The federal deficit reached a record high in October. The budget shortfall for that month alone was $176.4 billion. Such a gargantuan number used to represent an irresponsible year. Now it is par for the course--for a month. Welcome to Obamanomics, in which the policies one denounces while out of power become the policies one escalates once in power. "And we are now looking at a deficit of well over half a trillion dollars," candidate Obama observed in the third presidential debate. "So one of the things that I think we have to recognize is pursuing the same kinds of policies that we pursued over the last eight years is not going to bring down the deficit." President Obama, along with his spend-happy Congress, will accumulate that half-trillion dollar deficit that he lambasted President Bush for sometime before Christmas. With the deficit numbers growing, and extravagant spending bills before Congress, it is frightening to contemplate how large a deficit Obama and Co. will rack up over the course of the fiscal year--and how long it will take for America to pay it back.

Pay it back? If you consider hyper-inflated dollars, that may as well have Art Linkletter's photo on them, payback then I guess we will pay it back. I call it legal default.

Yes, but he's just like the others. Isn't he?

Now, with what we’ve seen so far in reality, let's speculate on how any other candidate who may have won and was in the White House at this time would have done the same things, shall we?

Or better yet, let’s go back to the ‘Bush was just as bad’ pseudo argument to somehow justify or balance O’s outrageous policies and behavior.

Seriously. Are we learning yet?

The deeper problem here is the cultural problem: the assumption is that prosperity comes from money rather than money (a mere and imperfect measure of wealth) coming from work that produces something that people really value.

We will not have a materially prosperous society if the people think that work is a scam and the ruling class thinks that _they_ create wealth by printing more money and swishing it around.

Unfortunately, your common sense explanation and approach that is understood by most people who work for a living and financially manage their own existences are lost on the insulated "Wizards of Smart" who are running government using other people's resources.

Remember Medicare Part D "aka pharma cartel subsidy"?

Remember when we spent 3 trillion (and still counting!) waging war in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Remember when we blew 250 billion creating the totally unnecessary Department of Homeland Security?

Remember the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008?

I don't know if it's really all that fair to call it Obamanomics. Maybe we could call it something like Obushmanomics or "the logical conclusions of market fundamentalist economics".

This is what I don't get? Does this somehow and in some way justify the complete out of control government cluster f'k that has happened since January and is in full fledged action right now?! Not that you've noticed I guess, but GW has not been running things for almost a year now and it might be argued before that.

It just makes comments like that appear stupid.

Indeed! But when are you people gonna wake up we need to ban guns!

Hey, and how about this show trial of the 9/11 conspirators that will go down in civil court in New York? O’s AG, Holder, will move these admittedly guilty murderers from Gitmo so that the government can set the stage to expose our interrogation techniques and other secretive information designed to keep us safe but now for the world, friend and foe, to see.

Is this grounds for impeachment or at least somehow a treasonous act?

Don’t remember GW or that evil Cheney doing anything like this.

And this is just a capital idea....from Bloomberg -

"The Obama administration is confident Congress will raise the country’s debt limit by year end to avert a showdown similar to the one that shuttered parts of the government in 1995, administration officials said.

The White House wants an increase of at least $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion, according to a person familiar with the deliberations between lawmakers and the administration. Record budget deficits are pushing the national debt closer to the $12.1 trillion statutory limit."

Will this even cover the $1.2 Trillion in Stimulus/Supplemental Budget monies plus the $1 Trillion in monopoly money that was printed by the Fed?

Every once in a while I can agree wholeheartedly with PMA, and this is one of those times. Bush was a corporo-fascist, and Obama is Bush, just multiple times worse.

So I can agree to a point with PMA, EXCEPT for his completely moronic statement, “the logical conclusions of market fundamentalist economics," demonstrating once again that he has never actually read the works of the great free market economists. How he continues to mix corporo-fascism with free market capitalism can no longer be dismissed as innocent ignorance. And it has ceased to be bewildering; just aggravating. To him, just about anyone to the right of "libertarian"-communism (ha!) can be grouped in the same undifferentiated pool of "libertarians and conservatives." His repeated performance in the various threads here shows that his confusion is deliberate. Pathetic.

Other than his collusion with TARP, I'm not sure how Bush was anymore a corporo-fascist than any of his predecessors and certainly nothing like his Imperial Highness Obama.

I guess I'm unclear on the concept really.

In terms of our current trend toward socialism (i.e. - public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production), isn’t this what Obama advocates and has demonstrated in practice?

I don’t recall Bush getting intimately involved in any private concern much less a government grab.

NCLB, Medicare Prescription Drug Program, blowing up the budget from less than $1T when he entered office to more than $3T, squashing civil liberties through the Patriot Act, spring 2008 "stimulus" package, TARP, "bank" bailouts, loose monetary policy that helped cause the boom/bust in the first place, etc., etc....

But you do raise a good point: socialism and fascism have their differences, but they are really just two sides of the same statist coin.

Incidentally, PBS has a great show that aired recently: "The Soviet Story." Go to http://www.sovietstory.com. Commies and Nazis had a love/hate relationship. (So, quite frankly do socialists and facists, Democrats and Republicans...)

