I am a little surprized that no one has brought up the Russian solution to the "War on Terrorism." Not that a Russian use of brutality is a stop-the-presses event. What I will be most curious about is the public and official reaction to the fact that 3 AMERICANS WERE KILLED BY THE RUSSIAN SPECIAL FORCES "CHEMICAL WEAPONS".

Will it be significant, turning-wise, if the American public just shakes their collective heads and mutters about "the cost of war." Can you imagine the government statements that would have resulted if this had happened ten years ago. Think about the pundit-class! In the good ol' days we had a script standing by for these situations.

I haven't detected any immediate reaction to these loss of American life and wonder if this may be a good indicator of a change in mood.

P.S.: I loved Putin's statement equating the Chechen militants actions to the use of WOMDs. Does Dubya have any idea what Genie he has let out of the bottle?

Correction: One America is in "stable condition", one body is presumed American (I swear I heard that there were 3 Americans in the theatre???)

Originally Posted by scott '63

I haven't detected any immediate reaction to these loss of American life and wonder if this may be a good indicator of a change in mood.

'At the White House, spokesman Ari Fleischer avoided criticizing the Russian government's response to the hostage crisis.

"The president feels very strongly that responsibility for this rests with the terrorists who took these people hostage and put them in harm's way in the first place," Fleischer said. ' from AP

Originally Posted by scott '63

'At the White House, spokesman Ari Fleischer avoided criticizing the Russian government's response to the hostage crisis.

"The president feels very strongly that responsibility for this rests with the terrorists who took these people hostage and put them in harm's way in the first place," Fleischer said. ' from AP

The prez knows how to get the Russians on his side for the whole Iraq thingy. Now if only the French wanted us to condone something they did. . . :wink:

Here is some speculation on the economy, the budget, and what is in store for us if the Republicans should take control of Congress. At the end is a comment attributed to John Ashcroft which, if true, would result in his immediate impeachment if we had an opposition party in this country. Regardless, this is all 4T sounding stuff. Commentary on the Wellstone crash and portfolio recommendations at the link.


http://www.almartinraw.com/column77.html

(Excerpted)


... It is our belief, based on Beltway scuttlebutt, that if Republicans do regain control of the Senate and it does become an Imperial Senate, it is entirely likely that Secretary of State Colin Powell and the little band of "moderates" coalesced around him would leave and would be quickly replaced by people from the Hard Right.

In that scenario, the Bush Administration would quickly bring back the few pieces of legislation that had been defeated, such as the National ID Card legislation, the overturning of Posse Comitatus legislation, and undoubtedly the Homeland Security legislation. We are reiterating what we have said before, as we get closer to the election, because it is important that people understand this. ...



... It should be noted that in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, the Bush Administration first told the American people that we were going to respond, that there would be a limited military force in Afghanistan, that we would capture or kill Osama bin Laden, that we will smash the al Qaeda organization. They salso said it would be a 90 day operation and it would cost the American taxpayers $3 billion.

Here we are 14 months later and $30 billion of the American taxpayers money later (not $3 billion), and we have still failed to kill or capture Osama bin Laden. In fact, we don't even know where he is. We have failed to quell the al Qaeda organization and according to the Congressional Budget Office, we will be in Afghanistan for years at the cost of $2 billion a month. It becomes a planned program of failure once again.

Knowing that the economy was already falling apart by 9-11, Bush was desperate to shift the focus away from the economy (and what Bushonomics does to the economy) and back to foreign affairs, which has always been considered a Republican strong point.

Bush pushed the Department of Defense (you remember all the leaks that came out after the event in which the generals were very upset about White House pressure), which correctly said that we weren't ready and that our defense posture is such that we simply can't mount an invasion that quickly. Furthermore the Department of Defense had almost no intelligence about Afghanistan and no "friend or foe" material with which to instruct our troops or even maps of the country.

The Department of Defense was right (and I don't know why General Franks, the theater commander, didn't resign; he must have just been concerned about his pension). He said you've got to commit enough troops to seal the borders of the country to prevent these terrorists escaping to neighboring friendly countries.

