AunBear89 said:

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So what you're saying is:

"I have no freaking clue what the difference is between the debt and the deficit! But I won't let it get in the way of telling people they don't know what they are talking about."

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And ignores the fact that GWB spiked the military budget, Obama brought it down and Trump is jacking it back up again.

AunBear89 said:

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So what you're saying is:

"I have no freaking clue what the difference is between the debt and the deficit! But I won't let it get in the way of telling people they don't know what they are talking about."

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It sounds like that's exactly your problem here.

Unit2Sucks said:

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AunBear89 said:

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So what you're saying is:

"I have no freaking clue what the difference is between the debt and the deficit! But I won't let it get in the way of telling people they don't know what they are talking about."

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And ignores the fact that GWB spiked the military budget, Obama brought it down and Trump is jacking it back up again.

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If you look at total military expenditures, including items that were shifted from the base defense budget into the newly created "DoD Overseas Contingency Operations", and "OCO Support Base", the yearly totals under Obama are similar to those from the late Bush era, reflecting the escalation of the drone wars, increasing reliance on mercenaries/contractors, and the new campaigns in Libya and Syria which Obama started.

Trump did argue or a pullout from Syria and Afghanistan, which would have substantially lowered the DoD OCO spending, though he hasn't followed through on those promises.

https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-military-budget-components-challenges-growth-3306320

summary of military spending in billions of dollars since 2003:

FY
DoD Base Budget
DoD OCO
Support Base
Support OCO
Total Spending 2003
$364.9
$72.5


$437.4
2004
$376.5
$91.1


$467.6
2005
$400.1
$78.8


$478.9
2006
$410.6
$124.0
$109.7

$644.3
2007
$431.5
$169.4
$120.6

$721.5
2008
$479.0
$186.9
$127.0

$792.9
2009
$513.2
$153.1
$149.4

$815.7
2010
$527.2
$163.1
$160.3
$0.3
$851.6
2011
$528.2
$158.8
$167.4
$0.7
$855.1
2012
$530.4
$115.1
$159.3
$11.5
$816.3
2013
$495.5
$82.1
$157.8
$11.0
$746.4
2014
$496.3
$85.2
$165.4
$6.7
$753.6
2015
$496.1
$64.2
$165.6
$10.5
$736.4
2016
$521.7
$58.9
$171.9
$15.1
$767.6
2017
$523.2
$82.5
$177.1
$35.1
$818.9
2018 Actual
$574.5
$88.1
$181.8
$46.4
$890.8
2019 Estimated
$657.0
$69.0
$214.4
$26.1
$956.5

See link above for a better layout of these figures.

Cal88 said:

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AunBear89 said:

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So what you're saying is:

"I have no freaking clue what the difference is between the debt and the deficit! But I won't let it get in the way of telling people they don't know what they are talking about."

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It sounds like that's exactly your problem here.

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"I know you are, but what am I?"
Deflection - page 1 of the GOP/RWNJ playbook! Well done!

Look, if you want to roll in the mud with the juvenile crap, Blueblood is always available. I don't have time for that.

Cal88 said:

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Look, if you want to roll in the mud with the juvenile crap, Blueblood is always available. I don't have time for that.

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Move the goalposts or just walk away - I think that is page 4?

Cal88 said:

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dajo9 said:

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B.A. Bearacus said:

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Can't imagine any other serious or semi-serious Dem candidate responding like Buttigieg does here.

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This is a good exhibit of what I don't like about Buttigieg. The Democratic Party has done a great job bringing down the deficit. The deficit has gone up with every Republican President in my adult life and down with every Democratic President in my adult life. Instead of running on the successes of Democratic Presidents before him, Buttigieg would prefer to reiterate a dishonest Republican talking point that the media has fully absorbed.

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Explanations for your statement above:

1-you ceased to be an adult between 2008 and 2016
2-you died in 2008, and were resurrected sometime after 2016
3-Obama was a Republican (which is kind of a plausible proposition, considering his policies)
4-you all full of ****e

Occam's razor says it's #4.

