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 d-usa wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
So we should ignore the Constitution because a Frenchman thinks that people living in a Government might actually want a Government that they can benefit from?

Where do you set the limit?

At ignoring the Constitution, it's not really rocket science.

The rest of your reply is just mindless nonsense since you think that the Constitution doesn't matter and that somebody somewhere should get to decide who gets to vote or not vote.

Where does the constitution grant you entitlements?

You're beginning to sound more and more like a welfare leech with every post.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

Where does the constitution grant you entitlements?

You're beginning to sound more and more like a welfare leech with every post.

Under the Congress's power of the purse, right to tax and ability to pass laws. Yes this means they can take your money (through taxes) and give it to others or just build a bridge. It is within their power. If you want to call these programs entitlements so be it, it doesn't change anything.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
So we should ignore the Constitution because a Frenchman thinks that people living in a Government might actually want a Government that they can benefit from?

Where do you set the limit?

At ignoring the Constitution, it's not really rocket science.

The rest of your reply is just mindless nonsense since you think that the Constitution doesn't matter and that somebody somewhere should get to decide who gets to vote or not vote.

Where does the constitution grant you entitlements?

You're beginning to sound more and more like a welfare leech with every post.

Ad hominem.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
So we should ignore the Constitution because a Frenchman thinks that people living in a Government might actually want a Government that they can benefit from?

Where do you set the limit?

At ignoring the Constitution, it's not really rocket science.

The rest of your reply is just mindless nonsense since you think that the Constitution doesn't matter and that somebody somewhere should get to decide who gets to vote or not vote.

Where does the constitution grant you entitlements?

The part where people get to vote for people who then pass laws.

You're beginning to sound more and more like a welfare leech with every post.

I am typing this on my Obamaphone as we speak!

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville

1.) Alexis de Tocqueville never said this

2.) He'd probably slap you for suggesting the problem with democracy is too many people voting. Seriously, you clearly have no idea at all what this guy stood for.

 d-usa wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
So we should ignore the Constitution because a Frenchman thinks that people living in a Government might actually want a Government that they can benefit from?

Where do you set the limit?

At ignoring the Constitution, it's not really rocket science.

The rest of your reply is just mindless nonsense since you think that the Constitution doesn't matter and that somebody somewhere should get to decide who gets to vote or not vote.

Where does the constitution grant you entitlements?

The part where people get to vote for people who then pass laws.

You're beginning to sound more and more like a welfare leech with every post.

I am typing this on my Obamaphone as we speak!

So I ask again: When does it end? When do I get my Ferrari?

Address the question or concede that you have no real answer to the fact that once you set down the train to entitlements, you have no control over where it goes.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
So I ask again: When does it end? When do I get my Ferrari?

As soon as you can convince a plurality of Americans to elect enough representatives to vote in legislation issuing you one, while simultaneously electing a president who would sign such a bill.

This is how America works.

 Ouze wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
So I ask again: When does it end? When do I get my Ferrari?

As soon as you can convince a plurality of Americans to elect enough representatives to vote in legislation issuing you one, while simultaneously electing a president who would sign such a bill.

This is how America works.

You don't see the problem in this?

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
So we should ignore the Constitution because a Frenchman thinks that people living in a Government might actually want a Government that they can benefit from?

Where do you set the limit?

At ignoring the Constitution, it's not really rocket science.

The rest of your reply is just mindless nonsense since you think that the Constitution doesn't matter and that somebody somewhere should get to decide who gets to vote or not vote.

Where does the constitution grant you entitlements?

The part where people get to vote for people who then pass laws.

You're beginning to sound more and more like a welfare leech with every post.

I am typing this on my Obamaphone as we speak!

So I ask again: When does it end? When do I get my Ferrari?

Address the question or concede that you have no real answer to the fact that once you set down the train to entitlements, you have no control over where it goes.

It ends a fair while before you get a Ferrari. For one because there's this thing called Common sense, and for another because not everything is a slippery slope.

Also seriously? "Answer this absurd hypothetical example, or I win"? SERIOUSLY?

 Ouze wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
So I ask again: When does it end? When do I get my Ferrari?

As soon as you can convince a plurality of Americans to elect enough representatives to vote in legislation issuing you one, while simultaneously electing a president who would sign such a bill.

This is how America works.

Well, unless you can get a minority in one chamber of the house refusing to let the Ferrari bill get voted on even though a majority of the members in that house want to vote in favor of it.

