The Goat Pen

I must admit, I have not looked deeply at the Ryan Plan because it hasn't been up for any real vote. You may be right.

the problem is anything that is long term is just a pacifying the masses . We can't get congress to commit to accepting mandatory cuts 1 year after they were put in place, how can we believe Congress and the president(s) that follow will adhere to a plan that extends to 2026? Especially when things get tough and some moron runs on a platform of "a chicken in every pot" again.

I don't support being an obstructionist, but I fully support massive cuts to government programs including the military and I want it done within 1 presidential term. We spent billions of dollars in Afghanistan only to have a seal team of 30 men fly in and kill Osama in Pakistan. That pretty much sums up our military expenditures in a nutshell and can be a good analogy for all government programs.

After massive cuts , if we still have problems with balancing the budget, then I'd be willing to look at means based tax increases.

However Americans do need to understand that tax cuts are trickle down. Doing away with the Department of Education means that at the local level I will be expected to contribute more to schools thru taxes, fees, etc., I'm already paying an additional $400 a year in fees to send my kids to public schools.

Alot of tea partiers feel Ryan's plan does not cut enough. Ryan's plan and the Commission's are not far apart.

"His sole job is to be an obstructionist, a reductionist, a royal pain in the ass. I like that"

Shocker...

So the "shocker" is a pain in the ass?

Is he trying to signal 4 more years?

LOL

Brklyn didn't just be derogatory toward a President of these United States?...I mean he would never do such a thing....

How was I derogatory to Bush? Posting an unaltered picture that in no way was a slight against the man, his character or his office but simply was a reference to a joke made in a previous post? I think you're reaching a bit. I'm glad you've kept it on your mind to be a little more thoughtful about how we all view and treat the highest office in our government.

So, to clarify, if you want to post a pic of a Presidential meme with an "I'd hit that" blurb on it, or post here with a signature that references a President making a funny quote about the internet 150 years ago, then you can be safe in knowing that's not disrespectful. We're talking the Pres, not Mohammad, here.

Bush as a monkey or caveman, bad. Bush giving the ASU symbol that looks startlingly like The Shocker, okay.

I'm not a fan of tax increases or Lindsay Graham, but this needed to happen - and more of them
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en. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) broke with anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist on Tuesday, telling ABC's Jonathan Karl that he supported eliminating tax deductions in order to help get the country back on solid fiscal footing.

"We are so far in debt that if you don't give up some ideological ground, the country sinks," Graham said.

Graham is one of over a thousand Republicans nationwide who have signed Norquist's anti-tax pledge to oppose and vote against any effort to increase taxes.

The pledge also opposes raising revenue by eliminating tax deductions and credits. Graham voiced his disagreement with that component, saying "when you eliminate a deduction, it's OK with me to use some of that money to get us out of debt."

He praised Norquist for "doing a great service" but said that due to the country's poor fiscal climate, the Republican party's position must evolve.

"When you talk about eliminating deductions and tax credits for the few, at the expense of the many, I think over time the Republican party's position is going to shift. It needs to, quite frankly, because we are $16 trillion in debt," he said.

"I'm willing to move my party, or try to, on the tax issue. I need someone on the Democratic side being willing to move their party on structural changes to entitlements."

I'm willing to move my party, or try to, on the tax issue. I need someone on the Democratic side being willing to move their party on structural changes to entitlements."

Problem is those 2 (whatever democrat moves to center) will become endangered species on election day. gramm is as about as safe for reelection as it gets however. Need more like him in the senate/congress

A group of us got to sit down with Mick Mulvaney (R) of South Carolina on Monday. He sits on the House budget committee. He was telling us that after the elections in November there will be progress between the Dems and Reps. This guy is a a tea partier and he told us room of real estate development advocates that they will have to sacrifice the carried interest benefit to get other things from the Dems. I have to hand it to him, he didn't pander to our group.

Republicans assert that Barack Obama assumed sole responsibility for the budget on Jan. 20, 2009. From that date, all increases in the debt or deficit are his responsibility and no one else’s, they say.

The 2001 tax cut did nothing to stimulate the economy, yet Republicans pushed for additional tax cuts in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006 and 2008. The economy continued to languish even as the Treasury hemorrhaged revenue, which fell to 17.5 percent of the gross domestic product in 2008 from 20.6 percent in 2000. Republicans abolished Paygo in 2002, and spending rose to 20.7 percent of G.D.P. in 2008 from 18.2 percent in 2001.

According to the C.B.O., by the end of the Bush administration, legislated tax cuts reduced revenues and increased the national debt by $1.6 trillion. Slower-than-expected growth further reduced revenues by $1.4 trillion.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/ ... rge-w-bush

Military spending is the first cut and the deepest. We might have a shot at turning it around if we'd stop pouring money into these wars. Where are all the dipshits who swore we had to invade Iraq and find those WMDs back in 2002 and 2003? I said at the time it would kill us financially and every fucking right-winger who wanted to argue with me on the Internet said it wouldn't and it was a wise investment.

Well, it fucking did and it fucking wasn't.

Yeah. I went even a step further back then. I kept saying Iraq was macho posturing on WMDs in order to keep Iran guessing and off balance. The US kept speculating the shenanigans Sadam kept doing with the inspectors was because he had some sophisticated weapons program. I didn't see it like that from my side of the table. I was for bombing the shit out of Afghanistan, though. 9/11 was extremely personal for me.

The Right Wingers in my life had their dicks hard on an Iraq invasion talking about "we'll have 25 cent gasoline." Yeah, we see how that turned out.

I was for bombing Afghanistan until Al Qaeda was toppled there. The Taliban didn't attack us. They just harbored Al Qaeda - just like Pakistan, Yemen, and a host of other piss ant rock mounds do.

The American public should know by now however that we never go in, eliminate the threat and leave. We are at our heart imperialists and worst - we don't take the spoils of war while doing it.

Problem is we don't have the stomach to bomb the shit out of anything. We've proved we can not occupy and impose our will on certain people. See Korea, Vietnam, Irag, Afghanistan. We have to eliminate them, and when I mean eliminate, I mean eliminate their villages that harbor them. Not precision bombing and then send our guys in there to police, I mean utterly destroy.

Tom Cruise said it best in Tropic Thunder: "SCROCHED EARTH MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!"

We shouldn't have a professional military, just a volunteer militia...