Should Men Grow Mustaches for a Good Cause?

The last 4 U.S. Presidents have one common thread that links them all together; they are working to establish a 'new world order', at the expense of every American's future including the loss of our Constitutional liberties.

Mr. Obama signed the largest debt ever passed into law within the first 5 months of his administration!

If you were a businessman (and if it were possible), you began to lose $1,000,000.00 (one million) per day starting on the day Jesus Christ was born,..and for every day up to the present day (counting leap years, throughout), you still would not have lost your first trillion dollars! In fact, you would not have lost your first trillion dollars until the November, 2737!!!

Who was thinking of the American People when 435 Congresspersons, one hundred Senators, and one President, signed that $14.5 trillion dollar debt into law? What were they thinking about? Only J.M. Keynes could have been so inept, stupid and self-centered as to influence American leaders to vote such an inconceivable weight of debt into existence, then, passed onto the backs of American citizens, crushing the life out of future generations of Americans, including ALL of our grandchildren, and every generation for ever into the future.

I assure you that my thoughts of Obama are not 'random', my thoughts are continuous and uninterrupted, because only a complete 'fool' could have been so stupid as to vote into law, and favor such a 'crushing', irresolvable debt as he did!
j.m.

Sigh... must we do this? It seems so.

a) Your thoughts of Obama aside, your comment about him -- in this thread -- is certainly "random" as you put it. Or perhaps more aptly said, "misplaced." This is a discussion about whether or not wearing a mustache to raise money for research into men's health issues, in particular prostate cancer, is a good idea. I suspect, of course, that the person asking it was merely using this forum to raise awareness in another way. And I as well as many others on this thread have applauded that. Others have not seen the value, and that's their prerogative.

What's truly strange -- notice I did not say forbidden or anything restrictive of your rights to expression -- is to take this same discussion about men's health, mustaches, and fund raising and make it about Obama instead. You are, as I would always maintain, fully entitled to your thoughts and expressed opinions about anything you like. I'm just saying that it's weird to be so obsessed that you bring them up no matter what the context. I'll bet you I'm not alone in that view.

b) As long as you have brought it up, let's work on your terms. Obama didn't "sign the largest debt ever passed into law." What he did was propose the largest "budget" yet posed, at that same juncture. And large it was. It's likely, for Obama or any other president to follow, to get larger still. And yes, that's a problem.

Is the National Debt ALSO larger than it's ever been? Your interesting mathematical pyrotechnics aside, I agree that yes it's not only historically large but, it would seem, unsustainably so.

But again, let's first have this discussion with real terms, not made up or misapplied ones. Here is how it works, for the U.S. to accumulate what most of us call "debt:"

Step 1: The President proposes an annual "budget."
Step 2: This "budget" is approved or not approved by Congress.
Sub-Step: Often Congress asks for cuts or -- more often -- adds other spending.
Step 3: After all the negotiating, a vote and then a signing of the budget.
Step 4: If enough revenue (taxes) is not there to cover the budget, there's a "deficit."
Step 5: This "deficit" is THEN added to the accumulated "debt."

It this situation, you're making it appear as if Obama spent all of that $14.5 trillion. Or in your terms, "signed [it] into law." This is just a fundamental misunderstanding of this process I've just outlined.

Certainly, by racking up large annual DEFICITS, he has done his fair share of adding to the DEBT. He also presided over the recent raising of the DEBT CEILING. This is the legal limit on how high the debt can go. But again, this isn't spending being signed into law. It is the credit limit on that spending.

And it occurred not because of Obama's spending alone (which, again, has been sizable) but because all the president's preceding him, with Republicans doing a surprising and ideologically counterintuitive majority of the spending, have played a part in adding to the total NATIONAL DEBT owed.

This multi-presidential total is the $14.5 trillion you cite. What's more, it does not just extend back "four presidents." They've spend plenty, yes (and I'm assuming you mean to go back five presidents, to include both Obama and Ronald Reagan, who was himself an incredible spender).

Clinton famously shrank the DEFICIT to the point of offering a balanced BUDGET, but not enough to have a net drop in the total National Debt by the end of his two terms. For that, you have to go all the way back to Roosevelt (and then Truman, who finished FDR's term for him). They had an 8% decrease in the dollars added to the DEBT, overall.

If you're confused again, I don't blame you. It's a lot of numbers for anybody to follow. Especially when they don't understand the basic terms of the discussion.

But when we talk blame, let's be sure that -- rather than saddle Obama with all $14.5 trillion spent, also remember that George Bush Jr., for instance, inherited the NATIONAL DEBT at $5.769 trillion and then handed off a $10.413 trillion national debt when he left office. THAT is still the largest increase in the DEBT under any one president (Obama included), regardless of whether you measure it in dollars or % increase.

This includes, by the way, the $1.8 trillion in bailout money Bush (and, it has to be said, a Democrat congress) signed into place... NOT Obama. It also includes the more than $4 trillion spent on the so-called "War on Terror" and Iraq, for which Obama and Bush have also spent but which was created and escalated under Bush. This is an exercise that has proven completely pointless and wasteful, even before you add in the escalated cost of oil during the same conflict, both in cost and loss of human life on both sides, not to mention the future instability it guaranteed.

Yet, tragically, so many of Obama's accusers lacked the purity of principle to take Bush to task on this when they still had a chance.

Keep this in mind: I'm fully aware that none of the proof I've given you above is likely to stick with you. Because you are not here to consider evidence. You are here to further an already deeply rooted and unmovable point of view, facts be damned. That's okay. It's natural.

Psychologists and sociologists both refer to your unwillingness to see any other possibilities other than the one you already believe in as "the argumentative theory of reasoning." In short, people don't generally care about finding truth. They only care about being right, even at the expense of reality.

So go ahead, write back and told me it's all Obama's fault again. And I'll promise not to waste both our time pointing out to you that, no, it's only partially his fault. And greatly the fault of others that preceded him, whether you like that truth or not.

NOW... are we ready to talk about prostate cancer research again?