What is the Debt?

At a Town Hall meeting in New Hampshire on Monday, December 21st, an audience member asked Republican Presidential candidate Governor Chris Christie about the National Debt, claiming that Barack Obama had tripled the Debt in his seven years in office.  Governor Christie, without attempting to correct the man’s exaggerated figure, claimed that Obama had added to the debt more than every other President combined; in other words, he had doubled – not tripled – the Debt, still a potent charge.   But here is the truth: Presidents Reagan and Bush I more than quadrupled the Debt, from $998 billion to $4,411 billion, President Bush II more than doubled the Debt, from $5,807 billion to $11,910 billion.  President Obama took over a Debt at $11,910 billion and the Debt stood at $18,151 billion at the end of the last fiscal year, September 30th, 2015, an explosion of 52%, not 200%, not 100% (but he has only been responsible for 6 years of budgets so far).  And while President Bush II only had surpluses as far as the eye could see to overcome, President Obama had a deep recession to fight (and additional government spending is every serious economist’s response to a recession).

Politicians lie, even with numbers that are easily verified.  But politicians don’t expect you to care enough to hunt down the truth.  So, I am happy to do that for you. 

And, by the way, here is the SOURCE of my numbers.  I wonder what the governor’s source was.

And Governor Christie knows he told a whopper.  The alternative is: he is ignorant and he doesn’t care.  Which is worse?

For what it's worth, this is not an anti-Christie post, it is a post aimed at setting the record straight re: taxes and the National Debt.  All Republicans have put these untrue facts out there.  Democrats lie too, but Republicans – the party of fiscal responsibility – like to emphasize the fiscal irresponsibility of President Obama, and they don’t seem to care that it is just not true.

Big Deal Dates in Recent US History

This blog post is just an exercise in historical silliness.  There is no way you could come up with this personal list of big deal dates if you asked Google or Bing.  It is just MY list, 13 events.

November 4^th & 5^th, 2008

Barack Obama wins the American Presidency.  The world went crazy, the world celebrated, America had elected a black man President, America had grown up!  Even in the USA, Obama had a 76% approval rating following his inauguration, so even conservative Republicans were glad for America (for a short while).  It was quite an event, you could feel it!

A Jewish friend of mine …

A Jewish friend of mine wrote this and I thought it deserved being seen.

Someone in the <deleted for the sake of anonymity> group argued that we are a Christian Nation.  As a Jew, I would say that makes me just a bit uncomfortable.  Not to mention that historically, it made Irish and Italian Catholics uncomfortable, too.  If we are a Christian Nation, we are a Nation of Salem Witch trials, of Pilgrims who fled religious intolerance only to practice it themselves, of Christians who justified killing the red (native-born) savages for not converting to Christianity, and of Christians who dressed in white robes to go on lynching rampages.

Allah Revisited

In a piece that I called Katy Perry & Allah, I probably sounded like an enemy of Muslims.  I suggested that American Muslims needed to get used to being discriminated against, at least individually and personally (rather than officially by the government).  But my whole drift was that they could not expect to have their prophet Mohammad respected, not as they wanted him to be, not by the American people.  Because individual freedom of expression is America’s creed (not just YOUR freedom, but everyone’s); what makes us American more than anything else, is our RIGHT to offend, to blaspheme, to insult, to disparage.  And I was suggesting that this lack of “respect” was part of a period of indoctrination that might last a hundred years or more; ask a black man how long it will last that they won’t respect you, and he will say with some justice: “it never ends, white Americans are all alike, bigoted as hell.”  Seen the movie The Gangs of New York yet?  I recommend it, it will give a real face to American intolerance.  But it will allow you to breathe easier about it.  Really!

So what am I here for this time?  To associate myself with President Obama’s sentiments, and not with Donald Trump’s.  And to honor the New York tabloid Daily News (NOT a liberal rag) for its graphic eloquence!