Balance This
"Of course fiscal rectitude was on the table," said Jared Bernstein, a senior economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, who was at the meeting. "But the key word with Barack Obama is 'balance.' " -- The Washington Post
Let's stipulate that Barack Obama has to talk a lot of rubbish to win the votes of our noodle-brained citizenry. Hence his well-intentioned, highly intelligent spokespersons must also serve up campaign twaddle. And we wish them great success. They seem to be doing it well. We have no political advice to offer, much less the political expertise to support it.
But who will tell the people? Somebody has to say what the country really needs, and what it doesn't need. This statement is a noteworthy effort, in contrast to this sort of mush. We offer here some unsolicited elaboration of the economics of The Nation.
First and foremost, if you want the Feds to sponsor new domestic initiatives, you need more revenue. Currently the candidates offer dueling tax cuts. Specifics aside, this does not foster a constructive public mindset. Democrats are still sowing the myth that we can have social welfare that Somebody Else will pay for. Them bastids in the limousines; the top eeny-weeny percent.
It is unlikely that a candidate who levels with the public on taxes could prevail in a national electoral contest, which brings us back to the rubbish. But somebody has to say we need to eliminate about 80 percent of the Bush tax cuts (keep the Child Tax Credit expansion and a few other doodads). That would keep the revenue side in shape for about ten years, before health care starts to eat our collective lunch.
What about spending cuts? Gabby Hayes John McCain likes to talk about earmarks and other nameless cuts. Many earmarks happened to be justified, but that's a topic for another time. Just an example for now, do you want to rehabilitate infrastructure, like bridges? Major bridge projects are financed by earmarks because the bridge grant program is too small for such endeavors; it only pays for smaller-scale upgrades. Besides often financing useful projects, the volume of earmarks is small in the context of the Federal budget. Of course, Republicans have been posturing on behalf of generic spending cuts forever. We know how that works.
On the Democratic side, folks are looking forward to another peace dividend after President Obama plays the get-out-of-Iraq card. Under most plausible scenarios, the dividend will be some time in coming.
The optimistic scenario has the Obama Administration breaking with Imperial America policy and bugging out of Iraq in sixteen months. This won't save as much money as fast as you think.
First off, it takes military force to cover a military withdrawal. It's cheaper (relatively) to sit in place then pick to up and move. Second, there is a lot of defense inventory to replace. Third, it's going to cost more to recruit because the troop-lovin' Republicans have made our armed services something you don't want to join. Fourth, it isn't clear how clean a getaway will be made if we're talking about a "residual" force.
That's the good news. A less optimistic scenario is President Obama turning the nation's bombsights to Afghanistan, graveyard of empires. Pacifying Afghanistan looks to be an undertaking ranging somewhere between huge and impossible, not to mention unnecessary. That the U.S. employs aerial bombing to liquidate individuals duplicates the Israeli strategy in dealing with its Palestinian enemies. How has that been going in the hearts-and-minds department?
And there is still Pakistan, home of many additional evil-dooers. You might not have known, I didn't, there are more Pakistanis (168 million) than Russians (141 million). Just for reference, Vietnam has 86 million, Iraq 28 million. Maybe Afghanistan/Pakistan will be a big success, but it won't be cheap. There will be no peace dividend, absent a Buddhist foreign policy from Secretary of State Dennis Kucinich.
Second to revenue, or better third to revenue and the sorrows of empire, is a determination not to get snowed by hand-wringing about the deficit. Balanced budget rhetoric - even if the budget is never balanced - stifles creativity in domestic policy. It's a conversation stopper. Note that it does not block spending growth per se. You still get spending growth. It tends to go in through the back door with less public scrutiny and underlying justification. You get more junk, like the new housing bill. But I digress.
The forces of fiscal constipation (FOFC), in the form of the Concord Coalition and Peter Peterson's newest propaganda vehicle, as well as this gaggle, are gearing up to clog the budgetary digestive system of the incoming Democratic Administration. (Here is some dissent.) Their ostensible platform is even-handed cuts in entitlements and increases in revenues. We never seem to get those revenue increases, but even on its face, this is a rotten program.
Revenue increases are easily reversed. Elimination of entitlement benefits, not so much. Under the PAYGO regime supported by Democrats, restoration of a terminated benefit requires an associated revenue increase or spending cut elsewhere. It's hard to get the horses back in the barn.
As others have pointed out, there is no "entitlement problem." Outside of Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare, there is no excessive projected spending growth. Social Security poses a moderate need for revenue growth, some 35 years from now. The real projected growth is in health care.