The Bush Administration was A. Scared about how much money it would cost and B. Even though the Republicans love war, they have no balls when it comes to seeing the body bags coming home. The whole thing has been bungled from the beginning. Then you interject into that mix the fact that the American weapons systems don't work. Remember we've lost 53 helicopters, and they haven't had to shoot one missile. And therein is the second problem. We have ordinance that doesn't work, bombs that don't explode, mines that either don't explode or explode prematurely, Cruise and Tomahawk missiles only 38% of which can hit their targets. The other glaring problem is that the US continues to purchase weapons systems that don't work in exchange for which defense contractors give enormous amounts of money to the Republican Party.

And here's how it works. Every time one of our Apache helicopters crashes and eight or nine people get killed, those eight or nine American soldiers die for that one, two or three million dollars that that defense contractor contributed to some Republican offshore account, from the taxpayers money that went on to build that helicopter.

You could call it Republican Blood Money. Our troops are paying for it.

It should also be noted that this Bush Administration has advisors who are all "chicken hawks," those who want to get us into war, but who haven't tasted it themselves. This is the ultimate hypocrisy.

We have a $200 billion deficit this year and if we get involved with a war in Iraq, and Bush gets his Rubber Stamp Congress, we are potentially looking at a $350 billion federal budget deficit for fiscal year 2003. Even though the United States only services 40% of its debt (thanks to BFLAP, i.e. Bush Fantasy Land Accounting Principles), eventually budget deficits won't be serviced anymore.

Treasury Secretary O'Neill was asked on CNBC -- since Bush was elected, all of the Treasury contingency reserves have disappeared, the stand by letters of credit are maxed out, the Federal Reserve's currency stabilization fund is gone, so where have these billions gone?

And O'Neill just shrugged his shoulders and said I have no idea.

Bush Administrations will and have sapped the money out. These are required reserves that the Treasury, other federal agencies, and the Federal Reserve must maintain by law. Finally people are asking -- where does the money go? And where has the money gone?

The money is usually being filtered through the Department of Defense or through Congressional or White House spending authorization accounts, and it's simply being looped back into the Treasury to be counted as general revenue in an effort to disguise (one of the key components of BFLAP) the true amount of the budget deficits which are created by BFLAP. That's the problem.

This year's fiscal budget was simply listed as "$200+ billion." Secretary O'Neill stated that from now on we are simply going to state a number and then say plus or minus, because we don't know. They don't know where the money goes and they can't account for it.

Why didn't Mainstream Media touch that?

Why wasn't that a scandal when O'Neill came out several months ago and said that the Department of Treasury has $500 billion missing since the election of George Bush and we don't know where it went?

And NOBODY in the Mainstream Media went with it. Why? Because the people holding the levers of power are making so much money that nobody has a vested interest to ask any questions.

O'Neill was asked -- when is this all going to fall apart? This was referring to the impact of 12 years of Bushonomics I (1980-1992) and the renewed deleterious effects of Bushonomics II (2000 - ?).

O'Neill answered that it all falls apart when we can't service the debt anymore.

It should be noted that prior to the Reagan Bush Regime, the United States Government had always serviced 100% of its debt since the first issuance of US Treasury bonds in 1795. It was during the Reagan Bush years with the advent of BFLAP, wherein the government began to service less and less of its debt. By the end of the Reagan Bush Regime, the United States was only servicing, and still to this day services, only 40% of its debt at any given time. The other 60% of the debt we are not servicing is debt that has been issued in forms of restricted US Government Bonds or Future Contingency Bonds.

If the United States had to service 100% of our outstanding debt, it would commit 53% of the total budget to service that debt. That would effectively cause the United States Government to collapse insofar as 48% of the budget is comprised of non-discretionary spending and 13% of the budget is comprised of necessary discretionary spending.

If the US was forced to begin to service all of its debt it simply could not do so and it would collapse. It should be noted that sometime in the future as Secretary O'Neill pointed out (with furrowed brows), the tab comes due.

