is not I am Sancho (or even Max Hardcore's bitter and perverted uncle--check out his picture).

The Judge probably called out his own name during 'sex'! The 'what the fuck' look on his face probably got him busted.

RG, in addition to Ensign, maybe we could get John Edwards in on the conversation. It doesnt get any better than banging a chick when your wife is fighting cancer.

I am not judging Edwards (and didnt at the time it all showed up in the news), but I just bring him up because you can go back and forth on which side has the most scum bags. Well, they both have plenty. What do you expect, they are all politicians.

You guys crack me up, why not leave out all the bullshit and just say you dont agree with a given persons politics and leave it at that.
AZ

Let's see John Edwards. Wasn't he the guy who the Democrats essentially ran out of the party and didn't even let attend the Democratic Party Convention after his bad behavior became known?

And what exactly is Ensign's present status, if I may ask? Or Sanford's? How have they dealt with life after their resignations? Oh, they didn't resign their positions and are still Republican officeholders? My mistake.

But we wouldn't want to say anything bad about them while they are in office now, would we? Particularly given that both were elected on "family values" platforms and managed to project "outrage" at Clinton's infidelities. I say give them a pass, and perhaps they will even figure out a way to get re-elected by convincing the public, again, that they are the only candidates who support traditional family values.

Better to spend our time talking about someone--John Edwards--who was given a one-way ticket out of the power centers of the Democratic Party. Talking about him now really matters.

I hope Roadglide doesn't mind me saying this (and I also hope my memory is accurate), but based on some history on this board, AZguy's comment that "just say you dont agree with a given persons politics and leave it at that," essentially directed at Roadglide's post, is off-base.

Again hoping my memory is accurate, many years ago Roadglide's political posts were coming from the right, the Republican right. Dare I say they were politically similar to what we now might expect from AZguy. I objected then that those on this board who were supporting Bush and the Republicans were essentially supporting a far-right Christian fundamentalist agenda that wanted to impose their morality on the rest of us, something that should be particularly objectionable to members of this board.

It was a few years later that Roadglide admitted he did not realize how extreme the Bush and Republican crowd was in their desire to impose Christian fundamentalism on this country. His political views began to change presumably as a result of this realization.

The bottom line is AZguy, you are right that we disagree with the views of people like Ensign, Coburn (who apparently tried to convince Ensign that the way to deal with his lapse in morality was to pay off the woman he had slept with), Gingrich, and the rest of this gang. We object to their attempts to impose a reactionary brand of morality on us, while at the same time they don't follow it themselves. Quite the contrary, they do the opposite of what they demand we do.

For the life of me, I don't see how members of this board can give them a pass for this, even if they agree with some other aspects of their political beliefs. But as I said years ago here, one of the primary reasons I cannot support these right-wing Republicans is because I believe in personal freedom, not just for them, but for us.

And again, to the extent I have mis-represented Roadglide's views or have made him uncomfortable, I apologize and hope he corrects me.

(Message edited by LAguy on July 19, 2009)

(Message edited by LAguy on July 19, 2009)

And let the guessing game commence:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/19/spitzer-escort-i-had-anot_n_240059.html

(Message edited by LAguy on July 19, 2009)

My guess is Sarah Palin.

Laguy; Yeh for many many years I was a hardcore Republican voter, and in some ways I still am a Republican at heart. I don't think that I have moved to the left or become more liberal.

No what I firmly believe is that the Republican party has left it's "Country first" roots and fell in love with the evangelical born again crowd. Now that the truth is coming out in the public eye about just how we were lied to about the WMD's and the Iraq connection to 9/11 The Bush administration really mismanaged the response to 9/11 not only on a military level, but also on a financial level, and now almost 10 years latter we have a president who is doing his best to repair years of faulty leadership, and poor management but yet the mouth piece of the far right is hoping that he fails. A true American would not hope that the President were to fail.

When the Republican party, gets their shit together and remembers that "country first" means "We the People" then I will think about joining them again.

Laguy; I am not offended and you have not made me feel uncomfortable here. Some day Beachman may see the light, you don't know just how free you are, until you start to loose some of those freedoms.

