1. Anonymous says:

    â€So why aren’t we asking people, â€Say, did you hear the Republicans just put an accused money-launderer in charge of your pocket-book?â€

    That thundering silence is the traditional media not asking about what, in normal times, would be public outrage. On the other hand, it’s one turd in a sh*tstorm of Republican corruption so they could be forgiven for just having missed it.

    On the other, other hand, Republicans charging the cost of their ideologically-driven, failed policies to our children and grandchildren is about as bad a narrative (for Republicans and our children) as I could come up with. And it just happens to be true.

  2. Anonymous says:

    as bad a narrative

    The magnitude of the admin’s audacious incompetence works in the their favor, in a way; it’s so mind boggling. The mind doesn’t have time to find patterns, impose sense – it’s just a steady barrage. It’s a classic insurgent technique. Speaking of which, there was a wonderful CSPAN moment last weekend. Francis Fukuyama was the ’host’ (he’s identified as a neocon and is the author of ’The End of History’, but has been a scathing critic of the war and Bush and Krauthammer, et. al.) Anyway, it was him, Bill Kristol and Bernard-Henri Levy having a panel. There were many good moments, but the best one was Fukuyama calling Kristol a Leninist (and himself a very mild Marx-ish determinist). Kristol airily (and smoovely) waved away the characterization, as only he can, and then couldn’t restrain himself from arguing to Fukuyama that, in fact, Lenin was right and Marx was wrong. Hilarious.

    I agree with you EW. Getting it down to personal dough, understandable dough…. People surely understand debt. I always like to bring up interest on the national debt. It’s not the most pressing problem in the country, perhaps, but it is an understandable measure of something. The government never seems to have any money; ’tough choices’ – you hear that ad nauseum. We have been spending $300-350 billion a year on interest for years. People know that we have the best military money can buy. We could buy a whole ’nuther one with the money we transfer to bondholders; or actually spend it on something useful. We have a massive economy, and the fact that we have a budget item like that is an indication of our great wealth; but it’s also an indication of our great prolifigacy. Spending $1000 per capita on debt service seems like kind of a waste of money to me. The government is paying the ’minimum payment’ every month. Cardholder (or fate) may change terms at any time.

  3. Anonymous says:

    We need to do the same thing with secret NSA â€domestic spying†and all the other â€classified†projects the WH hasn’t told us about. My guess is that so few people know about these projects, that there’s absolutely no oversight, no accountability, and a huge amount of good old graft as well, as waste. Gonzalez doesn’t want to get into â€operational details.†That’s fine for now you little weasel, just give us the cost of the secret NSA â€domestic spying†and all the other secret, unconstitutional projects you refuse to disclose operational secrets about. The budget is not an â€operational detail,†it’s a budget.

  4. Anonymous says:

    Btw,

    I have to admit I did the math wrong yesterday. It was a few hundred to bomb Afghans, then by the time I tried this and we had spent $120 billion, it was about $400 per person (so over $1000 for the upper middle class couple I first tried this with) and now $1000 per US man, woman, or child, so around $3000 or so for the same couple, most of it debt.

  5. Anonymous says:

    â€I agree with you EW. Getting it down to personal dough, understandable dough…. People surely understand debt.â€

    Perhaps. But they could understand the irresponsibility and unfairness of passing the enourmous cost of their choices to our kids even better. And it’s a much better frame to hang aroung the Republicans necks.

    An interesting figure to quote would be the amount of dept each child in America will inherit as a result of Republican policies.