Here's an analogy. Bushonomics has created for the United States a variable interest only mortgage with an ever-expanding balloon payment. It's as if a homeowner was using 40% of his income to pay interest on an interest-only mortgage on his house, then continuously expanding the balloon payment in order to service the other 60% of the debt.

Every year there is a budget deficit, the US Government's debt to equity ratio diminishes. The current accrual of debt we are not paying constitutes about $240 billion per year.

The Economic Policy Institute issued a statistic that the total aggregate debt (National Debt) of the United States by the year 2032 would be $100 trillion.

This figure, $100 trillion, exceeds the aggregate assets of the entire planet.

The current aggregate assets of the entire planet are only about $68 trillion. That means all of the money, all of the real estate, all of the gold, all of the oil, everything. Even now the actual amount of US debt on a realized basis equals fully ? of the aggregate net worth of the entire planet.

If the entire earth could be converted to a sea of money, it still would not pay the US debt.

That's why we have consistently urged the Bush Regime to spend more money on space exploration, particularly in terms of setting up mining colonies on the Moon and the exploration and eventual terra-forming of Mars because we are going to need other planets in the Solar System to mortgage by 2032 to pay the debt.

Then the Bush Cabal will have to go off planet.

First, under Reaganomics, it was Off- Budget Debt.

Eventually, under Bushonomics, the Off- Budget Debt will have to turn into Off-World debt. ...



... The next item is not a joke. Senator John McCain, quoting from a conversation with Attorney General John Ashcroft said that, according to the Attorney General, we would never have complete security in the United States -- until every citizen is frightened of being thrown into jail.

Furthermore, in the conversation, Ashcroft admitted that although they've backed away from the TIPS Program (The Department of Justice's infamous "Rat on a Neighbor" Program), they compiled the names of more than a million American citizens (of the blonde haired, blue eyed Smith and Jones types -- not of the Ahmed or Muhammed variety).

The Attorney General and the Department of Justice feels that these individuals would be "potentially seditious," as the State continues to tighten its control.

In the immortal words of George Bush Sr., "If the truth gives you indigestion, simply take more Prozac." ...

Wowwee zowie! I hope the American people vote and keep in mind what could happen if all the breaks are taken off the Bushwagon in its headlong drive to disaster. :evil:

On the other hand we could just all vote Democrat.
They've never met a tax they didn't like.

If we raise taxes, couldn't we just generate enough revenue to cover
that debt, Stoney?

Or perhaps we could all just raid the coffers of the Catholic Church.
They got lots of gold. Maybe the space exploration money could just be
spent on drilling tunnels to the vaults of the Vatican.

With a debt like 100 trillion. If it's true, it's ludicrious to even try to suggest a solution. Giving us a deadline of 2023 it's futile. We can't explore space, mine for gold with only a possibility of getting anything on a hostile planet, and bring it back in time. ( I can't believe I wrote that last line )

So we default on our debt, and start all over??
What is your solution Stoney? If you got rid of Bush today, we still have
an appointment with the bill collectors.

Originally Posted by scott '63

I am a little surprized that no one has brought up the Russian solution to the "War on Terrorism." Not that a Russian use of brutality is a stop-the-presses event. What I will be most curious about is the public and official reaction to the fact that 3 AMERICANS WERE KILLED BY THE RUSSIAN SPECIAL FORCES "CHEMICAL WEAPONS".

Will it be significant, turning-wise, if the American public just shakes their collective heads and mutters about "the cost of war." Can you imagine the government statements that would have resulted if this had happened ten years ago. Think about the pundit-class! In the good ol' days we had a script standing by for these situations.

I've commented before on the 911 shift with regard to that war. Before 911, American 'elite' opinion, and some commoner opinion, was sympathetic to the Chechens. After 911, America essentially changed sides in that war overnight.

While the Chechen conflict is still very troubling, most Americans will take ham-handed Russians over Islamic Fundamentalists any day.

Had the same situation occurred in the U.S., I'm not so sure the results would be much better.

When the Russians withdrew from Chechnya in the mid-'90's, the Islamic groups turned it into a haven for regional terrorism.