RG.

So, all we know so far is that his last name starts with "X".

Hey, did I mention, I'm predicting drawn out stagflation, malaise, double dip recession and high interest rates as a result of Obama's MASSIVE socialist wasteful spending of unfathomably huge amounts of borrowed money policies. I figure I should just put that in writing now so I can come back to it in a couple of years and say "I told you so".

Come on, guys. Say I'm wrong. Then when everything is fantastic two years from now you can all rub my face in how misguided I was back then.

Big government tax and spend liberal..Big government tax and spend liberal..Big government tax and spend liberal..

Obama may be a tax and spend liberal, but the damage he is (and we are) faced with comes from 8 years of a "no tax and spend" conservative administration. And every conservative I've ever met claims to be for smaller government, but then balks when the programs benefitting him or her, like capital loss write-offs or deductibility of multiple mortgages (both of which are very expensive and very regressive) are offered up as ways to reduce the cost of government. You know, it's always "cut government!" when talking about those aspects of government that don't directly and immediately benefit them, but they squeal like pigs being butt-fucked by Beachman when you propose cutting the "upper class welfare" tax loopholes and benefits that they got their lobbyists to insert into the tax code, etc.

It is funny that you see "not taking as much of someone else's money away from them" as a government welfare program.

Since Screechman brought up the Sotomayor nomination hearings earlier, I thought I'd share this NYT column from Frank Rich. It seems to me he nailed the issue (and a bunch of assholes) pretty well:

They Got Some ’Splainin’ to Do

By FRANK RICH
AS political theater, the Sonia Sotomayor hearings tanked faster than the 2008 Fred Thompson presidential campaign. They boasted no drama to rival the Clarence-Anita slapdown, the Bork hissy fits or the tearful exodus of Samuel Alito’s wife. There was rarely a moment to match even the high point of the Senate’s previous grilling of Sotomayor — in 1997, when she was elevated to the Second Circuit. It was then that Senator John Ashcroft of Missouri previewed the brand of white male legal wisdom that would soon become his hallmark at the Bush Justice Department. “Do you believe there’s a constitutional right to homosexual conduct by prisoners?” he asked. (She aced it: “No, sir.”)

Yet the Sotomayor show was still rich in historical significance. Someday we may regard it as we do those final, frozen tableaus of Pompeii. It offered a vivid snapshot of what Washington looked like when clueless ancien-régime conservatives were feebly clinging to their last levers of power, blissfully oblivious to the new America that was crashing down on their heads and reducing their antics to a sideshow as ridiculous as it was obsolescent.

The hearings were pure “Alice in Wonderland.” Reality was turned upside down. Southern senators who relate every question to race, ethnicity and gender just assumed that their unreconstructed obsessions are America’s and that the country would find them riveting. Instead the country yawned. The Sotomayor questioners also assumed a Hispanic woman, simply for being a Hispanic woman, could be portrayed as The Other and patronized like a greenhorn unfamiliar with How We Do Things Around Here. The senators seemed to have no idea they were describing themselves when they tried to caricature Sotomayor as an overemotional, biased ideologue.

At least they didn’t refer to “Maria Sotomayor” as had Mike Huckabee, whose sole knowledge of Latinos apparently derives from “West Side Story.” But when Tom Coburn of Oklahoma merrily joked to Sotomayor that “You’ll have lots of ’splainin’ to do,” it clearly didn’t occur to him that such mindless condescension helps explain why the fastest-growing demographic group in the nation is bolting his party.

Coburn wouldn’t know that behind the fictional caricature Ricky Ricardo was the innovative and brilliant Cuban-American show-business mogul Desi Arnaz. As Lucie Arnaz, his and Lucille Ball’s daughter, told me last week, it always seemed unfair to her that those laughing at her father’s English usually lacked his fluency in two languages. Then again, Coburn was so unfamiliar with Jews he didn’t have a clear fix on what happened in the Holocaust until 1997, when he was 48. Party elders like Bill Bennett had to school him after he angrily berated NBC for subjecting children and “decent-minded individuals everywhere” to the violence, “full-frontal nudity and irresponsible sexual activity” of “Schindler’s List.”

