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NeilMacCallister 08/11/2011 12:45 AM Report
Wow! ..a whole week, ..and nobody chose to press my eyelids closed?
Oh well, ..I made about as much sense "brain dead" as did my adversary.
(..Let's just call it a wash???)
NeilMacCallister 08/02/2011 03:16 AM Report
What??? ..the Knitesa hand=picked Talent!!!
NeilMacCallister 08/02/2011 03:10 AM Report
Dear Rhoda,
Timothy Leary died on LSD, many years ago.
..for you health, ..please remember this!!!!
Okay???
The money beingh sp0ent is sf
Rodha 08/01/2011 07:02 PM Report
CHARLIE THE SECRET BEHIND (( PHILOSOPHY OF PREDICTION ))
The concept of prediction is one of the greatest accesses that the man kind has perhaps it has been something that our ancestors had for their own protection when we where steel hunted rather than becoming the hunter by the pass of the time,
and during the ages when we have become more and more developed we have been less dependent on this gift that our ancestors has.
Or it has nothing to do whit the earlier mentioned theory maybe the man kind needs only to use different methods in order to experience this philosophy of prediction.
I shall explain two examples! which one is wrong and the other one is correct about the senses and the philosophy of prediction.
One is theory of prediction and the other one is the reasons behind the experience about the philosophy of prediction.
The first one out of two is when the individual believe that the future will happened according to his own theory and his own wish full thinking would it be for the good or for the bad even thou when the person wants to predict the future they wish to see the future in terms of something good that will happen instead of a bad and dark event, as long as their wish full thinking is not for their foes but for themselves.
This kind of theory of prediction will sometimes happened but most of the time not.
But even when this kind of persons have correct about their prediction doesn’t make them into persons who can understand the concept of prediction their correctness just make this kind of persons into individual that hopes or think that the future will happened according to his own theory and wishful thinking because of the professional understanding that hi/she have about the situation that made it possible for them to predict the future.
The second example in contraction out of the former previous mentioned is the correct one where in this case the individual has felt pain within his soul and this pain has been transformed into a great suffering.
The suffering is only one element that will make the possible for the person who wish is to understand the philosophy of prediction the other segment that will make it possible for the person who wish is to experience the philosophy of prediction is prayer and meditation.
The sooner the person begin to pray the greater chance will the person have too experience the philosophy of prediction because the youth will expand his senses as best during the ear-lie age of his life and the mediation and prayer must continue during his entire life until the moment that the philosophy of prediction happens but it doesn’t mean that the prediction itself happens when the person is praying.
How can we than make some distinction between who have experience the correct understanding about the philosophy of prediction and who is the representative of the theory of prediction if both of them have predict the future in its correct form.
The person who have experienced the theory of prediction has already been explained namely the professional understanding that hi/she have about the situation that made it possible for them to predict the future.
And now the secret behind those person who have experienced and can experience prediction in its correct form namely the philosophy of prediction.
As we have already mentioned the pain and suffering as well as the prayer and meditation is the training behind the result of the philosophy of prediction but we have not explained in witch way does we know when the person has experience it in its truly form.
The pain/suffering will not live the person for years and during this year’s the pain/suffering will occupy more and more of his soul as well as his taught and when the right (time/moment) has arrived the person will fell the future within his heart as a bomb that will explode and spread signals into all the direction of his soul where his brain has been the first element of the process that has send-ed signals to his heart and the brain is the last destination that will receive the information from the signals of the heart about the future to interpret the hole situation.
This process of philosophy of prediction will be active 3-4 seconds from the time when correct moment has a cured that has activate the senses namely
1 the brain send signal into the heart (0.0001 s)
2 the explosion that happened and the signals from the heart that will be send out to all the direction of the soul (2.5 s)
3 The last destination that will receive the signals is the brain for interpret about the situation and the signals is none other than the process of prediction (0.5 s).
Hence it is important to understand that the philosophy of prediction
is like all other thinks in life their will be those persons who will become professional and others amateur even thou they have the same environment.
After-all the world has experience only one Diego Maradona only one Albert Einstein and only one Michael Jordan.
JohnGelles 07/31/2011 12:57 AM Report
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11819#comment_81764
Above is my major entry at the Nurse page.
JohnGelles 07/31/2011 12:27 AM Report
I want to comment on conversation with Sir Paul Nurse, Nobel laureate and other high honors. If I cannot I will return here.
