Very sad indeed. I don't know what happened to Americans. They fought bitterly 
inside to stop the Vietnam war. And they succeeded. 

=======
  S1000+ 
  =======



--- On Sat, 2/21/09, Mercury <[email protected]> wrote:
From: Mercury <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Obama Beats Down Another Big Bush Lie
To: "World-thread" <[email protected]>
Date: Saturday, February 21, 2009, 4:41 AM

I also don't thing people "think" about the kind of mess Obama is
having to deal with, This is the WORST economic crisis since the Great
Depression.. People are just obviously ignorant and want "change"
ASAP. But those same ones were also very quiet about Bush spending
billions every single month on some stupid war!




On Feb 21, 7:14 am, "Sumerian.." <[email protected]>
wrote:
> shersy17 wrote:
>
> Obama Beats Down Another Big Bush
> Lie
> By Steve Benen, Washington Monthly
> Posted on
> February 20, 2009,
> President Obama has only been in office for a
> month, and I'm already tired of the phrase "change you can
believe in." When he
> does something great, his supporters use it ("That's change we
can
> believe in!"). When he does something misguided, his detractors use
it
> ("Whatever this is, it's not chance we can believe in").
This has become rather
> tiresome.
>
> That said, the whole point of "change you can believe in," when
it was used
> during the presidential campaign, was to highlight Obama's commitment
to
> changing the way the system works. Americans had been misled so often
about so
> many aspects of government over the last eight years, Obama wanted to
return
> some integrity and intellectual honesty to the political process. The
cliche was
> practically intended to be literal -- he would change the system, so that
> we could believe in it again.
>
> And with that in mind, this
> is exactly the kind of change Obama promised to deliver.
>
>   For his first annual budget next week, President Obama has banned four
>   accounting gimmicks that President George W. Bush used to make deficit
>   projections look smaller. The price of more honest bookkeeping: A
budget that
>   is $2.7 trillion deeper in the red over the next decade than it would
>   otherwise appear, according to administration officials.
>
>   The new accounting involves spending on the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan,
>   Medicare reimbursements to physicians and the cost of disaster
> responses.
>
>   But the biggest adjustment will deal with revenues from the alternative
>   minimum tax, a parallel tax system enacted in 1969 to prevent the
wealthy from
>   using tax shelters to avoid paying any income tax.
>
> While budget sleight of hand and "magic asterisks" had become
the norm, OMB
> Director Peter Orszag explained, "The president prefers to tell the
truth,
> rather than make the numbers look better by pretending."
>
> It's about damn time. The smoke-and-mirrors approach to which
we've grown
> accustomed was ridiculous. It was a problem policymakers recognized, but
didn't
> want to talk about, and had no interest in fixing. It's not only
heartening to
> see Obama bring some sanity to the process, it will also have key
practical
> consequences -- honest budgets lead to better policy making.
>
> Noam
> Scheiber added that it will be "kinda helpful to have a budget that
actually
> means something when you're debating public policy," and added
the political
> upside to using honest budget numbers for a change: "Why not make the
long-term
> deficit look as large as possible at the beginning of your term? Not only
can
> you fairly blame your predecessor at that point; the bigger the deficit
looks,
> the easier it is to show progress, which Obama will need to do as he runs
for
> re-election. To take one example, you can't claim savings from drawing
down in
> Iraq if you don't put Iraq spending on the budget in the first place
(which Bush
> mostly didn't)."
>
> I think that's largely right, but the politics might be more
complicated than
> that. By bringing some integrity to the budget, Obama will also show some
> steep deficits, which will likely cause a major-league trantrum on the
> Hill.
>
> John Cole offers the administration some excellent advice:
>
>   The very first thing I would do if I were Peter Orszag and company, and
>   this is one of the very few times I actually hope someone in government
>   listens to me, is to go back and re-score the last decade or so of
budgets
>   using the new accounting system, so when they roll this out they can
say "Here
>   is what this year's budget would have looked like under the old
system. Here
>   is what it looks like under the new system. Here are the past ten years
worth
>   of budgets under the old system. Here they are under the new
system." For
>   political reasons, this simply has to be done.
>
> Steve Benen is "blogger in chief" of the popular Washington
Monthly online
> blog, Political Animal. His
> background includes publishing The Carpetbagger Report, and writing for a
> variety of publications, including Talking Points Memo, The American
Prospect,
> the Huffington Post, and The Guardian. He has also appeared on NPR's
"Talk of
> the Nation," MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow Show," Air America
Radio's "Sam Seder Show,"
> and XM Radio's "POTUS '08."
> © 2009 Washington Monthly All rights
> reserved.
> View this story online at:http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.
washingtonmonthl y.com/128032/
>
> =======
>   S1000+
>   =======
>
> --- On Sat, 2/21/09, [email protected] < wrote:





      
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"World-thread" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to 
[email protected]
For more options, visit this group at 
http://groups.google.com/group/world-thread?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

Reply via email to