COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Friday, April 03, 2009

More from the Islamic shit hole of Swat, Pakistan



The White House announced that it would no longer use the phrase "war on terror."

One wonders how The White House word merchants who now use the catchy phrase, "overseas contingency operations," would describe a seventeen year old girl being humiliated and beaten in the street by an Islamic thug. Perhaps "attitude adjustment."
----------------

Taliban Lash 17 Year Old Girl
Times on line
This grainy footage appears to show a 17-year-old girl being beaten by Islamic radicals in Pakistan’s northwestern region of Swat, where Sharia law was introduced after the government reached a truce with the Taleban in February.

A local Taleban commander in the militant stronghold of Matta, 25 miles from the regional capital, Mingora, ordered the girl to be flogged a week ago after accusing her of adultery, according to local reporters.

But some residents of Matta have accused the commander of ordering the beating to get revenge after the girl refused to accept his proposal of marriage, the reporters told The Times.

“Please! Enough! Enough!” the girl is heard crying in Pashtu, the language of the tribes who dominate northwestern Pakistan – now the main hub of Taleban and al-Qaeda activity.

At another point, she cries: “I am repenting, my father is repenting what I have done, my grandmother is repenting what I have done...”

The man flogging her is also heard abusing his colleague as he struggles to hold her down and stop her covering her backside with her hands.

“You should hold her tightly so she doesn’t move,” he is heard saying.

President Zardari of Pakistan insists that the truce was made with “moderates” in the region and his officials have even held it up as a model for other parts of Pakistan’s troubled northwest, which borders Afghanistan.

The deal was agreed with Sufi Mohammed, the leader of an outlawed Islamic movement who was recently released after six years in jail for leading thousands of his supporters to Afghanistan to fight American forces in 2001.

He is the father-in-law of Mullah Fazlullah, the 33-year-old cleric who leads the Pakistani Taleban in Swat and is known for propagating his strict interpretation of Islam through pirate FM radio broadcasts.

Pakistani officials argue that many residents of the Swat Valley, which only became part of Pakistan in 1969, have long demanded Sharia law because of the weakness of the secular state judicial system.

However, this footage appears to back up reports from many local residents that the men who have over-run Swat are no more moderate than the Taleban government that ruled Afghanistan until 2001.

It is also likely to reinforce fears that the militants are now using Swat, which is just 100 miles from the Pakistani capital, as a base to spread their ideology and launch terrorist attacks deeper within Pakistan.


115 comments:

  1. Dont ya just love Shria?

    For all of those seeking to talk to "moderate" taliban?

    hope it's your daughters, mothers, sisters & wives being beaten....

    not mine...

    This will be happening all over the world until the world is honest enough to say...

    Islam is full of shit....

    Dont like my bigotry? Then march, protest & reform...

    ReplyDelete
  2. (CNN) — Former House speaker Newt Gingrich is warning of a third party mutiny in 2012 if Republicans don’t figure out a way to shape up.

    “If the Republicans can’t break out of being the right wing party of big government, then I think you would see a third party movement in 2012,” Gingrich said Tuesday. The speech, to a group of students at the College of the Ozarks in Missouri, was recorded by Springfield TV station KY3.

    But Gingrich, bemoaning President Barack Obama’s “monstrosity of a budget,” acknowledged that Republicans are partially to blame for the escalation in federal spending.

    "Remember, everything Obama’s doing, Bush started last year,” he said. “If you’re going to talk about big spending, the mistakes of the Bush administration last year are fully as bad as the mistakes of Obama’s first two, three months.”

    Gingrich told the students that the current governmental system “is so sick, so out of touch and so arrogant that you’re going to have a nationwide rebellion at the polls of people in both parties who are just fed up.”

    “You can do a Facebook page, you can Twitter,” he said. “I Twitter right now and I think we’re at like, I don’t know, 18,000 or 20,000 thousand people that follow my Twitter, which I have to say I think is nuts. But there are ways to communicate, you’re not trapped by CBS news.”

    Gingrich has repeatedly said that he will decide in early 2011 whether he plans to seek the White House in 2012.
    ==

    And this would be a bad thing?

