Thought this was rather interesting... http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/o...am-cost-more-than-the-Iraq-war-101302919.html Of course, the Iraq war is still a controversial war of choice, but then the Obama stimulus et al is hardly non-disressionary spending either, is it? The tired mantra of defense spending run wild is wrecking the nation, however, simply does not add up, despite what some would say.
True, it wasn't spending that wrecked our nation, although the war in Iraq didn't help. It distracted the nation from our real problems, and that money was not an investment in our country, it disappeared into the money pit of Iraq or to the tax shelters of private contractors, billions were simply "lost".
Oh, that is good. A right wing whacko opinion piece, long on accusation and short on proof. Nothing new here just a continuation of right wing extremist misinformation. Where is the proof that Obama's stimulus failed? We have been through this time and time again. I show the proofs that the economy is doing much better. And you ignore the proofs. You don't even try to rebutt them, because you cannot. It is just much easier to pretend the evidence does not exist. Two, let's seem some real numbers on the deficit Obama and his merry band of Democrats inherited from george II and his merry band of Republicans. And while you are at it, why don't you add in the Afganistan War expenses and the entitlement expenses and tax cuts that george II and his merry band of Repubicans added to the national debt and ongoing deficts durring their reign in power?
Joe, you think everything is a right wing wacko piece, and in doing so, fail to realize how ridiculous it makes you look. Meanwhile, the numbers in that article are facts and the Examiner is owned by the Post (not exactly right wing).
Remember that most of the money allocated to the Iraq war were given to American companies and service men and women of the military. So that money was actually not invested in Iraq but in Americans of all ilks.
Those are selections from a piece by Randall Hoven on American Thinker, which is as right wing and partisan as you can get. A stitch in time saves nine. If sufficient attention had been paid to what was going on in the domestic economy, instead of wasting money and manpower on a completely unnecessary "preventive war", perhaps the "Obama" stimulus (which was passed uncontroversially, and had the approval of the overwhelming majority of economists) wouldn't have been necessary. If things had been a little different, it would have been the "Mccain stimulus", and American Thinker would then have nothing bad to say about it.
I would not worry about me so much as I would your article. It is clearly an opinion piece. And it is not a fair comparison. You cannot compare the Iraq War with the Stimulus program for many reasons including the following: - Iraq War is an ongoing commitment of funding without a specific end point. The stimulus ends this year. The author of the article is comparing the partial costs of the Iraq war to the total cost of the Stimulus program. You can surely see that is not a valid comparison. * The Iraq War accounting in the article only focuses on money already spent on the Iraq war and ignores money that will be spent in the Iraq War. Yet it includes all of the money that is supposed to be spent on stimulus. - The article focuses only on one of the many spending folleys Republicans engaged in during their term as rulers of this country. It totally ignores frivolous Republican spending on: * Unfunded Medicare Entitlement Expansions complete with "non interference provisions" which prohibit the government form taking action to make the program more cost effective...a big giveaway to special interests. * And unfunded tax cuts http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61G3EO20100217 So I repeat my previous claim, the article is highly biased and makes unfair comparisons in order to give the reader a false impression. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_policy_of_the_George_W._Bush_administration
joe, and what about your supposed supporting articles????? "Your article's are highly biased and makes unfair comparisons in order to give the reader a false impression" The Democrats protected Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and allowed them to continue to bundle loans and dump them on Wall Street, and rake in kickbacks for their own pockets and the Democrat Political Machine. The Democrats in lock step in the Senate either filibustered, or threatened to filibuster, any attempt by the Republicans to impose regulation and rational on the run away Housing bubble that was headed for a crash. We have the Democrats, in their own words, reviewable on You Tube, telling everyone in America that there was no problem with Fannie and Freddie FU, and that anyone who said so was a raciest.
And I don't give a shit. You have consistently bitched and moaned about every single source anyone other than yourself posts, labelling them all in the same hyperbolic terms. At the same time, you IGNORE the fact that the chart in the story is from the CBO and not partisan in origin. If you want to talk about the substance of the argument, then talk about it. If you don't want to and you want to wail and moan about other topics, then carry your bucket of water and go and start another of your "Republicans are evil" threads. My argument, for some time, has been that people, whatever their affiliation, make too much hay about defense spending. This is just more evidence of that.
