I told you Tulsi's the one!

[James DiEugenio]

$4.6 Trillion in Additional Federal Deficits

 

Upon taking office in January 2009, President Obama inherited a budget deficit that had soared from $161 billion in 2007 to a recession-slammed $1.186 trillion estimate for 2009. The January 2009 CBO baseline budget projection for 2009–19—which already incorporated the effects of the year-old recession in its projections—estimated that a strong economic recovery and the expiration of certain tax cuts would return the annual budget deficit to approximately $260 billion by 2012. In other words, the projections assumed that the high recessionary deficits would quickly fall back to earlier levels. Overall, CBO estimated that there would be $4.32 trillion in total budget deficits over the decade.

 

That is not what happened. Figure 1 shows that, as Obama left office, the 2009–19 budget deficits were now estimated to total $8.93 trillion—more than double the initial projections. Annual budget deficits remained above $1 trillion through 2012, fell to $438 billion by 2015, and have since begun rising once again. While current deficits of 3% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are not historically atypical, they are significantly higher than the default baseline when Obama took office. These deficits also exceeded the president’s own targets. A month after his inauguration, Obama pledged to “cut the deficit we inherited by half by the end of my first term in office.”4 Instead, the inherited $1.186 trillion was pushed up to $1.413 trillion by 2009

[Cliff Varnell]

Uh oh!  Looks like Jim messed up and read my post citing the negotiated removal of Syrian chemical weapons.

It's never a good thing for Jim to read my critiques.  The High Critic of All Things JFK is irritated when his own work is challenged.

He wrote (emphasis added):

<quote on>

Russia actually made the deal happen.

But this below is from Wiki

During the G20 summit on 6 September, Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Barack Obama discussed the idea of putting Syria's chemical weapons under international control.[32] On 9 September 2013, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry stated in response to a question from a journalist that the air strikes could be averted if Syria turned over "every single bit" of its chemical weapons stockpiles within a week, but Syria "isn't about to do it and it can't be done".[33][32] State Department officials stressed that Kerry's statement and its one-week deadline were rhetorical in light of the unlikelihood of Syria turning over its chemical weapons.[34][35] Hours after Kerry's statement, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov announced that Russia had suggested to Syria that it relinquish its chemical weapons,[36] and Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Moallem immediately welcomed the proposal,[37][36] and U.S.–Russian negotiations led to the 14 September 2013 "Framework for Elimination of Syrian Chemical Weapons", which called for the elimination of Syria's chemical weapon stockpiles by mid-2014.[1][2][3] Following the agreement, Syria acceded to the Chemical Weapons Convention and agreed to apply that convention provisionally until its formal entry into force on 14 October 2013. On 21 September, Syria ostensibly provided a list of its chemical weapons to the OPCW, before the deadline set by the framework.[38]

<quote off>

Like any Trumpenlinks propagandist, Jim DiEugenio can't give Obama credit for negotiating a peaceful end to the Syrian chemical warfare crisis because it runs counter to the claim Obama was a Neo-Con.

So DiEugenio gives all the credit to Putin -- like any Trumpenlinks shill.

 

[James DiEugenio]

Let me add, I said I would not comment on this thread anymore.

I posted the above two comments as a favor to someone.

I will not reply anymore. And I did not read the original posts either.  Someone thought that they were factually wrong, which is nothing new with CV, and thought they should be corrected.  He had a good source so I did him a favor.

Edited November 11, 2019 by James DiEugenio

[Cliff Varnell]

4 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

$4.6 Trillion in Additional Federal Deficits

 

Upon taking office in January 2009, President Obama inherited a budget deficit that had soared from $161 billion in 2007 to a recession-slammed $1.186 trillion estimate for 2009. The January 2009 CBO baseline budget projection for 2009–19—which already incorporated the effects of the year-old recession in its projections—estimated that a strong economic recovery and the expiration of certain tax cuts would return the annual budget deficit to approximately $260 billion by 2012. In other words, the projections assumed that the high recessionary deficits would quickly fall back to earlier levels. Overall, CBO estimated that there would be $4.32 trillion in total budget deficits over the decade.