JohnGelles 07/31/2011 12:20 AM Report
1. I agree that there should be no taxation of wages, incomes, gains, profits, etc. CAPICHE? -- meaning Get it?
2. I agree private sector producers who own their own businesses ought to get government cost plus contracts for lots of necessary supply for us of individuals, families and nations, too.
3. I agree with free markets where they work in the public interest.
4.I agree no one, gov't or private owners, ought to be encouraged or allowed to "force" their crap on me or you.
5. I agree private employers ought to want you to work for them -- and vice versa. Where you do not like your employer or your job, you should be able to change -- to become self-employed in most or many cases.
6. Your sentence: "If the government is unhappy with you, ..they will take your wages, your house, your children, your life" -- is not applicable to any America experience or evidence. You should "take it back" -- it makes you sound false and off the mark.
7. You are ignorant of freedom IF you think it can exist with the FOUR FREEDOMS we won in WW II: FREEDOM FROM WANT is what it is. Without it, freedoms of speech, religion, and from fear, is not ENOUGH!
8. Four years ago we had Bush. Obama is with us only from January 2009 until January 2010 and until January 2011 and until August 2011 (today). That is 2 years and 7 months -- not 4 years. I agree the nation is in bad shape -- better than it might have been, but bad nonetheless.
9. So I will vote for whom I think will promote growth and full employment budgeting. With high unemployment budgeting (like we have now) there is not enough freedom, not enough jobs, not enough progress, not enough fairness and honesty and minimization of corruption, crime and stupidity.
====================
What about YOU -- Neil. Do you want full employment and full freedom --or NOT ????
NeilMacCallister 07/30/2011 02:51 PM Report
Your "big-government" Socialists are society's takers, John. Private industry capitalists are the givers.
The government Socialists force their products upon you, and then tax your wages to collect their pay.
Private enterprise capitalists have to offer you a product that YOU choose, at the price YOU agree to pay.
***
If a private employer is unhappy with you, ..you will not be asked back to work tomorrow.
If the government is unhappy with you, ..they will take your wages, your house, your children, your life.
***
Which system better advances that "freedom" of which you say I am ignorant, John??
The worst brutalities ever suffered, were savageries by governments upon their people.
Are you really better off today than you were 4 years ago, John?
We'll vote again in a year and a half. Have the courage to try FREEDOM this time!
JohnGelles 07/30/2011 04:37 AM Report
Neil ~
Interestingly, you took my oblique way of sending you to Hades as a reaction to your comment/thought on the President. I had not even given it a second thought. It was your "Up yours, rob, ..." opening line to Rob that got my goat.
Your metaphoric visit to a political-rape friendly jail where Rob might meet the President did not even register with me when I read your words.
I am very disappointed with the President's failure to create the jobs he might have if he were as good at telling Congress off as he is at offing pirates and bin Laden's who deserved the ends he indirectly gave them with my thanks.
It is true I prefer Obama to all but Huntsman among what may be our choices. I believe Huntsman might be more aggressive in tongue lashing Congress until they pass a full employment budget that serves to seed great programs for needed economic growth -- as well as guaranteeing prosperity for all of us, not just crooks and "banksters". (However, I would want to hear their promises, before I finalize my vote in 2012.)
As for the last par. of your last message ("You must live in Massachusetts, ... where you sell your very SOUL for ... power over the masses!!!")
..... I live near the ocean in Ventura California where you buy at farmers markets and feed you soul with clean appreciation for the blessings of liberty, good neighbors and a perfect climate. I retired here and began to teach at the community college. Like Massachusetts, California has spawned the information technology revolution that beckons us all to leave the Ship of Fools and guide the ship of state toward the truth and good life that freedom from ignorance makes possible.
Neil, you are hanging out with an ignorant crowd who have no understanding of the freedom from want and tyranny Americans are fighting and have fought for since 1776 when Massachusetts demanded we become an independent nation. I believe you would have been a Tory then -- as you are a Tory now. Liberty and justice for all cannot exist if you're broke and of work and your neighbors reject the Golden Rule because they see RED when they're called to account for their greed and love of self above all else.
NeilMacCallister 07/30/2011 03:20 AM Report
Hah! .."Ship of Fools"!!!
..As we descend further into that Circle of Hell populated by liars, cheaters and thieves!
***
John, ..You say I am "going to Hell" for speaking out against the abuses of Barack Obama and all the other "fatcats" on the golf-swilling public payroll..
As if Barack Obama's finger-tip gestures are the very words of God! ..and my speaking against Barack is heresy, ..a SIN against the almighty!!