It's another one of those situations, like Palestine, where Americans are sympathetic to the suffering, but not so sympathetic as to side with terrorists, especially after 9/11.

The Russians have had the capability to slaughter millions of Americans for decades, and never did it. The same cannot be said of Islamic Fundamentalists.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Originally Posted by Sanford

While the Chechen conflict is still very troubling, most Americans will take ham-handed Russians over Islamic Fundamentalists any day.

Had the same situation occurred in the U.S., I'm not so sure the results would be much better.

When the Russians withdrew from Chechnya in the mid-'90's, the Islamic groups turned it into a haven for regional terrorism.

It's another one of those situations, like Palestine, where Americans are sympathetic to the suffering, but not so sympathetic as to side with terrorists, especially after 9/11.

The Russians have had the capability to slaughter millions of Americans for decades, and never did it. The same cannot be said of Islamic Fundamentalists.

All VERY True!

Originally Posted by Stonewall Patton

Here is some speculation on the economy...

http://www.almartinraw.com/column77.html

(Excerpted)


... If the entire earth could be converted to a sea of money, it still would not pay the US debt...

Time for a little reigning-in of the hyperboles, dude.

According to the National Debt Clock,

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

each American's share of the debt is less than $22,000. An alarming number, no doubt. But less alarming if only the budget was back in surplus territory, which recent history teaches is quite possible.

If that number wasn't growing, it wouldn't be hard for Americans to pay the whole debt down over 22 years. It will not be neccessary to convert the Earth into a sea of money. It is only necessary for some hard-nosed reigning-in of government spending, perhaps some tax hikes (but not into European-style tax rates), and continued technological development (for higher productivity = higher wages = more government revenue).

The problem is, politicians are terrible at this sort of thing. I'm still for democracy, however...

When this problem (the national debt) never gets solved, sometimes I want to throttle a politican and shout "It's just MATH, you morons!"

Originally Posted by Sanford

When this problem (the national debt) never gets solved, sometimes I want to throttle a politican and shout "It's just MATH, you morons!"

No its not. US government debt is not like the sort of debt you or I incur. Individual debt as well as that of third world governments is denominated in dollars which must be obtained through the process of exchange. An individual might get a job where he exchanges his labor for wages, paid in dollars. An individual who finds he cannot repay his debt can file bankruptcy.

A country typically runs a trade surplus in which they sell more (for dollars) than they buy, thus accumulating dollars which can be used to repay debt. Nations today generally do not declare bankruptcy (although once this was a not infrequent occurrence). There has been talk of providing a bankruptcy procedure for third world nations.

But the US government is the only entity on earth than can create dollars out of nothing. Thus, they can always repay their debt with dollars and thus cannot go bankrupt.

So no, the federal deficit is not a matter of math like your own deficits are.

It is not clear to me what trade surpluses have to do with the national debt.

The national debt is the U.S. government owing money (to individuals and institutions, foreign or domestic, whoever has lent the U.S. government money by buying bonds or whatever).

When Americans sell goods or services abroad, it is by and large not the U.S. government doing so, it is individuals and institutions selling goods or services abroad.

If the U.S. government then taxes the subsequent income, sure, that effects the U.S. debt.

My point is, what you said sounds like so much of a smoke screen. In particular, by bringing the trade surplus into the picture, you give the false impression that the debt is exclusively money owed to foreigners. It is not, it is money owed by the U.S. government to anybody, regardless of their nationality, including Americans.

It IS just math. If the U.S. government didn't spend money faster than it received it, it wouldn't have to borrow more money. If it kept this up for a long time, while paying off the old debt, the debt would shrink.

Trade surpluses might have something to do with our ability to carry on with business-as-usual while having a large national debt. However, the issue of how to bring the debt down is JUST MATH. Revenues versus expenditures. Plus and minus.

As for the fact that the U.S. government could simply print more dollars and pay off the debt, this is a difference that doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter because the U.S. government knows that the results of doing that would be disasterous. So, it doesn't do it. The U.S. government has at least been pretty disciplined in this way (thankfully).