    ReplyDelete
  3. The Pubs continue to demostrate an inability to learn.
    Obama's own Justice Dept ruled the DC Statehood Plan was Unconstitutional, but that has been swept away by none other than Eric Holder.
    Orin Hatch Supported it!
    Brain Dead Lifers.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Colorado professor wins wrongful-termination suit

    Ward Churchill's 'little Eichmanns' reference to victims of 9/11 started a storm that led to his firing.

    Reporting from Boulder, Colo. -- The University of Colorado professor who likened 9/11 victims to a Nazi leader was fired in retaliation for his controversial remarks, a Denver jury ruled Thursday.

    Jurors in the wrongful-termination lawsuit filed by Ward L. Churchill agreed with the embattled professor's contention that he was the victim of a "howling mob," not the perpetrator of academic misconduct.

    Ward Chuchill, David LaneHowever, they awarded him only $1 in damages, an amount Churchill dismissed after the verdict as unimportant.

    "What's next for me? Reinstatement, of course," Churchill said at a televised news conference outside the courtroom. "I didn't ask for money. I asked for justice."

    It's up to Chief Denver District Judge Larry Naves to decide whether to return Churchill, 61, to his $96,392-per-year job as a professor of ethnic studies at the Boulder campus. The judge also will determine whether the university must pay his legal fees.\
    Churchill's attorney, David Lane, said the verdict represented a victory "for the 1st Amendment and academic freedom."

    "We've never argued the fact that [the 9/11 essay] is what started this ball rolling," said Ken McConnellogue, spokesman for the University of Colorado system.

    But Churchill was fired for academic misconduct uncovered in the aftermath of the essay's publication, he said.
    "We're certainly disappointed in the decision, but it doesn't change the fact that 20 of his peers found he engaged in plagiarism and academic dishonesty."

    McConnellogue said the university has not decided whether it will appeal.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Pygmy-leaved lupine blooms alongside a California poppy.
    We had the full size model, much more impressive.

    ReplyDelete
  6. It's in very poor taste to embarass us by pointing out the shortcomings of our future Afghani allies.

    ReplyDelete
  7. That's not a flogging, that's a spanking, I got those all the time. A flogging is when the last six inches of a bullwhip rips open the skin on your bare back about forty times.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Whit, they aren't our "future Afghan allies" they are our CURRENT Afghan allies - ref. Karzai signs "rape law"


    Reminds me of seeing Musharaff on a The Daily Show interview where he tried to explain that the Taliban were not separate from the people of Wazaristan, they ARE the people.






    Blogger Xena said...

    "Sam, 2 months, 37 shootings, 17 killed in Vancouver BC. Open air shootings in public just like in the Dirty Harry movies. How's that gun control working out for them?"



    Yeah, gun control with that giant 'free market' arms bazaar just a few miles to the south where happiness truly is a warm gun...

    ReplyDelete
  9. Ash: Yeah, gun control with that giant 'free market' arms bazaar just a few miles to the south where happiness truly is a warm gun...

    A few miles south of Vancouver is the workers' paradise known as Seattle, where Commissar Nickels has decreed that public places in the city are gun-free zones, even if you have a State permit to carry concealed.

    ReplyDelete
  10. oh my god!

    To think that they'd try to curtail the divinely inspired Constitutional right for all gang-bangers to bear arms!

    ReplyDelete
  11. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  12. It is already illegal to shoot people, in Canada, correct?

    So, in all reality ash & Canada favor a form of Bush cowboy intervention, by preemption.

    How'd that work out?

    US policy is to stop illegal drug traffic at the source, so do not be surprised or shocked that Canada and Mexico want to stop illegal gun traffic at its' source.

    The Mexicans are fully justified if direct action by their agents is used, using US foreign policy precedent, to come to Phoenix and shut down that X-Caliber gun store, since the Federals failed to make their case stick in Court.

    We've done that in Mexico, Columbia & Bolivia before.

    ReplyDelete
  13. yeppers, the US has a long history of 'reaching out' to other nations and it does provide justification for others to do the same - Russia in particular.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Just wait until Mexican Government agents kidnap the President of Colt Manufacturing and put him on trial, in Mexico.

    We've done the same to drug cartel leadership across the Americas.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Then there is the nifty stuff revolving around politics and elections - God forbid any foreigner should try to 'influence' a US election but WE need to help others elect the right folk to office!

    ReplyDelete
  16. Time to spread US accounting rules around the globe - MARK to FANTASY and all your problems will not be!!

