I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
Just curious: when Hurricane Isabel, currently a Category 5, which is the same strength as Hurricane Andrew was in 1992 when it wiped out South Florida, hits the East Coast - current forecasts point to landfall late next week in North Carolina - where will the billions of dollars come from to help pay for the clean-up and repair?
You know, that picture looks like something drowning in a bathtub.
Nothing another tax cut and a couple more wars can't solve.
Bobby,
And, when it hits, where are we going to get the Guardists to help with the cleanup?
Now, after a long, dismal August in which Le Monde reports as many as 12,000 Frenchmen died in a heat wave the size of Tucson because of a confluence of government mismanagement of health services, a deep love of the Kyoto Treaty, and a sweaty disdain for Yankee-style air conditioning — along with a propensity for every adult in France (including, apparently, most doctors) to pile into a Peugeot or Airbus and run away from responsibility for a month — we have given Chirac and his Bill Maher-like henchman, Dominique de Villepin, a chance to preen the moral feathers of France once more.
All it took was America's most recent bizarre, grotesque return to the U.N. When Bush sent Powell back to the Security Council for some postwar assistance, it was Chirac and Villepin who got the benefit of a pleasant distraction from their real problems, including all those unclaimed bodies in the morgues of Paris. Having mastered the rhetoric of pomposity by denouncing America's "logic of war" before the Iraq invasion, Villepin, according to Le Figaro, expressed his sorrow at America's "logic of occupation," while advancing France's love for "the logic of sovereignty," as reported by Liberation.
What about the logic of freon? If the U.S. lost 15,000 American soldiers in Baghdad in a month, I suspect there would have been a different set of headlines yesterday in Paris.
So, Anon, do you just hover around your computer, monitoring Eschaton so you can post some off-topic wingnut troll on every new post?
That is what I call weird, creepy stalker behavior.
grytpype -- thanks for keeping me up on your TOS, dickwipe.
waaaaaay smarter monkeys, please.
Josh Marshall had one rather interesting final sentence today...
After everything that has transpired over the last two years we are back in a political situation very similar to that of September 10th, 2001.
-- Josh Marshall
Time for son to follow dad's footsteps and start stumbling in a big way.
Anonymous:
Just so that you don't sound like an idiot, you should read up on what happens here when we get a heat wave. People die too. By the hundreds. France is very densely populated, and got hit by a major catastrophe. When we had a major catastrophe here (9/11), the french were nearly unanimous in their support. People like you are the reason I can not be as proud to be an American as I would prefer.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
clark just lost my vote, fuckface.
...And?
I mean, all those deficits are providing more jobs, services, and security to the American people, so what's your point?
Everything's fine. Just be like Rod Paige, and don't believe anything unless President Bush says it.
Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is indeed over.
Please. I know thinks are weird down in the deep south, but they still don't let 11 year olds vote.
clark just lost my vote, fuckface.--
Yes, because I'm sure you were going to vote for him, idiot.
Fuck you, Jesse, you barely literate paralegal.
rccp72: I see Clark attracts all the assholes How-Weird Dean has managed to miss.
Please pay attention to me, mommy's on a bender again and my self-esteem is lower than Bush's approval ratings.
Go mow your mom's lawn, paralegal boy.
Ok boys and girls, let's play nice. and Talk Serious.
The deficits, the jobless recovery, Iraq quaqmire. Check out the CNN USA Today Poll whichis traditionally 5 - 7 points higher than the mean of others. None of the others have been in the field yet. They go in Monday-Wednesday. By next Thursday,you will consistently see Bush under 50, some in the 4-3-45 range. THEN the talk about DADDY begins in earnest. Let's watch...Your sensible thoughts please?3
Your sensible thoughts please?
I'm afraid I don't have any. My paranoid, scary thought is 'I guess this means we're about due for another terrorist attack.'
But thanks, daver9, for your voice of reason.
i'm lost as to what Clark has to do w/ this?
I don't understand why liberals think the government should be making a profit on its citizens.
As opposed to the people that run the gov, Homer?
Or are you anony?
I don't understand why liberals think the government should be making a profit on its citizens.
You probably don't understand because liberals *don't* think that. That surplus was for, what, paying down the national debt and social security, right?
