EU all wet?

So Eric, you are a smart man. Why you gonna vote for him again?? If I wuz a democrat, I would defintly maybe try look the other way. Obama will go down worse than Jimmy Carter.

OverMyHead wrote: This should be a 100% local decision that is 100% locally funded. At most the government could put out a recommendation of a weekly count of calories, sugars, fats, and fruit and vegetable servings as a guide, and let the school districts and school boards with input from parents set a policy that works for them.

This is what had happened.. guidelines set up by the agency charged with setting them up, they even reflected common sense things like that pizza and fries should not be considered substitutes for servings of vegetables although they were certainly not banned.

Then a republican controlled congress stuck in a completely unrelated bill language that overturned common sense.. and low and behold they fear no ridicule because thier supporters make crazy convoluted explanations of how the real problem isnt corrupt politicians taking industry bribes but really government in general.

As for airline industry regulations.. quite simply airlines like banks rely on the federal government to function. Therefore they open themselves up to regulation that ensures they service the people adequately in exchange for the people paying for a large part of thier operating expenses. I dont see any real conservative actions being taken by these so called conservatives.. or there would be no FDIC insurance and there would be no federal air traffic control and no federal aviation security. Instead they put forth the idea that the american people should pay for these things and make private contractors rich in the process but that the people through thier elected representatives then should have no say over how those contractors treat the american people. That aint conservative, it aint small government, it is silly. The first time I see the republicans make a move to actualy decrease the size or expendatures of a government program and not simply redistribute the money towards a campaign contributing business then I will believe they have once again become a viable option.
     I am sure you can come back with all the things they say they want to do but the reality is when given the chance they dont do it.. look at the medicare prescription drug benefit.. classic.. increase the deficit, dont pay for it, create an entire new revenue stream for insurance companies and drug companies, and make it illegal for the government to even consider negotiating drug prices with the companies. Even though those companies take federal money for development, and need federal agencies to certify thier drugs, and then take federal money to pay for the drugs. Sounds real conservative to me.

OverMyHead wrote: Many outside of the liberal land of New York view this weeks budget committee failure much differently. It took both sides to cause the failure. Many believe we have a spending problem not a tax problem.

Way to confirm the standing premise that the right wing controlled media seeks to inflate thier audience by conditioning them into believing those that disagree with them have an inherent defect.. in my case being from the liberal land of NY.

But one would have hoped your education would have conditioned you into looking for facts. The facts here are stark. We have both a spending and a tax problem. We have historically low tax rates that favor the investor class over those that work for a living. We collect less federal taxes as a percentage of GDP than history has shown to be prudent (the reality based number is 4-5% of GDP low). These tax rates were proposed as an experiment when we had a budget surplus, the claim was that they would actually increase revenue as a percentage of GDP. They didn't and the experiment is a failure, as it was when Reagan tried it. Reagan at least had the good sense to fix his own mess, unlike Bush who stuck with it until the end and kicked it down the road.

Obama got elected campaigning on raising taxes, you guys laugh at him as a tax and spender but his biggest departure from his campaign promises is that he has cut taxes instead of raised them. The vast majority of reality based people in this country understand that we need to both lower spending and raise taxes. The biggest way to lower spending in the short and long term is to control the rise in health care costs, everything else is peanuts. In the latest round of negotiations the democrats caved as usual away from what needed to be done and upto and past what republicans have agreed to do.. which of course caused the republicans to move the line again. They proposed an increase in revenue of what 30 billon a year and even that was really a huge increase in taxes on the middle class that would have been mostly offset by a huge decrease in taxes on the top 1 percent. Not worth the effort, reality would rather take the 1.2 billion in budget cuts and let the bush tax giveaways expire next year. Frankly I am surprised the democrats didnt cave as usual and did the right thing.. but dont worry they have the rest of the year to find a way to screw us all over.

So reality is that we spend 4-5% too much as a percentage of GDP and need to lower that...

Reality is that we collect 4-5% as a percentage of GDP too little in terms of taxes and we need to raise that.

The current class of republicans is insisting on no increase in taxes and has said that they would not accept even a 10 to 1 ratio of expense reduction to tax increases.

If you are worse off than you were 4 years ago that is not Obamas fault no matter how much you try to make it so. At best you can blame your last two years on him. It becomes increasingly apparent as days go by that reality is the republicans have been betting hard for america to fail over the last couple years and doing what it takes to ensure that happens. There is no give, there is no take (except in unlimited amounts from big corporate donors), and most importantly there is no reality.

As long as they can rely on people to look past the facts when they vote, donate, and rant on the internet what do they need reality for?