    ReplyDelete
  17. Canadians, peace loving folk, love their HOCKEY!

    ReplyDelete
  18. Should we force the Pakistani to have incarcerated that young lady, instead of the corporal punishment that was meted out, by the duly constituted "Law of the Land"?

    Jim Webb, Senator from VA has something to say, about how the US manages its' criminal justice.

    Let's start with a premise that I don't think a lot of Americans are aware of.
    We have 5% of the world's population; we have 25% of the world's known prison population.
    We have an incarceration rate in the United States, the world's greatest democracy, that is five times as high as the average incarceration rate of the rest of the world. There are only two possibilities here: either we have the most evil people on earth living in the United States; or we are doing something dramatically wrong in terms of how we approach the issue of criminal justice. . . .

    The elephant in the bedroom in many discussions on the criminal justice system is the sharp increase in drug incarceration over the past three decades. In 1980, we had 41,000 drug offenders in prison; today we have more than 500,000, an increase of 1,200%. The blue disks represent the numbers in 1980; the red disks represent the numbers in 2007 and a significant percentage of those incarcerated are for possession or nonviolent offenses stemming from drug addiction and those sorts of related behavioral issues. . . .


    As the incarceration rates increased, so did the contraband trafficing and the violence.
    Cause and effect.

    Is that where we want to be?

    Are we getting closer to the Goal?

    ReplyDelete
  19. Ash: To think that they'd try to curtail the divinely inspired Constitutional right for all gang-bangers to bear arms!

    That's what I'm saying, Ash. In Canada you're not even supposed to have a slingshot, yet the gang bangers are shooting at each other in set-piece gun battles that you only see in Hollywood, USA.

    ReplyDelete
  20. (CNN) — Former House speaker Newt Gingrich is warning of a third party mutiny in 2012 if Republicans don’t figure out a way to shape up.

    “If the Republicans can’t break out of being the right wing party of big government, then I think you would see a third party movement in 2012,” Gingrich said Tuesday.



    The United States is not configured for small government. Neither are most individual states anymore. I don't know where small government dreamers would place the ideal conservative moment on our historical timeline (1797? 1851? 1918? 1953?) but surely there must be some recognition, on some level, that we have long since passed that day when a relatively diminutive governing apparatus was still practicable or desirable. Surely?

    The phrase itself is undoubtedly a trope but as such leads to perpetual frustration, disillusionment, and anger on the part of those who in simple faith follow, over many decades showing no progress toward the goal, the Gingriches of the political scene. And if the only conceivable conservative goal, as Hayek suggested, is to occasionally slow down the expansion of the state (and the various states), rather than to usher in or bring back concretely small government, it's probably better to say so.

    Wise governance for a country that isn't getting any smaller or less complicated or less demanding or less ambitious - this would be at least attainable. And less invariably self-defeating.

    ReplyDelete
  21. yeah, but the blame really lies in the US and not things Canadian, like Hockey ;) If we didn't have guns to play with we'd all git along just fine!

    ReplyDelete
  22. Ratlogic---President of Colt = Drug Cartel President

    Rat may well have a Colt in his closet.

    either we have the most evil people on earth living in the United States; or we are doing something dramatically wrong in terms of how we approach the issue of criminal justice

    Maybe we just got better law enforcement.

    ReplyDelete
  23. From having lived around here forever, and watched the system, you got to have been nailed in court over three times for the usual low level drug stuff before you actually see the inside of a cell. Before that, it's the standard probations, fines etc.

    Maybe we'd be better off with a good public whipping.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Pardon if you have already read this as I have been away from the WWW.

    http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/03/26/lapierre.guns.mexico/index.html?iref=newssearch

    ReplyDelete
  25. China is the great 'unsung' contributor of private arms to Mexico.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Bobal

    In my absence, I trust you have kept everyone in line?

    ReplyDelete
  27. From the Mexican perspective, bob, they are very equal.

    The Mexicans have lost control of their country, in large part because of weapons manufactured or sold in the US. The US cannot convict the gun running contrabandistas in Court.

    This is similar to what occured, in Mexico or Colombia, with regards the cartel leaders.
    Pablo Escobar was a well respected businessman in his hometown of Cali Colombia, as much as Marine Corps Maj. Gen. James R. Battaglini (ret.) the COO of Colt Arms is respected in his.