The FOFC approach is bankrupt because it is fiscal, not structural. By the latter I mean reform of the nation's health care system, top to bottom: providing health care of better quality at acceptable cost. The FOFC makes a fetish of public costs and glosses over how its proposals merely shift those costs elsewhere. It's the flip side of the right-wing's valid point that what a tax cut costs the government is a gain to the taxpayer. What the Gov saves on health care is an added expense to households and businesses.
So to sum up, Obama voters need to be told that to bring change they can believe in, he needs revenue he can count on without the constraints of deficit delirium and the drain of imperial overstretch.
But if progressive economic voices are burdened with the constraints of a campaign that must win votes from morons people who don't pay attention, how will the truth win out?
Not a bad plan for 2018, but let's look at where we stand, today.
We have a very large current account deficit. These dollars must be repatriated -- that is, they must be borrowed back.
For the last several years home buyers (mortgagors) have borrowed a good deal of these dollars, but as a result of the real estate crisis these potential borrowers are pretty much out of the market. And with a slow down in the economy corporations and especially, private equity investors (mergers & acquisitions) won't add much to borrowings. That leaves the U.S. government to do the borrowing.
Until we bring down the current account deficit, we have to run deficits and for a while, very large deficits. But there is an upside.
The large deficits should produce inflation which 1) makes it cheaper to pay back the loans and 2) lowers the foreign exchange value of the dollar making our exports more attractive and lowering the current account deficit.
Looks like the "morons people" may be just be right.
August 1, 2008 12:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Although I am hypnotized by your eyeball, I will try to respond.
Bringing down the trade deficit is like the weather -- people talk about it, never do anything. Here's Jamie Galbraith:
In short, one may not like the acute state of mutual dependence that currently exists between the United States and China. But it's too late: the condition exists. In the world economy, the Middle East will produce oil, because that's where it is. The Chinese will produce labor-intensive consumer goods, because they have the labor, and know how to use it. We will produce bonds, so long as everyone else is willing to take them. The question before us is not whether this situation can be cured, but how best to cope with it -- and how to be prepared if, unfortunately, it should collapse.
See also this, which I crudely summarize as "No solution, no problem."
August 1, 2008 1:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Before investing time reading* Galbraith, fils, tell me whether he disagrees with me.
Rather than "No solution, no problem" I'm of the "No solution -- muddle along" persuasion. Leads to fewer well-meant policies with their frequently deleterious but always unintended consequences.
* "If I wanted to read, I'd go to school." -- Butthead
August 1, 2008 1:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Near as I can figure, we are all in agreement, though I'm not certain which morons you are describing as right.
August 1, 2008 2:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
C.A., you have abundantly proven your point that you lack the political expertise to support the political advice that you offer in spite of your contention that you have no political advice to offer. Nevertheless you make a lot of sense, but what do I know, I never pay attention to such things. I admit that there are always people who know more than I do, including even you. Let them figure it out. I'd rather watch birds.
August 1, 2008 2:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
I suppose out of bitterness you cling to guns and religion.
August 1, 2008 3:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, I'm a sharpshooter for Muhammed (oops, just kidding).
August 1, 2008 4:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am mystified by hearing Obama is promising tax cuts to all. Last I heard was higher top-end rates.
While holding existing budget items constant, couldn't we launch some dedicated bond issues, mandated for some new programs? For example, the federal government announces it will begin a purchase schedule, spread over some number of years, to acquire enough solar panels and batteries to run all its facilities without buying power. Gov pays for program through boind sales, which carry a good rate. Since it is not a general-funds bond it should have a reduced effect on general interest rates.
Consider that the Pentagon should be able to get by on a hundred megawatts, which is close to the average output of covering the building and its parking lot (3 sq. km).
This program causes a huge tool-up, boosting the capital-goods sector and involving much hiring (both implying increased tax revenues coming back), and leads to immediated budget savings (no electric bill) allowing amortization of the bond issues. At maturity (10 yrs?) the solar power is paid off and free electricity continues to rain down on the federal government.
August 1, 2008 4:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
BTW, how did you end up on the main page?
August 1, 2008 4:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
How did I end up here? Who else at TPM has built his own female robot, whose eyes shoot laser beams?
Re: Obama's tax cuts, he moves around some of the deck chairs and eliminates some of the Bush cuts. The specifics will be determined by the next Congress, not Obama. My point is the general absence of realization of revenue needs, in contrast to the delusion that the Gov can dole out more tax cuts.
