The Black Republican

Deficit going down huh?

First, all of your data comes from very biased sources. Give me one that does not have a right-wing agenda, if you can.

Second, if I were to put 30K this year on credit cards, I'd surely look richer on the outside -- makes it look like I have a higher standard of living than I really have. Indeed, if the government were to add that to my gross income, I'd would pay more in taxes!

But that is what America is doing. We are delighting in an orgy of debt accumulation. Oh, and BTW, we are exporting our techno-industrial infrastructure to China in the process. That's a real good national security move!

When we were industrializing, why didn't we move our farms overseas? Hmmmmmm.

The US Treasury Department is a "very biased source" on the federal deficit? (News reports here, here, and... well, here... but you don't want to read that last one, it's from Red China.) Why don't you try looking this shit up yourself next time - we're not here to debunk your paranoia.

You know, I don't like federal deficits, open borders, or feeding the enemy technology that'll eventually come back to kill us. But at the moment, what I like even less are naysayers who think the world is going to come to an end because someone they happen not to like lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington.

Like Mom used to say, if you have nothing good to say, stick a sock in it. And be warned, I happen to have plenty of stinky electronic socks in a web folder around here somewhere and I'm in a mood to use them.

I don't think Peter Gibbons (comment, supra) understands what it means to have the deficit going down. That means the government is putting less money on those "credit cards." Simply put, the fact that the government is borrowing less IS WHAT IT MEANS to have dropping deficits.

Sure, if you put $30K on credit cards, you would look richer, but your budget deficits would be increased, not lowered.

Please explain more if I am misunderstanding your comment...

He understands, and so do you, Baron. But while you (and Rick, and I) are happy to see the deficit getting lower, he's complaining that it's still expected to be almost $350 billion. Cry me a river.

Quite interesting

Any particular part there Chase?

I did not see the government links. My bad on that one. But keep in mind that a rising trade deficit with a lowering budget deficit (if it continues) means the general population is taking on a much larger share of our overconsumption which to me negates any good news that may have come from the deficit story. And all of this just underscores my next point . . .

My other point, which should have been obvious, is that the only reason the government is receiving higher revenue is due to economic growth fueled exclusively by debt. I fully understand budget deficits, the Laffer Curve, Say's Principle. I was a true blue supply sider who now see things in a much more complicated light. What we have here is a DEMAND SIDE ORGY. You are Keynesians on steroids and don't even realize it!!!!

Furthermore, what we are doing by regressively, yes regresively, lowering our taxes is destabilizing our society. Have you folks seen where the GINI ratio has gone over the past 25 years? There needs to be enough non-rich with enough purchasing power to buy what the wealthier are making or the whole dynamic eventually contracts. Even before that happens, there is at least political and social instability that could also lead to the capitalist dynamic being endangered.

That doesn't sound very conservative to me. It, along with the Wolfowitzian Wet Dream, sounds rather very NEOconservative, where postmodernist Trotskyite hogwash has infiltrated conservative thought. Am I saying conspiracy? No. It's happening right before our eyes so no conspiracy is necessary.

Experiment with your theories. Put them into place. Impliment your versions of dialectical materialism. And where they don't match up with the vagaries of human nature and reality, just shoot people like the Soviets did. That almost worked.

And don't threaten me Chris, you sanctimonious prick. Oh, and BTW, that person you DO happen to like at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. IS supporting "federal deficits, open borders, [and] feeding the enemy technology that'll eventually come back to kill us". What is wrong with you?!?

Again, am I "paranoid" and think there is a Bushie conspiracy to destroy the country? No, that's for those masterbating tinfoilers and "Unknown News" and DemUnder. Though I am a little uncertain about some people's moral motivations, I must stick with the most important axiom:

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"

You can always spot the liberal. They are the ones who start calling people names after a few minutes.

He's not a liberal Baron, but almost as bad. I've suspected all along he's a paleoconservative, but he'd only hinted at it around the edges before this. However your observation about name-calling is dead-on, and exactly what I was thinking. We're not having any of that here, so Mr. Gibbons has relinquished his posting privileges for a time. I'll turn off the ban in a few days and we'll see then if he can behave himself.

Peter, if you want to troll, you're welcome to come here and rag on us every once in a while. However persistant harping will get on my bad side, especially if you hit fever pitch on one of my bad days. Still, the one way to get banned for sure is to throw trash and call people names. If you want that privilege, go get yourself your own webspace.

No Peter, I'm not going to let you post under another log-in. You don't want to go overboard with this - I can be fairly obsessive about these sort of things and I've got the advantage of technology on my side.

As for your ideological bent, if you're not really a paleo, so be it - I aplogize for attaching the label, something I'd been resisting because I was finding it hard to pin down. From the sound of it, you're rather idiosyncratic in your political beliefs, which would make Rick your natural ally if you'd tone down the spew and get a handle on your rage.

Until then, you can watch from the sidelines.

One of the less strident passages in Peter's now-removed comment went this way: "The liberals want to solve the problem with affirmative action and direct wealth redistribution (welfare). Bad ideas. The conservatives either really don't give a crap or are indeed racist (though they'll give good lip service, so to speak) or will push some tough love pull-em-up-by-their-bootstraps self-responsibility stuff." It's the one time he refers to racism, so I wanted to post it so I could link from here.

Chris, what is with your link in the last post? Doesn't seem to work?

Thanks for the heads-up Rick. I needed to change a configuration to get the anchors to work, but when I did I broke href. They're both fixed now.