Scott McClellan Interview...... <<<crickets>>> Come on guys you can attack him like the rest of the fringe right.

[TheAnvil 0]

My hero? GWB 'tis not. He's been the lesser of two evils in 00 and 04 and John McCain would have made a far better president and should have won in '00.

Keep drinking iced tea. FY01, EJC budget, was a deficit year, by the way.

Vinny the Anvil
Post Traumatic Didn't Make The Lakers Syndrome is REAL
JACKASS POWER!!!!!!

[Amazon 7]

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My hero? GWB 'tis not. He's been the lesser of two evils in 00 and 04 and John McCain would have made a far better president and should have won in '00.

Thats choice. you and others here have certainly supported his policy ever since I have known you. McCain WOULD have been a far better choice in 00' but the sleazes in this administration made sure that did not happen. Their actions then and in subsequent elections showed EXACTLY how they felt about people who actually served this country.

Face it George fried his brain with cocaine and alcohol long ago...seems to be common for those in this administration who abuse substances..and others... that affect their cognitive abilities.

He may claim to have found Jesus..but his actions speak volumes for that to be only a sham for the religious right.. his base.

Perhaps he should have had more iced tea....and retained enough synaptic prowess to realize how surrounding himself with the yes men would turn out badly. By his not listening to those who have studied the larger world he doomed our country to suffer the consequences of his hubris.. and it will be a long time till we can repair the damage this administration has done to our country.

[jcd11235 0]

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So now you're changing from the economic crisis being decades in the making to the state of the economy at the end of El Jefe Clintonista's administration

What I wrote:

Yeah, that budget surplus and growing economy that we saw during the Clinton administration had disaster written all over them.

Then you made the claim about the federal budget being headed for disaster for decades. I said that was largely untrue, except fore Medicare, and, to a much lesser extent, Social Security. You said I was still wrong, yet you refuse to present any evidence of such, despite your multiple insults of the economic knowledge of others.

So, if you are going to change the subject from the economy under Clinton to the federal economy of the past few decades, please present some facts, instead of insulting those of us who rely on them.

Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!

[lawrocket 3]

Yes, ma'am. I deliberately excluded GHW Bush as an "idealist." Bush, Sr., did some things differently. But he was also a political insider, and mastered certain aspects of the job prior to taking it.

Perhaps the single most important legacy of GHWB is that he was the POTUS who created the modern model of presidential warmaking. He took Gulf of Tonkin and moved it forward.

Recall that many in Congress prior to Desert Shield/Storm told him he couldn't do it without their advice and consent. He carried around a copy of the Constitution in his packet and told them all, "It says here that I am the Commander in Chief. Not you guys. And I am commanding them to go to Kuwait."

All Congress did was back down and follow with resolutions and funding. He took what Teddy Roosevelt did, added some LBJ and Nixon, a piece of Reagan's Grenada, and recent success with Panama, and centralized military power within himself.

That's not idealism. That's pragmatism and political cunning.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[jcd11235 0]

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Yes, ma'am. I deliberately excluded GHW Bush as an "idealist."

She (nerdgirl) referenced the forty-third POTUS, not the forty-first POTUS.

Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!

[nerdgirl 0]

Concur, w/r/t Pres GHW Bush (Sr) realism. Trying to argue Bush Sr as a foreign policy idealist or neoconservative would be an interesting straw man argument to make but not one which I would want to undertake.

My query was w/r/t Pres GW Bush's (Jr) as a foreign policy idealist. Neoconservatism foreign policy is characterized by idealist expectations of spread of democracy, motivating belief the inherant value of democracy as normatively best, and expectations that people around the world will accept, prosper, and build democratic institutions and processes.

VR/Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[TheAnvil 0]

Odd the last budget he produced left a nice deficit year for GWB, then, eh?

Vinny the Anvil
Post Traumatic Didn't Make The Lakers Syndrome is REAL
JACKASS POWER!!!!!!

