idiots

I think that you can’t really call a balance with a negative or positive balance, balanced, or that’s not what most people think of as a balanced budget. I think all states except Vermont have a constitution that says they have to balance their budget, but I think a lot of chicanery is involved in achieving that balanced budget. One thing that doesn’t seem to be stressed enough to me, is when the budget deficit is less than it was the previous year, all that means is that the debt grew less than it did the year before, but it’s still growing. I’ve heard lately that the payments on the national debt have decreased in relation to the general budget, and some of my ilk think the debt is not such a big deal, but I am a Bohunk like you Beagles, and I hate paying interest.

I assume this Gov Granholm was a democrat, maybe you just couldn’t bring yourself to type out that word. I don’t know any of the details on this, but I think a politician rarely gets voted out simply because of a balanced budget, there is plenty of other stuff going on.

I don’t think you really want the entire government shut down, what of your social security payments, how about the armed forces not getting paid and wandering the streets looking for food and entertainment, how about aircraft crashing into Beaglesonia? Of course the gov is careful in what it shuts down, just as you, running short on money, would cut cable but still go out to the grocery store. But it’s a delicate game, in that both sides are playing chicken and hoping the other side will be blamed. Generally the reps are seen as being more to blame because they are the ones holding a gun to the dems and saying give us what we want or the budget gets it. They make the argument that the dems are to blame because they don’t give the reps what they want, but mostly people see this for the weak argument that it is.

So mostly the reps have a vested interest in the shutdown not being so painful, see, so you can’t visit Yellowstone for a couple weeks, that’s not so bad. The dems have more of an interest in it being painful since the reps are largely getting the blame for it, but if they make it too painful then they will be getting blamed for hurting people just to make their point.

I don’t remember the exact details but there was an incident during the last shutdown where some war memorial was shut down and tea party types got their underwear in a bunch even though they kind of started all this, and then the dems did something a little fast and loose to release some funds to play down the furor.

It gets pretty complicated. I don’t remember all the details on the shutdowns, but I think I have the gist.

I liked Obama a lot, certainly better than Hillary. Some of my ilk saw him as almost supernatural, but I just saw him as a pretty smart guy, a guy who talked smart to the people, giving details and not slogans. I saw him as more lefty than he probably is, but then candidates always try to appeal to as many as they can. I wish his domestic policies were more lefty but I can see how hard it is for him to get anything through the sphincter of the house so I don’t blame him for that. I think he is doing what he can.

On foreign policy I am not a big fan. I don’t like those drones because it seems to me that for every militant or bystander you kill, there will arise ten to take his place. I didn’t like the Afghanistan surge, but at least we are getting out, messy as it may be, I am happier with us out than with us in. I don’t like this recent thing of sending in a small amount of soldiers to beat the caliphates. How can they make a difference? And when they don’t isn’t the natural reaction to put in more? And all this talk about dumping Malaki, isn’t that regime change? But I think he will weasel his way out of that situation like he did the Syrian red line thing, so I am staying with him.

And the republicans scare the shit out of me, so where else could I go?

I still hear people say that they want their kids to grow up to be president.

Well we all do what will make us feel better. I think we’ve known that since before the Greeks. Some of it is not obvious, like going to work, but we go to work because that is the only way we are going to get a paycheck and that paycheck will make us feel better. Sometimes people use that argument to put down someone who is doing something good, say giving money to the poor. Their argument is that he is no better than me watching the Two Broke Girls marathon, or maybe shooting up meth, because we are both doing what makes us feel better, but the fact that what makes him feel better is doing good, is what makes him a good person.

The idiot colleague that was proud of not voting was an idiot. What is a big suck, and why does one want to avoid being called one by this idiot? And you know ‘they’ want you to get a job and stay out of prison to, so are you going to quit your job and lead a life of crime until you end up in jail, just to show them? As Ray’s wife used to say, “Idiot.”

I remember one hippie idiot in my day who refused to vote because he somehow thought that what supported the government was people voting, so that if he didn’t vote he was helping to bring the government down. What it meant was that the government went on without him. To quote Debra again, “Idiot.”