    The merchant of the means of death is the one that should be convicted of attempted murder. That was your position, bob.

    Illegal guns in Mexico, are a scourge upon their society.
    Just as illegal drugs are here.

    We blame the manufacturers of the drugs.
    Why should the Mexicans blame themselves?

    ReplyDelete
  28. Which is why Norinco products are in my closet, trish.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Most of the weapons, in my experience and that gleaned from others, that make it to Mexico from the US, are Chinese.

    The X-Caliber dealer was shipping AK varients, to Mexico. Or so it was accused, the Judge dismissed the case against the fellow.

    The Chinese products are time tested in rugged conditions and considerably less espensive than their US competition.

    ReplyDelete
  30. The merchant of the means of death is the one that should be convicted of attempted murder. That was your position, bob.

    I said the seller of a true poison like heroin perhaps should be charged with attempted murder, as it often happens that the buyer ends up dead somewhere along the line.

    It is a poison. And an extremely addictive one. Doesn't it seem logical that one that sells a poison to another might be charged with attempted murder? A little too much, you are in the other world.

    How this applies to the second amendment I do not know.

    If I were to sell an addictive poison to Mrs X down the street I can see how society might what to charge me with attempting to kill her, as she might well die, and I would have done it with forethought, knowing she might well die.

    ReplyDelete
  31. The cartels were using Barrett 50 caliber rifles in their overwatch positions, but that was on the US side of the fence.

    The weapons from captured caches that Sheriff Joe displays are, invariably, AK varients.

    Except for an occasional Barrett and/or shotgun.

    ReplyDelete
  32. And the manufacturer of the poison, bob, he is not culpable in the chain of custody?

    They have been, by US Federal policy.

    Or else Pablo Escobar would not have been tracked down by Delta Force operatives.

    In Mexico guns are considered more dangerous than drugs, bob. That's their Law. While it is true the US Courts have found that the weapons manufacturers are not complicit in the crimes committed with their weapons, Mexican Courts may not be so disposed.

    Since the US would never extradite Marine Corps Maj. Gen. James R. Battaglini (ret.), the COO of Colt Arms, it could be expected that Mexico could go to extrodinary means to stop the terror that is enveloping their land.

    The US has done as much, to stop criminals, drug dealers and terrorists. Why would the Mexicans not have the right to do the same?

    ReplyDelete
  33. Italian Trial of C.I.A. Operatives Begins With Torture Testimony

    By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
    Published: May 15, 2008


    MILAN — A long-delayed trial of C.I.A. operatives and former top Italian intelligence officials moved forward here on Wednesday, as a judge ruled that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi could be called to testify about the abduction of a radical Muslim cleric here in 2003.

    Testimony also began Wednesday. The cleric’s wife, Ghali Nabila, said her husband, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, known as Abu Omar, was taken from Italy and transferred to a prison in Egypt, where, she said, he was repeatedly tortured.

    While acknowledging a program of “extraordinary rendition,” or abducting terrorism suspects outside the United States,
    the Bush administration claims that no one is sent to nations that torture.

    ReplyDelete
  34. "Most of the weapons, in my experience and that gleaned from others, that make it to Mexico from the US, are Chinese."

    The Chinese arms merchants, the foremost suppliers to Mexico, import directly into that country. It is vastly easier. Almost none of it ever touches US soil. We've just been sucked into a false meme by the Mexican government.

    ReplyDelete
  35. Where do I learn about Big Government Libertarianism, Trish?

    ReplyDelete
  36. What this administration expects in return for getting sucked in, is anyone's guess.

    ReplyDelete
  37. "It is vastly easier."
    ---
    That's what I figured.

    ReplyDelete
  38. Where do I learn about Big Government Libertarianism, Trish?

    Fri Apr 03, 12:19:00 PM EDT

    You don't. There isn't.

    But you already knew that.

    ReplyDelete
  39. "What this administration expects in return for getting sucked in, is anyone's guess."
    ---
    Gun Control and Amnesty come to mind.

    ReplyDelete
  40. But how can you argue that Big Govt is now a necessary reality and claim to be a libertarian?

    ReplyDelete
  41. Libertarianism doesn't work?