[TheAnvil 0]

Compared to the policies of socialization that the left espouses, I do support GWB. Always will be against socialism, racial discrimination for collegiate admission/employment, mandatory union membership, lack of school choice, moronic gun laws, higher taxes, and the like. Just because a Republican president has done poorly in many areas doesn't mean I abandon all sense and become a liberal. Ha! Never in a million years should I live that long.

Vinny the Anvil
Post Traumatic Didn't Make The Lakers Syndrome is REAL
JACKASS POWER!!!!!!

[jcd11235 0]

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Odd the last budget he produced left a nice deficit year for GWB, then, eh?

Did he? Or did he just sign the budget Congress wanted?

Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!

[lawrocket 3]

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Why is it (or more specifically , do you,) automatically think what he has printed is the "truth"?

Probably because what he printed confirms my underlying suspicions - which were confirmed to me by a former Congressman who had served on the House Armed Services Committee. I was at a meeting of the Lincoln Club back in about February or March, 2003 in Downtown LA - right before the start of the war. He gave a talk on the reasons for going to war in Iraq as:
1) An unfriendly government with aspiring nuclear capabilities;
2) A tyrannic government that is despotic to its own citizens;
3) A tyrannic government that is balking at international opinion; and
4) Strategic importance

So I grilled him one-on-one after the talk. I asked him about Korea - a despotic government with actual admitted nuclear programs. Also, a tyranical government that starves its citizens. I told him, "since the fall of the USSR, North Korea has been threat No. 1. The reasons that you gave would mean that we go after Korea before Iraq. North Korea also retains its strategic importance."

He responded that a look at a satellite photo of the earth at night would show nothing but blackness in NoKo. There's nothing there to protect that isn't already being protected. I brought up the famines, and he said its pointless to try to fix that. AndI responded, "But that means the reason for going to Iraq is not a real reason for going to Iraq."

He responded, correctly, I might add, that NoKo has a million man army. If we made a move on NoKo, NoKo would attack and move in to SoKo and with their manpower would take Seoul in three days. So we don't really want to mess with them much. I added that I agree, but what he is saying, then, is that:
1) Iraq has something we need. I'd assume that's oil. He agreed that it is strategically important to keep it going, which is a reality that, politically, we just cannot admit;
2) NoKo is worse with regard to his stated reasons, but we can't beat them without nuking them - an option that is not available. So Iraq is a baddie that we can actually win a war against.
3) Conclusion - we are there to flex our muscle and ensure that te wells remain open.

He said (paraphrasing) "Look. The reason we are going there is to clean up the block. Broken windows. The whole place is rough. We are going into Iraq, gonna take out Saddam, and help them build a stable democracy. Once we build that, the countries around them will start to follow suit. That won't work in NoKo - everywhere around them behaves fairly well. Iran? We don't have a good enough reason to go there. Iraq is the bang for our buck."

So I asked him, "Why not just say we're going in there to experiment with nation-building?" He responded, "The American people won't support that. They'll support anti-terrorism with WMD aspirations. And that is also a goal - to prevent that."

McClellan wrote that the Administration forwarded propoganda to foist support for its Iraq policy. People weren't asking the questions that I asked that guy.

McClellan aleged that a "political propoganda campaign" was waged to sell the Iraq War, instead of the truth. According to this Ex-Congressman, it was true. The Administration could not be truthful, for they knew the public would not support the true reasons. Thus, they waged propoganda.

That is why I believe it is true.

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Next question.

Do you know WHO bank rolled his book and "WHO" the pulisher is and both of their backgrounds?

I ask sincerly

No, I do not. Frankly, it makes little difference. McClellan himself said that the words are his, and that there was no clever editing or anything of that nature.