Re: your bonds idea, if the Feds sell bonds for the general fund or for some part thereof, the impact on interest rates should be the same. In the face of a big swing in Federal deficit trends since 2001, interest rates have not shown much response.
I'm all for channeling more investment in solar but the labels on the bonds don't make much difference.
August 1, 2008 4:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm thinking of the German model, where shares in new wind or solar energy ventures are separate from normal company shares. Those shares are hot items, in my understanding, since they are paying dividends quickly.
August 1, 2008 8:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you can set up a dedicated revenue stream tied to the benefits thrown off by the investment, you can sell bonds based on that. I don't know how Germany does it. This might look better to taxpayers, but if the bonds are guaranteed by the Feds, it isn't any different from how they finance deficits now.
August 2, 2008 9:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
female robot, whose eyes shoot laser beams
Science!!
August 2, 2008 12:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
<fingers where="in ears">La-la-la-la-la! I can't hear you!</ fingers where="in ears">
August 2, 2008 7:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
I get that a lot.
August 2, 2008 9:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
So, once again, the noodle-brained, morons citizenry are to be saved by the dictatorship of the proletariat well-intentioned, highly intelligent spokespersons of progressive persuasion (one has to wonder why any intelligent person would want to narrow the gap between themselves and such idiots).
You begin well and follow with...
it's going to cost more to recruit because the troop-lovin' Republicans have made our armed services something you don't want to join.
The only Democrats who ever wanted to join the armed forced were of the Southern persuasion, you know, the kind who lynched and killed progressives whenever they could.
Terrific. And there's something unreal about your economics as well...
An article in today's Bloomberg noted that all our automakers are in deep-do-do. GM lost 15.5 BILLION is the last quarter, has only 21 billion in reserves, and is burning through them at the rate of 1 billion per MONTH (Since last month their cash reserves were estimated at 30 billion their situation is probably much worse). Ah, but there are bright spots, you say. Look at Exxon. Well, look at it. They had record profits, but also record low reserves of potential product since national oil companies continue to seize their assets - thanks to some of those wonderfully progressive policies.
Further, when a depression comes - if it comes - it will be much, much worse than that of the '30s because, back then, we had a solid currency which Hoover worked hard to preserve, and a vast, unpeopled west which could be developed without worrying too much about environmental consequences...
And...
It was the Nazis who were anti-Jew while today it is the Left.
August 2, 2008 11:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
@Rotwang
How do you strike text? I used the s,/s tags to no effect.
August 2, 2008 11:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
I used strike /strike around "morons" to try to get the quote right. That didn't work either.
August 2, 2008 3:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
offensivetoyou says
"The only Democrats who ever wanted to join the armed forced were of the Southern persuasion, you know, the kind who lynched and killed progressives whenever they could."
"It was the Nazis who were anti-Jew while today it is the Left."
I'll tell you one thing, you ARE predictable.
Your latest nonsense causes me to repeat my analysis of you;
You aren't a stupid person, but your mind is so ideologically f**ked up it causes you to say stupid things.
August 3, 2008 8:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
@ johnWjackass
Weaning the military from the GOP
In other words for most people living today the military has been a Republican institution. Further the author is doing her best to lessen that fact wherever she can. When there was a draft political inclination could only be guaged by looking at the officer class and enlistees...and they've been conservative and southern for a very long time.
Since you follow me around you must have noticed the Left's anti-semitism on a couple of recent Rosenberg threads (and others) I posted to. Those views are representative.
August 3, 2008 11:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
offensivetoyyousays:
Publish your source for that comment.
You have an exaggerated sense of your own importance. I don't follow you around, I follow the threads. As to anti-semitism in Roesnberg's comments, you're delusional. Its your warped way of seeing things, a pathology, that causes you to see things that aren't there.
Bias is usually in the eye of the beholder, and the more bias one is, the more bias one sees. That fits you to a "T".
August 3, 2008 1:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
@ johnwjackass
on Rosenberg's threads is not the same thing as in Rosenberg's comments. Helps if you can read.
August 3, 2008 2:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
@ johnwjackass
I'm actually very curious about your mental processes. I think they're typical of true believers and I'd like to pursue them.
The anti-Jew arguments I listed are very, very common. They're all over the news. The particular threads I was referring to were Rosenberg's and Gitlin's response to Joe Klein's exchange with other members of the news media. Klein may or may not have accused the Jewish neocons of dual loyalty, of putting Israel's interests ahead of American interests. I say may or may not have because, after reading the link to Ami Eden's article which Rosenberg provided I am still not sure. Nor am I sure where Rosenberg stands.