You must live in Massachusetts, alongside that "Lie-ing of the Senate" Democrat, ..and where you sell your very SOUL for Democrat power over the masses!!!
***
You say "Obama can't be a Socialist" because "..there are no socialists anymore, ..we don't see them anymore, ..that word is obsolete".
You remind me of those "initiates" in the book 1984, ..who took "pride" in the removal of words from our language:
"Someday, we won't have anything at all to say!", they rejoiced, "Oh, what joy that will be!"
***
I know who you are going to vote for John, ...and you know my vote as well,
..I will vote for FREEDOM !!!
JohnGelles 07/28/2011 11:44 PM Report
Like higher interest FOR those who want it and lower interest for those who pay it?
JohnGelles 07/28/2011 11:42 PM Report
Tonight all Americans are put to sleep with only two choices on the minds of pundits and most writers. Chose austerity and stop spending. Or chose growth and tax to spend. The third choice is to chose growth and borrow (from non-banks or from central banking systems).
Under the third choice we can create growth with or without debt.
Our major problem is that we want to use debt to grow but are reluctant to write if off to keep on growing.
The solution is to avoid debt ahead of time via central banking -- or later with haircuts, reorganization etc., -- but never to stop growing until all needs are met.
If and when all needs are met, we will have the good fortune to work such impossible problems as pleasing all the people all the time. Starting with Neil M. and REMant. I forget -- do those two agree with each other on anything at all? Like higher interest or those who want it and lower interest for those who pay it?
JohnGelles 07/28/2011 11:23 PM Report
Rob ~
You are completely right -- economically -- and Neil will go to Hell for his thoughtless message.
The word "socialism" is no longer useful. Because democratic socialism has overtaken much of Europe and Asia -- mixed with crony and managed capitalism -- labels are not as useful as full descriptions of modern national systems.
We must make clear how well protected human rights are in any place we praise. And we must describe their safety net, environmental law, military tradition and current strength, and their attractiveness to decent people who have traveled enough to make a fair assessment of their culture, hospitality, contributions to civilization, etc.
Governments, apart from ordinary people, are in trouble in many places on account of global economic uncertainties. But, as Rob has said, technology is changing everything everywhere faster and faster every day and year.
America is not at the moment on top of these changes. Maybe no nation is. Markets have been necessary to establish prices at home and in foreign trade. The Info Tech revolution will allow planned and managed production, consumption, trade, etc., to have better pricing systems than we have ever known.
Neil may believe we have reached the end of economic development. If so he is mistaken. His lack of couth is evidence of his uncouth disease which we hope will go into remission pronto.
As Rob points out, unemployment is disrupting the current period of post Cold War development to a nasty degree. Economic distress in the middle class in every country that has one is intolerable. Rob and I will remove it ASAP and invite you all to move to where we rule -- without gates to separate us from the desperate poor or armed guards and full prisons wherever you look because we are too stupid to make room for the golden rule and rational development of the engineering sciences and humanitarian arts.
NeilMacCallister 07/28/2011 09:30 PM Report
Up yours, rob, ...
You like the rape of government????
Go to prison, ..there sure is enough there!
Or vote for a SOCIALIST like that freedom hating individual Barack Obama, ..he is only TOO HAPPY to give it to you as well!
robdverity 07/28/2011 02:32 PM Report
John and Neil - Put this conjecture in your (capitalism vs socialism) pipes and smoke it.
Is it possible our system is out of sync with our technology? If technology (robotics etc) continues to replace workers, retraining can only solve a fraction displaced. Ultimately a different system of distribution of assets (wealth?) will be needed. The masses can't buy what the robots make without it.
It seems that ultimately a form of (gasp, choke) socialism will have to be initiated proportionately with technology. Probably with a lag that causes social disruptions caused by the unemployment. Making people feel useful may develop into a national dilemma.
JohnGelles 07/28/2011 01:00 AM Report
REMant ~
We ought to list there we agree and where we disagree. But I do not think we will. We probably could not -- even if we tried.
JohnGelles 07/28/2011 12:55 AM Report
Neill ~
1. I think we agree on ending all direct taxes: they are counter-productive, unnecessary, the cause of people hating their own government, and they invade our privacy. If we do share this disapproval of taxes, let us build on it.
2. We also agree that the jobs deficit requires our attention to fix it ASAP.
3. That is enough for us to be partners -- to end direct taxes and tax returns that invade our privacy and disturb our peace of mind.
