Naw, he’s not the beej.
But seems to be just as dim
You’ve ventured far off topic since you’re unable to compile a coherent response to support ylour original postings.
And you’re flagged.
You need to stay on topic here, TPM isn’t the wobbly cart that ventures all over the highway like the conservative sites you’re likely used to posting on.
Apparently I just got “flagged” for getting off topic. It’s true, but I was following others. I did enjoy the math lesson. Good luck in the election (you’re going to need it).
Don’t respond to those who try to attack and bait you. Respond to those of us, like me, who seek to engage and discuss. I had to poke you far too many times to get your attention.
TPM welcomes and seeks intelligent exchanges between both sides of the the isle. We often find that we agree on more than we disagree.
I know it’s difficult to not respond to folks who make asinine reply’s to you. But do try.
If you do your darnedest to post and back up your posts as best you can then you’ll find there are many here who will support and respect your right to a differing viewpoint.
Just be prepared to be challenged to support your position well beyond simply calling out a graphical representation of statistical trends. Better to understand the basis for the stats and trends.
Have a good evening.[quote=“Icepilot, post:65, topic:11552”]
Good luck in the election (you’re going to need it).
[/quote]
the sound of a thousand fleas farting…
I hope your team “wins” this election. America needs to be reminded of how the Tealiban governs, or doesn’t. Then in 2016…
Meh.
We didn’t cut spending in half since 2001. It’s been brought back to pre-9/11 levels. The post 9/11 spending bump is largely due to anti-bioterrorism spending…which was well out of proportion to need.
The spike in funding in 2006 was a direct result of emergency planning grants that initiated in 2002, after the New York anthrax scare, being brought to fruition. The original grants were for states and counties in large states like CA, NY, FL, and TX to ensure they had emergency plans in place and the equipment necessary to meet a generalized infectious disease outbreak. It started out with anthrax, then the Bush Administration became focused on the potential ‘weaponized’ form of Smallpox that Saddam was promoted to have had created, and finally morphed into an Influenza Pandemic Part II after all the various Asian flu scares (pig, chicken, acronym, alpha-numeric, you name it).
I suspect we see the funding drop precipitously because none of the scarry stuff happened, everyone had an emergency plan that could collect dust on the shelf, and our Congresscritters would rather show they could cut “Big Government” rather than fund ongoing REAL efforts for public health preparedness.
Funny how everyone and their cousin seems to be spending weeks laid up in bed every winter now due to some variation of seasonal infectious disease, but it takes ONE CASE of Ebola, as scary as it may be, to actually get peoples attention. We deserve what we do to ourselves.
If I remember correctly, that was even under a Republican President, before it was a party line that small government had to equal ineffective government as in the W years.
Here’s the problem with that. “Taxes should be low, government is bad” is an easy message to stick to. Why? Because it doesn’t require to you actually govern.
When you have to govern, and you try to govern responsibly, there’s not necessarily a ‘single message’ you can use to rally your base. Society is not homogenous, so there is no one over-arching, generation spanning priority that the party can use as its message.
An no, “Government is good and can make a difference in your life” isn’t going to work anymore, thanks to decades of Republicans both saying and proving the opposite, with the help of a complicit profit-driven corporate media. When you have one party intentionally mucking up the works to prove their message, you can’t state the opposite - there are too many examples of where government has failed. Forget the successes, neither the media nor the mob likes to focus on those. It’s failure that sticks in the mind long-term.
It’s easy to claim this is a simple problem to solve in the comment section on TPM. For you to castigate the Democratic Party for failing to do what the Republicans have done is incredibly defeatist and narrow-minded. You’re assuming that somehow the Republican Party has a monopoly on political talent, which is certainly not the case. The two parties have distinctly different levels of difficulty, and unfortunately for us the self-centered, socially destructive path is also the easiest to achieve.
I’m sure you and the rest of the Republican Party would be OK with either a huge tax increase or a huge economic stimulus bill to slow down the debt increase, right?
Just thinning the herd. Only going to be so many spots for maids, butlers, handymen, chauffeurs, and groundskeepers in the GOP’s brave and opulent new world.
No. Not reductions in the rate of growth of the budget while still leaving it to grow, real cuts.
Since 2000, we’ve cut taxes repeatedly, as Republicans have demanded, and as a result, they’re now screaming, “We’re spending too much money!”
We’re not spending too much money; the public demands such things as defense and schools and roads. These are things we must have and these are things that cost money.
The problem is that, thanks to Republicans, we’ve cut revenue to the bone.
Why not simply return taxes to Clinton-era levels, which resulted in unprecedented economic growth?