Let the Punishment Fit the Crime: Justice department recommends pursuing prisoner abuse cases.
When Disaster Strikes Pt. 1: One killed, nine injured by Hurricane Bill.
Chinese Democracy: Chinese government to charge 200 for July riots.
When Disaster Strikes Pt. 2: Massive Greek wildfires threaten Athens.
That Takes Guts: Israel pulls newspaper’s credentials for military kidnapping and organ harvesting story.
Hidden Dangers Pt. 1: Cows
Whatever It Takes for that Sweet Smooth Taste: Child tobacco farm laborers in Malawi suffering from nicotine poisoning.
Hidden Dangers Pt. 2: Candles
Have an adventurous day.
Et tu, Stranger? “Prisoner abuse” cases? Yes, that’s the euphemism used by the mainstream press, but it’s really torture. Say it with me now: “Torture.”
Indeed, it was bizarre to read this morning’s NYT article on this topic, which kept using euphemisms, but then pointed out that the law allegedly broken is the “federal torture statute.” So why not just call it torture in the rest of the article?
umm, like, I’m a big fan of that Hobbitt soundtrack. used to listen to those records as a kid. it’s out of print – anyone know where I could buy it? can’t find it, nor the folk-sy Return of the King soundtrack as well. Glen Yarborough is the dude singing. thanks ya’ll
“Don’t kid yourself, Jimmy. If a cow ever got the chance, he’d eat you and everyone you care about!”
Beef. It’s what’s for dinner.
Did you see rthat the OMB has revised the 10 year projected deficit to $9 Trillion from $7 Trillion?
Every Trillion adds $50 Billion a year in interest so the yearly interest tab alone will be $450 Billion.
Did you see that the Taliban now controls one third of the territory in Afghanistan?
I don’t understand why Obama isn’t spending every waking hour working on gay marriage.
Off-topic a bit, but does anyone know why Daniel Schorr is listed as an “enemy of SLOG”? I’m just curious.
I hate The Hobbit, it’s terrible. LOTR was even worse.
where there’s a whip…. there’s a way.
@ 5, you do recall that W added substantially to the National Debt, right? He blew the Clinton budget surplus and then spent, spent, spent.
I guess you miss the false comfort of having someone who paid you lip service when you say you miss W.
@ 2, just do a google search for the record, and add .rar to your search; some sharing site undoubtedly has it posted for your download.
As if previous health concerns weren’t enough to ban tobacco products all together. I can’t wait till our elected officials grow a heart and do the right thing by banning such a detrimental product altogether. Either that or raise the taxes on it a couple of more notches and make the business non profitable.
11
I do recall that in six months Obama racked up more debt than Bush did in eight years.
I do recall that the greatest deficit under Bush was $450 Billion, barely enough to cover the yearly interest tab on ObamaDebt.
I guess I miss the idea that the nation wasn’t saddling my grandchildren with a crushing debt load that will rob their generations of any hope for prosperity.
Bush was a mediocre President.
But things can always get worse.
And they have.
@ 14, no, that first statement is not true. And it doesn’t negate my point, which is that saddling future generations with debt (a Republican tradition since 1981) is perfectly okay with the right as long as it’s for their pet causes (military, abstinence education, war on drugs) and not liberal ones.
Obama is racking up the debt, but that is the proper response to an economic crisis like this. W could have headed it off if he had spent our money wisely. He didn’t, and we’d be in much worse shape if McCain had been elected.
The real problem with the stimulus is that congress will turn off the faucet before it will do what it needs to do. One of the major reason’s FDR didn’t get us out of the depression was congress (and FDR) became very concerned about deficit spending and started to cut back on the original “pump priming”. The economy started to faulter and it was the deficit spending for the build up for war that pulled us out of the depression.
Obama needs to do a second stimulus package that focuses on the getting money into the pockets of average Americans and not the banks.
15
(the figures cited here do not reflect the $2 Trillion increase in the projected debt the OMB announced today)
Debt Relative to Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
GDP is a measure of the total size and output of the economy. One measure of the debt burden is its size relative to GDP. In fiscal 2007, U.S. debt was $9 trillion (65.5 percent of GDP.) By August 2008, the total debt was $9.6 trillion.
GAO Simulation assuming current spending levels continue.Based on the 2010 U.S. budget, total national debt will nearly double in dollar terms between 2008 and 2015 and will grow to nearly 100% of GDP, versus a level of approximately 80% in early 2009. President Obama and multiple government sources including the GAO, Treasury Department, and CBO have said the U.S. is on an unsustainable fiscal path. As the debt ratio increases, risk of currency devaluation increases. This would be a tacit form of default, by paying back the debt with cheaper currency. Investors (including other governments) may compensate for this risk by demanding higher interest rates, which would slow domestic U.S. growth. Further, this increases interest payments on the debt, which already exceed $430 billion annually (the OMB figures released today show this figure will increase by another $450 Billion a year by 2019), or about 15 cents of every tax dollar for 2008.(33 cents of every tax dollar by 2019)
@ 17, let’s accept that as true for a moment. Why are conservatives up in arms about this but not the deficits of Republican presidents? To me, it’s a glaring hypocrisy that completely invalidates any anger or concern over Obama’s budget.