Many of the comments on these threads were overtly anti-jew. One women, santafe31 or something like that, even said she was anti-semitic.
The particulars don't matter as far as our conversation is concerned. What interests me is why you are so anxious to deny obvious importance of the arguments in today's news? And why have you not replied to the evidence I provided about the relationship between Republicans, Southern Denmocrats, and the military? How does you mind allow you to deny the evidence?
August 3, 2008 3:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
offensivetoyou says:
Your so full of shit your eyes are brown.
"Evidence"? Here's your "evidence";
I asked you to publish your source for that statement and you ran and hid beneath your desk.
I can only surmise you have no source.
As has been shown by you a number of times, you don't know the difference between opinion and fact, and now you confuse opinion with evidence.
You better stick with posting at FreeRepublic where you can get over on the mile wide half inch deep crowd.
August 3, 2008 4:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
@ johnwjackass
You can only surmise? I EXPLICITLY told you that I don't need a source for such a common sense observation. I explained it so that any moron could understand. Maybe you do have brain damage.
August 3, 2008 5:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
offensivetoyou says;
This is what you call a common sense observation, and which you can't source.
"When there was a draft political inclination could only be guaged by looking at the officer class and enlistees...and they've been conservative and southern for a very long time."
Well, how did you "observe" this?
Obviously when you have no source for an outlandish claim, you simply say a source is unneeded. My, how convenient.
August 3, 2008 6:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
@ johnwjackass
And this comment
You use that like a magic incantation, as if you believe that it will ward off dangerous ideas.
I asked when Democrats who were not Southerners ever wanted to join the military. And later pointed out that the motivations and political orientations of draftees were not relevant since, obviously, they were COMPELLED to join the military - so belonging to the armed services is not evidence of anything more than their fear of the consequences of refusing to obey the law. Why do I need a citation for that observation?
I know you're smart enough to understand, a high school student of average intelligence would be able to,...so why don't you?
August 3, 2008 3:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
offensivetoyou asks;
No you didn't, here's what you posted and what I asked you to back up. You haven't.
Again, how did you arrive at your conclusion about military personnel?
As to your question regarding when Democrats ever wanted to join the military. Well there's me and my older brother, there's John Kerry, Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, Lyndon Johnson, Jack Reed, Ted Kennedy, Jack Kennedy, Joe Kennedy, Tom Daschle, etc.
Did I mention my Dem. Congressman Patrick Murphy who served in Iraq? Or members of VoteVets.org?
OH, this is too easy, I'll quit while I'm ahead.
August 3, 2008 5:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
@ johnwjackass
The only Democrats who ever wanted to join the armed forced were of the Southern persuasion, you know, the kind who lynched and killed progressives whenever they could.
That's from my initial post directed Rotwang. You even quoted it in your response. You know, the one where you dismissed me in your usual manner.
I responded with a link to a news article which details the very strong connection between Republicans and the military over the last 30 years...and commented that the author had underestimated the strength and length of that connection. She says it began after the Viet Nam war but I believe it began much earlier. That's difficult to document because the draft was used so extensively during earlier wars. Hence my comment about the draft.
World War II was an aberration. There never was another war like it in American history Everyone went. But, even then, the officer core was Republican and Southern Democrat. Joe Stillwell commented on it. So did many others. I believe it had that character for many years - probably from the 1870's. As for volunteers, I suspect the pattern has been the same for a long, long time as well; mostly rural white boys - southerners and Republicans.
August 3, 2008 5:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
offensivetoyou,
Rip van Winkle slept for 20 years waiting for you to identify the source you base your opinion on.
And Rush Limbaugh doesn't count as a source, this isn't FreeRepublic.com.
August 3, 2008 6:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
@ johnWjackass
That's from the L.A. Times link I posted. Rosa Brooks was the author. What is it with you? Do you really think she's a surrogate for Rush Limbaugh or that the L.A. Times shills for Free Republic? You can't be that nuts so what, exactly, is your problem?
August 3, 2008 7:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
From the same article;
Meaning the former southern Democrats were now Republicans.
Initially, I thought you were questioning my exclusion of draftees when considering political orientation but it turns out you wanted a source for my contention that most officers and enlistees were Republican and conservative. Since I had already posted the source I couldn't understand what you were talking about.
I still can't. You can't seriously be contending that Rosa Brooks and the L.A. Times are biased towards the conservative right when the exact opposite is known to be true. So say something that makes sense.