I doubt that we have any real disagreement over aims and purposes of government, language, law, taxes, work and belief.
NeilMacCallister 07/27/2011 07:50 PM Report
Hello John,
I believe my arithmetic is fine. Borrowing and spending (.."easy money") creates the bubbles that precede depressions. Then TARPS come along to bail-out the friends of the tax-collecting government.
***
I never want to work for the government!
The government charges the customer $100 for the work I do, ..puts $70 in its own silk-coat pocket, and hands me $30 while walking away.
If the customer could have kept that skimmed-off-the-top $70, ..there WOULD have been enough money remaining to hire me back tomorrow too, ..and the next!!!
When the government takes the money, ..they take the jobs!!!
It's as simple as that!
***
Capitalism is not something "we developed", ..it is the law of nature.
If you want something I have, ..you must give me an equal value of my choice.
Nothing else is simpler, ..nothing else is more fair.
When our government hoards our capital, ..my customers have no money, ..and I have no job!!!
Our government is a DRAG on our economy, ..it is DEADWEIGHT!!!
I want freedom from government! ..I want free-trade!!!
I want my job back!!!!
JohnGelles 07/27/2011 06:05 PM Report
Neill ~
Your heart may be in the right place -- but your arithmetic ???
We have more than 300 million people. If we move the minimum income up from say, 15,000 a year to 30,000,and the median family income from say $50,000 to $75,000, the total investment required to re-industrialize and fix our our law, governance and economic systems will be many trillions of dollars.
The capitalist system we have developed cannot raise such sums from existing capital -- government must seed the system with some money and lots of guarantees.
What we have done so far prevented another great depression -- so far. What we must spend now is really big time. We must spend enough to employ every willing worker and pay the highest possible wages. This requires wage inflation everywhere producers can compete with American workers. This takes more money everywhere -- created by all our partners or by ourselves if necessary. Once we create we will have to lend it to create local markets to buy what our workers buy and not impoverish our middle class until they can buy as little as they are destined to if we are too timid or ignorant of Keynesian truths.
I'll end here. But I will be glad to continue in this vein until all of you understand than money is no more than the price of what we produce. If we want more money we must produce more and better things for human beings to produce and consume to banish poverty and unemployment forever.
Why full employment? Because we are no long marginal farmers? Without work in our productive years we lose our sense of who we are and what we do. None of us can be forced to be nothing and own nothing. For if one of us can be forced by our societal ignorance to be nothing, any and all of us can be forced to join that victim until war consumes us all and leaves the planet on fire or frozen to death.
NeilMacCallister 07/27/2011 03:07 PM Report
John? ..you swerve so radically on this intonation highway!
You say you are now willing to throw Obama under-the-bus, ..but ONLY if we can find someone else who is willing to waste even MORE money than he?????
Wow!!! ..you mean President Obama's "historic" elevation of United States debt is not even NOW big enough for you????
You want to pile on 5,000 more calories of pure un-rendered FAT????
***
These "stimulus spendings" are nothing more than selfish amphetamine abuses by our government!
"Quantitative Easings" are the same kind of raging-ego steroid injections that brought us baseball pitchers throwing 106 mph fastballs at batters heads, ..and then the chomping-and-spitting batters charging the mounds with arteries bulging and their $8,000 dollar baseball bats wildly swinging!
***
Good Golly I hope our nation someday heals.
JohnGelles 07/27/2011 01:47 PM Report
tabs ~
I think you paint a correct big picture of where we are.
However, Obama is both lucky and politically competent. He wants to be re-elected and he wants us, you and me, to do the leadership job.
I hope he gets away with it IF the alternative is sick Republican determination to lower wages at the cost of our freedom and median standard of living.
Obama is plain dull compared to Lincoln. Lincoln financed victory with blood and money. That's what it will cost until we develop more robotic defenses against terrorism and tyranny. If we build better defense systems, it will only -- mostly -- cost money. And money is always no more than the JOBS we need for our wealth and health -- which produces the THINGS that the money buys.
JohnGelles 07/27/2011 01:36 PM Report
AntiEgo ~
You are right on some details -- but I believe your picture of what to do is incomplete:
1. We need tax reform to prevent taxation of profits that ought to be exempt IF they are re-invested in the public interest -- to create jobs and defend freedom. If we do not do this, only government will allowed to create jobs and defend freedom. Such a change from what we need would make us less a democracy and more a bureaucracy only.
