Posted on 08/02/2011 9:15:46 AM PDT by Palter
People seem to act irrationally when they have nothing to lose. Often we observe in wars that the losing side expends more blood and treasure after its position becomes hopeless.
The American South sustained most of its casualties in the Civil War after July 1863, when the dual defeats at Gettysburg and Vicksburg made its position untenable. Athens suffered its worst casualties in the Sicilian gamble at the end of the Peloponnesian War.
The Spanish ruined their empire and depopulated their core provinces during the second half of the Thirty Years War of 1618-1648 rather than cede dominance to France. Germany took most of its casualties after Stalingrad. Japan was prepared to absorb an arbitrarily large number of casualties after Okinawa, and its resistance was terminated only by nuclear attack.
Some aspects of the apparently suicidal behavior observed in great wars may be at work in the present budget stalemate in Washington, where the Republican right and the Democratic left yet may undo a compromise. I do not think this will happen - yet. But the extremes of polarization in the American body politic are different from anything I have seen in my lifetime.
If the Tea Party wanted most of all to govern, it would declare that a split government cannot accomplish the agenda on which its members were sent to congress, and that the 2012 presidential election would become a national referendum on America's future. It would then agree to an interim compromise on the debt ceiling.
(Excerpt) Read more at atimes.com ...
read
...and just before the hangman slipped the hood over his head, he muttered... “this is really gonna be a lesson to me!”...
Another quasi-Keynesian who thinks balancing the budget will cause a “1933 collapse.”
Argues for Reagan era tax cuts and budget deficits.
Balancing the budget is always put off into the distant future. I guess China/Japan and the petroleum exporting countries will always buy American sovereign debt and finance our deficits.
It is far easier to argue for tax cuts. They are almost instant; cutting actual Gov’t is[always] the problem. Who was the last President to cut Gov’t?? Just saying.
The charts are depressing.
Well, we can always start selling our National parks to China. I should be careful though. Everytime you make some ridiculous, insane statement, in a few years it becomes reality.
The Intentional Destruction of America's Middle Class
Taxes are optional. Why work to pay high tax?
It does not look like America will recover. The flood of Third World people seeking the dole; a pervasive vice addiction coupled with an abdication of the right to govern by the Euro-American; the increasing loss of skilled people capable of creating a manufacturing and basic resources recovery; a finance/middleman type economy parasitic on productive economies; the slow destruction of farms requiring increasing imports of food with less and less wealth to pay for such imports; most basic resources such as mines, forests owned by aliens draining out the wealth from American ground; a “Diverse” population completely incapable of any form of united action; and, last but not least governance by incompetent self serving political hacks whose ineptitude is easing the way to total political and social collapse with armed struggle now plainly on the horizon.
bump.
sounds reasonable...
Spengler’s always good.
A synopsis:
1.) Spending cuts won’t do it all, neither will a BBA
2.) You need to cut taxes and regulations too
he left out:
3.) Fire Obama
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