This puts the U.S. government in the same situation with regards to its debt as an individual is with regards to his or her debt. An individual CAN'T just print money, and the U.S. Government WON'T just print money.

This certainly seems like a 4T perspective below. But I am at least glad that this "liberal" can differentiate between Ronald Reagan and the Bush people as he demonstrates below.

I personally find it difficult to believe that anybody would engage in foul play with plane crashes this close to the election since it would so obviously create suspicion given the recent Carnahan incident and today's political climate in general. Nevertheless two things about this do make me pause:


1) Rall addresses the black box. Good point. According to reports, a local Minnesota television news reporter arrived on the scene early and reported that the feds had already come and gone, having retrieved the black box which was on its way to Washington at that point. Later, the feds held a press conference denying that the plane even had a black box. Well which is it? Was the Minnesota news reporter mistaken or are the feds playing the same games with plane crashes to which we have become so accustomed over the past 6 years? Will the federal government deign to address these sorts of inconsistencies this time or will they once again cover everything up?


2) We have been bombarded by propaganda about the alleged danger we are in from Muslim fundamentalists waiting to strike. This propaganda is essential to the Bush administration's war plans. So why has the Bush administration not raised the possibility that Muslim fundamentalists might have taken down Wellstone's plane? They could certainly milk it and nothing has restrained them from milking anything in the past. Yet they are silent. Are they possibly afraid that someone might look too closely at this crash?


Again, I find it hard to believe that someone would be so stupid as to deliberately take a plane down so close to an election, in light of recent events. But it would be nice to have some questions answered by the feds for a change.



http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...7%2F2k5lk.html

(For educ. and discussion)



THE (POSSIBLE) ASSASSINATION OF PAUL WELLSTONE

Tue Oct 29,10:04 PM ET

By Ted Rall

George W. Bush's Legacy of Cynicism and Contempt



George W. Bush and his henchmen stole the presidency. They threw thousands of innocent people into prison without even charging them with a crime. They're gearing up to invade Iraq without bothering to come up with a substantial justification. Now some Democrats and progressive Americans are asking the unthinkable about an administration they increasingly believe to be ruled by thugs and renegades. Did government gangsters murder the United States' most liberal legislator?

Talk of foul play began hours after Senator Paul Wellstone's plane went down over northeastern Minnesota on Oct. 25, killing him, his wife and his daughter, along with three staffers and two pilots. "Please tell me I'm wrong to be thinking what I'm thinking," a self-described "liberal Democrat" from St. Paul e-mailed me that evening. "I want to be wrong, but I wouldn't put it past the Republicans-- THESE Republicans--to sabotage Wellstone's plane." Internet discussion groups and e-mail in-boxes quickly echoed her sentiment.

People expressed similar fears after Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan (news - web sites) died in plane crashes--the latter weeks before facing an election challenge from future Bush Attorney General John Ashcroft (news - web sites)--but the whispers of assassination following the Wellstone tragedy are more widespread and gaining mainstream currency far beyond the usual conspiracy nuts.

A Convenient Death

The Minnesota senator's death certainly comes at an auspicious time for the Republican Party. Wellstone's challenger, former St. Paul mayor Norm Coleman, was considered by both parties to be the GOP's best chance for recapturing the 50-to-49 Democratic U.S. Senate. Wellstone had been considered vulnerable for two reasons: his principled opposition to Bush's Iraq war resolution (the Senate voted 99-to-1 in favor) and a strong Green Party candidacy sure to siphon off leftie votes. Bush was so anxious to silence the Senate's most liberal voice (Mother Jones magazine called him "the first 1960s radical elected to the U.S. Senate") that he personally recruited Coleman to run against him. Bush then campaigned furiously against Wellstone, attending two fundraisers which raised over $2.3 million--more than he raised for any other Republican candidate, including his brother Jeb.

Republicans resorted to Nixon-style dirty tricks in the Coleman campaign. Coleman called Wellstone "extremist" and implied he was a communist. GOP workers phoned senior citizens to tell them that Wellstone was plotting to take away their Social Security (news - web sites). They called members of the National Rifle Association to tell them that Wellstone was plotting to take away their guns. They even ran newspaper ads depicting gruesome photos of late- term abortions.