JohnGelles 07/27/2011 01:26 PM Report
"If your spending more money than you're TAKING IN -- then -- spend less of IT !" -- John Boehner, Speaker of the House
--Reduce deficit and national debt by trillions over time by cutting federal expenditures and raising federal taxes at a pace that will not reduce growth necessary for timely recovery from bubbles and deflation-- Barack Obama (who ought to know better)
These are the dueling notions that are ridiculous on their face yet animate all the discussions in the nutty world we live in and the the comments below these.
1. The object of federal spending is three-fold: pay current expenses, invest in the future, and grow fast enough to prevent unemployment, poverty, pollution and tyranny, etc.. Boehner knows government should not TAKE IN money the private sector needs for prosperity and growth. Government should do the opposite -- it must PUT OUT for liquidity's sake money that may have dried up.
2. Reducing the national debt is always something to be done with care: if it causes unemployment or defeat by tyrants -- do not do it. The national debt normally allows private enterprise to produce what people and nations need to be prosperous and free. The President is willing to reduce individual economic security and the defense programs that prevent war at a time when such results are the opposite of why he was elected. If he does not lead us to jobs and strength to win asymmetrical wars I do not want him in his present office. Let him return to Chicago where he will do no harm.
AntiEgo 07/27/2011 02:22 AM Report
I just think it is wrong for our government to keep enforcing this notion that wealthier people need tax breaks while cutting funding to programs that benefit poorer people is ok. But, I understand. What do the wealthiest people of this country, politicians included, have in common with the rest of us. They see us, just as long as it takes to get our vote, mow their lawn, serve them their burgers and fries, run that machine....then...poof! They go back to their estates, country homes, white houses and gear up for the next election. These politicians are addicts...feeding childhood egos, needing the spotlight, the attention. And we are the ones that allow it, distracted by our own dependence on products we don't need, food that is killing us, and our own sick, twisted desire to be like the ones who keep us down. What is this American Dream I keep hearing about? The upper class gets it on a silver platter (entitlement) while the lower class tries to get it quick and fast(Work ethic? What's that?). You cannot make over 250k and whine about ending the bush tax cuts any more than you can complain about cutting funding to you program while walking around in $120 dollar sneakers and an Ed Hardy T shirt. We ALL need to wake up. DO your Job Washington! Do your Job American Citizens. Drop the Ego, stop being lazy, and find some work ethic..or else we are doomed..together!
tabs 07/26/2011 07:17 PM Report
Keeping up with the events of the past several weeks and making sense of them has been an exhausting exercise, one that is in the end is futile as it is all sound and fury with very little actual action. However if one steps back and boils down and renders off the dross there is an interesting story developing here.
Last week the man who invented the modern Las Vegas, Steve Wynn lambasted Obama thoroughly saying in affect that he is a "wet blanket" on the economy and is a Socialist who is all about "redistribution of the wealth" These comments were not lost on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, because it has been the Casino/Resort Operators that have been stalwart Reid and Democrat campaign donors and supporters. Who in this last election cycle saved Reid's bacon from being in the unemployed politician line. Since Harry is well aware of which side his bread is buttered, it is no coincidence that Reid along with friends who have heard similar complaints have come up with a Debt Ceiling plan that does not include the central Obama tenet of "raising revenues" and for that matter does not include Obama at all. One might say Harry and friends made a circumvention of President Obama.It was quite interesting to see just how fast Obama endorsed that Bill, for Obama was not about to be thrown under the bus voluntarily.
With that as background the Obama speech struck one as ringing hollow in particular with the same old shopworn blame Bush routine. Obama hit on all his usual voice modulated emotional tug at the heart strings of "hard working American tired from a days work turning on the television only to see how dysfunctional Congress has become." cliches. Further Obama revealed his true blue ideological colours of being a true Revolutionary or as some like to say of him aa being a "trans formative figure" when he says, "that he gets to keep money that he doesn't need." This implies that he would be just fine without having any money beyond what he would need for daily subsistence.
The second impression was that Obama is a man who was stepping up to the microphone to claim a leadership role for something he had not done. This is in a sense his trying to put himself back in the game and all Obama has left is the same tired old class warfare rhetoric that has already been left behind. Thus Obama might have become the first American President that has abdicated his Presidential responsibility of leading the nation while still warming the seat in the Oval office.
SharkswithfrikingLazers 07/26/2011 04:25 PM Report
The word of the day is "compromise".
I called both offices of my Congressman and used the word of the day.
There is no fence and John Boehner can use the dadgum word. Not everything that comes from his brain is a principle.