The antediluvian political culture of Coburn and his peers, for all its roots in the race-baiting “Southern strategy” of the Nixon era, is actually of a more recent vintage. It dates back just 15 years, to what my Times colleague Sam Tanenhaus calls conservatism’s “most decadent phase” in his coming book “The Death of Conservatism.” This was the Newt Gingrich revolution, swept into Congress by the midterms of 1994. Its troops came armed with a reform agenda titled the “Contract With America” and a mother lode of piety. Their promises included an end to federal deficits, the restoration of national security, transparent (and fewer) House committees, and “a Congress that respects the values and shares the faith of the American family.”

That the class of ’94 failed on almost every count is a matter of history, no matter how hard it has retroactively tried to blame its disastrous record on George W. Bush. Its incompetence may even have been greater than its world-class hypocrisy. Its only memorable achievements were to shut down the government in a fit of pique and to impeach Bill Clinton in a tsunami of moral outrage.

The class of ’94 gave us J.D. Hayworth and Bob Ney of the Jack Abramoff casino-lobbying scandals. Ney, a House committee chairman, did 17 months in jail. It gave us the sexual adventurers Mark Sanford, John Ensign and Mark Foley. (All these distinguished gentlemen voted for articles of impeachment, as did Gingrich, their randy role model.) The class of ’94 also included a black Republican, J. C. Watts, who at least had the integrity to leave Congress in 2003 to become a bona fide lobbyist rather than go on a K Street lobbyist’s payroll while still in public office. He was a fleeting novelty; there’s been no black Republican elected to either chamber of Congress since. Today the G.O.P.’s token black is its party chairman, Michael Steele, who last week unveiled his latest strategy for recruiting minority voters. “My plan is to say, ‘Y’all come!’ ” he explained, adding “I got the fried chicken and potato salad!”

Among Sotomayor’s questioners, both Coburn and Lindsey Graham are class of ’94. They — along with Jeff Sessions, a former Alabama attorney general best known for his unsuccessful prosecutions of civil rights activists — set the Republicans’ tone last week. In one of his many cringe-inducing moments, Graham suggested to Sotomayor that she had “a temperament problem” and advised that “maybe these hearings are a time for self-reflection.” That’s the crux of the ’94 spirit, even more than its constant, whiny refrain of white victimization: Hold others to a standard that you would not think of enforcing on yourself or your peers. Self-reflection may be mandatory for Sotomayor, but it certainly isn’t for Graham.

In his ’94 Congressional campaign in South Carolina, Graham made a big deal of promising to enact term limits. At the Clinton impeachment, he served as a manager of the prosecution. That was then, and this is now. Graham hasn’t even term-limited himself — an action he could have taken at any time unilaterally — and his pronouncements on marital morality (unencumbered by any marital attachments of his own) are a study in relativism. On “Meet the Press,” he granted absolution to his ’94 classmate Sanford, now his state’s governor, for abusing his office with his taxpayer-financed extramarital “trade mission” to Argentina. “I think the people of South Carolina will give him a second chance,” he said, as long as “Jenny and Mark can get back together.” Maybe Graham judges the Sanfords by a more empathetic standard than the Clintons because the Republican lieutenant governor who would replace Sanford is already fending off rumors that he’s gay.

Graham has also given a pass to his ’94 classmate Ensign, now a Nevada senator. Ensign not only committed adultery with an employee but sat by as his wealthy parents gave the mistress and her cuckolded husband nearly $100,000 to ease their pain. Ensign’s lawyer deflected questions that this beneficence might be hush money by claiming it was part of the senior Ensigns’ “pattern of generosity.”

When asked about these unsavory matters, Graham said that an ethics investigation of Ensign “isn’t high” among his priorities. This moral abdication still puts him on a higher plane than Coburn, who has been a murky broker in Ensign’s sexcapades. The husband of Ensign’s mistress told The Las Vegas Sun that Coburn urged Ensign to give him and his wife more than $1 million to pay off their mortgage and “move them to a new life.” Too bad no one thought of that one for the “Contract With America.”