    ReplyDelete
  42. Would you object if the Mexicans chose not to excercise extraordinary rendition in regards to Marine Corps Maj. Gen. James R. Battaglini (ret.), the COO of Colt Arms, but employeed it instead on George Iknadosian, 47, the owner of X-Caliber guns in Phoenix.

    George recieved a directed not guilty verdict from Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Robert Gottsfield, even though at the time of the arrest:

    Authorities allege the gun dealer sold more than 650 AK-47-type assault weapons to Mexican drug gangs responsible for recent shootouts that have claimed dozens of lives.

    "He knowingly, willingly sold these weapons, and he even gave our guys undercover tips on how to evade the police," Pete Forcelli, the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms supervisor on the case told ABC News.

    ReplyDelete
  43. Any way of knowing about how many guns extant in Mexico or USA?

    ReplyDelete
  44. That could be true, trish, about Mexico and Chinese weaponry.

    But it is just not the Mexican Government that is promoting the smuggled from "el Norte" storyline. Your own is right in their, singing that tune, too.

    ReplyDelete
  45. BHO Blames USA for just about everything.

    ReplyDelete
  46. But how can you argue that Big Govt is now a necessary reality and claim to be a libertarian?

    Fri Apr 03, 12:23:00 PM EDT

    If Glenn Reynolds can do it, I can to.

    ReplyDelete
  47. Thus the need for radical transformation.

    A Crisis of a Guilty Nation is a Terrible Thing to Waste.

    ReplyDelete
  48. For the US the NRA may have a guesstimate, somewhere.

    For Meixco, I draw a blank on where that number could publicly reside.

    ReplyDelete
  49. ...I don't read Glen, I read you!

    ReplyDelete
  50. Your own is right in their, singing that tune, too.

    Fri Apr 03, 12:28:00 PM EDT

    I believe I stated as much.

    ReplyDelete
  51. Any examples of Big Govt States where libertarian values prosper?

    ReplyDelete
  52. You'll have to await the dissertation, Doug.

    And Spring Break is upon us.

    ReplyDelete
  53. You should apply for a job in this Admin!
    Selling the Future Reality, Slip Sliding through the Present.
    ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  54. I should apply. I'm just too slothful to bother.

    ReplyDelete
  55. Anybody know how health care in France compares with that in Britain?

    ReplyDelete
  56. ...I've heard good reports from France, bad from Britain.
    ...but a Doc I know is from France.
    Guess he makes more here...

    ReplyDelete
  57. It is not the size of the Government, in and of itself, but the power that the Federals have usurped from the people and the various States.

    To reverse the process a incremental approach would have to be taken, and as of now, there is no public support for even the first incremental step away from ever more intrusive Federal Socialism.

    bob's position on opposing the sale of Federal assets, rather than increasing Federal debt, is instructive in that regard.
    As he is four square in rejecting that course for his own, personal estate.
    While finding it an acceptable, if not the preferable, course of action, for the Federal Government.

    Not meeting the goose and gander standard. Perhaps due to scalability issues, perhaps not.

    ReplyDelete
  58. "It is not the size of the Government, in and of itself"
    ---
    Has to be paid for, and Govt "Workers" vote.

    Seems a recipe for loss of individual liberty.

    ReplyDelete
  59. Everyone has to eat, doug, in a republican empire.

    Even the Romans figured that one out.

    ReplyDelete
  60. Getting fed as a Roman Government "Worker" a mite easier than workers building the Colosseum.

    ReplyDelete
  61. "It is not the size of the Government, in and of itself"

    Just one more reason to retire the 'small government' phrase.

    I do, do, do, however, adore those who believe, for instance, that you can have your Pax Romana and your petite, disinterested federal governance as well.

    An interesting but unappreciated fact is that the real explosion in government in the past 25 years has occurred at the state and local level. What one Cato writer noted as a consequence of "grassroots tyranny." We just don't often seem to recognize, in the Great Debate, any other than an attrition of freedom occasioned by Washington. Most of it happens much, much closer to home.

    ReplyDelete
  62. "It is not the size of the Government, in and of itself"

    Just one more reason to retire the 'small government' phrase.
    ---
    Yet neither of you explain the Mechanics of that "truth."

    ReplyDelete
  63. ...seems the realities I bring up don't support the contention.
    ...til argued otherwise.

