Rex Nutting at WSJ Market Watch wrote that under President Obama, federal spending has increased at its slowest rate since, well, a long time.
Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s.
Even hapless Herbert Hoover managed to increase spending more than Obama has.
See chart:
Yesterday I ran into a wingnut who could not be made to understand the chart represented rates of increase in spending, not dollars spent. Ann Coulter seems to have had problems grasping what the chart says, also. And James Pethokoukis, a hack who “in AUGUST OF 2008, was denying that we were in a recession. He then, a few months later in October 2008, was forced to admit we were in recession (since the economy had crashed and the DOW had dropped 5,000 point), decided that the reason the economy tanked and the DOW dropped was because investors were afraid that Obama was leading in the polls,” took issue with it also. Pethokoukis compared spending as rates of GNP between Bush and Obama without noting that the economy contracted in 2008. Note that many of the comments to Pethokoukis’s article are better than the article.
Yesterday Jay Carney cited the Nutting argue when he lectured newsies on Air Force One to stop repeating right-wing talking points without verifying if they are true. I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for anything to change. See also Joan Walsh.
This is how you can tell where they fall on the stupid/evil continuum – you gotta work to pull that one off. You gotta start with the conviction “Obama = big spender” and really sift through the numbers until they come out the way you want them to.
Similarly, the blogger who decided that Obama must be stupid because the AVERAGE SAT score of students who transferred to Columbia in 1981 was below GWB’s SAT score – you don’t just fall into that.
Evil.
Gee, spending goes up slower and the economy grows better under Democratic presidents.
Does ANYONE pay attention to the real world any more???
The sad thing is that we’re arguing with the right-wing about whether or not Obama has cut the increase in federal spending like that’s a GOOD thing.
Because it isn’t. We’re in a depression, for goodness sake. We should have opened the federal spending floodgates to stimulate the economy and bring us out of it. But somehow all the regular economic textbooks got switched with ones from an alternate dimension where John Maynard Keynes was a school janitor, or something.
And the only place that spending has actually happened is in the feverish minds of those right-wing nutjobs (I’m lookin’ at you, Mitt) who think it’s a bad thing. Even though it’s imaginary.
Sigh.
Federal spending, per se, is neither good nor bad. Not only do Republicans spend more, on less productive projects, they also just happen to borrow more Federal dollars to spend on projects where the money goes predominately to those already doing well.
‘Facts is such stupid tings!’
And I have a “gut” feeling that “F-A-C-T” is a 4-letter word for Conservatives.
Btw, and OT, I had another encounter with that epic “dope” and ‘MAROON,” Donald Douglas, he of “Sasquatch Israel” fame, at Steve M’s great site:
http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/
Check it out, it in the post, “WARREN SURGES LIKE A REPUBLICAN.”
‘Conservatives is such stupid tings!!’
Another Conservative has a “Come to Jesus!” moment about how crazy his side is getting:
http://www.salon.com/2012/05/24/my_break_with_the_extreme_right/singleton/
Well anyone can get the crayons out and create a graph? The problem is these dimwitted fucks have been reading, watching and listening to complete bullshit for so long they assume evrything is bullshit. Why how could anything be true, what with the librul bias and all?