BBO Discussion Forums: Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped? - BBO Discussion Forums

Winstonm, on 2017-May-23, 15:15, said:

Couldn't agree more. As the mathematician G.H. Hardy famously said,

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Has Budget Director Mick Mulvaney been talking to too many financial accountants over at the Department of Defense?

You just can't plug $2 trillion to balance the budget and expect folks with a rudimentary understanding of arithmetic to miss the faulty underlying budgetary assumptions and the double-counting.

INSPECTOR GENERAL'S WARNING: Falling for financial sleight-of-hand tricks can be hazardous to the health of the American U.S. economy and your personal economy.

jogs, on 2017-May-23, 07:37, said:

Wow, you really do live in a complete fantasy world, don't you.

Zelandakh, on 2017-May-24, 03:18, said:

In the US political kindergarten,

• Democrats believe that they are goodies but that Republicans are deluded stupid ignorant evil baddies with no redeeming grace.
• Republicans ditto but Democrats ditto.
• Americans ditto but Russians ditto.

Zelandakh, on 2017-May-24, 03:18, said:

No, the progressive left lives in a fantasy world. I live in the real world.

A paragraph in a fit in a WaPO article struck me:

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I focused in on the difference between "colluding with" and "manipulated by". The latter has always seemed more likely than the former. Depending on details, either might well be illegal. Still, there is a difference.

We have all heard more than enough about Clinton and her emails. But if I can paraphrase Comey on this, it showed carelessness and bad judgment. Whatever one thinks of the investigation, there never should have been Clinton emails on Weiner's computer to investigate. If HC wants to know how this went wrong she should look first to herself and then to Abedin.

Which illustrates, as we have seen time and time again, that politicians and the staff they hire can be unbelievably stupid.

Getting back to Trump. how much brains, or self-discipline, does it take to restrain oneself from referring to Comey as a nut job while speaking with the Russians, or with anyone except perhaps Melania? More brains than he has, apparently. A Dana Milbank column today quotes Trump, speaking in Jerusalem, saying "We just got back from the Middle East". Ok, that's a kick, but he followed it with a reference to Saudi Arabia and anyway we all speak a little carelessly sometimes. We could hope for better, but we know what he meant. Commenting about Comey, and bragging about derailing the investigation, goes far beyond careless. "Irresponsible" is closer, but my choice would be "moronic".

It can be tough to sort out the stunning incompetence from the actual intent. But if it should turn out that "manipulated by" is closer to what happened than "colluded with", this would not surprise me. Either way, there might well be illegality and surely it has creates major problems.

As I said earlier, we really need to make better choices in whom we trust with our future.

PassedOut, on 2017-May-23, 09:58, said:

Study the history of civilization. Before the USA after WWII, every most powerful nation of the world set out to conquer the known world. There was the British empire.
The USA isn't conquering the known world. Trump is just tired of the USA footing the bill to protect the free world. And the UN is corrupt. Its bureaucracy is worst than the US bureaucracy. Some members were spending $1,000 a night on hotel bills.

nige1, on 2017-May-24, 05:37, said:

I always thought Republicans are elitist, uncaring warmongers in the pockets of big business and Democrats are wet, pandering fools promoting a nanny state in the pockets of the unions. Then there are the tea party who are bat-sh!t crazy religious fanatics who want to shut down government except for an enormous military. We could play this same game for the parties of practically any Western democracy, of course.

So none of you lefties want to discuss the Manchester bombing.

CNN didn't report on the bombing til 2 1/2 hours after the fact. They were too busy speculating on a possible Russia/Trump collaboration to steal the election. Russia has been in and out of recession for years. They are too incompetent to steal any US election.

jogs, on 2017-May-24, 07:28, said:

I lived in Manchester when I was younger, indeed was there for the last major terror attack on the city. Are you really going to try and use it to score political points?

"Lefty" is a relative term. In my country I was traditionally slightly to the right of centre but of course compared to Genghis Khan (and you) I suppose you could call me a Lefty.

jogs, on 2017-May-24, 07:28, said:

So you still believe that almost all security services across the Western world are involved in an enormous conspiracy theory to implicate the Russians in the elections of the USA and, to a lesser extent, France? No doubt that makes perfect sense in your fantasies; in the real world noone with half a brain considers Russian involvement in doubt. The unknown part is how large of an impact it had. Where there is little doubt is that the combination of the Russians together with the Comey effect were enough to swing the election.

All that is basically old news though. We have a result and it is not going to change because a foreign power got involved. On the other hand, if it were shown that there was collusion between one of the candidates and such a foreign power, well that is a different story. Another possible scenario is that the POTUS was impossibly compromised and therefore unable to discharge his responsibilities. That would be a different situation entirely. I assume you would not support the POTUS's position if either of these scenarios comes up?

jogs, on 2017-May-24, 07:06, said:

What's your real world take on the fake news stories about the Seth Rich shooting that tried to deflect blame from the Russian hackers? Here's what a conservative columnist says about that: Questions Fox and the right need to answer

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As a conservative businessman myself, I find it disheartening to see the Republican party slide deeper and deeper into irresponsibility. Because conservatism is by nature less exciting than irresponsibility, we're finding conservative ideas being drowned out in a flood of nonsense like the fake Seth Rich story and the Donald Trump tweets.

nige1, on 2017-May-24, 05:37, said:

Let me qualify that I am oversimplifying here, but it's to illustrate a key point.

