I hear the old crap about liberals loving to tax and spend - as if that, in and of itself, is their goal, just for the hell of it. And now, some say that Obama creams his Armani slacks just thinking about it. Boy, you righties sure have all of us lefties figured out. We all fit snugly into a nice neat, if elite, little box.
Given our rather incredible 2009 estimated budget deficit of around a half trillion dollars, and our current national debt of over nine and half trillion dollars, I wonder just who are the real "spender offenders" in government?
Let's see. The Democrats supposedly tax and spend.
The Reps just spend, and then spend some more. They contend, "We don't need no stinkin' taxes!" Hmmm. Which scenario is better? The Bushies, and now McCain, touting how wonderful all the tax cuts have been, and how they should be extended into infinity while the spending goes on willy-nilly, regardless of emptying coffers? Or perhaps, spending when tax dollars are available to cover all or most of it?
We've managed to spend nearly five and a half trillion dollars in Iraq alone. Now where could a major portion of that pesky national debt have come from? I know! I know! I know! I know! It's those damn welfare queens! We ought to pack up their freeloading asses and send them to Iraq, by god! That'd show 'em.
And now we're all supposed to believe - just take it on faith, I guess - that, given another four to eight years, the Republicans can put all the broken shards back together. The McCain dream will be a reality. Humpty will be whole again! We will march out of Iraq with a shining victory and a flourishing democracy firmly in place. The Taliban and Al Qaeda will be history, given only to considering the Feng Shui of their respective caves, or their rooms in hell.
We'll be veritably drowning in home grown crude oil, and gasoline will be something like 38 cents a gallon. Alternative energy sources, though no longer a real concern, will nevertheless be fully developed, cheap and plentiful.
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Article comments
1 - Dave Nalle
So you'd rather have high taxes AND high spending? Seems pretty unappealing to me.
Hell, let's take everyone's income and savings away and just give them a government voucher for food and housing every month. That sounds like a GREAT idea.
Dave
2 - Baritone
So deficit spending and a huge national debt is apparently preferable to you. Let's make our kids and grandkids pay for our mis-management. Screw them so long as the government keeps its grubby fingers out of my pocket!
Good plan. Just keep your fingers crossed that your beloved grand children don't break down your door as you sit comfortably in your dotage and string you up, when they realize just how they inherited a bankrupt government owing allegiance and trillions in interest payments to the Chinese.
B
3 - Andy Marsh
You know B-tone, I hear that argument all the time, we're spending our kids future...
We heard it before and I'm sure it'll be spewed again. The thing is that it always works itself out in the end.
It's no different than a person buying a house. You have to go massively in debt to own your own home, but eventually, if you don't buy something you didn't belong in in the first place, things start to balance out. Once the Iraq, Afghanistan foreclosure is over, then we should be able to get out of debt. No one is gonna get us out of debt until they are done.
Besides, we're in the middle of some kind of recession, is this really the time to raise taxes?
Your boy Obama wants to nail the oil cos. with windfall profits taxes...just who do you suppose will pay those taxes, the oil cos, or us?
I don't have any grandkids....yet...so I'm not worrying about them...yet. They'll probably just mess with my brakes and push me down a hill when I'm old anyway.
4 - marlowe
Hell yah let's tax the oil companies - tax the HELL out of them! Tax them all the way back to the 50's where they, along with the rest of American companies actually paid their fair share OF taxes - approx. 50% - as opposed to now where it hovers around 6.9% (meaning of course that save for those of you reading this that make more than $2.5 million a year)WE carry the rest of that tax burden on OUR backs...
But hey, it's fine. While Chevron's CEO makes more (most all of which isn't taxed thanks to them hard working accountants) in ONE YEAR than his average employee makes in 2000 years, while our infrastructure falls apart, along with our schools, indeed our ENTIRE Commons "web" that holds society together at least we'll know that another eight years of Bushites in office will UTTERLY wreck the country. Wonder what island the rich will move to?
PS. McCain, STOP THE DAMN CODE WORDS OF FEAR FOR WHITE CHRISTIAN MALES concerning Obama... Your "sly" references to "the One" and "annointed" etc., etc., hinting that Obama might be the AntiChrist isn't fooling anyone. How revolting you are to continue the Republican Fear Machine... Will you be held responsible for the consequences...
Marlowe
5 - Clavos
Hell yah let's tax the oil companies - tax the HELL out of them! Tax them all the way back to the 50's where they, along with the rest of American companies actually paid their fair share OF taxes - approx. 50% - as opposed to now where it hovers around 6.9% (meaning of course that save for those of you reading this that make more than $2.5 million a year)WE carry the rest of that tax burden on OUR backs...