It still stands, you article was very biased and made very unfair comparisons for the reasons listed in my previous posts.
I don't suppose it would be asking too much of you to read? I don't need an article to point out illogical comparisons. But perhaps you do. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Strike that, you definately DO. ) You are trolling again. Where in the OP does it say anything about Fannie and Freddie? And I remind you that at the time, Fannie and Freddie were privately owned and operated. I will once again, FANNIE AND FREDDIE WERE NOT THE CAUSE OF THE CRISIS...NOT THAT IT MATTERS TO YOU...BECAUSE IS DOESN'T. YOU NEVER TROUBLE YOUR SELF WITH LITTLE THINGS LIKE HONESTY. Well if you have those proofs, show them. And again, the fact the Fannie and Freddie had accounting problems that Congress was not aware of is no big crime on the part of Congress. Enron had serious accounting problems too. Was the Repubican congress responsible for the Enron accounting errors? Of course not. So you are just pulling shit from your ass again. By the way, Repubicans wanted to further deregulate Fannie and Freddie. Democrats did stand in the way of further deregulation. And I think history has proven that to be the right course to take. I don't think it is reaistic to expect that Fannie and Freddie can ever be independent again. And lastly, if you persist in saying that Fannie and Freddie cause the crisis of 2008, please prove it. I will not hold my breath waiting for you. Because you have never proved anything in the past, so why should you start now?
Saying something does not make it "stand." When you have something of substance to add to the discussion, please do so. If not, piss off.
The source you posted in the OP uses, as data, the Bush administration's official deficit figures. W&Co were famous at the time, and one would assume known as common knowledge now, for omitting the cost of the Iraq War from their official budgets: much of the war was financed "off budget" through special appropriation bills. If you recall (it was in all the newspapers, etc) he even stuck Obama's first budget with a planned overrun of the special war appropriation for 2008/2009 - putting Obama in the position of continuing the charade, cutting the deployed soldiers off cold in scene, or being vulnerable to dishonest propaganda attacks by the shithead right for dramatically increasing the official deficit. To use W's "official" deficits as evidence of the war's lack of contribution to the overall federal debt is Buffalo level foolishness, at best. Just for starters: merely adding up the special appropriations for the wars (all of that money was borrowed) from 2001 through 2009 (from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War) puts the total increase in the federal debt from just that direct borrowed payout to the physical deployment at 755 billion - without interest figured in, even, let alone the huge indirect costs of these wars (medical, domestic infrastructure and other domestic expenditures, related on budget military spending, etc). Coupled with the apparent concealment of the TARP monies - W era corporate expenditures - inside the category "Obama stimulus", and similar sleights of rhetoric in the descriptions (the entire issue of "tax cuts" is invisible, say), we have here nothing of actual interest, and negative valued information: It's Fox quality, and one knows less about the deficits and the debt after reading it than before.
That is true, saying something does not make it true. But it is pretty obvious to any unbiased observer that your article is highly biased and uses information in a dishonest way. You seem to kling for dear life to that chart that is alledged to be from the CBO. There is no proof the chart is from the CBO, other than the claim of an author in an opinion piece. And even if the CBO chart is true, its uses the information illogically....going back to those old apples and oranges again.
That's no excuse for lying with them. The increase in the federal debt for the year 2007 was more than 500 billion dollars, for example. Hoven's little chart there has the "deficit" at less than a third of that - apparently accepting the W&Co budget scam as physical reality. He then goes on to draw conclusions about the W era war contribution to the total debt, not the sum of the official deficits he has graphed (that graph that makes Obama's first year look like the first dramatic spike, rather than an essentially equal continuation of 2008). Anyone reading that article and accepting its arguments or evidence (especially that graph) has been negatively informed - they know less, not more, about the contribution of the Iraq War to the federal debt.
Saw that, too. Didn't think it worth of comment... So your contribution, essentially, is: You don't like the article. Fine. Go play somewhere else. Apprently, you missed the part where the story totalled the spending on the war and came up with an amount far less than the trillions that is kicked around by the Left?
