Wingnuts Say Obama Has Exploded US Debt Which Is, Unfortunately, Wrong

Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis
based on CBO estimates.

The more I listen to elected Republicans, who, thank goodness, just won't stop talking, the more I realize that they're bullshitters. They must know basic facts like the size of US deficits and debt. They must know that the deficit is falling. They must know that the current debt cannot, in any honest economic sense of the word, be blamed on President Obama. But they don't care. They have an impression they want to make, so they don't care what's true and what's not. They just say whatever they have to say in order to convey the impression they want to make, which is, of course, that Democrats are big borrowers and spenders, and they are the party of fiscal responsibility.

Of course, anyone with even a loose grasp of facts knows why this is bullshit. But, apparently, some people still need help with the facts. So, occasionally, I set people straight. It's especially fun to set wingnuts straight, although it gets old when you point out how wrong they are, and they just disappear, only to come back some other day with more bullshit that shows that they just ignored the actual facts.

Today, I see that Bloomberg has a poll that illustrates this break with reality that Tea Party Republicans have suffered, and continue to suffer, because they believe the BS from the people they elected. They allow the impression being made by the bullshitters to take root in their walled off minds, and they pick and choose the information they need to feed that impression until it festers into a boil that sorely needs to be lanced. If only they weren't so afraid of needles.

Two-thirds of regular Republicans believe the federal budget deficit has grown this year and 93 percent of Tea Party Republicans agree. Both are wrong; the budget deficit is projected to fall this year from $1.1 trillion to $642 billion.

That's just this year. Go back a ways, and their delusion gets even stronger. For example, tell them Obama has cut the deficit in half since he took office from GW Bush, and they often become apoplectic, if they don't just leave and avoid the subject. They'll wail about how Obama sent the deficit soaring to such heights that even he could keep it up.

So, the real kicker is when you show them what the money is for. Like any good bullshitter, they'll say I'm a weak, pathetic libtard for blaming Bush. When the truth is, for centuries in this country, those described as weak and pathetic were the ones who knowingly chose to believe fantasy over reality. I'm looking at you, Confederate States of America.

The chart at the top of this post lists the sources of the current deficits that are adding to our debt. It is a stark reminder of the fact that any Republican who claims they are the party of limited government is bullshitting you and will probably ask for a campaign contribution right after doing so. The entire GOP has become a country club of con artists, and their base is the mark.

Source: ZFacts

The chart at the right is the one that should be shoved in the face of any bullshitting wingnut who dares to suggest that Republicans are the party of fiscal responsibility. And note that anyone capable of putting chart A and chart B together will realize that the debt spike under Obama is really legacy spending from that codpiece wearing hero of the Mission Accomplished wingnuts, GW Bush, from his wars (the Iraq war will eventually cost over $6 trillion), his tax cuts (which we were told would create millions of jobs and resulted in the worst job creation record on record), TARP (started by Bush and finished by Obama, but only necessary because of Bush), recovery measures from the Little Bush Depression (like the stimulus, which was one-third tax cuts, something Republicans refuse to believe), and the reduced revenues due to the Little Bush Depression.

One last fact to keep in mind on this last graph: When calculating debt as a percent of GDP, it's important to remember that GW Bush's final GDP, in 4Q2008, was negative 9%. When GDP spikes down like that, and emergency spending goes up (job losses were at 800,000 per month when Obama took office and  in the three months before the stimulus passed, the economy cut loose 2.2m workers), the debt as a percent of GDP will, of course, go up. To blame that on Obama is the ultimate in bullshit.

"Private fixed investment as a percentage of potential GDP.
When it gets back to historical norms, the free lunch
on infrastructure investment will be over."
Neil Irwin, Washington Post

What this whole argument misses is that cutting the deficit right now is the worst thing to do. We should be be doing what the Congressional Progressive Caucus's People's Budget would do: borrow more at currently low interest rates, buy cheap materials, and put unemployed people back to work fixing our crumbling infrastructure, which would more than pay for itself. This won't happen, of course, as long as the GOP controls the House. But if they keep spewing their bullshit, and enough people learn the truth, maybe we can extend the half life of their polling plunge, take advantage of the hidden weakness of gerrymandering, and then keep the bullshitters talking long enough to replace them with some people who want to put this country back to work.

The Confederate Party is Busy Rewriting History

"Our new government is founded upon … the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition."— Alexander Stephens, "vice president" of the Confederacy, March 21, 1861

Seems the majority of people "remembering" the Civil War for its 150th anniversary are really rewriting history. 

The South would change its view as well. It would begin to spin grand, romantic fables of a "Lost Cause" that had been fought for 'state's rights" or constitutional principle, or any other reason it could invent, so long as it was not slavery. Jefferson Davis, who before the war had flatly declared "the labor of African slaves" the cause of the rebellion, would write after the war that slavery had nothing to do with it.

Like Davis before them, the current Confederates want people to think that the Civil War was about state's rights. Well, yeah. State's rights to keep slavery legal, and to expand slavery into the territories (see Bleeding Kansas). They want you to think the south fought a valiant effort to restrain an out-of-control federal government, with, of course, parallels to today's socialist Muslim Kenyan's government.


What a crock of shit.


These people who want you to think the Civil War was about states rights are, quite simply, racists. To forget that slavery was the cause of the civil war is to paper over this country's racist past. Why would anyone want to do that? To perpetuate the practice of racism. Ask any Teabagger/Republican/Confederate party member of today why they want to gut government spending on social programs, they'll tell you we're broke, and that welfare is for parasites--mainly lazy minorities. 