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The fun thing about this post is that I don't think Cal88 knows how much of his own ignorance he has shown

Cal88 said:

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Trump did argue or a pullout from Syria and Afghanistan, which would have substantially lowered the DoD OCO spending, though he hasn't followed through on those promises.

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Trump said a lot of things and promised that he would get us so much more for our money because he's a great negotiator. What he got us was much more expenditure on the military with no end to that growth in sight. Now that he's decided to put boots on the ground in Saudi Arabia, for reasons that perhaps only Kushner knows, it will probably ramp even higher.

But sure, give him credit because he said he would do something he hasn't done.

dajo9 said:

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Cal88 said:

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dajo9 said:

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B.A. Bearacus said:

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Can't imagine any other serious or semi-serious Dem candidate responding like Buttigieg does here.

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This is a good exhibit of what I don't like about Buttigieg. The Democratic Party has done a great job bringing down the deficit. The deficit has gone up with every Republican President in my adult life and down with every Democratic President in my adult life. Instead of running on the successes of Democratic Presidents before him, Buttigieg would prefer to reiterate a dishonest Republican talking point that the media has fully absorbed.

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Explanations for your statement above:

1-you ceased to be an adult between 2008 and 2016
2-you died in 2008, and were resurrected sometime after 2016
3-Obama was a Republican (which is kind of a plausible proposition, considering his policies)
4-you all full of ****e

Occam's razor says it's #4.

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The fun thing about this post is that I don't think Cal88 knows how much of his own ignorance he has shown

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Well said!

dajo9 said:

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Cal88 said:

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dajo9 said:

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B.A. Bearacus said:

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Can't imagine any other serious or semi-serious Dem candidate responding like Buttigieg does here.

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This is a good exhibit of what I don't like about Buttigieg. The Democratic Party has done a great job bringing down the deficit. The deficit has gone up with every Republican President in my adult life and down with every Democratic President in my adult life. Instead of running on the successes of Democratic Presidents before him, Buttigieg would prefer to reiterate a dishonest Republican talking point that the media has fully absorbed.

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Explanations for your statement above:

1-you ceased to be an adult between 2008 and 2016
2-you died in 2008, and were resurrected sometime after 2016
3-Obama was a Republican (which is kind of a plausible proposition, considering his policies)
4-you all full of ****e

Occam's razor says it's #4.

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The fun thing about this post is that I don't think Cal88 knows how much of his own ignorance he has shown

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Riiight, 2 + 2 can equal 5, in your fun universe where arithmetic is permanently out to lunch. And $7,27 trillion is less than $2.13 trillion.

And of course those who deny this, are Russian agents!!1!

Quote:

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Key Takeaways

• President Obama reported deficits totaling $7.27 trillion during his eight years of presidency.
• George W. Bush also tops the presidency deficits list with total budget deficits of $2.134 trillion during his presidency.
• The highest annual budget deficit in history was during the first year of the Obama Administration in 2009, which reported a budget deficit of $1.413 trillion.

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https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/030515/which-united-states-presidents-have-run-largest-budget-deficits.asp

It's quite a feat for Obama to run a 2009 deficit considering he entered office in January 2009 with the deficit fiscal year ending September 2009 already projected to be $1.3 trillion. The fiscal year was 1/3 complete when Obama walked in the door.

Any publication that tries to label that an Obama deficit is ignorant or dishonest. Obama reduced the deficit he inherited by more than half during his Presidency.

If you want to play more, don't bother unless you want to tell me what legislation signed by Obama or other act of his caused the 2009 deficit.

Take away 2009, and the Obama deficits are still nearly 3 times higher than Dubya's.

You can keep digging if you'd like, it's not like you had that much dignity to start with.

Cal88 said:

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Take away 2009, and the Obama deficits are still nearly 3 times higher than Dubya's.