@8
oh that…
the AssHole farted in my mouth while I was giving him a rimjob.
18
Conservatives are/were unhappy over Bush’s deficits as well.
And thought the GOP deserved to lose control of Congress because they were spending like Democrats.
Unlike the whiny bitches on the Left, however, we have the maturity to recognize that in a two party system the GOP is our best/only horse to ride.
And we won’t piss ourselves and run crying home to mommy if we don’t get 110% of what we want from the GOP.
But to address your question, the scale of the Obama Deficits is LITERALLY terrifying.
If you dispute #1 in @14 you find and post these figures; total debt racked up by Bush and Obama’s first year debt.
The MSM won’t leak Obama’s dirty little secret but the debt is a huge iceburg looming in our near future.
“…the debt is a huge iceburg looming in our near future.”
Sure dude, the media’s been a-towing that line since at least the 70’s.
2012?
Is that when we are going to hit that iceburg??????
“Conservatives are/were unhappy over Bush’s deficits as well. And thought the GOP deserved to lose control of Congress because they were spending like Democrats.”
Really? Then why weren’t all the Teabaggers protesting out-of-control war spending to attempt to futilely turn Iraq into Riverdale? Why was the general GOP stance when it came to ballooning the military out of proportion to stand there with hands outstretched and say, “Give. Now. Don’t ask questions or we’ll brand you a terrorist.”? Why did the administration not only purposefully not include war spending in the budget to make it look smaller, but also under report unemployment numbers so that its doddering candidate could stand there like a fool and say “The fundamentals of our economy our strong.”?
Bill Maher nailed it. The Right’s devotion is not so much to ideals as it is to people. No matter how many times Bush failed and misled his base, they just couldn’t bring themselves to turn away from him. They didn’t excoriate Bush while McCain was running — they simply opted for historical revisionism and tried to pretend that he never existed. The Left will abandon the messenger when he loses the message, something Obama is facing now.
Yes, the Right co-opted God, Santa Claus, Uncle Sam. et al to serve its needs, but this notion that the GOP is somehow financially adept and good with the $$$ is as much a chimera and the magical daddy figures it can’t seem to live without. At this point, the party sole’s megalomaniacal end is to literally tank everything through demagoguery and callous resistance to anything so that it can pretend to be the calvary who’s going to clean up the neo-Wild West it did everything in its power to engender.
@ 20, conservatives sure kept their unhappiness to themselves judging from the utter silence exhibited in the right wing media, blogs, letters to the editor, polls, and any other popular measure of their opinions; which is why I tend to believe that such sentiments are complete BS. I’m sure there were a handful of true conservatives concerned about the deficits and W’s adventures in the Middle East, but they were an insignificant minority. As such, my point about the hypocrisy of the right wing stands.
21
Keekee, you’re precious.
A few months living under an I-5 underpass is the best cure for skepticism.
22
23
The right recognizes that ideals inspire but people get the job done.
Imperfect people.
Imperfect people that are still head and shoulders better than the Democrats. (I voted for Bush twice, wasn’t happy about it either time, hated voting for the less disagreeable choice rather than a choice I was exited about. But no matter how disappointed I was with Bush- and I was plenty disappointed- I’VE NEVER REGRETED NOT VOTING FOR GORE OR KERRY. never for one millisecond.)
There were candidates other than Bush and McCain that I supported and worked for in the Primaries. They lost. I will work harder and sooner for 2012. But I never had a moment’s hesitation that Bush was a better choice for me that what ever the Democrats would run.
Just because Conservatives don’t pull a Savagesque Bitch Tantrum every time we don’t get our way don’t make the mistake of assuming we agree.
It’s not hypocrisy.
It’s maturity.
Where has the Left’s ideological pure devotion to Ideals and abandoning the Messenger when he disappoints gotten it?
What Hero has the Left had from the past 40 years?
What successful President has the Left had in 40 years?
What policy successes?
When you elect a President they are only successful if they overcome their base and work with and reach out to the GOP.
Clinton did and was.
Carter didn’t.
Obama remains to be seen.
Perfect is the enemy of Good Enough.
I’ll take Good Enough when it’s the best I can get.
You can munch on your empty Ideals.
it’s so easy not to try…
let the world go drifting by…
if you never say hello…
…you won’t have to say goodbye.
21
2012 is when we are going to elect Romney.
Ask Golob to explain the debt to Slog.
@ 25,
No, it’s not maturity. It’s cowardice. It’s not having any real convictions. It’s the result of not really believing in anything except your own self interest; as long as W gave you tax cuts and said the right thing, you didn’t care what he did. You might well have supported others more than W or McCain, but in the end it really was all the same to you. W spent, spent, spent and you acquiesced because all you wanted was an R in power; what he actually did there was irrelevant.
Maturity? Please.
28
ok.
whatever.
pretty jealous, I see.
like anyone is going to take political advice from the Whiner Loser Malcontents on Slog…
@29 – you’re just upset cause we p0wnd you.
Well, except for the Bag Tax on the Poor, which nobody believed the Stranger about.