Where is the US economy headed?

Most of our programmes about the Jubilee are screening short video extracts from God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols. Johnny Rotten on baritone. Sid on a cocktail of mind altering medications.

The Republicans must have demanded some balance to counteract the fawning gong seekers who make up most of our movin' an' shakin' fraternity.

Clinton didn't have a congress who had members openly stating that the most important thing the GOP in congress can do is making sure Obama fails so he does not get re-elected.
Mitch McConnell’s cheerful cynicism


Moreover for the most important piece of legislation that was passed only passed with Gore making the deciding vote.

Senate passes budget plan by one vote Gore breaks tie after Kerrey gives support to bill

Before 2010, they did manage get some bills through when they had enough votes to pass a super majority and get through the filibusters and other obstructionist tactics used by the GOP.

From what I can gather, most of the job losses have occurred in the public sector because of the recession, state and local governments have shedding government jobs. The ones most affected by this are women and African Americans. The private sector jobs have been improving.

The public-sector jobs crisis

It's too bad Finn hasn't been keeping up with the Obstructionist Democrats in the House, and the statement made by McConnell when Obama was sworn into office.

Some people are just too dumb to understand simple concepts of politics.

Oh no!! Not the reverse invidious comparison again.

Proving even a genius is succeptible to a Freudian Slip.

See! Even most understand what I meant to say. I do make mistooks too! Sometimes by accident.

Is anybody being serious about how the deficits can be significantly reduced?

If not, because doing so loses elections, then we are having a phoney war.

A governing party has an advantage in a campaign because it is easier to take apart the opposition's spending plans than the other way round. In a phoney war this advantage is lost or weakened seriously.

Everybody knows that investing in more deficits in order to stimulate growth is the last throw of the bankrupt. It's a bet. The trouble is that "austerity" is also a bet.

It is all inevitable when there has been a steady failure to grasp the spending nettle to win votes.

Nobody else is responsible for the financial crisis other than the voters and the politicians who took advantage of the "stick rattling in a bucket" temptation.

ci. is simply disengaging by continually calling people stupid. People are not stupid. They are people. People do falling for temptation. And only Christian asceticism can mitigate what is, as any animal trainer will tell you, an evolutionary characteristic.

It is democracy itself which is being tested and ci. is either too wimpy to say so because he's tempted to be popular, or too stupid to know.

The LTRO (long term refinancing operations) underway in Europe is a cash for trash scheme so that banks are not forced to pay for their own reckless decisions (which were bets). Apart from Lehman Bros and more than one of those is unthinkable.

The European Central Bank is giving the banks at 1% for three years using Government bonds.

Which means that broke banks are propping up bust governments with free money on dodgy collateral and it is being called "success".

The money is static in the banks to make it all look pretty to get by the next election. The direct opposite of what Faustian money is supposed to be.

There is only one answer besides a strong-arm man and that is the voters accepting austerity without creating the problems it is assumed will ensue. The grin and bear it approach.

Fat chance of that eh? The only way democracy is not fucked is to **** the next generations with added value whilst vociferously assuring it of our love.

A partially accurate, but interesting interpretation. There are just as many examples of autocratic ghovernments spending themselves in to oblivion or taking on eventrially crushing levels of debt to finance happy times for those who prop it up as there are among democracies. The problem is in human nature and not in tyhe particular form of government involved.

I did say George--



"Lead us not into temptation". And we have an extremely powerful Media which does nothing else and employs psychologists whose training we have paid for to be persuasive about it.

If we stick with human nature we are evolutionists. The whole point of my argument with teaching evolution in schools is to avoid us reverting to animality. If blokes like you don't get onside there is little hope.

It isn't as if austerity means a smacked bottom let alone a caned one.

What autocratic governments do is neither here nor there.

Now, that is funny. It presumes we can act like we aren't human.

We are not human in the biological sense. We are Christians. The whole point of Christianity is to set aside our biological inheritance.

You're either for or against.

You are for denial? Is that denial 3 times before the rooster crows?

Denial of our biological inheritance? Yes.

What are you for except being against something?

No wonder you hark back 2000 years to a story you don't give credence to and think it clever.

Tell us what you want and then we can subject it to the sort of criticism you apply to Christianity.

Christianity is a 100% economic operation in which the fortunes of the US economy is intimately bound up.

Why would you deny the truth?
I am against ignorance. I am for intelligence and rational thought.
You are free to think it isn't clever. I never claimed it was clever. I do find your denial of it being clever interesting. Why would you deny it's being clever unless you first thought it was clever?

Do you want to subject it to my criticism of Christianity or your version of my criticism?

Because humans are animals doesn't mean they act like other animals nor does admitting they are animals argue that they act like other animals. Dogs don't act like bees but they are both animals. Saying you want humans to act different from dogs doesn't mean we are no longer animals. It only means you are so prideful you want to define yourself as being better than what you are.

Pride is a dangerous thing; it makes individuals think they are superior - when in fact they are not.

Because it doesn't work. It's a question of priorities. If you think it does work it can only mean you don't know what it entails. Like fm defining science to suit his argument so with you about truth. Keep well away from truth is my advice.



Which takes is where precisely. No doubt you are defining the terms in your own way.



Surely you only strain our eyes with what you think clever. I wouldn't dream of posting something I didn't think was clever. I thought the remark was stupid. And as washed out as a Kalahari bushman's breech clout.

Your idea of what constitutes clever is rather insipid.

But I suppose you were merely redefining "clever" while complaining that others redefine words their own way.

Thst appears to me to constitute an excellent example of a rather tortured effort to use an upscale word. I think Spendi's implied definition was both clear enough and appropriate for the use to which he put it. Calling it "insipid" is a bit pretentious.

Here's an example of a better and more apt use of the word;