Coburn maintains that he has immunity from testifying in any Ensign inquiry because he counseled Ensign as “a physician” and an “ordained deacon.” Coburn is an obstetrician and gynecologist, but never mind. What’s more relevant is the gall of his repeatedly lecturing Sotomayor last week on the “proper role” of judges — even to the point of reading her oath of office out loud. Coburn finds Sotomayor’s views “extremely troubling.” There’s nothing in Sotomayor’s history remotely as troubling as Coburn’s role in the Ensign scandal. Or as his inability to grasp Al Qaeda any better than he did the Nazis. In 2004, he claimed in all seriousness that the “gay agenda” is “the greatest threat to our freedom that we face today.”

You’d think that Coburn’s got some ’splainin’ to do, but as Washington etiquette has it, we spent the week learning every last footnote about Sotomayor while acres of press coverage shed scant light on the shoddy records of those judging her. The public got the point anyway about this dying order and its tired racial and culture wars. With Sotomayor’s fate never in doubt, it changed the channel.

Much of the audience was surely driven away by the sheer boredom of watching white guys incessantly parse the nominee’s “wise Latina” remark. This badgering was their last-ditch effort to prove that Gingrich was right when he called Sotomayor a racist at the start of the nomination process. She confronted that overheated controversy directly. “I do not believe that any ethnic, racial or gender group has an advantage in sound judgment,” Sotomayor testified.

It’s the American way that we judge people as individuals, not as groups. And by that standard we can say unequivocally that this particular wise Latina, with the richness of her experiences, would far more often than not reach a better conclusion than the individual white males she faced in that Senate hearing room. Even those viewers who watched the Sotomayor show for only a few minutes could see that her America is our future and theirs is the rapidly receding past.

Kinda contradictory...his last paragraph!


"It’s the American way that we judge people as individuals, not as groups. And by that standard we can say unequivocally that this particular wise Latina, with the richness of her experiences, would far more often than not reach a better conclusion than the individual white males she faced in that Senate hearing room."

She is the one who judged and classified herself in a group as " a wise Latina woman."

White guys now are always racists and bigots whenever they ask legitimate questions in the political process! And the liberals will attack them with that very argument. They will attack anyone who tries to get in the way of the liberals who want to force upon us the socialist government they want.
Why doesn't Obama put forth the effort of taking care of the unemployment and foreclosure crisis before demanding that we have a national, socialist Health Care plan......?

You dumb putz. You completely missed Rich's point. You really are a dull tool!

Branq, isn't calling a Republican a "dull tool" about the same as saying outer space is a "cold vacuum"? It's pretty self-evident these days.

I would love for Screechman to educate us all on what "socialism" is and what makes one a "socialist," since it seems to be his (and the whole FOX Propaganda Team's) favorite epithet. Don't give us a link to Wikipedia, Screechman. As your 7th grade homeroom teacher used to tell you, "put it in your own words."

Apparently, any reform of our health care system is "socialist." And anything that is proposed is tantamount to "National Health Care," a phrase that's intended to scare us silly.

What's been proposed thus far is nothing close to the types of national health care systems the rest of the developed world--without exception--has in place. But assholes like GOP chairman Michael Steele (what a dildo, but that's a topic for another time) believe that by calling it a "national health care" plan and "socialized medicine" they will make it so. If there aren't any immediate terrorist threats to scare us with, the Republican Party (FOX Branch) will try to get folks worked up over the threat of "socialism." Puhleeeeease!

So, Screechman...what is socialized medicine? Is it like socialized national defense? Is our national security system and our publicly-supported national defense infrastructure an example of socialism? Where does "using government to do things that are in the interest of all" end and "socialism" begin? Tell us, do you believe that Medicare should be dismantled? And Social Security? Should the government just close shop and go home instead of trying to assist in alleviating some of the inequities that exist in the quality of education between, say Connecticut and Mississippi? Maybe we should just dissolve the Union, because redistributing resources sounds an awful lot like Bill O'Reilly's definition of socialism.