August 3, 2008 7:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
@ johnwjackass
Keep in mind that my initial comment was a response to a statement of Rotwang's.
Had his been neutral, had he said the war has made enlistment less popular and therefore more costly, I would have agreed.
But he chose to make it political, and was not honest about what really happened. I've talked to many military families (I live in a rural area and worked with many of them last year). They were not happy with Bush's conduct of the war. He was too wimpy they felt, too unwilling to use force adequately and intelligently, and that weakness was exposing the troops to unnecessary risk and damaging their morale. I'm sure that one could find families who were anti-war...but I didn't meet them.
Further, many felt the war was being fought with inadequate resources - in particular not enough men. That's what elicited my reply; the Democrats were not enlisting, either before the war or now, and that drastically reduced the pool.
Now there is one major exception to my characterization. Blacks - who are mostly Democrats - did enlist in numbers prior to the war but do not do so now.
August 3, 2008 6:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
@ JohnWjackass
Zionism is Nazism. Israeli society is a racist, apartheid society. Jewish neocons have dual loyalties and place the interests of Israel above those of America. Jews in general and AIPAC in particular have too much power and run the foreign policy of this country as if it were a colony of Israel.
Who do you think is making these arguments - Right or Left? Get a new head, old man. Your old one is useless.
August 3, 2008 12:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
You forgot a few things; the Holocuast didn't happen its a Jew hoax, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion calls for the Jews to take over the International banking industry, Israel has moles as members of the House and Senate, the Jews are conspiring to rule the world, babble, babble, babble.
OTY, today's mental hospitals are doing great things for people like you, I suggest you look into one.
August 3, 2008 1:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
@ johnwjackass
I've had a lot of experience with people who refuse to let go of irrational ideas so I'm not too hopeful that I can get through to you. Nor to people who are as committed as you are to those ideas. But, by making the steps and the evidence clear, I may be able to reach someone. That makes it worthwhile.
August 3, 2008 3:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
@ johnwjackass
The arguments I mentioned are everywhere, in all the world's major newspapers and magazines. The stuff you brought up is advocated seriously only in the Muslim world today, and by a few hard core Nazis, and a few paleocons (damn few. Pat Buchanan doesn't support this stuff...but he does agree with the Left that Jews have too much power).
August 3, 2008 6:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
I thought I'd let you know, point by point, how you're rock bottom policies look to people who don't share your ideology
§ Withdrawal from Iraq on a fixed timetable.
Disaster. Like the fall of Czeckeslovakia looked to Hitler or the fall of China to Stalin.
§ A response to the current economic crisis that reduces the gap between the rich and the rest of us through a more progressive financial and welfare system; public investment to create jobs and repair the country's collapsing infrastructure; fair trade policies; restoration of the freedom to organize unions; and meaningful government enforcement of labor laws and regulation of industry.
More or less pie-in-sky propaganda. The gap between the rich and the poor can never be narrowed, anymore than the law of gravity can be repealed. What can be done is increase the size of the pie while maintaining the same ratios...but under present conditions the exact opposite is more likely.
§ Universal healthcare.
Impossible. Too expensive as medicine is practiced and hopeless under present economic conditions.
§ An environmental policy that transforms the economy by shifting billions of dollars from the consumption of fossil fuels to alternative energy sources, creating millions of green jobs.
Sort of a good idea but basically bullshit since no know technology can replace fossil fuels (see David Goodstein's "Out of Oil").
§ An end to the regime of torture, abuse of civil liberties and unchecked executive power that has flourished in the Bush era.
Pure propaganda.
§ A commitment to the rights of women, including the right to choose abortion and improved access to abortion and reproductive health services.
A good idea if implemented universally. A terrible idea otherwise.
§ A commitment to improving conditions in urban communities and ending racial inequality, including disparities in education through reform of the No Child Left Behind Act and other measures.
Mostly propaganda but, where implemented, a measure forced on the noodle-brains by elites who don't have to live it.
§ An immigration system that treats humanely those attempting to enter the country and provides a path to citizenship for those already here.
This will go over well in a shrinking job market. But, by all means, sign your names to it. It will make it easier for us to know where to put the tar and feathers.
§ Reform of the drug laws that incarcerate hundreds of thousands who need help, not jail.
If every progressive agrees to take a drug abuser or dealer into his house and guarantees his assets against any future crimes said person might commit I'm all for it. Alternately, I would approve incarcerating progressives with drug criminals on a 1 to 1 basis as a show of solidarity. Otherwise, forget it.