Marlowe, "WE carry the rest of that tax burden on OUR backs" regardless. Companies are tax collectors for the government, not tax payers. Every penny of tax they pay is a cost of doing business; it is part of their overhead, and is included in the price of their product or service. Their customers (us) pay their taxes for them; in the final analysis, the only taxpayers in the nation are "we, the people."
I love the way you anti-business people want to close everything down. What do you think the unemployment rate will be then? And where will the money for ANY taxes come from? Oh, right! I forgot! The government can always PRINT MORE!
6 - Dave Nalle
Wow, Marlowe thinks McCain is portraying Obama as the Antichrist? that's a new take on it. As I understand it the strategy is to present him merely as a false-messiah, thereby painting him with blasphemous hubris.
And let me echo what Clavos said. If we're so hot to tax the gas companies let's just be honest about it, cut out the middle man and put a whopping big tax on each gallon of gas like the Europeans do.
Dave
7 - Jordan Richardson
Marlowe thinks McCain is portraying Obama as the Antichrist? that's a new take on it.
It's not a new take on the latest McCain ads at all. In fact, most religious groups spotted the inference in minutes and the blogosphere lit up with references to it. It's a shameless, stupid advertisement.
8 - Jordan Richardson
The thing is that it always works itself out in the end.
When you say this, Andy, do you also click your heels together and close your eyes really tightly?
9 - Dave Nalle
Not being at all in touch with religious fringe lunatics who worry about things like the antichrist, I hadn't heard that take on the ads. Given that most of those who take the antichrist seriously already hate Obama for his baby-killin' ways I don't see why they'd have a problem with portraying him as the antichrist.
My guess is that your description wasn't auite complete. Perhaps you should have said "shameless, stupid and highly effective."
Dave
10 - Baritone
I love how the McCains pledged that the campaign would take only the high road, that it would concentrate on the issues and would never cross the line into personal attacks or character issues.
Of course, when it became clear that such high minded notions would send their hopes down the tubes, they quickly adopted the exact mode that they had pledged not to. (Does this qualify as McCain reneging on a promise? He wouldn't do that, would he? Surely, not after his outrage at Obama's rejection of public financing.)
Yes, Dave, it has been effective. Virtually every politician over the last few decades has learned the lesson that "high road" campaigning does not add up to wins on election day. Voters complain about negative campaigning, yet they almost never fail to respond to it just as intended.
Since this type of campaigning will not go away, perhaps we would all be better served and less chagrined if candidates would knock off the puritanical poses and just go for the jugular from the get go.
In this instance, McCain's campaign started the old negative ball rolling, now Obama MUST respond in kind or he'll wind up on the presidential trash heap.
While I have made brash statements regarding Obama being victorious in November, I actually doubt that he will win. Where his inexperience is currently hurting him most is in his failure to grasp the ebb and flow, the nuances and bludgeoning of a national campaign. The Reps are far more experienced at waging campaigns at all levels - high and low. The Dems proved to be inept in 2004 and now, at least so far, in 2008. Their wide eyed innocence and slow response to attack is going to doom them once again.
So far, the worst thing that Obama has done IMO is announcing the supposed "windfall tax" on the oil companies and the redistribution of a thousand dollars to taxpayers. It's ludicrous in its inception, and the thousand dollars would have no more long term effect than the Bush tax rebate last spring.
Needless to say, I am thoroughly dismayed. Obama and company may well be pissing away a golden opportunity that will likely not come again for some time. If he blows this opportunity, I can't fathom that he'll ever get another.
I can only hope that with the conventions and the coming head to head campaigning and debates that Obama can settle in and stop making such foolish promises. The thought of 4 to 8 years of McCain at the helm is not, for me, a happy one.
B
11 - Baronius
I wish McCain were saying the thing that Baritone accuses him of. Cruelly shrinking government, putting Halliburton in charge of Iran, a statue of Limbaugh: he'd have my vote. Instead it's all Vietnam and global warming. By the way, as a religious nut, it never occurred to me that McCain was playing the Antichrist card, but Obama is definitely fast and loose with the messianic imagery.
12 - Dave Nalle
Doesn't the religious nuttery lexicon say something aobut how the antichrist will be mistaken for the messiah?
Personally I like Sam Niell as a presidential candidate better than Obama.
Dave
13 - Baronius
Ah, yes, The Omen III. A friend of mine used to joke that Sam Niell played the Antichrist (The Omen III) and a Soviet Naval officer (The Hunt for Red October). All he has to do is play the coach of the Dallas Cowboys, and he will have represented all forms of evil known to man.
Yes, the Antichrist will deceive many, and be followed as a world leader. I just always pictured him as, I guess, more competent than Obama.
14 - Joanne Huspek
Your piece was rather funny.
Yippee!! Indeed...
