The Goat Pen

sardis wrote:The liberals added $14 Trillion of debt from 2009 through 2016 and they are now up in arms about another $1 trillion over 10 years.

Incorrect. When Obama took office, the national debt stood at $10.6 trillion. When he left office the figure was $19 trillion. Obama was handed the Great Recession and two wars - maybe you forgot. The recession cut revenues yet we needed stimuli to keep us from becoming Greece. Yet even though we're now out of the woods so to speak, we just had another 666 billion tacked on during fiscal year 2017. We project deficit spending for another 15 years, and now we cut revenues bigly with this tax giveaway so the donors can buy another yacht.

The beauty of it all is that the same Freedom Caucus members who voted for the tax bill are digging in their heels about avoiding the gubmint shutdown on the 8th. Seems they'rer worried about the debt.

and here we are back to housing prices at national highs, a stock market that is perceived to be on a huge bubble and auto makers who were bailed out returning to no credit selling incentives to justify selling $40K cars - our government added trillions of debt yet we now have the biggest disparity of wealth in our nations modern history with no vision of how to correct it short of civil unrest.

We can talk about 401K's tanking and unemployment reaching 25% but adding trillions in debt was government rewarding bad behavior. You want to talk about transference of wealth - if the government had let the bubbles burst and dealt with the suffering directly instead of keeping the market from default, there would have been a huge reset - not only in America but across the globe. It likely would have resulted in wars, suffering, famine, a shift in boundaries but America would be insulated from that and would have come out on top, and I happen to believe would have returned to a 1950's era of prosperity. And as a direct result of that pain endured, the government would be very reluctant to play the role of invisible hand in guiding the market and lack the ability to support Americans in terms of funding health care, education, housing, autos and god knows what else. The market would represent Americans actual ability to support it without having billions pumped into it yearly with fiat money.

I honestly believe that. Of course no one with any ounce of humanity wanted to face that - but you also should be concerned the day is coming regardless when America can no longer meet its obligations both globally and domestically, where technology changes it power hierarchy tied to its natural resources and superior military. What happens then in terms of a shift in the world's power, America may not come out on top, it may be engaged in a world war like Britain was in WWII where after draining what was left of its resources in survival, it no longer held domain as the most powerful country in the world.

"And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all."

On a related note, I have stepped in dog shit in my yard twice in the last 4 days. And still can't find where it is. I've gotten to work only to have to go to restroom and rinse off my shoe while I dig it out of the tread with a paperclip

Saint wrote:On a related note, I have stepped in dog shit in my yard twice in the last 4 days. And still can't find where it is. I've gotten to work only to have to go to restroom and rinse off my shoe while I dig it out of the tread with a paperclip

Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.

looks like dog shit

smells like dog shit

tastes like dog shit

sure am glad didn't step in dog shit

along those same lines

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... id=U142DHP

The GOP has to have a "win". I'm not sure they care about whether Americans approve of it or not.

If 70% of Americans don't approve, how is that a win?

because the GOP controlled congress with a GOP president finally got something done

The win is passing legislation? Shouldn’t the quality of the legislation have some bearing on this?

Cletus wrote:The win is passing legislation? Shouldn’t the quality of the legislation have some bearing on this?

I've said I think it sucks. I'm just telling you what Mitch McConnell is going to say

meanwhile in California

another day

another retraction about trump

https://t.co/ANE7i8Wnh0

I don't ever remember the media being this careless, they have such a hard on to bring Trump down at some point they'll say anything they think should be true

It's so hard for them to hold it together when you have a guy like Trump just spewing shit on an hourly basis but they're playing into his hands when they just start doing shit like that. Really, Trump is the type who will eventually hang himself if everyone is patient enough to let it happen. Of course, these overeager attempts to put out negative info on Trump just hurt the offending party more than him.

I think John Oliver pretty much parodies that with his "We got him!" bit on his show.

In the current news media environment, any lies they fabricate about Trump are noble and commendable contributions to the Resistance. In fact, the biggest manufacturers of the biggest lies are first in line for a Pulitzer, Nobel, or an evening in Harvey Weinstein's hot tub.

I wouldn't resign if I was Franken. Ride this out and 5 months from now people will have another cause. Senate redemption is one pork barrel project away.

Now if it was rape or he forced himself on a woman - which I haven't read has happened - then I would say he needs to be gone. I just think America is hyper sensitive about this stuff right now.

The attack versus protect mentality when reading the facts

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On December 5, the Supreme Court heard the case of Jack Phillips, the Christian baker who can’t in good conscience design and create wedding cakes that celebrate same-sex marriages. The justices now will decide whether states, consistent with the First Amendment, can force citizens to express support for same-sex marriage through their artistic products. But this case needn’t have ended up at the Court. And future cases like it can be avoided. Agree or disagree, but Phillips believes he is serving Christ with every cake he makes. He has previously turned down requests to create Halloween-themed cakes, lewd bachelor-party cakes, and a cake celebrating a divorce. He was never reprimanded over those decisions, but the same-sex-wedding cake plunged him into hot water.

Not surprisingly, much of the oral arguments focused on the First Amendment. Phillips argued that making him create a cake that celebrates a same-sex wedding would violate his First Amendment rights to free speech and free exercise of religion, by forcing him to express a message, and celebrate an event, that runs against his beliefs. If the Court agrees, it will bar Colorado and other states from applying anti-discrimination statutes in such a way. But Colorado should never have applied its statute this way to begin with. Indeed, states can avoid First Amendment showdowns by refusing to view support for traditional marriage as “discrimination.” Part of the problem is that Colorado misunderstood the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges. Colorado claims that the Court held “opposition to same-sex marriage” to be “tantamount to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.” In fact, as Chief Justice John Roberts pointed out during the Masterpiece oral arguments, the Court in Obergefell noted that belief in marriage as the union of husband and wife is held “in good faith by reasonable and sincere people here and throughout the world.”

The Court stated in its majority opinion that “many who deem same-sex marriage to be wrong reach that conclusion based on decent and honorable religious or philosophical premises, and neither they nor their beliefs are disparaged here.” The states should not disparage these people and their decent and honorable beliefs, either. A big part of the problem is that sexual-orientation anti-discrimination laws are now being used to “punish the wicked,” in the words of Tim Gill, their biggest financial backer (to the tune of $500 million). But anti-discrimination policies should serve as shields, not swords. They are meant to shield people from unjust discrimination that might prevent them from flourishing in society. They aren’t supposed to be swords used to punish people for acting on their reasonable beliefs. You can see this when considering the history of Colorado’s law. Within a two-year span, Colorado citizens voted to define marriage as the union of husband and wife and to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Many other states, too, simultaneously enacted sexual-orientation non-discrimination policies while insisting that the traditional understanding of marriage is not discriminatory. Justice Samuel Alito pointed to this reality during oral arguments. At the time that Jack Phillips declined to bake a same-sex wedding cake, Colorado wouldn’t even recognize — let alone issue — same-sex marriage licenses. So the same-sex couple couldn’t get the state of Colorado to recognize their relationship as a marriage. “And yet when he goes to this bake shop, and he says I want a wedding cake, and the baker says, no, I won’t do it, in part because same-sex marriage was not allowed in Colorado at the time, he’s created a grave wrong,” Alito stated. “How does that all that fit together?” Indeed.

Colorado should have never declared Phillips to be guilty of discrimination in the first place.

you cant have your cake and eat it too