Joe_Cavalry All Day Every Day

Oh, well that settles it then. The Catholics say he wasn't one of the,... so clearly he was an atheist who didn't believe in God despite all evidence being to the contrary.

Wait... when exactly did ATHEISTS claim him? Or does that only work one way?

"If" - Kipling.

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Are you STILL implying that you don't? Do you know that that chart I linked means? What the implications are for the nation if it doesn't exist and isn't enforced?

For one thing, like I said before, they are the allocators of the entire electromagetic broadcast spectrum. And like I asked you before, do you know what happens if we remove that regulatory apparatus and people just start being able to broadcast whatever they want however they want?

Do you think this:

http://reboot.fcc.gov/spectrumdashboard/ searchSpectrum.seam

Just organizes and maintains itself with no regulatory body enforcing transmission protocols? That it just spontaneously happens and regulates itself? It stuns me how many people just drift through their lives with no idea how much work is being done in the background to keep everything they take for granted on a day for day basis running.

Sigh...

Yes. I know the FCC does that. I SAID the FCC does that. I also said that is not the ONLY damn thing they do. That is just the one thing they do that the general public pays any attention to so people THINK that's the only thing they do. What is remarkable is that after I've ponted this out to you three times now you STILL seem to think that's the only thing they do.

And the FCC is the reason GM was in debt? WHAT?

Wow. Even after I pointed out to you that I was pretty sure you only had an awareness of one tiny portion of FCC responsibilities AND pointed out to you what some of the other ones were... you STILL based your argument entirely on the one trivial little aspect of their operation as if that's all they do. Bravo.

Being in debt or being partly government owned doesn't make a company a "zombie". Neither does sales figures being down DURING A GLOBAL RECESSION.

Less spending or more taxes. I prefer less spending.

Then you prefer staying in debt. It's that simple. This is not an "either/or" situation. It's both or we're not getting the job done. Spending is too high AND taxes are too low and they BOTH need to be corrected as soon as the economy is back on firm footing.

Is that intended to be a serious list?

I'll give you NASA as unecesary. Important, but not necessary. But you don't think the FCC is necessary? I'm betting you're only thinking of the occasional meddlesome idiot from the comission that gets their panties in a twist about a wardobe malfunction on television or something, which is the only thing about the FCC that ever really catches the attention of the general public, and the fact that they are the regulators for things like the allocation of the entire electromagnetic broadcast spectum is not even on your mental radar. Do you appreciate what happens if we remove that regulatory apparatus and people are allowed to broadcast whatever they want however they want?

And you don't think we need a Department of Energy? How do you think we have a national power grid without a Department of Energy?

And GM and Chrysler are already paying back their bailout money. They are not zombies. Your concerns are a little out of date, that was the GOP talking point from last year.

I care about money being spent wisely, and paid for, but the thing about America is that we want all of these government services, but America is clearly unwilling to pay for them. This is why we are $12 trillion in the hole.

Actually, mainly Republicans are unwilling to pay for them, which is why they practically riot in the streets any time anyone says the word "tax".

And nobody needs a deficit commission to figure out the problem. You need it to reach common ground on the solution. It's all well and good to say "Duh! Don't spend more money then you're bringing in"... but then try actually doing it. Everyone agrees you need to reduce spending, but try putting that through congress or the senate and everyone agrees you need to reduce spending in someone ELSE'S district, sure as hell not in theirs. And bottom line is spending cuts aren't getting you there even if you miraculously manage to get some significant portion of them through. The deficit and the debt are too massive. Taxes need to be raised. But you can't even say the words" raise taxes" without half the country throwing a screaming tantrum. And instead of talking them down the GOP just whips them into a frenzy because that's their party base.

I still the understand the difference between necessary and unnecessary spending.

Yet, the fundamental difference between you and I is that you believe in high government spending at no matter what the cost

If you understand the difference then explain why you're harping about THIS spending. Do you consider avoiding a Depression to be unnecessary?

And how do you get me harshly criticising unnecessary spending during times of economic stability as me believing "in high government spending no matter the cost"??? Do you even pay attention to my posts when you respond to them? Or do you just react to certain key words that jump out at you?

the cost while I don't as noted before. Our system is based on profit-loss system, not a profit system. No matter what industry it is, they are not entitled to government bailouts because of mismanagement.

Entirely agreed!

Of course the bailouts had nothing to do with "entitlements". It had to do with preferring bailing them out to letting them take down THE ENTIRE NATIONAL ECONOMY when they collapsed.

Same goes for the car companies on a smaller scale. They wouldn't have smashed the entire national economy flat if they'd imploded and dissapeared, but they would have taken a huge chunk out of the Great Lakes economies . Do you have any idea what the unemployment rates would have hit in Michigan if the car companies and al the businesses that supply them and get business from them went under? Bailing them out was an investment in keeping the regional economy functional.

Now yes, steps need to be taken to reform the financial regulatory system so that kind of thing isn't necessary anymore, but not doing it was not a sane option.

And yeah, they did allow Lehman to fail. Within a month the Dow had dropped 2000 points and it triggered a global financial crisis that almost caused the entire international system of credit to lock up. That was a hint they wanted to not do that kind of thing anymore.

There is no way to prove that if nothing was done, the economy would have collapsed, but it is better to be safe than sorry.

If you recognize it was better to do the bailout why spend the first half of your post complaining about doing the bailout?

And I don't care if government spending increases in the long term. Just saying "government spending increasing" doesn't mean anything by itself. I care if it's being spent usefully, and if it's paid for.

If government waste is increasing, I care.

If government is setting long term plans to just keep spending money it doesn't have I care.

I do not care if spending increases are offset by revenue increases that cover them, and if the spending increases is on something we want the government spending on.

However, that said, Obama has already spent considerable time trying to get the GOP to sit down on a deficit commission, that would have the power to make calls to CUT spending going forward to address the budget deficit, and it took him all year to get them just to finally agree to send anyone to sit on it... which they finally did a couple weeks ago. And they will now no doubt stall as long as possible to avoid actually doing anything because anything the commission accomplishes means something was accomplished during Obama's watch, and they refuse to cooperate in allowing that to happen no matter what the consequences are for the nation.

We weren't talking about making you young. We were talking about relocating you in time.

I'm almost certain Reagan had nothing to do with you not being old when he was president.

What happened to understanding the difference between necessary and unnecessary spending? Of course the deficit is going up right now. Spending enough to dig the national economy out of the worst recession since the Great Depression will tend to do that. It's why the deficits of almost every nation on the face of the planet massively increased right about now. There was this little incident with the global financial system back in 2008.

When the economy is back on firm footing and growing at a sufficient and sustainable pace and the private sector is able to pick up the slack on the demand side of the economy... then you start getting serious about deficit reduction. Like Bush should have been doing for years during his terms when that was an entirely possible thing to do.