Probably should have written a bill given every citizen a US build car.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 Ouze wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
So I ask again: When does it end? When do I get my Ferrari?

As soon as you can convince a plurality of Americans to elect enough representatives to vote in legislation issuing you one, while simultaneously electing a president who would sign such a bill.

This is how America works.

You don't see the problem in this?

Not at all.

Want more slippery slopes:

We give soldiers money. That is like bribing people to fight for your country. They should love it enough to fight and die for it for free.

Then we give them education!

Where does it end? Pretty soon they will be the only people allowed to vote in our country because they are the only people that actually care!

We need to stop the slippery slope of special benefits to military members before these posters appear:



Slippery slopes, slippery slopes everywhere!

 d-usa wrote:

 Ouze wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
So I ask again: When does it end? When do I get my Ferrari?

As soon as you can convince a plurality of Americans to elect enough representatives to vote in legislation issuing you one, while simultaneously electing a president who would sign such a bill.

This is how America works.

Well, unless you can get a minority in one chamber of the house refusing to let the Ferrari bill get voted on even though a majority of the members in that house want to vote in favor of it.

Probably should have written a bill given every citizen a US build car.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 Ouze wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
So I ask again: When does it end? When do I get my Ferrari?

As soon as you can convince a plurality of Americans to elect enough representatives to vote in legislation issuing you one, while simultaneously electing a president who would sign such a bill.

This is how America works.

You don't see the problem in this?

Not at all.

Want more slippery slopes:

We give soldiers money. That is like bribing people to fight for your country. They should love it enough to fight and die for it for free.

Then we give them education!

Where does it end? Pretty soon they will be the only people allowed to vote in our country because they are the only people that actually care!

We need to stop the slippery slope of special benefits to military members before these posters appear:



Slippery slopes, slippery slopes everywhere!

This is possibly the most ridiculous straw man I've seen yet in OT. If it were entirely satire, it would be hilarious. But judging by your post history on veterans, it seems as though there's a bit of real contempt shining through. Kind of pathetic...irrational support for social leeching, irrational hatred of veterans? Some people are past saving.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 Ouze wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
So I ask again: When does it end? When do I get my Ferrari?

As soon as you can convince a plurality of Americans to elect enough representatives to vote in legislation issuing you one, while simultaneously electing a president who would sign such a bill.

This is how America works.

You don't see the problem in this?

I don't see the problem with elected representation effecting the will of the people in free and fair elections? No; I'm good with it. We've been doing it for a while now and it's had some hiccups but on the whole it's gone fairly well.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
This is possibly the most ridiculous straw man I've seen yet in OT. If it were entirely satire, it would be hilarious. But judging by your post history on veterans, it seems as though there's a bit of real contempt shining through. Kind of pathetic...irrational support for social leeching, irrational hatred of veterans? Some people are past saving.

Do you honestly not see the difference between arguing against your, frankly ridiculous, arguments, and supporting the exact opposite? As much as you might want it to be so, the world isn't in black and white, and generally just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't mean that they're a "Leech" or "kind of pathetic" or "past saving".

It's quite obvious that the latter part of D's post was hyperbole.

Your entire argument is based around the slippery slope argument of "if they're giving out entitlements, and people vote to receive these entitlements, how long until people vote to increase the entitlements to the point that I get a Ferrari?" This is bad logic. D then supplied a variety of Slippery Slope based counter arguments for your perusal, to illustrate quite how ridiculous your rhetoric is.

Your response to what was quite a sensible point is to question his morality and insinuate that it's maker is pathetic? And you're saying that D-usa was the one making the ridiculous argument?

Maybe I really do hate veterans, that is why I work for them to refresh my hate on a daily basis.

"Makers" and "Takers" man, this is hilarious. Please continue with your posts, they are awesome.

Huggz, your arguments are based on a short sighted, hysterical and overly simplistic (not to mention self centred and judgemental) vision of society. I think it's a good thing that more people don't think like you do.

Did you get a public education?

 Ouze wrote:

1.) Alexis de Tocqueville never said this

No, he did not.

This is a good read on the matter if anyone happens to interested.

heh... this is good.

Is today Monday or something? I'm missing something here or I'm seeing some fast and loose posting mayhem....

Whelp, if it goes another couple of weeks I'm hearing that a whole lot of people are going to start realizing just how much they need the government functioning as it was.