No! Let's just ignore the topic and talk to Anon. It's what he wants us to do, and he won't be happy at all until someone pays attention to him.
Won't you, Anon? I'll bet you're really smart, and big, and strong, and really good looking.
Wow, you really are the greatest, Anon. I just love it how you stick it to those horrible misanthropic liberals. You're the best! Why, arguing with you is pointless, you've got such a mastery of the facts and such strong moral fiber, it's just pathetic how anyone even thinks they could stand up to your withering logical assaults.
You == my hero.
Clark has nothing to do with this. I use a Clark site as my URL as a show of support for his campaign. This offended Anonymous.
Man it must gall conservatives to no end that Clinton balanced the bugdet, had a huge surplus, and was in pretty much every respect more fiscally responsible than their village idiot has turned out to be.
How they can run as the party of "fiscal responsibility" is beyond me. That would be like saying that since you can rack up a huge credit card debt with no idea of how you'll pay it off, you qualify for an extra big mortgage!
Hey! Anon! A village in Texas wants their idiot back!
"a deep love of the Kyoto Treaty"
Which is designed to at least attempt to slow DOWN Global Warming... how is this failure on the French part? The Kyoto treaty is about avoiding heat deaths, amongst other things.
Why, by that logic of yours, America's War On Terrorism means the US is responsible for any deaths caused by the terrorists they are fighting against too. Those 2 soliders killed in Iraq yesterday? America's fault, obviously. And so on... What are you, some sort of Communist?
Now, please feel free to call me a paralegal too. Even though you it of course doesn't actually have any relevance to reality, or indeed even any insulting content;
"par·a·le·gal
(click to hear the word) (pr-lgl)
adj.
Of, relating to, or being a person with specialized training who assists an attorney. "
Did a paralegal run off with your Girlfriend or something, Anonymous? I know, I know... they think they are so special, with their huge wage packets and intellectually stimulating talk... there, there dear!
Just curious: when Hurricane Isabel, currently a Category 5, which is the same strength as Hurricane Andrew was in 1992 when it wiped out South Florida, hits the East Coast - current forecasts point to landfall late next week in North Carolina - where will the billions of dollars come from to help pay for the clean-up and repair?
Yurup to the rescue!
Really. Did a good job the last few times when the earthquakes hit Turkey.
To Anonymous the troll:
EAT SHIT AND DIE, NAZI ASSWIPE.
I think we should use the deficit as a standard riposte to any pro-war visitors. "So, troll, how are we going to pay for our military adventures? Or don't you think it's necessary to pay our bills?"
Alternate responses include whether balancing the budget is a good idea or whether we ought to get rid of Social Security and Medicare.
This ought to put any good little Republican in a bind.
anon should not be responded to.
thelrd in TEXAS
Catallexy,
Great line! I guess the others were to busy to notice.
What a pretty little graphic.
I wonder how much it would cost to put on billboards where people stuck in traffic can study it in great detail.
Because the terrorists have directed a major horrorcane to attack the free people of the east coast, I am issuing an executive order immediatly closing all national weather stations so the free people of Merka will never more be frightened by adverse weather news.
I've been seeing this 'starve the government down so we can drown it in the bathtub' going around for a couple of days, but I'm wondering--what exactly do the Repubs have in mind?
Do they really grasp the concept of what it means to be without a federal government? Are we just going to do away with medicaid and social security, and other social programs, or are they planning on going further? No more highway construction? Hospitals, libraries, post offices? Are we going to drown the military as well?
By the time Dubya is done, we'll be no better off than a third-world country.
There are disasters and then there are disasters. One by nature one by man.
Why do laugh at the French for their unfortunate deaths?
Could they have stopped the sun from shining?
Did you also laugh when at the deaths of the Turks 4 years ago in the earthquake?
Could they have stopped the earth from shaking?
Do you feel a rush of euphoria when you hear people losing their family and homes to tornadoes during the summer months?
Could they have stopped the wind from blowing?
Iraq on the other hand is a man made disaster, pure and simple.
Why is there no running water? Because the pipes were bombed.
Why is there no electricity?
Because the power plant was bombed.
Why are so many sick and so many homeless?
