Monday, April 20, 2009

Every Picture Tells a Story, Don't It


Courtesy of the Heritage Foundation




5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The so called reductions are akin to a chubby person ordering a 10 scoop ice cream sundae,and then bragging about not ordering nuts, or perhaps a cherry on top. The old agage of draining the sea with a thimble also comes to mind.

Get used to this. Obama actually thinks that the general public is stupid enough to buy his load of horse dung. "This government will work until the politicians realize that they can bribe the people, with the people's money."

Anonymous said...

Mark,
If that Heritage Foundation visual would then show the 30 or so Trillion dollar unfunded mandate for the Medicare/Medicaid drug coverage that was foisted upon us by a Republican led Congress and a Republican President engulfing the 3.7 trillion dollar Obama budget, I might be able to take it more seriously. But in its current form, that chart is an example of Disreali's old line about lies, damne lies and statistics.

For eight years, the Heritage Foundation and the vast majority of Conservatives in this country carried water for Bush while he ran up huge budget deficits during times of relative prosperity. And now that a person with a (D) after his name is running the show, your all coming out of the woodwork to attack his reckless spending. Even though 95% of us haven't seen our taxes go up. And, Obama is running these deficits in response to a major economic calamity that even many conservative economists say is a time when governments can be the stimulator of last resort. I am not saying that this will necessarilly work, but I don't know what the alternative was when the credit markets were completely frozen (and they were).
Bootom line: Where were all you Henny Penny's for the last eight years, and what happened to you all these tea partiers that they could shift from "Cheney's right, deficits don't matter." to "We're doomed." in two short months? Seems a little off kilter. Don't you think?

Rich

Mr. D said...

Ah, Rich -- who could forget the brave Democrats who stood up to the profligate Bushies and opposed this horrific unfunded mandate? It was a stirring sight, watching the parade of portsider fiscal hawks swooping over the festivities.

I remember the stirring speeches that Charles Schumer and Christopher Dodd and Ted Kennedy gave, the jeremiads of Maxine Waters and Charlie Rangel, the impassioned pleas of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, begging foul Bush not to bankrupt our nation thus. It was enough to make a grown man cry. I was never prouder to be an American than I was when I heard those individuals speaking truth to power.

Oh, I'm sorry. That didn't happen, now did it? They all signed on to it, didn't they? In fact, they were mostly complaining because the benefit wasn't generous enough.

Let me see if I can understand your logic here. Because someone does something undeniably stupid in the past, they are duty bound to support compounding the stupidity in the future? They must, to be intellectually and logically consistent, simply acquiesce to whatever future stupidity comes down the pike? Is that it?

C'mon, dude. You can do better than that.

Oh, and one last thing. I agree that Bush and his BIPARTISAN pals have already screwed the pooch. That doesn't mean that Obama should be telling us to BOHICA, now does it?

Anonymous said...

Mark,
I never said that two wrongs make a right, nor did I say that Conservatives had to support Obama. I am responding to what I see as a laughably misleading representation of some monetary measures.
Taxes have actually been cut for most people over the last few months, and you'd think tax collectors were suddenly stopping people in the streets and shaking them down at gunpoint. I don't think the word Socialist has been thrown around with such alacrity since Eugene Debs went to jail. It's actually fairly amusing. I haven't enjoyed Fox News this much since the Clinton impeachment. You are all sneering at 100 Million, but 6 months ago, Conservatives were backing John McCain's asinine assertions that he was going to balance the budget by eliminating pork barrel spending. A little consistency, beyond the Obama loathing, is in order.

Mr. D said...

Rich,

For a guy who claims to enjoy Fox News (and I would wager that you probably watch it a hell of a lot more than I do), you aren't actually paying attention to what the Tea Party movement is about. The extra $13/week that isn't being withheld from my taxes isn't the issue. The issue is the amount of additional debt that is being piled on by the guardians of the public fisc these days.

You and I aren't the ones who will be paying for this. It's our children, and their children.

And as for socialism, what would you call it when the government takes, and attempts to maintain, a stake in private industry? You've got banks that want to return the TARP money and are being told that they can't do it. You're right, socialism isn't the word for that. I think the proper word is actually fascism. But we can't call people that, either. How does Peronism sound? Maybe we can agree on that one. And maybe we can get Andrew Lloyd Webber to write a musical or something.

Don't cry for me, sons of Hegewisch
The truth is I'll buy your steel mill
I learned from Rosty
And Pete Visclosky
Things will be sunny
If I print money
And I'll do even better once I get my coffee....