The only thing I would disagree with you on here is the supposed "squashing of civil liberties" via the Patriot Act. Expediting the cause to monitor phone calls and the like of suspected terrorists doesn't bother me necessarily. And it never trickled down to monitoring those who weren’t suspected. In fact, that bending of the fourth amendment did tag and catch people who would harm us. Certainly not worse than FDR's interment camps I would say.

I still think that labeling GW as a fascist is a stretch.

And it is interesting when looking at how Hitler and the Nazis got started to see how socialism works and how it easily can morph into fascism. Or vice versa. As has been observed, one of the first things Hitler did when first coming to power was to take over the auto industry and from there, other industries. Also, one of his prize initiatives was the nationalize healthcare.

So our current crop of leftists running this government have just taken a page out of history and are certainly not doing anything new and improved. Just wrong.

We don't live (yet) in the desperate 1910s, '20s, or '30s of Europe, so we are slow and gradual in our socialistic slide whereas the Germans and Russians were comparatively abrupt. Statism is a spectrum on which the Germans and Russians were at the extreme end. We, with Bush and more so Obama, are making our way there. Let's all hope we revisit, as a federation, our theory of government before we have gone much further. It really will only end in atrocity and ruin otherwise.

asdf wrote,

"And it never trickled down to monitoring those who weren’t suspected."

Completely untrue. There are plenty of documented cases of this; God knows how many went unreported.

Source: http://vodpod.com/watch/1071042-abc-nsa-agents-admit-spying-on-americans

Eric squealed,

“the logical conclusions of market fundamentalist economics," demonstrating once again that he has never actually read the works of the great free market economists. How he continues to mix corporo-fascism with free market capitalism can no longer be dismissed as innocent ignorance...His repeated performance in the various threads here shows that his confusion is deliberate. Pathetic."

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt when you completely fail to comprehend important conceptual distinctions because of my terrible writing. I should've wrote "consequences" instead of "conclusions".

What are the effects of an unfettered free market (ie complete deregulation)? Answer: poisoned water sheds, no redress for injured or abused workers, exploited children, micro-tyrannies, in essence feudal bondage. This doesn't even begin to touch on the hyper fixation of libertarians on an extreme interpretation of negative liberties, as if equality of opportunity actually exists across the board and therefore everyone profited fairly.

Ever heard of fraud? Do you know what an externality is? Do you even understand the concept of scarcity, or like Rush Limbaugh do you believe that the pie's just gonna keep growing and growing, the wealth will trickle down, and everyone has a fair shot?

Eh, two of the many realities that will always be true PMA: bad things will always be with us (i.e. - poisoned water sheds, no redress for injured or abused workers, exploited children, micro-tyrannies, etc., etc.) and everyone DOES NOT have a fair shot.

It's called life in the real world and as one would revel in a Utopian World, it hasn't ever and won't ever happen. As much as you want to believe it to be so.

Ban guns? What would that solve Van? Maybe it will solve your thirst for the US to become a totalitarian state?!?!?!? Your insane....and I bet very, very chubby.

I watched a two hour program on the History Channel yesterday on 9/11 called 'Countdown to Ground Zero'.

How quickly we forget what a devastating and horrific event that was eight years ago last month.

So, personally, I'm glad that that evil Bush and Satanic Cheney decided to listen in on my phone conversations regarding my pizza orders and verbal tussles with my wife to insure that terrorists who were and are the real threats have not the ability to put together another 'man caused disaster', as our new head of Homeland Security likes to refer to is as.

But hey, people have forgotten and it's just all good now. Can never happen here or again, right? All that we're concerned about now is the minutiae of the rules.

asdf,

Where and when would you draw the line of demarcation in legitimate surveillance? Are you honestly arguing that eavesdropping by virtually unaccountable organizations is a legitimate infringement of the right to privacy? So you think the Obushma administration has the right to surveil whomever as long as the surveillance is intended to monitor terrorist communication?

Don't you think that justification is faulty, too vague?

I'm not arguing at all. I believe that an acceptable level of surveillance is necessary to prevent me from getting blown up in a subway by a bomb toting Soldier of Allah.

"President Obama has shattered the budget record for first-year presidents -- spending nearly double what his predecessor did when he came into office and far exceeding the first-year tabs for any other U.S. president in history.

In fiscal 2009 the federal government spent $3.52 trillion -- $2.8 trillion in 2000 dollars, which sets a benchmark for comparison. That fiscal year covered the last three-and-a-half months of George W. Bush's term and the first eight-and-a-half months of Obama's.

That price tag came with a $1.4 trillion deficit, nearly $1 trillion more than last year. The overall budget was about a half-trillion more than Bush's for 2008, his final full fiscal year in office.

Click here to read FOXBusiness.com's Elizabeth MacDonald describe what the interest on the debt can buy.

That's a big increase. But compared with other presidents' first years in office, Obama is running circles around them. "

So, tell me again how Obama is the just like McCain and Bush?