highsea

Hmmm...I'm not sure I want to rely on this guy for economic policy. I remember the Carter years (not too fondly), with double digit inflation and 24% interest rates.

If China were to unpeg it's currency from the dollar, I wouldn't care if prices at Walmart went up. I don't really see this as having that great an effect on our standard of living. And I don't really mind the dollar going down against the euro or yen, it encourages those countries to spend money in the US.

Our present deficit against the GDP is not even close the historical high of 1987, and the overall budget numbers aren't something that really alarms me. The first number in the series is the FY 2004 numbers. The second number is the average of the 8 years of Clinton budgets. The third number is the 1987 Reagan budget. Defence spending as a percentage of GDP (3.6%, ???, 6.1%), Total Gov't spending (19.7% , 19.6%, 22.3%), Deficit (2.7%, 0.1%?, 4.3%), Defence as a percentage of total outlays (17.5%, 17.1%, 26.7%), Net interest costs as percent of total outlays (7.9%, 13.9%, 13.2%), Debt held by public at end of fiscal year as percent of GDP (36.9%, 43.0%, 36.7%).

http://www.taxfoundation.org/2004budgetperspective.html

The Clinton "surplus" was a myth. There never was a surplus, it was a projected surplus that was to materialize sometime in the future, based on the trends at the time. A look at the historical National debt numbers shows the facts. Clinton never ran a surplus in the budget. What could have been, would have disappeared in the recession and 9/11 after effects, just as it did under Bush.

The current projections reflect the costs of the war in Iraq, which the Clinton projections did not. That's the law, when the OMB makes the projections, it has to use current spending as the baseline. Since we are spending $100 Million/year in Iraq, that number gets added to each year's projected budget over the ten year period. Since it is unlikely that we will be spending that much in Iraq in ten years time, the projection is probably pessimistic by that amount. Take that number away, and the US is in a budget surplus in 6 or 7 years.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, "The rumors of our demise are greatly exagerrated".

Praxus

My post was the last one mentioning any specific means of destroying the enemy, how could I have possibly know you were talking to him?

Blademaster

The key factors were that we were not willing to give up and were willing to keep Kashmir at any price.

It is all about whether it is worth paying the butcher's bill. We are paying the butcher's bill in Kashmir because we think it is worth it. The majority of Indians support keeping forces in Kashmir. Unless that changes, we will stay in Kashmir and defeat the terrorists.

Bluesman

Well, context, I suppose. My "Absolutely right" was a response to OoE, and he was responding to antelope. Your post never entered into it.*

Anyway, the shoot-from-the-hip snarkiness about how cute you assumed I was being could've possibly been modulated a bit by asking for clarification.





*But I DO wish to go on record as saying that although I don't think of a draft as 'immoral' (your rather emotionally-charged word, if you'll pardon me for pointing it out, Mr. Kettle), I don't think it is efficacious for any problems that currently confront us. Instead, it should be used only in the most dire circumstances - where national survival itself is at issue. I think we agree that a draft is NOT desirable for a free people, unless their very freedom may be paradoxically preserved by it.

__________________
"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
- George Orwell

Confed999

I agree, it's flat out wrong. Conscription is slavery. If a draft is required, we've lost anyway.

__________________
No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry

Praxus

My moral judgements are not based on emotions.

Bluesman

You'd know best about that, I'm sure. But stating categorically that something is immoral when reasonable people may disagree - and, in the case of conscription, emphatically DO disagree - is a value judgement that is based on YOUR morality. It was not incorrect for me to say that you used an emotionally-charged word, no matter how clinical and detached you yourself managed to be (or believed yourself to be).

There was conscription in WWII, and I assume that you do not consider yourself morally superior to The Greatest Generation. Or do I assume incorrectly? What exactly is your position re: conscription in WWII?

I'm not talking about in the abstract, as a theory, but whether President Praxus would've called for an end to conscription in 1940, with the entire Rest of the World at war, and every likelihood of us being involved at some point.

Bluesman

Is it your your position that we lost WWII? Did we lose each and every war up until the draft was abolished?

During the Civil War, did the soldiers free the slaves whilst being enslaved themselves?

American conscription is nothing more than compulsory service to an entity that has given succor and security to those that are then required to pay that debt. It is nothing like slavery. Slaves do not make good soldiers, as they DO NOT owe allegience to their masters, and WILL NOT fight well for them. In fact, arm slaves, and see what happens.

Jagger

I don't understand why we need conscription. 51 percent of the population just voted to support the war. With all those right wing warriers out there, we should have plenty of volunteers lining up for Iraq for either the army or marines.

Unfortunately for some reason, not enough volunteers are showing up. Col Hackworth has an article on the recruitng shortfall dated 12/6/04.

From here: http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/c...atabase=Hacks% 20Target.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=103&rnd=570.88 50594571546

“Hack, here’s a snapshot of how little of our 1st Quarter mission has been achieved,” says an Army recruiter. “Look at it from a perspective of a business releasing quarterly earnings information. To keep unit manning levels up out in the field, especially in Iraq, there’s no question our recruiting mission is in serious trouble.”

“These are totals for the 41 USAREC (Recruiting Command) Battalions, so these stats represent the USAREC mission accomplishment:

Regular Army Volume (all RA contracts):

Mission: 25,322

Achieved: 12,703 (50.17 percent)

Army Reserve Volume:

Mission: 7,373

Achieved: 3,206 (43.48 percent).”

----===

By the end of this recruiting year, the Regular Army, Reserves and Guard could fall short more than 50 percent of its projected requirement, or about 60,000 new soldiers. And according to many recruiters, quality recruits are giving way to mental midgets who have a hard time telling their left foot from their right.
=-----------

Unless a miracle happens and the new Iraqi security force decides to stop running and start fighting, we’ll be in Iraq for a long time. Most likely with a draftee force.

Shades of our last years in Vietnam.

“The bottom line is that Recruiting Command is in trouble,” says another recruiter with almost 30 years of service. “The Army has re-instituted ‘stop loss,’ which is basically a backdoor draft. They’re stopping people from retiring or completing their enlistment and leaving the Army. They do this fairly often, mostly in August and September, depending upon how far behind they believe they’ll be at the end of September.


“I believe the Army will have to drastically change what they offer to enlistees to overcome what’s happening in Iraq. The war is ugly, and not many kids want to enlist to be blown up.”[/b]

Confed999

Those conscripted lost their right to choose. Did they need conscription in a war that wasn't heavily politicized? None of my family who fought were conscripts, none durring Korea or Vietnam either.
Yes...
If one is forced to pay for his rights, by taking his rights, they are not rights at all.
Both are being forced to serve another under threat. It's the exact same thing to me.
Neither do draftees, for the same reasons.
There were draftees in Vietnam through the whole war.

Broken

Not a myth. The Tax Foundation figures are misleading. There was a budget surplus in Clinton's last years and the first year of Bush. At least, according to the OMB.

Confed999

The bad thing about politics, and about everything else, is, if you show me one thing, I'll show you another that disproves it.

Broken

Maybe so, but notice that the Tax Foundation only shows the average for the Clinton years, not the years there was a surplus. That is deception, pure and simple. In any case, I will take the OMB's own figures over those of some political foundation.

Confed999

Either way, doesn't matter, as he said, "What could have been, would have disappeared in the recession and 9/11 after effects, just as it did under Bush."

Broken

Yeah, I don't think Clinton's numbers would have held in a recession. It just made matters much worse to cut taxes and increase spending.