pacino wrote:today I learned school lunches were awesome and delicious until michelle obama got her grubby hands on them

dajafi wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:
The other line tells the complete story, though. It includes all the government spending in the blue line, plus adds in all the other government spending that does nothing to contribute to GDP. That includes interest on debt and, of course, transfer payments. Welfare, social security, medicaid, food stamps.

So - clearly - for the socialists on the board - stay right here, 'cos these are the Good Old Days.

Medicare?

TomatoPie wrote:
So - clearly - for the socialists on the board - stay right here, 'cos these are the Good Old Days.

CalvinBall wrote:Jerseyhoya,

I think it is a pretty calculated move to get the house to act. president Obama has tried to get boehner to do something. Whole senate bill was a no. So boehner said let's do it in pieces. Obama said yup. Boehner did nothing. Some negotiation huh?

Do you think the republicans can win the argument by not presenting anything but just crying foul? I'm guessing the White House believed the Rs cannot thus this step.

CalvinBall wrote:They weren't going to as it was. Don't think that is the point. From a PR perspective it makes it look like they are they asssholes that refuse to do anything, which is true.

jerseyhoya wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:They weren't going to as it was. Don't think that is the point. From a PR perspective it makes it look like they are they asssholes that refuse to do anything, which is true.

You said it was a calculated move to get the House to act, and now you're saying that's not the point?

jerseyhoya wrote:I have many opinions on Obama’s executive amnesty thing....

Very nice job overall. Thoughtful points, well-supported. But of course I have issues with some of it.

....The excuse that he should act because the Senate passed a bill last year but the House didn’t is insane.

I don't understand bringing up congressional inaction as an excuse, so much as just a pragmatic observation that, on this and other matters, one legislative body in particular has been a cesspool of cowardly inaction, venality, & incompetence.

Could there be a more obvious villain of the piece than a body held in such low regard by the American public?

Pointing that out could be many things, but hardly insane.

...Douthat is usually pretty good, and not some wide eyed winger who hypes stuff for shits and giggles....

Douthat is a slug, a sullen apologist, who does indeed "hype stuff". And though you're right that he doesn't do it for shits & giggles, doing it for those reasons would almost reflect better on him, because you could imagine he doesn't actually believe some of his acrid nonsense.

Now Obama is saying “send me a bill that gives me what I want policy wise, and I won’t take this unilateral action.” What the hell kind of a negotiation is that?

She was having an especially difficult time figuring out how to process that awful night, because her small social circle seemed so underwhelmed. For the first month of school, Jackie had latched onto a crew of lighthearted social strivers, and her pals were now impatient for Jackie to rejoin the merriment. "You're still upset about that?" Andy asked one Friday night when Jackie was crying. Cindy, a self-declared hookup queen, said she didn't see why Jackie was so bent out of shape. "Why didn't you have fun with it?" Cindy asked. "A bunch of hot Phi Psi guys?" One of Jackie's friends told her, unconcerned, "Andy said you had a bad experience at a frat, and you've been a baby ever since."

This past spring, in separate incidents, both Emily Renda and Jackie were harassed outside bars on the Corner by men who recognized them from presentations and called them "cunt" and "feminazi bitch." One flung a bottle at Jackie that broke on the side of her face, leaving a blood-red bruise around her eye.

"I went to the dean covered in scabs and with broken ribs," she remembers. "And he said, 'Do you think it was just regrettable sex?' "

Phan In Phlorida wrote:

dajafi wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:
The other line tells the complete story, though. It includes all the government spending in the blue line, plus adds in all the other government spending that does nothing to contribute to GDP. That includes interest on debt and, of course, transfer payments. Welfare, social security, medicaid, food stamps.

So - clearly - for the socialists on the board - stay right here, 'cos these are the Good Old Days.

Medicare?

The orange line that doesn't start until around 1960?

dajafi wrote:

Phan In Phlorida wrote:

dajafi wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:
The other line tells the complete story, though. It includes all the government spending in the blue line, plus adds in all the other government spending that does nothing to contribute to GDP. That includes interest on debt and, of course, transfer payments. Welfare, social security, medicaid, food stamps.

So - clearly - for the socialists on the board - stay right here, 'cos these are the Good Old Days.

Medicare?

The orange line that doesn't start until around 1960?

My point, as you seem to have gotten, is that even if you accept the (frankly nonsensical) premise of TP's post that safety bet programs "[do] nothing to contribute to GDP," it's still overwhelmingly non-poverty programs driving the increase.

The argument that we're "coddling the poor" really doesn't hold up, unless you start from the premise that the WSJ editorial page is the arbiter of truth. This is the mindset that sees ACORN (even today, presumably) as more powerful and a bigger threat to the nation than the poor, put-upon Koch bros.