    ReplyDelete
  64. Once you've rejected being an elitist, doug, it's a question of being a pleb or a slave.

    I'd rather be a plebeian citizen of the Republic than a slave of Empire.

    There is a difference.

    Made that choice long ago, no turning back, now.

    ReplyDelete
  65. Nice way to evade more basic argument.

    ReplyDelete
  66. I could tell you what choices I've made and why, but that does not change the reality of the costs of big government.

    ReplyDelete
  67. Here is a chart that allows us to see the growth in Government expeditures and power.

    Chart it from 1930 to present, the expolsive growth in Federal power is easy to see.

    Regardless of whether Republicans or Democrats were in contol of the levers in DC, from 1970 onward, the money spent and with it the power enjoyed by the Federals exploded.

    slim claimed it's good for the morale of the rest of US. bobal was adement, we can't turn back the clock.

    Many of those State and Local funding issues are related to Federal mandates, but not all of them, by any means.
    AZ finds inself $3 bn USD in the red, with no where to "cut", that seems acceptable to Gannett Newspapers.

    ReplyDelete
  68. I do not know how to turn back the tide, doug.

    I think that the best we can hope for is that our personal floatation devises work.

    ReplyDelete
  69. That the explosion in spending and the usurption of power by the Federals all seemingly coincided with the retirement of the Silver Certificate and the increased influence of the Federal Reserve, just happenstance.

    An Act of God.

    ReplyDelete
  70. I was going to argue your points about the Feds.
    Glad you did it for me, since Trish is on vacation re: Rebuttal of same.
    ...I would have felt had,
    yet again.

    ReplyDelete
  71. DeTocqueville told us this would happen with time.
    Unless the populace somewhere sometime becomes as enlightened as the founders, don't see any shining cities anytime soon.

    ReplyDelete
  72. DC schools a good example of the tyranny of the feds in collusion with the unions.

    Obama promises to give the World Equal Educational Opportunity at the same time his party is depriving DC students of same.

    ReplyDelete
  73. Obumble the Humble

    The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 35% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-two percent (32%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of +3, his lowest rating to date.

    ReplyDelete
  74. Rush cited a poll that said 80% blamed banks and Bush.
    The battle of the polls continues.

    ReplyDelete
  75. Trish: I do, do, do, however, adore those who believe, for instance, that you can have your Pax Romana and your petite, disinterested federal governance as well.
    ==

    There you go, Bob. Your very own tower of Babel. And why you're cursed.

    ReplyDelete
  76. The finances of an individual citizen shouldn't be confused with those of the nation as a whole, as some people sometimes mistakenly do. They are quite different. An individual has no power to tax, for instance, among many other things. If an individual, as often happens, wished to sell an asset to cover an individual debt, that is quite different from selling the national forests to cover a national debt. An individual doesn't have to think about things like a national heritage, or the overall living environment of the folks, the benefits of the vast outdoors to the sanity of the populace, the grotesqueness of selling national treasures to the UberRich, the will of the voters, prior acts of Congress, etc etc while the government does, or should. Often people seem to see a banana and an orange and think they are the same because they are both fruit. A common enough error.

    ReplyDelete
  77. Looked at another way, though ...
    In 1961 the GEP of the US was 544.7bn while Total Spending was $164.8, 30%.

    In 1981, Reagan's first year, GDP was $3.1284 tn, Spending was $1.05 tn. That'd be 33.5%

    In 1989, the first post Reagan year, GDP was $5.803 tn, Spending was $2.104 tn. That'd be 36%

    By the end of the Clinton era in 2001 the GDP was $10.128 tn, Spending was $3.434 tn. That'd be 33.9%.

    The 2008 numbers, GDP $14.28 tn, Spending @ $5.293 tn. That's 37% at the beginning of Obama's tenure.

    The expansion of Federal spending is still there, but not as dramatic an increase as the gross dollar amounts.

    ReplyDelete
  78. Damn me, I'm cursed.
    ==

    Not you, Bob. You're under my protection.

    ReplyDelete
  79. The individual has an obligation to his progeny, bob.
    Both publicly and privaely.

    As you said earlier

    "We're broke"

    What happens when folks are broke, bob? Well, the Sheriff comes and auctions off the property, real and personal.
    To pay the creditors.