McClellan stands by it.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[livendive 8]

While not particularly relevent to Scott McClellan's claims regarding the Valerie Plame, Iraq war, and Hurricane Katrina stuff, a report out from the NASA OIC today does lend credence to the claim the administration "managed" press releases to keep them consistent with the President's positions. It's not particularly surprising, but still at least hints at support for the propoganda/continuous campaigning allegations.

http://oig.nasa.gov/investigations/OI_STI_Summary.pdf

Blues,
Dave

"I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!"
(drink Mountain Dew)

[TheAnvil 0]

Read up on some facts. OMB didn't disband in FY00 - it kept RIGHT ON GOING. 'All those years of surplus' equates to FY99 and FY00 alone. EJC's OMB drafted eight budgets - FY94-FY01. Ending up on a deficit note.

Vinny the Anvil
Post Traumatic Didn't Make The Lakers Syndrome is REAL
JACKASS POWER!!!!!!

[TheAnvil 0]

I think that the propaganda piece comes back to my original statement about the constant campaign mentality in DC.

In the abstract, one can understand the House being in a constant campaign mode of sorts. The Senate and the President, however, should not be. If the Executive and the other half of the Legislative are maintaining the constant campaign mentality, that's a problem that ALL of us should be worried about. It means our elected officials are more prone to the will of the masses than to doing what they were elected to do - lead.

Serious issue. McClellan, though a bit of a weasel and full of shyte on other things, should be lauded for bringing it up. The fact that it's been ignored by many amidst the partisan clamor is a testament to the need for it to get attention.

Vinny the Anvil
Post Traumatic Didn't Make The Lakers Syndrome is REAL
JACKASS POWER!!!!!!

[kallend 2,146]

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Read up on some facts. OMB didn't disband in FY00 - it kept RIGHT ON GOING. 'All those years of surplus' equates to FY99 and FY00 alone. EJC's OMB drafted eight budgets - FY94-FY01. Ending up on a deficit note.

Tell, us Vinnie, just how did that WJC deficit compare with GWB's deficits? Was the trend of 1992-2000 up or down? How about 2001-2008? How about the accumulated debt of each administration?

You may have convinced yourself that GWB is an economic wizard, but you aren't fooling anyone else.

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[jcd11235 0]

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Read up on some facts. OMB didn't disband in FY00 - it kept RIGHT ON GOING. 'All those years of surplus' equates to FY99 and FY00 alone. EJC's OMB drafted eight budgets - FY94-FY01. Ending up on a deficit note.

Is this where you got your information about President Clinton's fiscal irresponsibility?

Here in reality, the facts do not support your claim that Clinton proposed and signed a deficit budget for 2001. Source (see attachments from OMB) Alternate Source

Of the last nine presidents, the average federal deficit (including interest payments) as a percentage of GDP was lowest under the Clinton Administration. Source

Of the last eight presidents, only under the Johnson, Carter, and Clinton administrations did federal revenue grow faster than federal spending.The difference was greatest under Clinton. Source

Clearly, your claims are unfounded in reality. By any reasonable measurement, President Clinton was the most fiscally responsible President in recent history, taking office with a budget deficit of 4.5% passed by his predecessor, decreasing the federal deficit steadily while he was in office, culminating in three years of post interest payment budget surplus, leaving his successor with a first year budget that offered a surplus even after the supplemental spending requested by President Bush.

Welcome to reality, Vinny.

Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!

[kallend 2,146]

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Read up on some facts. OMB didn't disband in FY00 - it kept RIGHT ON GOING. 'All those years of surplus' equates to FY99 and FY00 alone. EJC's OMB drafted eight budgets - FY94-FY01. Ending up on a deficit note.

Is this where you got your information about President Clinton's fiscal irresponsibility?

Here in reality, the facts do not support your claim that Clinton proposed and signed a deficit budget for 2001. Alternate Source

Of the last nine presidents, the average federal deficit (including interest payments) as a percentage of GDP was lowest under the Clinton Administration. Source

Of the last eight presidents, only under the Johnson, Carter, and Clinton administrations did federal revenue grow faster than federal spending.The difference was greatest under Clinton. Source

Clearly, your claims are unfounded in reality. By any reasonable measurement, President Clinton was the most fiscally responsible President in recent history, taking office with a budget deficit of 4.5% passed by his predecessor, decreasing the federal deficit steadily while he was in office, culminating in three years of post interest payment budget surplus, leaving his successor with a first year budget that offered a surplus even after the supplemental spending requested by President Bush.