I wonder if image memes can be exchanged for food and rent? Buy gas with a couple of lolcats and maybe snag a pack of smokes with something attributed to some guy who died a century back (note: citations are for wussy liberals).

On another forum I post on, a bunch of people are already talking about research projects being canned and having to be restarted next year; months and years of work potentially down the drain. Veterans concerned that they'll see benefits on time in order to pay their bills, federal employees wondering when they're going to get a cheque again.

Whatever ones political views, real damage is both happening and looming. People are and will continue to suffer. There is fault to ascribe, but some of the vitriol for ones fellow men, women and children expressed here has been impressively callous.

"Land of the free, home of the brave", eh? Whatever happened to the poor, the tired, the huddled masses? To embracing ones neighbour and showing them compassion, understanding and love.

"Frak y'all, got mine" is a truly poisonous line of thought, and it seems to be coming up plenty these days.

 Forar wrote:
Whelp, if it goes another couple of weeks I'm hearing that a whole lot of people are going to start realizing just how much they need the government functioning as it was.

I wonder if image memes can be exchanged for food and rent? Buy gas with a couple of lolcats and maybe snag a pack of smokes with something attributed to some guy who died a century back (note: citations are for wussy liberals).

On another forum I post on, a bunch of people are already talking about research projects being canned and having to be restarted next year; months and years of work potentially down the drain. Veterans concerned that they'll see benefits on time in order to pay their bills, federal employees wondering when they're going to get a cheque again.

Whatever ones political views, real damage is both happening and looming. People are and will continue to suffer. There is fault to ascribe, but some of the vitriol for ones fellow men, women and children expressed here has been impressively callous.

"Land of the free, home of the brave", eh? Whatever happened to the poor, the tired, the huddled masses? To embracing ones neighbour and showing them compassion, understanding and love.

"Frak y'all, got mine" is a truly poisonous line of thought, and it seems to be coming up plenty these days.

"I've got mine so feth you," is the rallying cry of Libertarians across 'Merica.

You know what I find kind of funny is that people are still expecting the government to work even though it is shut down. Even more pondering is that is still working rather well. Why is the government working without money?

 daedalus-templarius wrote:
"I've got mine so feth you," is the rallying cry of Libertarians across 'Merica.

No, it really isn't.

Though I certainly wouldn't mind if you guys didn't need quite so much of my money to survive.

 Jihadin wrote:
The sequester was not something that the Republicans played on.

Nonsense. This was a stated part of the Republican strategy agreed on January as part of the Williamsburg Accord. Seriously, go look it up. Republicans are doing exactly what they said they were going to do. The only thing that's just changed is that they assumed Obama would cave and agree to give them stuff, and that isn't happening.

Also everyone ignoring the idea that the Tea Party reps are pretty much doing what their constituents want but "hey" their EXTREMISTS. So treat them as such and call them as such.

You can be democratically elected and have policy goals and a method that's extreme. I don't know why you keep claiming otherwise.

Having a unlimited borrowing power (financial) is not effective government. I hope you can connect the two points.

Nonsense. You sign on to raise only so much money, and spend more than that, then you simply have to raise the money to fund it. Arguing otherwise is absurd.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Seaward wrote:
We've got one party that wins elections by promising more spending. The guys on the other side that you actually like, you like because they're pretty okay with more spending themselves.

That's not a recipe for taking some bites out of the debt. That's a recipe for ramping it the feth up to crazynuts levels, which has been going on for a while now.

The alternate reality some of you guys live in is just incredible.

Here's the actual real world story of US debt in the last 100 years.



First of all just eyeball the trend after WWII. It's steadily down for 35 years - no matter which side held congress or the Whitehouse debt under every president was lower when he left office than when he entered it. Overall solid financial managment from both sides.

But then look at what happened from the early 80s - debt starts growing, and growing really fast. Reagan's ludicrous insistance that you could cut taxes without impacting revenue, coupled with massive expansions in various areas of spending saw a massive increase in debt. His terrible structural changes weren't adjusted until the Clinton/Gingrich budget deals, which basically cut spending enough to match Reagan's reduced tax base. Then you get Bush II... who decides that now we need another tax cut, likely with the expectation that the spending cuts needed to stabilise the finances would happen down the track some time.

Unfortunately the Republicans, once a party with a pretty impressive record of governance, are now basically the party of Reagan - cut taxes, complain about how you can no longer pay the bills and declare that spending cuts are needed.

And you sit there and talk about the Democrats are the reckless ones. Incredible.

Ugh Seb.