    Often times the debtor could have liquidated those assets, before the crisis stage and come out ahead.

    As to the matter of scalability, Nations are never "To big to fail"

    ReplyDelete
  80. Expanding more, by percentage, under Reagan and both of the Bushs than under Clinton/Gingrich.

    ReplyDelete
  81. Wiki:

    1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. 2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. 3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. 4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

    ReplyDelete
  82. we're broke--ah, I didn't really mean that. We're going to have some big inflation though, I think.

    ReplyDelete
  83. You say the State has the power to tax, but then decry as unfair a Capital Gains tax and portray any increase in the income tax rate as unproductive.

    Which may be true in both cases.

    But you do not offer an alternative method to raise revenues.

    Nor to cut spending, by substantial amounts.

    You have advocated that we cannot abandon our expensive miltary efforts abroad, regardless of cost or probability of success.

    It's tough to be broke, bob.
    There are hard choices to be made.

    ReplyDelete
  84. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  85. Bush/DeLay wiped out any progress made by Clinto/Gingrich at reversing the incremental expansion of Government.

    ReplyDelete
  86. Just about the Scariest Chart you'll see this week (year?)

    Chinese Oil Consumption

    We've got just a couple of years to get our act together, folks. This is going to get "messy" as hell.

    ReplyDelete
  87. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  88. clusterstock: Peter Madoff Must Live On $10,000 A Month

    http://bit.ly/OP3t
    ==

    Oh, the horror.

    ReplyDelete
  89. But you do not offer an alternative method to raise revenues.
    ==

    You don't need to raise revenues. You need to cut expenses, starting with the military and the other corporate parasites.

    ReplyDelete
  90. And, rufus, they are building and selling 600,000 autos internally, per month.

    The 500,000 EVs the Chicoms have slated for production in 2011, just a drop in the bucket.

    Less than a months supply of overall demand for transportation at current levels.

    ReplyDelete
  91. That wold be a start, mat.
    But bob has rejected cutting back military expeditures, he advocates for more, not less.
    He gets that from Pesident Obama's budget. Miltary spending is up 3% over last year, with the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan still not factored into the annualized budget.

    ReplyDelete
  92. Rat, your chart is Fed, State, and Local.

    Federal Spending looks a lot different when it's broken out this way.

    The Feds historically collect about 19% of GDP in taxes (regardless of which tax "scheme" they institute,) and they usually spend about one and a half to two percent more than they take in.

    ReplyDelete
  93. They've got a Billion people, Rat. About 300 Million of them are starting to make some money, and have no debt.

    Now, they're starting to produce their own inexpensive, fairly good quality cars. I can see them putting twenty-five million cars/yr on the road in a few years, fairly easily.

    And, they're not like the U.S. When they put a new car on the road an old car doesn't come off the road. A car that went on the road 15 years, ago, in China will probably be there for another 20 years.

    Then, there's India.

    Vietnam, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and all of Latin America.

    And, Worldwide oil production has Peaked. This could be a long-assed "Recession" folks.

    ReplyDelete
  94. That's why I think we will "technically" come "out of recession" fairly soon, but go back in within a year, or so.

    ReplyDelete
  95. "And, Worldwide oil production has Peaked. This could be a long-assed "Recession" folks."
    ---
    There goes that prediction of a second quarter turnaround!
    :-)

    :-(
    gallows humor icon

    ReplyDelete
  96. A Bear Market Recession Rally.

    ReplyDelete
  97. Chart don't look that different to me, 'specially if it showed the latest 8 trillion of planned for Federal spending.

    ReplyDelete
  98. That wold be a start, mat.
    But bob has rejected cutting back military expeditures, he advocates for more, not less.
    ==

    I think that Bob is coming to the same realization that I have. These wars are fake wars, a military welfare program to keep military contractors busy.

    ReplyDelete
  99. "the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan still not factored into the annualized budget."
    ---
    I thot he said Bush didn't but he was gonna.
    ...he didn't?

    ReplyDelete
  100. Wars expense is smaller and more temporary than Welfare State Spending.
    (not that I'm arguing for Empire, or the present long wars.)

    ReplyDelete
  101. This website certainly has all the information and facts I wanted
    about this subject and didn't know who to ask.

    My web blog; bachlaufpumpen günstig

    ReplyDelete