Welcome to reality, Vinny.

That bastion of commie-pinko-liberal-socialism the Heritage Foundation pretty much agrees with you.
www.heritage.org/research/features/budgetchartbook/fed-rev-spend-2008-boc-C1-Federal-Spending-Is-Growing.html
www.heritage.org/research/features/budgetchartbook/fed-rev-spend-2008-boc-C2-Government-Spending-Grew-Faster.html
www.heritage.org/research/features/budgetchartbook/fed-rev-spend-2008-boc-C3-All-Recent-Administrations-Ran-Up.html

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[mnealtx 0]

Funny how you're so rah-rah on the place when it agrees with you, Professor.

Gotta love those situational ethics.

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[kallend 2,146]

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Funny how you're so rah-rah on the place when it agrees with you, Professor.

Gotta love those situational ethics.

I think you failed to detect the sarcasm, since "bastion of commie-pinko-liberal-socialism" was too subtle for you.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[mnealtx 0]

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Funny how you're so rah-rah on the place when it agrees with you, Professor.

Gotta love those situational ethics.

I think you failed to detect the sarcasm, since "bastion of commie-pinko-liberal-socialism" was too subtle for you.

I think you don't see the irony of using a source you complained about being partisan once it agrees with you...as I said - more situational ethics, but nothing unusual.

But since you're such a fan, now... I'm guessing you don't disagree with this, this, this and this, then?

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[TheAnvil 0]

Fix one of your links - it doesn't work. You haven't shown anything to anyone who knows what they're talking about (I do). Read and learn.

The Congressional Budget Office is a government organization whose mandate is to provide nonpartisan, and timely analyses to aid in economic and budgetary decisions on the wide array of programs covered by the federal budget and the information and estimates required for the Congressional budget process.

If you knew this, when examining historical data on the budget you might have found this and actually looked at the government data showing the government's revenues, outlays, debt, and surpluses. But you didn't do that.

Now, if you'll look at the Legislative branch of government's OWN DATA, you'll see that only TWO of the budgets submitted by EJC's OMB produced surpluses. Non-negotiable fact of life - live with it. Or do the liberal thing and avoid it - do as you like.

Your claim that GWB was left with a budget surplus in err. If you knew the budget process you'd realize that elections fall in the fiscal year subsequent to the calendar year in which they're held. Armed with this knowledge, you'd realize that any President winning in a November election had NOTHING to do with the budget for the calendar year following the calendar year in which he was elected - unless he was the incumbent. If you knew the budget process.

IF you'd known this, you'd have looked @ CBO data and seen that EJC's last budget year produced a... DEFICIT for GWB to follow upon.

But CBO data is a bit skewed, as budget execution often differs from its original plan due to cost over runs and the like, many of which are not realized until a couple of years later. A bureau under Treasury's purvey, the Bureau of the Public Debt, keeps track of the actual debt of the U.S. government. Clicky You say there was a surplus - find it. Please. Point it out.

So tell us - do the DoTreasury and CBO not know what they're talking about?

Welcome to reality - face it whenever you like. Or...not.



BTW, Sir Kallend - I've never stated GWB's an economic wizard. He ignored the Doha round completely other than putting Bob Portmann on it for a while, screwed up royally with the stupid steel tariff imbroglio, and his second tax cut wasn't well structured. Glad to see you're now a fan of the Heritage foundation. Perhaps it will be an educational experience for you perusing some of their info.

Vinny the Anvil
Post Traumatic Didn't Make The Lakers Syndrome is REAL
JACKASS POWER!!!!!!

[jcd11235 0]

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Fix one of your links - it doesn't work. You haven't shown anything to anyone who knows what they're talking about (I do). Read and learn.

I'm working on the link. The attached files are PDFs from the page, so the info is still there. Also here.