An unlimited borrowing limit for the government. You are nuts. Democrats who want that are nuts. Obama nuts for wanting it to. We're getting ready to pull out of Afghanistan so no more borrowing money to finance that war. Iraq is over with so no more borrowing money on that to. Back track a bit. We might get screwed if Karzai pop smoke out of Afghanistan before elections there being its his last tour for Pres. The guy likely to replace him really and I mean really hates the Taliban. So if Karzai pops out and leave the country hanging we have to stay past 2014 to ensure the next guy is set up to run it..
We're down sizing the US Army by removing one Brigade from each division but leaving a combat support Battalion....and I'm digressing.

With unlimited borrowing power then we're going to hit the solid brick wall down the road. I don't write checks if I can't cover it. The government should not to write checks if its going to bolo later on down the road.

 Seaward wrote:
The electorate isn't worried about debt because the electorate's awfully stupid as a general population, and ridiculously easy to bribe.

Poppycock. You get the electorate to list their policy priorities and the budget will show up every time. You ask the same question of any decent economist and they won't give it anywhere near the same priority.

You want to talk about an idiotic populace... you want to talk about the blind insistance that spending is a serious problem, coming from people who are completely ignorant of the fact that government spending per capita has declined over the Obama administration.

Before or after Sequester

 djones520 wrote:
Not really. Under Bush's 8 years, the deficit ran up 3.551 trillion dollars. 1.9 trillion of that in the Dem controlled congress of the last two years, with 1.4 trillion of that total being during the year of the economic collapse when receipts just plummeted. Under Obama's tenure, we've seen deficit spending of 4.652 trillion. The two worst years of 1.3 trillion a piece being while the Dems controlled Congress. Obama and pals have raised as much debt in three years what it took Bush 8 years, with an economic collapse thrown in, to spend.

Hang on, so Bush gets a pass for some of his deficits because of the few months of GFC he incurred, but Obama doesn't get a pass for the gakky economy that's still suppressing revenue to this day?

That's probably why they've been getting the reputation as debt addicts. Clinton overall saw a neutral deficit because he worked with a Republican controlled Congress during the 2nd term, instead of against.

The entire deficit problem you've got now goes back to structural changes made by Reagan. The graph I posted above couldn't make it clearer.

From NPR via the Weekly Standard:


In his State of the Union address tonight, President Obama will reportedly issue a call for “responsible” efforts to reduce deficits (while simultaneously calling for new federal spending). In light of the President’s expected rhetorical nod to fiscal responsibility, it’s worth keeping in mind his record on deficits to date. When President Obama took office two years ago, the national debt stood at $10.626 trillion. It now stands at $14.071 trillion — a staggering increase of $3.445 trillion in just 735 days (about $5 billion a day).

To put that into perspective, when President George W. Bush took office, our national debt was $5.768 trillion. By the time Bush left office, it had nearly doubled, to $10.626 trillion. So Bush’s record on deficit spending was not good at all: During his presidency, the national debt rose by an average of $607 billion a year. How does that compare to Obama? During Obama’s presidency to date, the national debt has risen by an average of $1.723 trillion a year — or by a jaw-dropping $1.116 trillion more, per year, than it rose even under Bush.

How much in deficit spending did Bush spend on average per day during his presidency? It’s pretty easy to figure out: $607 billion/365 days = $1.66 billion per day. That’s a lot of spending, Georgie. Shame on you!

But compared to Obama’s $5 BILLION of deficit spending per day? Obama spent well over three times more per day every single day than did Bush.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
I'd have to argue that they're as stupid as foxes. In our society, we have a pretty sharp divide between "makers" and "takers," mostly because the stigma of being a "taker" has been largely abrogated and it's become a social norm.

Actually, what we've learned is that moving in to poverty is typically a temporary thing, and that people regularly move out (and are no longer takers) with a few months. So that sharp divide doesn't really exist.

People are willing to take on US Debt despite receiving a return on that investment below the standard rate of inflation.

In other words, they're willing to effectively pay you to take on that debt. $10 now is worth more than $10 five years from now.

So ponder this, is it stupid to borrow money to pay for infrastructure and programs and research and investments (including investing in ones citizens, social safety net and the like) when people are essentially paying you for the privilege of holding some of your debt?

Note: Nowhere in this statement do I remotely suggest that the money should be spent unwisely or frivolously. But when someone offers to give you $10 now if you give them $9 in the future... hell, let's do this thing!