You can keep digging if you'd like, it's not like you had that much dignity to start with.

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I am sure you already knew this because you are such an honest person: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/us/politics/20budget.html

calpoly said:

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Cal88 said:

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Take away 2009, and the Obama deficits are still nearly 3 times higher than Dubya's.

You can keep digging if you'd like, it's not like you had that much dignity to start with.

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I am sure you already knew this because you are such an honest person: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/us/politics/20budget.html

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Wait, Cal88 cherry-picked a data point and conveniently omitted all larger context? You don't say.

sycasey said:

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calpoly said:

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Cal88 said:

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Take away 2009, and the Obama deficits are still nearly 3 times higher than Dubya's.

You can keep digging if you'd like, it's not like you had that much dignity to start with.

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I am sure you already knew this because you are such an honest person: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/us/politics/20budget.html

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Wait, Cal88 cherry-picked a data point and conveniently omitted all larger context? You don't say.

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I know its hard to believe.

Random Question: If Tulsi Gabbard were to drop out of the Democratic Primary and run as an Independent who would it hurt more? Trump or the Democratic nominee? I think it would be close.

golden sloth said:

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Random Question: If Tulsi Gabbard were to drop out of the Democratic Primary and run as an Independent who would it hurt more? Trump or the Democratic nominee? I think it would be close.

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Gabbard would be down in the Green/Libertarian/Constitution party background noise level, so I doubt she would affect Trump or the Democrats much.

Cal88 said:

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Take away 2009, and the Obama deficits are still nearly 3 times higher than Dubya's.

You can keep digging if you'd like, it's not like you had that much dignity to start with.

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None of us are babes. We all lived through it so your attempts at rewriting history here are weird.

Obama inherited directly from Bush a $1.3 trillion deficit, 2 wars, an irresponsible tax cut, and an unfunded Medicare expansion. It all came crashing down right before Obama became President. It took a long time but obama cut the deficit he inherited by half.

dajo9 said:

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Cal88 said:

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Take away 2009, and the Obama deficits are still nearly 3 times higher than Dubya's.

You can keep digging if you'd like, it's not like you had that much dignity to start with.

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None of us are babes. We all lived through it so your attempts at rewriting history here are weird.

Obama inherited directly from Bush a $1.3 trillion deficit, 2 wars, an irresponsible tax cut, and an unfunded Medicare expansion. It all came crashing down right before Obama became President. It took a long time but obama cut the deficit he inherited by half.

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And at the time people were predicting that the GOP would immediately start pinning the recession and the deficit on Obama, even though it all really was inherited from Bush. Seems like they are still doing it.

Cal88 said:

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Take away 2009, and the Obama deficits are still nearly 3 times higher than Dubya's.

You can keep digging if you'd like, it's not like you had that much dignity to start with.

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Sorry, I'm late to this discussion.

Are you trying to argue that Obama was a bad budget president because he walked into office in 1930 and kept things from becoming 1933-1940, based on global depression and bank saving advice from Goldman Sachs graduates?

That's a skinny wire you've set up for him to walk across, sir.

My take, since you asked, is that his first term deficits are pretty much excused. Thank you for piloting a salvation plan that worked successfully to avert disaster - utter catastrophic disaster! Second term deficits are on him. I think he should have been more aggressive late in his run.

dajo9 said:

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Cal88 said:

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Take away 2009, and the Obama deficits are still nearly 3 times higher than Dubya's.

You can keep digging if you'd like, it's not like you had that much dignity to start with.

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None of us are babes. We all lived through it so your attempts at rewriting history here are weird.

Obama inherited directly from Bush a $1.3 trillion deficit, 2 wars, an irresponsible tax cut, and an unfunded Medicare expansion. It all came crashing down right before Obama became President. It took a long time but obama cut the deficit he inherited by half.

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Absolutely!

Bloomberg for President!
He will have a mind about how to fix this horrible economic picture Trump has created. Totally dependent on deficit spending right now is where we are at.