 

That is not what happened. Figure 1 shows that, as Obama left office, the 2009–19 budget deficits were now estimated to total $8.93 trillion—more than double the initial projections. Annual budget deficits remained above $1 trillion through 2012, fell to $438 billion by 2015, and have since begun rising once again. While current deficits of 3% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are not historically atypical, they are significantly higher than the default baseline when Obama took office. These deficits also exceeded the president’s own targets. A month after his inauguration, Obama pledged to “cut the deficit we inherited by half by the end of my first term in office.”4 Instead, the inherited $1.186 trillion was pushed up to $1.413 trillion by 2009

Why didn't DiEugenio publish a link to the above?

Is DiEugenio aware that in order to get an economic stimulus package passed in March of 2009, Obama had to compromise and accept a smaller package? 

Obama also compromised on the partial rollback of the Bush tax cuts in 2010.

Obama Tax Cuts Facts and Consequences

https://www.thebalance.com/obama-tax-cuts-3306330f

The Republicans did their level best to obstruct Obama's recovery efforts, which resulted in higher deficits.

[Andrew Prutsok]

So, this is a thing:

 

[Andrew Prutsok]

She’s gunning for the VP slot. Pence is toast.

[James DiEugenio]

If you ever needed any more evidence of why Tulsi is the best candidate and why the MSM fears her, just take a look at the article below about Warren.

https://thegrayzone.com/2019/11/20/elizabeth-warren-venezuela-sanctions-bolivia-coup/?fbclid=IwAR2gnEq0J4Mu6dAXvOHVHQ8CurQnEFukCsDURO6czza1edc1F7NkFMmC8ao

(BTW, I know I swore this off, but what Andrew did was so bad, I had to do something.)

Edited November 20, 2019 by James DiEugenio

[W. Niederhut]

8 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

If you ever needed any more evidence of why Tulsi is the best candidate and why the MSM fears her, just take a look at the article below about Warren.

https://thegrayzone.com/2019/11/20/elizabeth-warren-venezuela-sanctions-bolivia-coup/?fbclid=IwAR2gnEq0J4Mu6dAXvOHVHQ8CurQnEFukCsDURO6czza1edc1F7NkFMmC8ao

(BTW, I know I swore this off, but what Andrew did was so bad, I had to do something.)

It's puzzling to see Elizabeth Warren siding here with our CIA saboteurs in Latin America.  (One more reason that I'm still a Bernie Sanders supporter.)

From what I have read, the coup against Evo Morales is looking more and more like what Kissinger and the Company did in Chile to oust Salvador Allende, (and what the CIA did in El Salvador.)  Morales had made significant progress in improving the quality of life for Bolivia's impoverished working class.

[Sandy Larsen]

On 10/28/2019 at 6:23 PM, Sandy Larsen said:

On 10/28/2019 at 8:36 AM, David Andrews said:

Sandy - I take it you can afford better than the Bronze Plan level?

 

David,

Silver plans are subsidized and the subsidy amount is designed to make Silver plans affordable to everybody, regardless of income. The lower your income, the the greater the subsidy will be, and therefore the lower your share of the premium will be... all the way down to zero. (In which case you will be put on Medicaid.) So yes, by design we can afford a Silver Plan.

There are no subsidies at all for Bronze plans. So any low-income person who signs up for one is getting a really awful deal. For a little higher premium he could be enjoying a much better Silver plan.

 

Off topic, but I want to clarify what I stated earlier in this thread, the part I made bold above in what I told David.

I just finished renewing my Obamacare coverage for 2020 and as a result discovered something I wasn't aware of. And that is that the are TWO things that Obamacare subsidizes. The first -- which of course I was aware of -- are the subsidies on premiums. The second -- which I was unaware of -- are subsidies on the costs of using the insurance, namely the deductibles, copayments, coinsurance, and out-of-pocket limits.