NeilMacCallister 07/26/2011 03:38 PM Report
Our rise of debt is our return to slavery, rob.
I want to shout it to the mountain:
"Set my people free!"
bonacker 07/26/2011 03:19 PM Report
FIVE minutes (no guests) on the debt crisis and FIFTY minutes on GOLF and a sitcom comedian? What's going on here? Vacation time, I guess.
robdverity 07/26/2011 02:46 PM Report
Neil - you drinking the same coolaid as doodah and blank?
NeilMacCallister 07/26/2011 02:40 PM Report
Debt, Debt, "Debt", debt, Debit, DEBT, DDEEBBTT, death, Debt, deBIT, deeeeeebt!!!!, Democrats, debt, DEBT, "debt"..
(Open your window:)
"Debt, ddeebbtt!!, debt-death, death-by-debt, DEBT!, Obama, debt, deficit, debt, DEBT!!!, debt.."
(Turn on your radio:)
"Deeds-of-Debt, more debt, Deep-debt, DEBT!!, debt, valley-of-debt, debt, Democrats, debt, debt-star, DEBITS, debt, declining dollar, debt-mountain, more debt, DickDurbin-debt, deeeth, debt,.."
(Turn on your TV:)
"Debt, DEBT, debits, deficits, DISASTERS!!, more debt, OOBBAAMMAA, debt, DEBT, debt demands, demanding debt, death-by-a-billion-debts, DEBBBT!!!, more debts, piled-on debt..."
(.."Has it ALWAYS been this way, Daddy????")
Like a poisonous nuclear cloud, enshrouding the Earth, destroying the Sun and the Sky.
"Debt".
robdverity 07/26/2011 01:28 PM Report
Seems to me O's getting what he deserves. He jumped in bed with the big money bailout and deserves to wallow there. He's more of a Republican than Republicans and therefore deserves expunging by his own bedfellows. Irony with poetry.
They (the Republicans) have him by the short-hairs.
Default will be costly to both but moreso to O if they drape a fix on him (long or short-term). A veto would be his knell.
REMant 07/26/2011 11:19 AM Report
At least the president last nite was honest enough to say the debt is bad, that it was created by both admins, that, nevertheless, he doesn't want to rollback spending his admin has already embarked on, and, instead, to levy increased taxes on the richest of us. He also made the argument that these bills have already been incurred, which is rather like saying he decided to put them on his credit card rather than stick to a budget, but it is a lot easier in the absence of a line item veto or other cap on spending, to make a stand on the debt limit than to try to stop Congressional logrolling, pork-barreling, earmarks, etc. Additionally the president wants this decision to go his way now, or put it off until after the election so that he can run on the issue. The GOP, on the other hand, wants to do what can be done now, and continue work, which is complex, on a program adequate to the situation regardless of the timing. The president called the issue a matter of compromise, but clearly his party is playing politics with it as much or more than anyone else, and is responsible for the most recent impasse by tacking on an added tax increase above that expected by tax code overhaul.
Personally, I think the artificial boom of the past decade and the inflationary response of the Fed disproportionately favored the wealthy and they should pay relatively more. Tho they always have and would even with a flat tax, rates were cut severely in the Bush admin, and extended in a compromise the president made earlier this year, which he would now like to have back. On the other hand, this admin has spent a very great deal more in two years than the Bush admin did in eight, and raising the debt ceiling means sustaining it. Of course, the admin will retort that this was necessitated by economic conditions at the time they assumed office, but this is by no means true. But this is not to say the country hasn't got things to legitimately spend money on, altho it is certainly arguable whether these should take precedence. Nor is it possible to dictate what ought to be done even if true, tho one would hope the public has enough intelligence to make sensible decisions about them.
Much, if not all, of our current problem comes from cheap money over a period of decades, not just that spent by govt, increasing public rapaciousness and lethargy. Overcoming this is the biggest task before us. Too, it is not possible to simply scale up govt spending as a proportion of GDP without considering the effect years of inflation has had on our productive capacity. There is every reason to suppose that spending now has to come down well below "what it was in the Eisenhower admin." The current account deficit, the Social Security and Medicare liabilities, the crumbling infrastructure, are only part of the problem. We need to recover the means to sustain ourselves, or earn foreign exchange. We need to rebuild the middle-class, an issue the president ran on, incidentally. We cannot in this time of vastly increased foreign competition continue to rely on Chinese and Saudi subsidies. I do not, BTW, think standing up for principle plays badly with voters if pollsters deign to ask the right questions.