"Barack won't be able to do any of the things he mentioned in his ad."

[Atman]

That's the morning talking head theme. But it got me thinking...why not? If we were able to pull eleventy-brazillion dollars out of our collective ass (actually, China's ass) just to give it to Bush and Paulson and their buddies, why can't Barack say that it's also vital to our survival and the greater good of the country to borrow another eleventy-brazillion for infrastructure projects and alternative energy research and other jobs-producing measures? I mean, seriously, which will actually do more to HELP "real" Americans?

At this point, the amount of money is so obscenely large as to be almost abstract. It's simply too much, too big a stack of bills, to even comprehend. Trillions of dollars. It will take trillions of years to ever pay it back to anyone. China, the U.S., none of these nations will even be around as we know it, and that debt will still be on the books. For-fucking-ever.

So WTF...borrow a few hundred billion more, bring back the marginal tax rates of the Clinton (and even Kennedy) era to offset part of it, get people working. It's amazing what happens next...when people are working (and getting paid a fair wage), they go out and buy fancy new fridges and add a deck to the house and spend their money, exactly the same way the rich people did when Bush gave them the keys to the treasury. Except, instead of taking money from their right pocket and putting in their left pocket, working Americans, put it into Joe The Plumber's pocket, the hardware store's pocket, the appliance store's pocket.

And it goes from all those pockets, to the next pockets, and all these people are able to buy the stuff the big fat-ass corporate greed-mongers produce. We get new roads, new schools (or at least, updated and maintained), and they get profits and divends. Everyone wins.

Unlike the way it is now, where only the very rich realize any benefit, and don't feel the slightest bit of pain because they're the ones who took all the money in the first place.

Whew.

Rant off.

.

[elkston]

1. Exactly. At this point, balancing the budget can wait. Better to take on "good" debt

...that will actually have a long term pay off in American prosperity. No one considers having a house or car note a "bad" thing. They are both necessities (and one an investment) that provide the stability needed for further growth.

[high density]

2. Standard Media and Repuke bullshit

They had no problem at all with us spending endless billions on the war machine. Now that a candidate is talking about spending money domestically, and on items other than defense, they are suddenly sending up all this chaff as if there's no money left and nothing can be fixed.

Health care? Nope can't afford that.
Education? Nope, need to blow up more shit in Iraq.
Infrastructure? Nope, what's wrong with the 1950s infrastructure that we're using?
Energy independence? The Repukes just want to latch onto other forms or locations of non-renewable energy.

[Atman]

4. Which is why the whole "bailout" thing is so suspect.

And the real "October Surprise," even if it technically wasn't. These guys have said from day one that their goal was to bankrupt the system so that entitlement programs (unless they help large corporations) won't be affordable. The amount of the Wall Street bailout is curiously close to the amount that would have had to be spent to privatize Social Security. They couldn't get the money that way, so they came up with a "Wall Street bail-out." And now...there's no money left for any programs.

There wasn't any money there for the bailout, but they came up with it! That's all I'm saying. We were already seriously broke when they pulled the $700,000,000,000 out of their ass. Reach up into that bunger and pull out a few hundred billion more! It's all play money at this point.

.

[high density]

5. No kidding

I can't believe the things that have gone down lately. When a guy like Alan Greenspan finally admits that we're privatizing profits and socializing losses, it shows that big changes need to come in the way we conduct business in this country. If the companies can't be responsible than we need to regulate them into being so. If you or I gamble on something risky and lose our shits, we're screwed. When big business does it, we've learned that government rewards them with a bailout. The corporations are never going to change their ways if we just keep throwing money at the problem and rewarding bad behavior.

[Tim4319]

3. Ending the war in Iraq

will free up 10 to 12 billion dollars a month. That would be a great start!

[Atman]

6. Aw, what's 10 or 12 billion? A few hundred schools, health care for a few million people...

Pffft...isn't a war against ourselves in Iraq more important?

.

[AtomicKitten]

7. Typical cyclic chastising of Dems for wanting to spend money domestically.

With zero oversight of the massive fraud going on in Iraq and of military spending in general, the powers that be have a lot of nerve sniveling about proposed domestic spending. And, finally, I think more Americans than not agree.