§ Reform of the political process that reduces the influence of money and corporate lobbyists and amplifies the voices of ordinary people.
Ha, ha, ha...heh, heh, heh...
I believe you also say something about resolving the Israel/Palestine dispute by forcing Israel to withdraw entirely behind the 1967 lines. This would lead to the fall of any government and the destruction of the society. The Arabs would do the rest. Progressives like Rosenberg would then wring their hands and wail in despair while the progressive goyim would say too bad about the women and children but ultimately they deserved what they got. If they'd taken a more active stand against the Zionists none of this would have happened.
Great programs. Thanks for offering them.
August 2, 2008 12:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
How come no link?
And why are you posting under Rotwang's thread? Is he one of the signatories to the Nation's open letter? Which one?
August 2, 2008 3:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
@ Ellen
The link was in Rotwang's "this statement".
August 2, 2008 3:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah; I didn't click any of the links so missed it.
Thanks.
August 2, 2008 7:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
My post was narrower than The Nation statement, so I will stick closer to what I wrote about. Though I agree w/the statement and disagree with everything Mr. OffensiveToYou has offered. All of his remarks are true in a kind of backwards-Bizarro way.
For instance:
Re: the gap between rich and poor, in fact the gap as measured is known to grow or shrink. There is no evidence that it is immutable. 'Eliminating the gap' is a straw man.
Re: universal health care as unaffordable, look out the window and note that everyone who writes about this acknowledges that it is the status quo that is unsustainable. Meanwhile other nations have cheaper, universal systems. Cue 'who do you believe, me or your lyin eyes.'
Re: 'no known technology,' all the yet to be discovered technologies are unknown too.
Re: immmigration and jobs, there is no important link, except in some fevered imaginations. Every year we get millions of new workers -- they're called "19 year olds" -- and jobs grow more or less indefinitely.
This is too easy. And boring.
August 2, 2008 8:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
@ rotwang
the gap as measured is known to grow or shrink...[but]...jobs grow more or less indefinitely.
Hmmm...
Well, I agree, Mr. Rotwang. This is too easy. And boring.
August 2, 2008 9:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
@ Rotwang
I've noticed, over the years, that people who sniff down their noses at me do so because the stick up their ass impairs their flexibility. Just trying to be helpful.
August 2, 2008 9:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
@ johnwjackass
Institute Report: Southerners Most Affected By War
Another source in support. Despite the usual ambiguities in the statistics the the message is clear.
I can't believe you don't know this stuff...and I mean that. It's common knowledge.
So, now I've cited two sources in support. If you want to dispute it let's see your evidence. If you can't or won't post such evidence - and I think you'll weasel out of it with some smart-ass remark - and you continue to insist that I haven't cited anything useful, I'll take it as absolute proof that you are a complete and total shmuck.
August 3, 2008 8:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
@ johnwjackass
Read the full report. It's linked. I've been looking for a full list of the 15 states which contribute - by a wide margin - most of the troops. I bet that all of them are red, one or two exceptions at most. Care to help me find the list?
August 3, 2008 8:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
@ johnwjackass
Southern Honor, Southern Pride
It's obvious that this guy has never accepted the victory of the north in the Civil War...but do you care to dispute his statistics?
I think not. So the role of the South in the U.S. military is well-established. The question then is what are the origins and beliefs of the non-southern military? Once again I say overwhelmingly rural and Republican...at least among whites.
August 3, 2008 8:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
@ johnwjackass
The Civilian Side of Military Culture
The definitive source. This one simply cannot be disputed. So, the only question is...do you have any intergrity? Any at all?
August 3, 2008 9:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
offensivetoyou,
see, now wasn't that easy?
By the way, I never disputed your comment, I simply asked you to source it.
Whatever happend to your opinion that you needn't source it?
"I EXPLICITLY told you that I don't need a source for such a common sense observation."
heh heh heh.
August 4, 2008 8:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
From the number of your posts its obvious how easy you are to manipulate. You seem to be running around like a chicken who's head was chopped off.
On the other hand, you may be trying to show Rotwang how your presence drives up the number of posts to his piece as you claimed regarding M J Rosenberg's opinions.
Take the last word.
August 4, 2008 9:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
@ johnwjackass
As I thought, no evidence, lying about your motives, smart-ass remarks. You are a complete and total asshole, a shmuck.
Well, the evidence is there for those who want to look at it, as I intended. I learned something and some others may as well. It was worth the effort.
August 4, 2008 10:29 AM | Reply | Permalink