15 - Baritone
Joanne,
Thanks. I prefer to foster a few grins if possible. At times I take myself far too seriously, but usually I realize that most of what we do here is tantamount to a type of self massage; briefly satisfying, but of little lasting importance.
B
16 - Dr Dreadful
Yes, the Antichrist will deceive many, and be followed as a world leader. I just always pictured him as, I guess, more competent than Obama.
Well, Baronius, it's a pretty inept Antichrist/Devil who can be thwarted in his evil designs by such simple expedients as saying 'bless you' after someone sneezes, throwing salt over one's shoulder and not walking under ladders. So it's not that much of a stretch if you really want to believe he's settled on, of all people, Barack Obama as the key to his ultimate dominion over the Earth.
Fingers crossed.
17 - Jordan Richardson
Yes, the Antichrist will deceive many, and be followed as a world leader. I just always pictured him as, I guess, more competent than Obama.
Perhaps someone with a taller hat?
18 - Jet
I'm so tired of the tight little group of this website's allegedly educated "elite", high and mighty, self righteous jerks who know all the right phony catch-phrases and smart-ass put-downs to yell out at the appropriate times, but you not only don't have a solution to the problem (except to borrow more money to throw at it), but don't SEE a problem and rush head long towards hell to brand everyone pointing at it as stupid and less intelligent than you.
Both sides of this argument sound like a junior highschool debating team-plugging your ears singing la la la la while the other side tries to make their point.
How are we supposed to pay for crumbling and falling bridges, highways and infrastructure? Just who the hell is supposed to pay our outrageous national debt... before China comes and forecloses on us for defaulting on the loan?
We keep maxxing out our Chinese credit cards that's how.
The trouble is when the minimum payments come due every month, we just get another cash advance on our Chinese credit cards to pay the payment due-raising not lowering our debt.
Do you idiots realize (or care) how much each and every one of us owe on the national debt?
With the GOP hue and cry of NO NEW TAXES, we're saying let someone else pay it, don't touch mine. You fools want to spend it SO THAT IT BENEFITS YOU, but you don't want to pay it back.
You're ALL pathetic, and the sad part is, you know you are, because neither side is right, and neither side will ever hope to nudge eachother to the center or a compromise that makes sense.
19 - Condor
"Hell, let's take everyone's income and savings away and just give them a government voucher for food and housing every month. That sounds like a GREAT idea."
Can I have a house up on the California coast, next to the beach and redwoods? With a hot tub and about 50 acres? I'd settle for 1000 acres in Kansas, someplace where I could walk out on my palacial deck, take a whiz and shoot a coyote without getting arrested.
PLEEEEEZE.
20 - Clavos
You got it, Condor.
As housing czar of the NWO total-taxation government, I say you're deserving, despite not knowing anything about you.
Please send your thanks to the Cayman account number that my niece, the Junior Assistant Fill-in Undersecretary, provided you.
21 - Condor
"So deficit spending and a huge national debt is apparently preferable to you. Let's make our kids and grandkids pay for our mis-management. Screw them so long as the government keeps its grubby fingers out of my pocket!" - Baritone.
I agree with this statement. My progeny is self sufficient, they'll figure it out. This is not MY doing. And as such, I really don't want it to be my undoing.
Playing the "children/grandchildren" card is too often employed to give the unwashed masses a feeling of guilt, to sway and cajole them/us into turning around, mumbling 'well, I guess your right, I better return to my work and pay my taxes to my kids and such won't have to....'
B.S. on that, when I die I want exactly zero dollars of debt and zero dollars of wealth. Even score. I DON'T GIVE A RATS ASS. My job was raising children who can THINK for themselves and make their way through life with a full toolbox, not coddle them and provide them with every little freakin' pleasure or need. Their job is to SURVIVE.
Oh "there might be a revolution or something unthinkable if you take that kind of attitude!"
So what? It is obvious we (collectively speaking) are doomed to repeat history.... I am seeing history repeat itself almost daily. The human condition most likely guarantees that history DOES repeat itself. If that's the case... then there's nothing I can do about it. And future generations will just have to figure it all out, all over again.
22 - Condor
"before China comes and forecloses on us for defaulting on the loan?" Jet
Who's going to let them do that? Bankers? Government?... let them try... they'll get hauled out to the front ranks and marched through the minefields to make way for bloodlust that follows. Taking away property bought and paid for with worthless paper printed by a system of empty promises might be harder than they (whomever it is) think.
Invest in hardware that launches projectiles into oncoming throngs.
23 - Jet
I rest my case...
China doesn't have to invade, they'll just shut of the flow of money.
24 - Baritone
That sounds about right. Let's kill some "oncoming throngs." That's the American way!
Yeehaw!!!!