Political Hippo Circle Jerk - America, farg YEAH!

[Eagles_Legendz]

I think Obama has done plenty wrong.  But yeah, I was talking about Republicans.  Slash taxes while leaving defense expenditures where they are/raising them?  GTFO with talking about balancing the budget with a straight face.

[shorebird]

I agree, one big, big way to cut military spending would be to, *drum roll please*, bring the troops home!! I'm not talking about just in the middle east either. What the hell do we need 60,000 (or more?) troops in Asia for? To keep an eye on the Chinease and  North Koreans?? Gimme' a friggen break! How many billions does it cost to keep all those troops halfway 'round the world. No way you need anywere near that many, imo.

[Eagles_Legendz]

I'm torn on the DMZ in S. Korea since they still want those troops there and I do think they add a degree of stability to the region, but I agree for the most part about many of the bases.

[Munson]

-Who said anything about votes, it was blame, you want to blame Bush for the wars, fine, but as big a blame is Obama sending troops over after promising to bring them home. When is doing anything like that NOT a weakness? I'll tell you when, when it fits Munson's agenda towards fighting for his chosen one Obama, thats when.

-Bla bla farging bla. He's added almost twice as much to the deficit as Bush has in half the time. But if he didn't it would have been a disaster? By whose accounts? All those lucky people who benefited off of the wasted stimulus? The man can do no wrong according to people like you, nothing.

-I believe I already said I was not happy with Obama's decision to stick to Bush's timeline. But I assume somewhere between campaigning for president, and actually becoming the president, the military advisers probably are the ones that convinced him to stay in under the Bush timeline. Had he defied them, folks like you would have been screaming at him for not listening to the generals. It's pretty funny that you think defending him from fact-less dopes like you makes Obama my "chosen one".

NO, NO, NO. If you weren't so busy trying to put words in my mouth you'd know that I've been saying we should've had the troops back home long ago. But go on with your tunnel visioned veiw of everyone who doesn't think like you being a racist republican pig.

-"bla bla farging bla"?? Really?? that is your response? "yeah yeah SS and medicare part D, tax cuts that he didn't enact BLAH BLAH BLAH Obama shoulda fixed that shtein!" Do yourself a favor and look back in time at past economic downturns....the economy goes down the shteinter, less people have jobs to pay taxes, tax revenue goes down, the deficit goes up. That's how it works. Is Obama supposed to defy the laws of economics? But yes, it would have been a disaster if people who had lost their jobs during the downturn didn't have any income to survive on, and yes it would have been a disaster had unemployment  reached the 12-13% figure that many had it projected to hit had there not been "wasted stimulus". Maybe in your eyes it was "wasted stimulus", but tell that to the 2-3 million people who stayed employed in part because of that stimulus. Or to some of the many people that benefited from the 260 Billion or so in tax cuts that were included in the stimulus. Yes shore, that's right, it was not 800 billion dollars worth of spending like I'm sure you've convinced yourself it was.

HA! Well, hate to break this too you, but that 8.2% figure you stand behind so diligently? Try figuring the Real Labor Force Participation Rate into that and see what you get. Guess what, it's right around the 13% you say it'd have been without the stimulus. Not gonna' see that on MSNBC or anywere like that. Yeah, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to grasp the fudging the BLS has been doing every month for years now in order to bring the unemployment rate lower. Part timers, people who have given up looking for work, and so on. You think you have all the figures from what you've read on the internet, but the problem is were you're getting all your info.

Yeah, we're not talking about the U6 number. The U6 number is always higher than the 'official' unemployment number. The official unemployment number would have hit 12-13% during the height of the recession according to projections, instead of the 10% that it ended up hitting.

You're not shedding any new light on me by bringing up the super secret U6 number. If you think the U6 number is high now, imagine what it would have been at had the 'official' number reached 13%.

And yeah, I agree our troops should have been out a long long long time ago. Obama wanted to get them out earlier than Bush had planned to, but ended up going with that time frame after his generals advised him to. While I dislike Obama for doing this, I understand that, between he and the Republican nominee, Obama is the more likely of the two to shrink our military presence in the world. If that was the most important issue for me, I could vote Gary Johnson, but I have a complete disagreement with the way Libertarians think a country of 320 million can be governed.