It's like we have eaten all the food stores available, but in order to keep going we are raiding the seeds, too. A time of starvation is approaching, with not much remedy. Trump is setting the economy up for a hard fall.

I suppose the GOP rhetoric, looking back, will be that Trunp was wonderful for the economy and the person who followed was crap. That would be the same kind of argument it sounds like I'm hearing about the Bush yo Obama transition.
DUH!

dajo9 said:

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Obama inherited directly from Bush a $1.3 trillion deficit, 2 wars, an irresponsible tax cut, and an unfunded Medicare expansion. It all came crashing down right before Obama became President.

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Thank you for not letting him get away with malarkey.

sycasey said:

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And at the time people were predicting that the GOP would immediately start pinning the recession and the deficit on Obama, even though it all really was inherited from Bush. Seems like they are still doing it.

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Hillary was right to identify and label the vast swath of DEPLORABLES who are ignorant and maleable sheep.
They are a zombie herd which will not go away. Along with a crappy budgetary situation, the next president will also have to contend with them and their mal-informed notions.

concordtom said:

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dajo9 said:

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Obama inherited directly from Bush a $1.3 trillion deficit, 2 wars, an irresponsible tax cut, and an unfunded Medicare expansion. It all came crashing down right before Obama became President.

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Thank you for not letting him get away with malarkey.

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The reality is that Cal88's view will pass as the accepted version of history in a few decades. As young people who didn't live through it pass into adulthood the right wing framing of the situation will become what everybody "knows" to be true.

Millions of dollars and entire networks are devoted to framing history in a certain way. Carter was an economic disaster (the economic record is far better than people realize), Reagan rebounded America through fiscal conservatism (reality - the biggest spender between WWII and the Great Recession), Clinton was scandal plagued (the reality here is that compared to say, Reagan, Clinton's Presidency was relatively scandal free), GWB was a nice guy with bad luck (biggest disaster of a President between Buchanan and Trump), and Obama blew up the debt (reality - inherited a huge deficit and cut it in half).

As sure as you periodically see hagiographies of Reagan in your local grocery store for no apparent reason, the history of Obama will be written as Cal88 writes it. You'll have a couple of historians hollering otherwise, but nobody listens to academics.

This looks like the first actual debate. The reduced numbers are a very welcome relief.

I wanted to see if polls had moved since the recent Dem debate of top 7.
Nothing new out yet, but I found it shocking to see Trump leading vs Dems in numerous polls.
And I found it laughable to see how all them trounced Trump by 20 points.

Suffice to say, Californians f***ing hate Trump's guts!!!

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/elections/C

"How did America go from Obama, its first black president, to Trump, champion of racist conspiracy theories about his predecessor's birthplace?
Halifu Osumare, professor emerita in the department of African American and African studies at University of California, Davis, says: "It really shows the extreme schizophrenia of this country and how race is still very much a part of the original sin to portray itself in the world as the beacon of democracy that is always looking at the inalienable rights of the individual while at the same time reinforcing racial difference and hierarchy.
"I think that Barack Obama was such a rupture in the master narrative of the white, wealthy male being the only possible leader for this country, the original sin of America erupted with Donald Trump and we had permission for the violent racist past to re-emerge."

Back in 2010, Leon Panetta was the director of the CIA, planning the raid that would kill Osama Bin Laden the following year. He says: "Those who wanted to undermine America and our democracy and create distrust have been very successful. Whether it's the terrorists of 9/11 or whether it's Putin and Russia, I think the objective of creating a divided America that began to lack trust in the institutions of our democracy: that was their goal and, if you look at America today, they've largely succeeded."

Panetta says: "I think we're very much at a crossroads where there are really two paths. One is that we really could be an America in renaissance, if we could get our act together and deal with these challenges. Or we could be an America in decline. And right now, my sense is that we're are clearly moving on the wrong path of an America in decline."
David Smith, The Guardian

The decade that shook America


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/21/decade-that-shook-america-donald-trump-barack-obama-us-politics-race-division?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

dajo9 said:

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That's a fair response but voting for the war after 9/11 was the right vote at the time.