Enlighten us.

Wanna Dick-

The Constitution specifically spells out "provide for the common defense."


It DOES NOT specifically spell out "provide Health Care Insurance for everyone including illegal aliens."


Go back and read the Constitution since apparently you never have!!!!!!



Why don't you go back to Ethiopia and screw your starving 3 dollar women you bragged about. You seem to be so concern about the welfare of everyone!

Talk about inequities .....you bragged about fucking starving Ethiopian women for 3 dollars like it was such a conquest for you.....and now you are worried about inequities in the United States. Paying starving Ethiopian women 3 dollars to pleasure yourself.....you are a pathetic joke!!! Do you seriously look in the mirror and consider yourself an expert on the inequities in the U.S. and the World?

"Why don't you go back to Ethiopia and screw your starving 3 dollar women you bragged about. You seem to be so concern about the welfare of everyone!"

Ouch! Hey, I helped reduce inequities by paying for sex. What have you done lately? Those ladies did not starve in part because I paid for sex. What's you're problem there? That I paid for sex? If that's you're problem, you're on the wrong board. If it's that I paid too little, what was the fair price? I paid what I was asked to pay. Where do you draw the lines, Screechman? Again, enlighten us. You must have a coherent philosophy on sex and commerce, right?

Oh, BTW, I have read the Constitution. Carefully. I took Constitutional Law from one of your heroes, Antonin Scalia. I read the whole thing, and the amendments, and the Bill of Rights. And I read what legal scholars have said about the document. Guess what? Right after defence (they spelled funny back in the day) is mentioned, the Framers mention promoting "the general Welfare." They must have been more serious about that than "defence," since they capitalized one and not the other.


But seriously, you are an idiot. Have you seen any proposals calling for guaranteed health care for undocumented aliens in any reform proposals? No, because there are none. But you love conflating those issues because, because, well, because that's what they like to do on FOX.

So keep on wanking away. When health care reform fails, all those out-of-work folks in FL will be seeking the most expensive care in the world (emergency room care), and you'll get to pay for it. Instead of playing the Republican game of "Whatever it is, I'm against it," your ilk could try to approach the problem with some ways to fix what everyone but you regards as a broken system.

Maybe you can move to Somalia. They have no national health care system there. And as far as I can tell, no one has sex there, so you'd be safe on that front as well.

Mmmmmmm. $3 impoverished, starving, spinners.

IAS, think "$3 impoverished, starving, spinners" in SUB SAHARAN AFRICA. Got Latex?

Since I have been re-positioning myself for more mongering (aka being on airplanes) for a day or so (why can't we have supersonic mongering capsules that can project us into South America or Asia in a couple of hours?), I have not yet been able to respond to some of IAS's latest political inanities.

Sure IAS, you may be able to call yourself a latter-day Nostradamus if in two years we have stagflation, high interest rates and so forth. But should this happen (it probably won't, but it might) blaming this on Obama is a bit disingenuous.

Without doubt, the size of the upcoming deficits are troubling. But virtually everyone agreed that a response to the Bush economic mess was going to involve increased deficits, on top of what were going to be huge deficits without any intervention (as you may recall Bush created historically enormous deficits that were on track to get much larger owing to his recession, the worst since the Great Depression).

Indeed, the Republicans recognized we were in an economic mess. Does anyone of any intelligence really believe that their solution--restricted to lowering taxes to stimulate the economy--wouldn't have similarly added substantially to our deficit, and thereby would have risked stagflation, high interest rates, and so forth? Beachman, you don't have to answer this.

So the choice really was between Obama's stimulus package (and the deficits it would create) and the Republican's supposed stimulus through tax cuts (and the deficits they would have created). I suppose a choice also was to do nothing, but given the enormity of the problem that too would have been extremely risky.

Parenthetically, given that one of the problems we now face is that people are essentially hoarding cash, i.e., not spending any additional cash they acquire but rather saving it owing to a lack of confidence about their future cash flows, the notion a tax cut would have stimulated the economy much is highly questionable; in the short term at least it would not have had a stimulative effect if the tax savings ended up in bank accounts rather than in spending.