All Obamacare plans, Bronze, Silver, and Gold, have their premiums subsidized. However, only the Silver plans have subsidized deductibles, copayments, and out-of-pocket limits.

There are Bronze plans that cost low-income people nothing. But they amount to little more than catastrophic insurance. Which isn't bad because they will save you from bankruptcy in the event you have heart surgery or something. But for an extra $100 a month you could get a great insurance plan that will pay for lesser events.

 

Edited November 21, 2019 by Sandy Larsen

[James DiEugenio]

Warren, is almost as bad as HRC, but no Democrat can be that bad, so I thought:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elizabeth-warren-defends-israeli-shelling-of-gaza-schools_n_5b5067a0e4b086092477108b?fbclid=IwAR1GkSqKFO_FcyvOmkBn74xhj6j01amGf2mmTxFYvaNylhXdBNOT7SxmP8s

[Ron Ecker]

Tulsi can have my vote anytime.

 

 

[Rob Couteau]

Now Warren's defending the shelling of hospitals and schools? Horrific. Sounding more and more like Hillary each day. Next she'll be citing Henry Kissinger as her mentor. This is a Dark Age for the Democratic Party. Years from now, I believe that folks will look back on Tulsi's stand and realize how much in the vanguard she really was. No wonder they are afraid of her.

Edited November 23, 2019 by Rob Couteau

[Ray Mitcham]

On 11/8/2019 at 3:17 PM, Cliff Varnell said:

Good one!

I prefer the Good German version -- Trumpenlinks.

I prefer Trump Ausfahrten. 

[Ron Ecker]

My only quibble is that Tulsi keeps calling our wars "regime-change wars," which is not really accurate and confuses the message. Korea was not a regime-change war, it was a defense of South Korea. Vietnam was not a regime-change war, it was a defense of South Vietnam. As Secretary of State Dean Rusk famously said, all we were trying to do was make the Viet Cong "stop doing what they're doing." Afghanistan is not a regime-change war, it started out as a hunt for Bin Laden. That failed and it became a war against the Taliban. It is not a war against the Afghan regime. Only the invasion of Iraq was explicitly a regime-change war. And I believe this country has learned its lesson on that. A war with Iran will be a regime-change war, but it remains to be seen if we ever go through it, having said over and over that Iran will not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. Oh yeah?

 

 

 

 

Edited November 23, 2019 by Ron Ecker

[Kirk Gallaway]

Yeah, but as you told me, you don't vote Ron. If there's any time to get off your butt, it's now!

"Regime change" has become a bit of a buzzword of  Breitbart on the right and the left Peace movement. I don't agree with all your examples, it's true, in the Korean War, though not a regime change war, there are questions about if the ends justify the means. But there was and are  a great  many South Koreans who are glad we fought in that war, and there's standard of living now just completely demolishes the totalitarian North. But you're example of South Viet Nam, Do we really want to re litigate that? Your assertion is technically true. but doesn't answer why we we're down there in the first place. Re: Afghanistan, ,As I've said before, no matter how big a peacenik you think you are, there's no way an American President could have been inactive in prosecuting 911, and hope to get re elected. That's just American political reality.  Iraq war was a regime change war, pure and simple, and a purely elective war by GWB, and PNAC etc. He was under no political pressure  to do that.

In the debates, Tulsi made a youthful technical error when she compared her courage in visiting Assad to JFK meeting Khrushev or Reagan to Gorbachev. JFK had no political choice than to meet Khrushev,  just as Eisenhower and Nixon had before him,  as people throughout the world were becoming alarmed about the buildup of nuclear weapons and the precarious threat being played out in Europe and Cuba. Reagan set himself up escalating the Cold War,  but he couldn't resist the opportunity to stabilize the relation between the 2 major powers when a new generation of Soviet leadership took hold.

But I do agree with her, that President's in principle, should not be afraid to meet any foreign leader. You could argue in Tulsi's case, it was a smart political move to stake out  an ideological niche in which to run for President. Because without it, she'd have almost no real constituency now.

Edited November 23, 2019 by Kirk Gallaway