There will be no mention of corporate welfare. No mention that Michelle Bachman's family farm got over a quarter million in farm subsidies in between 19995 and 2006. No mention of George Bush's idiotic war in Iraq. No mention of Bush's unfunded Medicare prescription drug benefit (corporate welfare to big pharma). Complete ignorance that the TARP bailout was Bush's. If you do manage to corner them on GW's drunken-chicken-hawk-spending ways, they'll be happy to tell you that they didn't approve of Bush's spending either.


Liars.


It's what they do. During the Bush administration, those same people would have told you that Bush's tax cuts for the rich were going to spur the economy to new Galtian heights. We all saw how that worked out. Some of us actually remember the Clinton Surplus that Bush stole from our children in typical reverse-Robin-Hood fashion.


It's one thing to listen to them rewrite the history of Bush. It's another thing to listen to them claim that the Civil War was not about slavery.  Those fighting for the south were racist traitors (and the modern Confederates still want to aid and abet the theft of labor). Those fighting for the north were heroes. And we should never forget, or allow others to obfuscate, why.

Fun with Mental Health, Guns, and Quotes from the Right

Hearing the endless loop of whining from Republicans that their violent rhetoric had nothing to do with the shooting yesterday in Arizona has made me want to review some of the rhetoric for the record. Never mind Palin's gun sight map, which they argue wasn't really gunsights, just cross-hairs.

''I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. ... No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out.'' —Glenn Beck

"I hope that's not where we're going, but you know if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I'll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out." —Sharon Angle

''Our nation was founded on violence. The option is on the table. I don't think that we should ever remove anything from the table as it relates to our liberties and our freedoms.''—Tea Party Texas GOP congressional candidate Stephen Broden

I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us 'having a revolution every now and then is a good thing,' and the people -- we the people -- are going to have to fight back hard if we're not going to lose our country." —Michele Backmann

"Don’t retreat. Instead — reload!" —Sarah Palin

Who knows how much these words had to do with the shooting, if any. But they're awfully close to yelling fire in a crowded theater. I don't care who the shooter was or what he thought, talk like this is dangerous and stupid. Anyone who wants to defend speech like that now is sick. It's indefensible.

Of course, combine Arizona's lax gun laws and cuts to mental health services and you get a real fun place to live:

Arizona has been considered a progressive state because it provides the vast majority of mental health services through cost-effective outpatient community programs. By slashing these programs, experts say the state will force more people to use emergency rooms or end up in the criminal justice system, which will cost the state more.

So, who knows what this particular shooter's mental state was. Who knows if he should have had a gun or not. Who knows if he watched Glen Beck. But you put all this together and it sounds pretty dangerous. Something is/was bound to go wrong.

Right Wingers are Violence Prone

For a personal take on the recent violence and terroristic threatening coming from the "conservatives" in this country lately, head over to my R rated post at the Bush Treason Blog. If you didn't care for Joe Biden's F-bomb, you'll want to move on. Nothing to see here.

If you thought it was about time someone got real on a National Level and just said what most of us were thinking, then head on over and read the post about how I put up with assaults on a regular basis because of the bumper stickers you see here.

How Much to Mail a Letter to the States?

I actually heard an overly made-up, clashily-dressed middle-aged woman say that in a post office line in Hawaii once. Nobody laughed because they were sick of that kind of thing. In fact, there were more than a few heel-of-the-palm-to-the-forehead reactions. And yet it goes on.

Contrary to the opinion of 6% of Tea Baggers, Hawaii is a US State (4% are unsure). But enough about them. Really. Way enough. I have something more important to talk about. But then, just about anything is more important than them.

Buy Gourmet Organic American Coffee!

Not only can you buy domestic coffee in the US, but it is, as Mark Twain put it, the best damn coffee in the world. OK, Twain didn't put it that way. Here's what he actually said:

The ride through the district of Kona to Kealakekua Bay took us through the famous coffee and orange section. I think the Kona coffee has a richer flavor than any other, be it grown where it may and call it by what name you please.

Now click yourself over to do your duty as a patriotic citizen of the United States and buy some organic Kona coffee beans. It's a little more expensive than Folgers, but you'll drink less and it's better for you, the people growing the coffee, and the planet.

I'm sure those 10% of teabaggers who doubt Hawaii's statehood don't have a clue, but they might be onto something... Seems that back when the US made Hawaii a territory, there was some doubt as to the legitimacy of the transfer of authority (yes I said that South Parky). The Hawaiian Independence Action Alliance protested the 50th anniversary of Hawaiian statehood last year. According to the Hawaii Kingdom Independence Blog, Hawaii is not a state because the prolonged occupation of Hawaii, going back to before the islands were a territory, was and is illegal.

So, I suppose if the tea baggers wanted to smarten up their argument a little, they could join forces with some of the ardent leftists, who actually have a decent argument, if you ignore Stare decisis, as the current court is apt to do. Good luck with that. Even if you managed to get a court to agree that the occupation was illegal, therefore the becoming of a territory was illegal, therefore the statehood is illegal, therefore Obama was born in the Kingdom of Hawaii not the state, you'd still have a hell of a time getting him out of the White House, what with him being such a fascist and all.

For the rest of us, who enjoy a good lefty argument (like the illegal occupation of Hawaii voiding the US's claims to the islands) for the sake of argument, but with no real expectation that anything will ever come of it, I suggest you check out my big site full of Hawaii Stuff, where you can decide which of the illegally occupied islands to visit. I suggest you start with a few days at this Kauai beach house, followed by at least a week in an organic Maui bed and breakfast, and then finish off with some time in an affordable Kona vacation rental on the Big Island, where the best damn coffee in the world is grown.

And don't forget the Hawaiian post cards!