JoeinNY wrote: OverMyHead wrote: Many outside of the liberal land of New York view this weeks budget committee failure much differently. It took both sides to cause the failure. Many believe we have a spending problem not a tax problem.    Way to confirm the standing premise that the right wing controlled media seeks to inflate thier audience by conditioning them into believing those that disagree with them have an inherent defect.. in my case being from the liberal land of NY.

Joe, I was not trying to confirm a premise or imply that you have any inherent defect. I was commenting on your sphere of influence, New york is dominated by liberal politics, along with the rest of both coasts of the country, and our school systems. When surrounded by one particular school of thought it tends to mold your own thinking and pressure those who disagree into silence. (You my have a conditioned defect, but not an inherent one)I was just trying to say other groups/ areas of the country view the situation much differently, and that your basic premise of the republicans being the ones at fault could be flawed. I was even open minded enough to say both sides deserve blame.

Joe, I did not say the source is wrong, just possibly myopic.

In 2008 the government collected 2.1 trillion in taxes and spent 2.9 trillion, which shows we were spending beyond our means. A prudent leadership Should have recognized this at this point and put the brakes on spending. That is what I did at my house. In 2011 we took in 2.17 trillion in taxes and spent 3.7 trillion. Lets recap,tax income up by about 3.3% spending up by 44%. Am I wrong to see this as a spending problem and the solution might be less spending? You may have a unique view point. When most of us see evidence of to much gas flowing through the carburetor we tighten the screws. You like to make the whole engine bigger so it can use the gas.   

Dave what you have said and what you have shown is you are biased. Those who cling to thier bias rather than examine facts are prone to be the tools of those who would seek to use thier bias to control them.

You keep talking about 2008 numbers and not 2009 number even though those are the legacy the last round of lower taxes and bought and paid for regulators left you. I got a great idea lets spend a bunch of money and lower taxes for 8 years, then we just destroy the global economy and then when the guy that comes in to clean it up has to spend money to do that we can blame the whole debt thing on him.

There is no amount of cutting taxes that is going to fix the ongoing health care issues, infrastructure issues, war costs, and pending real estate write downs that we are faced with.

But these are "facts" and they will get me no where arguing against "beliefs" and bias.

If I hear one more liberal complaining about the spending during the eight years of Bush I will scream. You guys quadrupled the deficit in two when you had both the house and senate. Bush never had that kind of power, and by the way, he is a big tent guy. I would and did not support the medicare drug plan or any other growth in government. I don't remember democrats complaining about his budgets being to big (OK maybe the military's), only to small. again, a little intellectual honesty.

Your guy said he would end it 3 years ago, so whats the deal?

I am just sick of deficit spending under bush being bad and the cause of a financial meltdown, but somehow deficit spending at 4 times the rate under Obama is the cure for the financial meltdown. Somewhere in there is a math Error. Again, this does not work at my house, we had to cut spending period.

alot of things were thrown into the mix Dave, war, housing, bail outs, oversea's spending, someone along the lines made a pact with the devil and its redemption time...you know the only hopeful would of been MCcain 3 years ago, I have a feeling if he was in there it would be identically the same. We cant cut spending, i read my weekly paper again this week, 6 million in cuts are needed to stay in the black for the school system for the next couple years....I really dont see any frivolous spending going on in my neck of the woods.

Dave thanks for confirming that you dont care about facts, logic, or reality and instead would like to keep reguritating the nonsense you are fed without any sort of reality intervening. It will keep me from wasting time trying to have rational discussion with you. If in the future you could lead off your posts with a quick disclaimer along the lines of what you offered above it will save everyone some time.

Dont worry the rest of us will save freedom, democracy, and capitalism for you, even as you keep pulling the lever in the direction you are told.

Its a good thing that there arent any real liberals left in the country, if there were between them and the you so called "conservatives" there wouldnt be anyone left to make rational decisions.

Frankly Dave I don't have hopes for you to be anything other than a tool for the powers that be, when you want to be relavent again quit your biases and be open to facts. But I won't hold my breath, anyone who writes off the opinion of people because of where they live isn't likely to show much growth.

I didn't make you a tool, your willingness to give away your vote to anyone claiming to be a conservative even if their actions are not conservative makes you in fact thier tool.   Your willingness to believe what people tell you about huge swaths of the populace is why I discount your views as fundamentally trivial. It has nothing to do with the fact that you identify yourself as conservative. Bias against conservatives is something that Is as fictional as the war on christmas but if it helps you to feel persecuted go for it.

"crazy on a ship of fools"   R Plant