The Democratic ideals in their purest forms push toward a welfare state.

The Republican ideals in their purest forms push toward a warfare state.

I want to be clear, I am not suggesting that one state is morally superior to the next.

If we become a welfare-state===> Problem -- too many lazy or displaced, comfort-driven, employable citizens will drop out of the labor force and receive entitlements (they don't need) and will compromise the financial solvency of this nation and thus compromise our sovereignty. This state also tends to create too much business regulation and bureaucracy which hampers the growth of the economy and stifles competition in the marketplace.

If we become a warfare-state===> Problem -- we create a "war" economy where we seemingly need to instigate and incite very costly wars without just cause (as in the case of "no weapons of mass destruction"). Eventually, the nation becomes dependent on this war economy and government military expenditures to "balance out" the crazy booms (highs & bubbles) and busts (lows & recessions) of our national economy. This war economy also compromises the financial solvency of our nation by increasing the public debt because war is never free. The penalty of war is death, disease, and debt.

Also, with a persisting war economy we financially feed the "military industrial complex" (MIC) which shows no signs of reducing its empire size. It will continue to need larger and larger budget appropriations to function. The MIC will seemingly become larger, more combative, and more ominous and yes, more intrusive into our own personal lives under the Patriot Act. The goal of the Patriot Act is to root out terrorism by providing us "more comfort (security & surveillance)" in exchange for "our relinquishing some of Constitutional rights & liberties" such as protection from illegal searches and seizures of our intellectual property such as e-mails, text communications, etc under the 4th Amendment.

A warfare economy creates a "surveillance state" which directly conflicts with the values and spirit of our Constitutional republic birth.

A welfare economy creates a nation of dependents which directly conflicts with the values of liberty, free will, and freedom.

That's why we need both Democrats and Republicans to come to the table in the House and Senate and debate it out because when we discuss our concerns as civil men and follow rules of procedure, we will reach a compromise and hopefully create NEITHER of the states I have mentioned above.

I would like feedback on this one. Thanks.

kenberg, on 2017-May-24, 07:09, said:

Literally speaking, this is true. But I don't think they could have been manipulated if they weren't working with them in some way to begin with. So while they might not have gone to the Russians and asked them to help win the election, they put themselves in the position where the Russians could trick them.

Winstonm, on 2017-May-23, 15:15, said:

It's even worse, because the money he's counting twice is a fantasy to begin with. Hardly any economists believe the idea that the tax cuts will spur that much growth.

It would be more realistic if the revenue column of the budget included stealing a leprechaun's pot o' gold.

barmar, on 2017-May-24, 08:51, said:

Agreed.

Please review my posting#6151 about welfare state versus warfare state.

http://dailycaller.c...-welfare-state/

So here we go. . . To correct the $2 trillion arithmetic error, we are going to cut welfare spending by $3.6 trillion and increase military (war spending) by. . . $(insert figure here).

Question: How much are we going to spend on NATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE and RETRAINING OUR WORK FORCE FOR GLOBAL COMPETITION over the next 10 years in light of all of these tax cuts and increased military appropriations?

As a nation we are better than this. We deserve a more thoughtful analysis of how to inject tax cuts responsibly and accomplish more pressing objectives (like rebuilding our infrastructure and retraining our work force to compete in this new global economy where technology changes at an exponential rate). This is way too partisan of a response for an enormous error the media uncovered just yesterday!

jogs, on 2017-May-24, 07:28, said:

I'll talk about it if you want. You may of course decide for yourself if I am a lefty, if you haven't already.

So what 's on your mind about Manchester?

nige1, on 2017-May-24, 05:37, said:

This is simply inaccurate. I am registered Democrat and I have no problems with opposing positions that can be argued successfully or supported with data - I have long favored John Kasich as a conservative who is smart and honest, although I disagree with some of his positions and conclusions.

What most people do not like - cannot tolerate, actually - is the extremes of either party, those who hold a religious-like faith in their ideological belief system to a degree that anyone who does not concur is considered the enemy to be defeated, certainly not an opposing equal who holds a view with which compromise might be found.

More state secrets revealed by Trump.

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And on top of that he praised the strongman for his crusade against drugs in which it has been estimated 9000 people have been executed without benefit of arrest or trial, including, it has been rumored, that some Duterte personally murdered.

barmar, on 2017-May-24, 08:47, said:

We are probably close to agreeing here. Often bad choices are due to wishing that something is true when really you know that it isn't true. People in the employ of the Russian government are not our friends. But golly gee this suggestion sounds nice. Time to watch out. Trump isn't stupid,. and his advisors aren't dumb either. not really. But strange things happen.

I mostly go through life in a relaxed manner. I am not important enough or rich enough for anyone to plan a really good con on me. People near the seat of power have a big problem. They are warned about the lusty blondes who appear out of nowhere, but some even fall for that. There are many variants.

I have come to think that being unimportant is an extremely desirable trait.

In fairness, I can't really consider it a secret that we have nuke subs near North Korea. Anyone with any sense would realize that.

kenberg, on 2017-May-24, 10:38, said:

From former CIA Director John Brennon's testimony yesterday:

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Before he knows it, the useful idiot has become the treasonous idiot.