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Professor Turgeson Bear said:

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dajo9 said:

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calbear93 said:

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dajo9 said:

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Clinton was not a fiscally conservative President. Reagan, GWB, and Trump are fiscally conservative President's. That's what they ran on. That's who supported them. That's what they are.

Trump is the most fiscally conservative person running. If he wins he will continue to blow up the deficit and divert bailouts to people he likes (the farmers) and shift money away from people he doesn't like (blue staters).

The most fiscally responsible person running is probably Joe Biden but all of the Democrats would be more fiscally responsible than the fiscal conservative in the White House.

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If you want to be snide, don't bother.

If you want to engage in actual conversation, then don't write stupid **** like this. You are not being clever, just an annoying twit.

What do you want me to say? That Reagan, GWB and Trump were not fiscally conservative? When have I said they were? I have always said they were blowing up the deficit and incurring unsustainable debt.

This is the type of stupid **** that makes us draw battle lines and snipe at each other.

Not interesting in a stupid ***** slap fight with you, so just ****ing stop.

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Help me out here. Reagan, GWB, and Trump all ran as fiscal conservatives. Nearly all the fiscal conservatives I know voted for them. They all blew up the deficit and spent recklessly. How many times do we have to live through that before we identify the policy as what people say, do, and support. Fiscal conservative Presidents blow up the deficit and spend recklessly. It's been that way my whole life. Why would any of us pretend otherwise?

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Fiscal conservative is a meaningless term.

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the phrase implies fiscal responsibility, which in turn implies a balanced annual budget. (no deficit).

Since the last balanced budget 20 years ago, we've had 12 years of Republican leadership and 8 of Democratic leadership with no semblance of fiscal responsibility. No party gets to tout the phrase.

We should be doing this for the Dem Primary.

dajo9 said:

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That's a fair response but voting for the war after 9/11 was the right vote at the time.

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Did I ever mention the the time I asked Madeleine Albright, Sec of State under Clinton... "if the Florida recount effort had gone to Gore, and he was therefore President after 9/11, what would the response have been?"
-"We would have gone into Afghanistan but not Iraq".

Okay then, thank you very much.

Anybody that thinks we should not have gone into Afghanistan after 9/11 is a fool.

Now GWB objectively failed in those efforts. While we were fighting in Tora Bora in November 2001 Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. were already focused on their real goal of invading Iraq for oil contracts. In the meantime, without focus on Tora Bora, we didn't field enough troops (team Bush relied on local warlords whose priority was to accept bribes) and they let bin Laden escape the noose. Everything after that has been a disaster. The only chance we had at a positive outcome was a quick catch of bin Laden, build a hospital and a school, declare victory and come home. Bush was one of the worst Presidents this country ever had. Not because he failed at a challenging task but because his priority was NOT that task (among other failures).

But if you think we shouldn't have gone into Afghanistan to get bin Laden after 9/11 I believe you fail at the first priority of American foreign policy, which is to defend America when attacked.

concordtom said:

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dajo9 said:

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That's a fair response but voting for the war after 9/11 was the right vote at the time.

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Did I ever mention the the time I asked Madeleine Albright, Sec of State under Clinton... "if the Florida recount effort had gone to Gore, and he was therefore President after 9/11, what would the response have been?"
-"We would have gone into Afghanistan but not Iraq".

Okay then, thank you very much.

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There is a good argument to be made that if Gore won the recount (or if the Electoral College had honored the wishes of the American people and made Gore President) that 9/11 would not have happened. Read Richard Clarke's book Against All Enemies.

dajo9 said:

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The only chance we had at a positive outcome was a quick catch of bin Laden.

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Another thing a Democratic president had to clean up after the failure of the Republicans.