Left Right Across and Hold

Steve,

Steve Steve Steve Steve Steve... down boy!

I'll have to agree deficit spending has gone off the tracks, over the ditch, through the weeds, past the cliff and down to the canyon floor with Wile E. Coyote.

But you make it sound like this is a Democratic Party problem, which makes it a Barak Obama problem. Now hold on just a 'gol durn minute there partner...

You say:

"Worse, the media has uncritically swallowed - and doesn't hesitate to crow about it! - that the administration is *correct* in believing the solution to excessive debt is to borrow more money. *AND* that the deficit can be cut by drastically increasing spending and enacting a vast new government entitlement."

Doggonit Steve, where were you when the Bush administration pushed through Congress one of the largest new entitlement programs ever - that being the Medicare Prescription Drug benefit? You remember that one, don't you? It was the bill which Republicans in Congress strong armed a few hold outs in their own party to pass, the cost estimate for which the administration knew before hand was a couple of hundred billion dollars short. And by the way, what did you do with the $600.00 "stimulus check" the federal government sent you (and just about every other taxpayer) in 2008? Send it back? And for that matter, exactly when did you and Rip Van Winkle wake up after the national debt went from 5 trillion to 10 trillion during the Bush years? And what about TARP? That program was put together and GM got a chunk before Obama's U-Haul ever rolled up to the White House. Geez a'mighty!

Do you think for just one microsecond the right wing media bubbleheads would have called George W. Bush a "socialist" for doing precisely the same things they are accusing Barak Obama of doing today?

Since when is it "pacifism" to wake up and realize that we are fighting a war on two battlefields? One battlefield is of bombs and bullets and the other is of ideas. Steve, no army is powerful enough to defeat an idea. This country has at its disposal the most powerful armed forces the world has ever known. We spend more on arms than the rest of the world combined - which by the way contributes roughly a trillion dollars annually to that federal debt you are so fond of. But with all of our magnificent weapons, we are helpless against one determined fanatic.

If we are ever going to win this war, we have to figure out how we can open a dialogue with moderates in the Moslem world. Having soundly lost in the last election, conservatives are framing this kind of diplomacy as negotiating with terrorists. No. What we are trying to do is build support in Asia and the Middle East for a rational alternative to jihad and it isn't going to be easy.

For Pete's sake Steve, our armed forces are pursuing a major offensive against the Taliban in Afghanistan at this very moment and our own commanders are publicly declaring that this battle is less about territory than it is about winning the "hearts and minds" of the Afghans. Are you prepared to call our own commanders on the battlefield "pacifists" for having the nerve to say this?

(Calm down Chris...)

OK. What we have here is a simple exercise in negative framing. Liberal pundits did it to Bush and Conservative pundits are doing it to Obama. Now I don't mind telling you I didn't care for George Bush as a president. In fact I thought he made some horrible decisions. But I never once believed he was anything less than a decent man trying his level best to handle the situation when 9/11 was dropped in his lap.

For my money, Barak Obama is also a decent man trying to handle an epic recession at the same time terrorism is on the rise - both foreign and domestic. Not everyone is going to agree with his approach. But if we are ever going to face these crisis together as a nation, we need to stop listening to these ignorant, cartoonish buffoons - on both sides - who are doing little more than reducing civil, informed discourse to the mindless level of the playground.

Steve, what makes this nation the most glorious expression of liberty in history is exactly what makes us vulnerable to cowards like Mohamed Atta, Faisal Shahzad, Nadal Hasan, and yes, Tim McVeigh. These people are loathesome, contemptible excuses for human beings. By all means, let's track them down and string them up. But never let it be said that we feared them so much that we handed them the larger victory of dividing us.

-Chris