Is Obama finished?

[The Duke]

"This would negate the positive effects of this."

I want to see non-military government spending reduced dramatically. 

And what about military spending?

Um, where are Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest of the national debt?  Those are huge budget items and you've just decided not to include them becaue it was inconvenient to your ideologically driven argument?

[The Duke]

"This would negate the positive effects of this."

I want to see non-military government spending reduced dramatically. 

And what about military spending?

Um, where are Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest of the national debt?  Those are huge budget items and you've just decided not to include them becaue it was inconvenient to your ideologically driven argument?

Behold, the typical conservative: quite fond of Big Government, as long as the spending is on things he agrees with.

Was this supposed to be a burn?

Are you saying I'm in favor of national defense?  Guilty as charged.

Or are you saying I am in favor of Medicare and Social Security?  Well, I am guilty of that as well.

My point, however, was that the graph he put up excludes some of the largest budget items to make it appear that national defense is a larger share of the federal budget than it actually is.

[The Duke]

Behold, the typical conservative: quite fond of Big Government, as long as the spending is on things he agrees with.

Was this supposed to be a burn?

Are you saying I'm in favor of national defense?  Guilty as charged.

Or are you saying I am in favor of Medicare and Social Security?  Well, I am guilty of that as well.

My point, however, was that the graph he put up excludes some of the largest budget items to make it appear that national defense is a larger share of the federal budget than it actually is.

Which was a lie of yours that was already addressed.

Where is the lie?  I said, and these are my exact words, that Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on the national debt are budget items that are not included in the graph.

You can reply that your graph only represents discretioanry items, but it doesn't change the point.  You like those non-discretinary items, so you didn't include them in the graph so as to make the things you don't like seem to be more significant than they are.  Defense is the bulk of discretionary spending, so if you limit your graph to discretionary spending, you are able to create a false impression.

Saying that a budget item is non-discretionary is no defense at all.  Mandatory spending is 62% of the Federal budget.  You have excluded nearly 2/3rds of all spending and your response is effectively that this spending doesn't count!

On your graph, defense is a majority of spending, but when you include all spending, we see that it is only about 1/5th of the budget.



And remember, no one on your side of this acknowledged that your graph only represents discretionary spending until my post forced you to admit you were fudging the facts.  Your post did not say anything about discretionary spending.  Your graph was not labeled as such.  You tried to pull a fast one and you got caught.

[The Duke]

But your days are numbered, my friend. Indeed, we can't fund any liberal social programs - which means we sure as Hell can't fund your favorite subsidies, like defense or the prison-industrial complex. I guarantee it. Conservatism is dead. I hope I get to see your head paraded on a pike with it.

I'm thinking of making your psychotic rant into my new sig.  I especially like the part where you wish for my violent death.

[The Duke]

The thing people who claim about the effectiveness of the New Deal miss is that it was a political solution ot a political problem. 7% unemployment is an economic problem. 25% is a political one. It may be that austerity and free market economics will get you better growth 7 or 8 years down the line, but the unemployed won't wait that long. The Bruning government in Germany in 1930-32 followed Paulite economics to the hilt, doing a unilateral 33% salary cut for state employees and attempting to aggressively cut spending. The result was they all voted for Hitler who promised public works, and they loved him for it.

In 1931, Americans were being cut down in the streets of Washington by the US Army. five years later the President won reelection with 61% of the vote. The New Deal was an unprecedented success on its own terms. People just have no sense of proportion as to what those terms were.

Very smart post.