Of course a majority of Americans are opposed to raising taxes....Obama and a supermajority of Democrats added trillions of dollars to our national debt, with a result of 10% official unemployment to this very day --- and now they want us to go into debt further! It's insane...thankfully, the elections are coming!

Here is the debt from when Bush came in until out

Jan 2001 5,727,776,738,304.64
Jan 2002 5,922,321,839,074.39
Jan 2003 6,389,894,461,722.18
Jan 2004 7,006,834,072,435.49
Jan 2005 7,613,215,612,328.37
Jan 2006 8,175,743,292,992.87
Jan 2007 8,675,085,083,537.48
Jan 2008 9,188,640,287,930.39
Jan 2009 10,626,877,048,913.08

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/NPGateway

The final budget for 2008-2009 was signed by Bush and was $1.42 trillion in

deficit. That brings the total Bush debt to over $6 trillion. He entered $5.6

trillion in debt and by the time his 2008-2009 budget was finished we were

more than $12 trillion in debt.

Drill baby drill, lower taxes, more oil wars, etc is definitely not the solution to the major problems facing USA.

I thought it was interesting, most think the deficits were under $300 billion because that is what they were told. The deficits were over $600 billion as you can see, but borrowing from the Social Security Trust Fund does not show up on the deficit and the wars were paid for with supplementals which are not considered part of the budget so do not show up on the deficit. Can you say "smoke and mirrors?"

Okay, it's time to test EJJ's knowledge of American history.

In September 1929, the stock market, propped up by years of low interest rates, stock and real estate speculation, and stagnant wages requiring ordinary Americans to go massively into debt to buy goods to keep the corporations profitable and their stocks rising, finally crashed. With free market dogma reigning supreme, it lost 90% of its value, and unemployment went from near zero to 30% over several years. The more Hoover's government tried to stop spending and deficits, the more money was taken out of circulation and the worse unemployment got. In January 1933, 3 1/2 years after the crash, the banks were on the verge of collapse, protesting military veterans had been slaughtered in Washington DC by the Army, Republican Iowa farmers had formed mobs to attack foreclosers, US-born Mexican-American citizens were being forcibly deported to Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma were using troops to shut down oil production and Communists were marching in the streets.

In October 2008, the stock market, propped up by years of low interest rates, stock and real estate speculation, and stagnant wages requiring ordinary Americans to go massively into debt to buy goods to keep the corporations profitable and their stocks rising, finally crashed. The banks blackmailed the world's governments into a bailout to avoid the events of 1929 - Bush actually threatened Democratic congressmen with the specter of martial law if such conditions came about. Stocks and real estate were propped up, the worst of the consequences of a good old-fashioned free-market collapse were headed off, but the rich had made it clear that they were willing to cause all those old plagues if they were made to bear any of the burden for the catastrophe they had caused - and had caused in many past panics. As for the stimulus, it mostly consisted of tax cuts, which right-wingers keep claiming is the solution for everything. Combined with Bush's previous tax cuts for the rich, it destroyed Federal revenues. It did not consist of direct emergency hiring as did FDR's second wave of programs, which kept millions above water and built much of the infrastructure that served America during World War II, like the TVA, highways, bridges, bus and train stations, public school stadiums, and airports.

So what would the unemployment rate be today if we had done things the Herbert Hoover way, EJJ?

Why do so many hold Bush up as the standard?

He convinced the Democrats that we should go to war, radically increase the debt, and put Obama in office.

Obama is only somewhat worse than Bush?
That gonna be his campaign slogan?

I will point out befire 9/11 bush was shrinking the armed forces and in fact we got into the war in iraq BECAUSE our army was still shrinking and he only had so long to get what info they could on iraq before we no longer could invade.

Also brainiacs.. exactly how many more years do you think sadam would have remained clueless to his nuke scientists keeping him from the bomb? 1-2.. then round up children and toss em into the grinder till he gets his bomb.... tada ww3.....

We got bleeping lucky a few men in the worst possible place did the bravest thing ever.. and that bush invaded before they were found out.

If he had not invaded when he did I dont think we would be talking right now.

It's all gonna change massively gentlemen. Because the stranglehold on energy production has been destroyed. While the banking system may try to keep the old school fiefdom of control - there is little that will stop the growth of massive, low cost energy.

It is abundant throughout the universe and now on planet Earth.

Rather than tax the wealthy and the corporations, the Congress borrowed the money.

SJC, one of the big differences between now and 1932 is oil prices. In 1932 prices were so low that the entire industry was fratriciding itself into bankruptcy, so the governors of TX and OK declared martial law, took over the oil fields, and created essentially the first OPEC to prop up prices at life-support levels. The very fact that happened disproves classical laissez-faire, because lower prices should have stimulated demand for all goods related to oil. But today any signs of economic recovery cause prices to skyrocket.

Read Daniel Yergin's "The Prize" for the extremely complicated and intimate relationship between the US and UK governments and Big Oil over the last 130 years (like the British Navy's ownership of what is now called BP). It's never been a free market.

Shecky, the beard could be black.

JMartin, the tipping point has been avoided by artifice and that is now ending. We have the nation's most revered science agency, NASA's Chief Scientist openly acknowledging the existence for well on 20 years of Lattice Assisted Nuclear Reactions. The US Navy has led the R&D with their SPAWAR unit at NRL. This is no longer behind the curtain. And there are many many permutations on the horizon.

Tipping point is here. 10-25kW over-unity generators are in the labs and can be built from off the shelf parts. Yeah, a lot is going to change. The old school is going to lose control of energy. And poor people living a marginal existence across the globe are going to get fresh water, electricity and heat. Is there a problem here??

Richard Slay is my new favorite commenter on GCC.

Reel$$ is the usual comic relief. Rossi's E-CAT is a fraud, proven because Rossi won't allow independent tests of its alleged heat output (just measurement of the heat, not its radiation or other characteristics which might reveal its secrets). Reel$$ will be singing some other tune after Rossi goes down, but always with the implication that nothing needs to be done about AGW.