[shorebird]

Romney has already said that one of the first things he will do is do away with Obama's military cuts. I don't know were he plans on coming up with anything anywere near the 500 billion Obama will cut. It seems so simple to me, just bring 'em home. Whats so farging hard about that? They talk about it all the time. Well stop talking and just farging do it. I can't figure out how Obama's advisor General Dempsey can call for 500 billion in cuts while he sends more troops overseas. Something just doesn't add up.

[Munson]

The military industrial complex is out of control in this country. Anyone who talks about winding it down (Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich) is denounced as an America-hating, wanting to let our 'enemies' crush us, wimp. So then you get stuck with Republicans who pound their chest about how big their military cock is, and Democrats who pay lip service to cutting the military, but who also have giant military cocks.

Speaking of which, the military cuts you keep bringing up were part of a bipartisan agreement between Obama and the House GOP during the debt ceiling debacle if I remember correctly. If the so called Super Committee didn't come up with ways to reduce spending, the automatic cuts kick in, most of which are located in the military budget. Boehner's been trying to find ways to prevent these cuts from happening though last I read.

[shorebird]

It's already happening, especially in the Navy. Preformance to Service guidlines, PTS, has been expanded to include a lot more sailors than it ever has, and as such a lot more sailors aren't being allowed to re-enlist. Publicly, they say it's to ensure keeping the best sailors, but funny it's expanded now with all the cuts looming.

[SD]

It's already happening, especially in the Navy. Preformance to Service guidlines, PTS, has been expanded to include a lot more sailors than it ever has, and as such a lot more sailors aren't being allowed to re-enlist. Publicly, they say it's to ensure keeping the best sailors, but funny it's expanded now with all the cuts looming.

That initiative started when I was in the Navy in 2004. They stopped letting career E-5's stay in for life which is good because it makes Sailors push themselves to get to the next rank rather than staying stagnant.

[ice grillin you]

mcaskill 45%
akin 44%


lol @ MA

[SD]

mcaskill 45%
akin 44%


lol @ MA

I can't find your comment about Dinesh D'Souza but Maher absolutely destroyed him. Maher's been mediocre so far this season but this weeks episode was top 5 all time.

I'm actually less excited to see David Simon next week than I am to see Christine O'donnell who is the batshtein tea party politician who ran for Senate in Delaware and Steve Smith who ran Mccain's campaign.

[ice grillin you]

its schmidt and hes on msnbc almost every night and is a panelist on all their convention coverage if you wanna see more of him

odonnell was on chris matthews this week and i thought she was 1000% better....dont agree with her on a god damn thing but she was actually well spoken...for her anyway

[Tomahawk]

Remember the 15-month timetable President Obama promised Americans in 2008 for Iraq? How did that work out? It didn't.
Remember the promise from Obama that there would be no ground troops in Libya? Well, now there are nearly 30,000 troops in Libya.
Since Obama took office he has increased troops in Australia, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Libya, South Korea, Uganda and others.
Then his message to the troops, 'we are stronger, but the military cuts aren't my fault!' Whaaa fargin' whaaa.

But let's continue to talk about how it's Bush's fault for the wars.

Obama ended up going with the original Bush timetable for withdrawal once he got into office and was advised by the military advisers to do so. I didn't agree with it, but are you saying that this is a weakness? That he should have stuck to his guns despite experts on the matter telling him to do otherwise?

I'll call it a weakness. Who's naive enough to believe the military advisors, who would rather shoot first and ask questions later, have anything other than their self-serving interests in mind? Make a decision on your own, commander-in-chief Hoyda

[Diomedes]

I'm with T-hawk.  I'm sick and tired of the pundit chorus singing the wisdom of taking counsel from war makers.  What the hell do you think they're gonna say, "try peace?"  Ha.  Peace doesn't keep their greatest-of-all-welfare projects running.

[ice grillin you]

that will not happen in our lifetimes so im happy to have someone who gets us out of wars rather than lies to get us in them

even if he was a few months late in doing so

[SD]

http://www.factcheck.org/2012/06/obamas-spending-inferno-or-not/

"Stop blaming everything on Bush". Seems that factcheck.org which is non-partisan agrees that Obama is getting blamed for spending which was due to Bush policies. They do say that Obama did nothing to stop the spending but at the same time this is what he had to walk into. Meanwhile Bush Jr. walked into a much better economic situation.