That the magnitude of man-made disasters equals some of nature's shows the power of man. That man should create his own disasters when already plagued by nature shows his foolishness.
As for Homer, when you said: "I don't understand why liberals think the government should be making a profit on its citizens."
I answer: "I don't understand why conservatives think the government should be incurring a debt on its citizens' children."
Clintons administration of prosperity throughout the nation can only be explained by Herbert Hoovers economic policies finally taking hold.Todays fiscal debacle is the fault of that commie on wheels:FDR.....See how simple life is when a fungus like the right wing grows on the body politic.
What's remarkable is that the neoconservatives see these same numbers, too -- a heck of a lot more than we do. So there's only two possibilities, here:
1) They know full well what they're doing, and don't care.
2) They don't know, and they don't care.
Again, it seems to boil down to the same question as always; whether you believe they are Evil, or just Stupid. But it is increasingly difficult to believe they are Stupid, so I'm voting for Evil.
They know about the deficits. They know their tax policies are the largest reason for them. They don't care. They want to stay in power, and telling people we can spend more and more money and pay less and less taxes is the best way to do that. And to hell with the country, your children, their children, and everybody else.
Hey! Anon! A village in Texas wants their idiot back!
And in a year and a half, let's hope they'll get him.
I've never had a girlfriend, you pathetic excuse for various four-letter words that I can barely spell, so no four-lettering paralegal ran off with him.
Her.
Whatever.
Ha ha on you with bells on it. You wait until I'm ten, then I'll show you.
I have no idea what that was about.
Have any of you noticed that the projected comulative growth is exponential, but the projected cumulative deficit is logarithmic?
Is the Budget Office trying to be deceptive or is there an actual reason for this phenomenon?
The growth projected in Jan. 01 looks roughly linear to me.
The deficit projections flatten out because the economy is expected to revive and the tax cuts are projected to expire.
Nameless: Yep, they assume the growth will be exponential. So when the budget went well they planned an exponential net income, but when it goes worse they expect exponential growth will mean the worsening of the deficit will diminish with time.
Of course that's stupid because growth can't be exponential on the long-term; you end up with a bubble and a crash quickly (think the late 90s).
Heatwave: Funny, I remember Chicago ended up with hundreds of deads with a similar heatwave. And other European countries suffered as well with thousands more deads, like Italy and Germany - UK too, I assume, but I haven't seen a figure.
can you say FUZZY MATH?
Heck, we got fucking shag carpet math going on here.
God, those heatwave asses just won't go away. Listen to what they're bitching about:
France sucks because their government failed to plan for a highly unlikely weather event.
France should have spent government resources to plan for said unlikely weather event. Because they didn't, they suck and are heartless swine.
Imagine their speckle-flecked outrage if, say, Clinton had proposed spending millions of dollars for Alaskan heat-wave safety preparedness. They would all die of apoplexy.
But, because the French didn't do what they would not tolerate in their own goverment, the French are all idiots and deserve to die.
The mind reels.
In 2001 Bush out out a Citizens Guide to understanding the budget. There is a whole section in it on how deficits are a Very Bad Thing. I can't figure out how to put a URL onto this comment thingy here. But read it and weep. And then use it against these incompetent pigs.
Yeah, the French weren't properly prepared for weather. By comparison I'm sure Shrubbie has a plan for Hurricane Isobel.
Do the math. The difference between the two projections (5.6 trillion surplus to 2.3 trillion deficit) is $7.9 trillion. Lets see, million, billion, trillion .... hmmmm....
Which is roughly $150,000 per US household. Or, about $30,000 per person in the US.
That is scary and irresponsible.
Someone explain to me, if you have a National debt, how can you have a Surplus at the same time?
Fuzzy math at it's best.
Anonymous, I hope that was an attempt at a joke.
Evidently there are some at the CBO who are not committed to defeating terrorism.
Anon, you've got to apply a little critcal thinking to put the French deaths in perspective.
Heat deaths affect the elderly diproportionately.
French life expectency is 19th in the world. (US is 42nd)
About 18% of the French population is composed of those over the age of 65.
Now the French may have 'mismanaged' their health care services but it seems on a whole it provides them a longer life then the US.
about heat deaths... do they even get counted in the US?
graphic via the New York Times
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