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The Congressional Budget Office is a government organization whose mandate is to provide nonpartisan, and timely analyses to aid in economic and budgetary decisions on the wide array of programs covered by the federal budget and the information and estimates required for the Congressional budget process.

The CBO also shows a surplus for 2001.

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If you knew this, when examining historical data on the budget you might have found this and actually looked at the government data showing the government's revenues, outlays, debt, and surpluses. But you didn't do that.

Check out the files attached to my post, which you apparently haven't read, since they show, as does your own source, that there was a budget surplus in FY2001. The CBO shows the same thing.

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Your claim that GWB was left with a budget surplus in err. If you knew the budget process you'd realize that elections fall in the fiscal year subsequent to the calendar year in which they're held. Armed with this knowledge, you'd realize that any President winning in a November election had NOTHING to do with the budget for the calendar year following the calendar year in which he was elected - unless he was the incumbent. If you knew the budget process.

And if you read the data, you would see that there was still a budget surplus in 2001, even after GWB added significant supplemental spending to the budget. If you read the data.

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IF you'd known this, you'd have looked @ CBO data and seen that EJC's last budget year produced a... DEFICIT for GWB to follow upon.

Your own source doesn't support that claim. Did you even read it? They show a $128.2 billion surplus (i.e. $1,991.4 Billion receipts minus $1,863.2 billion outlays) for 2001, just like the PDFs from the OMB from my previous post. Sure, it was down from the surplus from the previous year, but GWB also requested supplemental funding from Congress, since he couldn't seem operate within the same budget constraints within which President Clinton was able to operate.

Patron and budget analysis don't mix well.

Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!

[likearock 2]

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Funny how you're so rah-rah on the place when it agrees with you, Professor.

Gotta love those situational ethics.

I think you failed to detect the sarcasm, since "bastion of commie-pinko-liberal-socialism" was too subtle for you.

I think you don't see the irony of using a source you complained about being partisan once it agrees with you...as I said - more situational ethics, but nothing unusual.

You are really misusing the term, situational ethics here. Situational ethics has to do with applying a given moral imperative differently in different situations. It has nothing to do with whether you blindly follow or blindly disagree with a certain media source. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging that the sources you usually disagree with get it right once in a while.

[kallend 2,146]

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Funny how you're so rah-rah on the place when it agrees with you, Professor.

Gotta love those situational ethics.

I think you failed to detect the sarcasm, since "bastion of commie-pinko-liberal-socialism" was too subtle for you.

I think you don't see the irony of using a source you complained about being partisan once it agrees with you...as I said - more situational ethics, but nothing unusual.

But since you're such a fan, now... I'm guessing you don't disagree with this, this, this and this, then?

You confuse data with opinion. I agree with their raw data. Their interpretations of the data and their opinions are so clearly wrong that even a Republican should be able to see the errors.

Maybe the difference between data and opinion is also too subtle for you?

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[kallend 2,146]

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Funny how you're so rah-rah on the place when it agrees with you, Professor.

Gotta love those situational ethics.

I think you failed to detect the sarcasm, since "bastion of commie-pinko-liberal-socialism" was too subtle for you.

I think you don't see the irony of using a source you complained about being partisan once it agrees with you...as I said - more situational ethics, but nothing unusual.

But since you're such a fan, now... I'm guessing you don't disagree with this, this, this and this, then?

Maybe the difference between data and opinion is also too subtle for you? As are the definitions of "situational ethics" and "strawman".

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[livendive 8]

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Funny how you're so rah-rah on the place when it agrees with you, Professor.

Gotta love those situational ethics.

I think you failed to detect the sarcasm, since "bastion of commie-pinko-liberal-socialism" was too subtle for you.

I think you don't see the irony of using a source you complained about being partisan once it agrees with you...as I said - more situational ethics, but nothing unusual.

You would have a valid point if he was trying to sell the source as non-partisan on one particular issue he agrees with. Instead, he acknowledged the partisanship and used it to emphasize his point.

Blues,
Dave

"I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!"
(drink Mountain Dew)