In fact, it is not unusual for the federal government to try to stimulate the economy when there is a recession, and likewise it is not unusual for this to create budget deficits. What is unusual (or at least extremely ill-advised) is for the government to run up such huge deficits during times of supposed prosperity, as it did during the Bush years, thereby creating a situation where once a recession hits it becomes extremely problematic to further increase the deficit through either spending or tax cuts. Put another way, Bush's extreme deficits during a period of relative prosperity totally fucked us and put us in a position where there was not good option available to deal with the present recession.

Had Bush followed prudent budgetary policies, similar to Clinton's, the spending programs (or tax cuts) that are now necessary to restore some semblance of viability to our economy would have been manageable. But given the weak economic foundation Bush created, I am afraid any program designed to get us out of the recession is bound to put us on the precipice.

So IAS, if your prediction of economic disaster is realized, just realize yourself who is ultimately responsible for the economic mess we are now in. I got a clue for ya, it ain't Obama.

(Message edited by LAguy on July 21, 2009)

Clinton was on the same path Bush followed and that Obama is following. His salvation was the loss of the House and Senate in 1994 and the resulting gridlock. If Bush had of lost the house and Senate in 2002. We would all be sitting around saying what a great president he had been.

The problem with Obama's so called stimulus is most of it it is not stimulus. It is spending on pet projects, some of it not for years. They point to a project here and there but compared to the full price tag of the so-called stimulus these projects are a minor percentage. How many of you here can name one tangible difference the so called stimulus would make in your personal lives.

Putting cash in the hands of taxpayers would get IMMEDIATELY spent, stimulating the economy OR immediately put to paying off debt, thus recapitalizing the banks and improving consumers credit situations without giving the banks handouts directly. Or they would save it. Again recapitalizing the banks without direct handouts to the banks.

As far as I can tell at least 70% of the government spent stimulus is headed down some mysterious shithole and if I am able see any benefit of 30% of it I will be surprised.

After Clinton took office, his people found that the budget deficit inherited from George H.W. Bush's administration was greater than advertised. Accordingly, he and his economic advisors concluded balancing the budget would take priority over the introduction of new programs. That decision led to a balanced budget, as well as confidence in the markets. It also led to a fair number of unhappy liberals (not surprising perhaps given Clinton was a product of the relatively conservative Democratic Leadership Council).

The one exception to his basic frugality was he wanted to pass a health care bill. However, that was stopped as much by Democrats like Daniel Patrick Moynahan and others who could not abide that Hillary was unwilling to compromise to make the bill less costly. That it did not pass had nothing to do with the 1994 Congressional election.

IAS: Which budget-breaking programs (or for that matter economically unsound ones) did Clinton propose and get passed prior to the 1994 Congressional election? Parenthetically, I am not much of a fan of Bill Clinton overall, but do believe his economic policies were basically sound.

(Message edited by LAguy on July 22, 2009)

In 2003-2004 Clinton was on course for mega-liberal spend-fest. Not nearly as extreme as Obama but congress was going nuts back then too. Then we all know what happened in 2004. Thereafter. Congress sent up some crazy Republican spending bill, Clinton Vetoed. Democrats proposed some crazy spending bill. Gingrich never let it get out of the house. Gridlock ensued. Arguing about blowjobs took center stage and the business of government practically came to a standstill. In the absence of either side being able to DO anything to the American public, the economy thrived.

I am quite certain that if Clinton had have kept the House an Senate in 2004 and been able to continue to impose his agenda on the American public, things would have been very different. Gridlock made Clinton good for the economy. Gingrich/Clinton. A winning team.

IAS: Interesting . . . Your response to the question which specific budget-breaking or economically unsound programs Clinton proposed and got passed before the 1994 Congressional elections is "[i]n 2003-2004 Clinton was on course for mega-liberal spend-fest."

Is THAT the best you can do?? A conclusory statement with no facts to back it up? Oh, I forgot, you are a Republican. Never mind.