The really awesome part is that money went to build sidewalk ramps and pay off 30-1 leverage. Exactly -nothing- to show for it.

hello fellow SDAers, Kate here.

when the staggering debt causes the Great USA to default and lose its place as predominant world power, leaving China to pick up the pieces for a penny on the dollar, what are your contingency plans to avoid the 'retraining camps' that will be set up by the new leftist masters?

today in Republican history:

Oct 23 1983

An Islamic Jihad suicide bomber drives a truck loaded with 2.5 tons of TNT into the US Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. The explosion kills 241 American servicemen. Simultaneously, a smaller truck bomb strikes another base in Beirut, killing 58 French soldiers. Even though the NSA has proof that the Iranians are behind the attacks, PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN BEGINS DELIVERING THEM WEAPONS FOR HOSTAGES ONLY 39 DAYS LATER.

what are your contingency plans to avoid the 'retraining camps' that will be set up by the new leftist masters?

Pumpkin carver to our new overlords.

I guess the point of the two administrative debt overloads is we have nothing to show for either vast expenditure of freshly printed green backs. Stimulus propped up zombie banking and too-lame-to-survive corporations, while the Bush war debt has bought us endless conflict expenditures in the ME and an entrenched police surveillance state at home where constitutional rights seem to be suspended where federal snooping and groping concerned. We really should refuse to pay the bill on what amounts to the personal political agendas of the last few administrations.

In the cold austerity that follows in the wake of a madly unrestrained gutting of the US public treasury and policy-based diminished industrial capacity, we must ask “Qui Bono?” – who benefited? It sure as hell wasn’t small business or industry or individual tax payers who are neither safer from so called terror today than before the war nor more economically secure before the orchestrated market/economic meltdown. Was it the Chinese? Well when you consider they hold the most US debt in the form of currency and bonds and their currency is attached to dollar valuation, no they would be financially ruined if the US economy tanked.
For my money (pun intended) I ‘m really uncomfortable with guys like Soros attached to a national left political party which throws the nation in debt and savaged the dollar. Is it coincidence we see the smile on Putin’s face every time bad economic news comes out of the US.

"what are your contingency plans to avoid the 'retraining camps' that will be set up by the new leftist masters?"

For years I've offered to pay for my niece and nephew's Mandarin language courses so they can get jobs as Overseers instead of coolie labour when everybody is being sent over to China to build their Railways,LOL!

trollfos said: "...what are your contingency plans to avoid the 'retraining camps' that will be set up by the new leftist masters?"

Ending the long gun registry.

By the way troll, you forgot to switch your posting name back. Torquing Kate off is not a good survival tactic for your trolling career.

Oh boy . . this could shape up to be a good day for troll hunting . . . .

Have to load up with lots of stupid-stopping ammo before heading out. Have to match the rounds with the targets.

If America defaults on it's debt China will have the problem, not the other way around.

"...PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN BEGINS DELIVERING THEM WEAPONS FOR HOSTAGES ONLY 39 DAYS LATER."

Ooo, calm down there, remember--use your inside voice.

Anyway, you're correct, and arms for hostages was a really bad way to respond to the act of war committed by the bearded hooting Iranians. Don't forget the Soviet Union was still a going concern in the 80's, and calculations of who might back the Iranians with a strategic nuclear arsenal had to be made. It stinks, and I didn't like it, but the Soviets had looked longingly at that part of Asia for some time, and we had evidence of their aggressive tendency playing out daily in Afghanistan.

In any case, your quite accurate citation of twenty-year old events isn't much of an argument against slapping the Iranian regime (the regime, I said, not the people) down good and hard in the here-and-now.

I dislike graphs like the one above as they exaggerate the facts. It should show all govt spending not just the amount of deficit. With a line showing the points at which deficit is reached. Still make the point - only more soundly.

Mike James, since you mention it the -other- thing trollfos conveniently left out is that Regan was cleaning up after four years of Jimmah! Carter's foolery, and didn't have much leeway.

No recovery will come before November 6, 2012. Once Obama loses, recovery will be so fast as to create whiplash. A recovery is long overdue lacking only the existence of a positive business environment. Trying to create a socialist worker's paradise in the midst of a recession was the height of folly.

Boy, you can mark to the hour, pretty much, when teh Democrats took over the reins on spending with that graph.

That is a laugh out loud irony when a poster with the handle "Occam" starts talking about "cui bono."

He did say "hope and CHANGE".

Now that's "Change you can believe in".

At least Michelle is finally proud of America, what more could any white liberal apologist want?

imagine the turnaround if the Senate flips to the TEA party, and it goes filibuster proof.

there is an outside chance for 67 Republican Senator's as well. veto proof.

$300 billion of the 2009 stimulus have come in the form of tax cuts and incentives, so to make this a more accurate comparison, you'd have to either add the ~$1.8 trillion and counting that the Bush-era tax cuts has contributed to US deficits over the years, or subtract the $300B in tax benefits from the total 2009 stimulus costs.

Oh, and $140B of the 2009 stimulus remains unspent, so in terms of actual contribution to US deficits/debt, that amount should also be subtracted from the total bill.

So, let's see:

$862B
-$300B
-$140B
-------
=$422B vs. $709B for a protracted war that left 4,477 US military personnel dead and 32,000 more wounded while, at best, achieving little in terms of national security interests (and at worst, actually increasing the amount of risk).

Further to Gord Tulk's comment, the graph also shows the results of the drop in federal revenue due to the recession without showing the extent. Not to downplay Obama's single-minded obsession with spending and campaigning while growing leviathan and the entitlement-addicted voting class.

I have come around to the opinion that in the long term much of the Iraq war (and all of the Afghan and Libya war) was a total waste, certainly since taking out Saddam. If GHW Bush had finished the job when US armour was 45 minutes from Baghdad, and then left, it could have saved a lot of money and lives. Nation-building in the Islamic wastelands is a total waste of time, energy, money, and most importantly, Western lives. Multi-culti acceptance of domestic Islam and its pathologies is far more dangerous.

Federal institutionalization of airport security along with dysfunctional and politically correct federal bureaucracies are far more responsible for the success of the 9-11 Jihad event than the prowess of Islamist training camps. The moment GW Bush referred to Islam as the religion of peace, most any actions that followed were doomed to failure. The (futile) war on "terror" is a war on tactics, not a discernable enemy. All he had to say was, America will not accept Islamic Jihad on its shores, you do the math.

My god. The pathetic lies and and attempts to shift the blame to the Democrats is just amazing. Those deficits would have been high no matter who took office, because the new president was handed the worst economy in 70 years.

If action had not been taken, you can bet your stupid rightwing asses that you actually would have commies to worry about, because that is the sort of reaction one should expect from the kind of economic devastation that would have occurred.

Read that a few times. I might get through your skulls.