Despite the money and sleazy tactics being used against him, recent polls showed Wellstone beginning to pull ahead. With Election Day looming on Nov. 5, many analysts were predicting a Wellstone victory and continued Democratic dominance of the Senate. Perhaps, the thinking goes, someone in the Bush regime decided Wellstone had to go.

Assassination by Aviation

If Wellstone's plane was sabotaged, it wouldn't be the first time that a political figure met his end in the friendly skies. A plane carrying Chinese leader Mao Tse-Tung's hand-picked successor, Lin Biao, crashed under mysterious circumstances en route to Moscow during 1971. The Chinese later claimed that Lin was defecting to the Soviet Union after a botched coup attempt against Mao; guilty or not, most historians believe that his plane was probably sabotaged. On March 3, 2001, a phosphorus bomb blew up a Thai Airways Boeing 737-400 minutes before the country's new prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, was set to board the jet.

Many American politicians--mostly Democrats and liberal Republicans--have died in aviation disasters. Senator John Tower (R-TX) Senator John Heinz (D- PA), Congressman Mickey Leland (D-TX); Ron Brown and Mel Carnahan are among those who have been killed in airplanes since 1989. "Elected officials expose themselves every day to these kinds of risks as they travel across their states or districts," Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) commented, noting the perils of frequently using small aircraft.

Anyone who has traveled on what is euphemistically called "civil aviation" can tell horror stories about sudden drops, lurches and violent thunderstorms. But it's also true that security at the regional airports and small terminals at major airports used for such flights--Wellstone flew out of St. Paul--is more easily penetrable than that at JFK and LAX. It would hardly be impossible to sabotage a plane chartered for an inconvenient politician.

Wherefore the Black Box?

According to aviation consultant Robert Breiling, the plane that carried Senator Wellstone--the King Air A-100 "business turboprop," also known as a Beech King Air--is remarkably safe, with 25 percent fewer fatal accidents than other planes in its class. Warren Morningstar, spokesman for the Airline Owners and Pilots Association, says: "It's a great airplane."

So why did Wellstone's go down? Weather is the lead suspect. Freezing temperatures, which can be severe in Minnesota, came early this year. "This airplane would typically be equipped with de-ice equipment but there are icing conditions that are beyond the measure of any equipment to remove," Morningstar notes.

Local pilots, however, doubt that ice was a problem. "There was little ice. It was normal. We see it all the time," said Don Sipola, a flight instructor with 25 years experience.

"Black boxes"--a flight data recorder and a cockpit voice recorder--are often crucial for discovering the cause of airplane crashes. According to Federal Aviation Administration (news - web sites) spokesman Paul Takemoto, the plane was required to be equipped with both. Contradicting the FAA, Carol Carmody, acting chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board (news - web sites), which is investigating the site of the crash, says that the plane apparently carried neither. Were the black boxes lost or were they never aboard? Someone may know, but thus far no one's saying.

A Reflection on Bush

Odds are overwhelmingly in favor of a natural or mechanical explanation for the crash of Paul Wellstone's plane. For one thing, substitute candidate Walter Mondale is expected to retain Wellstone's senate seat for the Democrats. That's predictable. The victories of last-minute substitute candidates like Missouri's Jean Carnahan in 2000 and New Jersey's Frank Lautenberg this year provide ample evidence that losing a candidate needn't mean losing an election. If anything, Mondale is more likely to win than Wellstone was, notwithstanding the inadvertent prediction of China's president Jiang Zemin (news - web sites), who offered his "deep condolences for the loss of the Senate."

The fact that we're having this discussion at all is a symptom of the polarizing effect that Bush and his top dogs have had on the United States since assuming office and even more so in the hard-right free-for-all that followed the Sept. 11 attacks. Presidents routinely cause their political detractors to take offense, but one would have to go back to Franklin D. Roosevelt's attempt to stack the U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) or Richard Nixon's wiretapping and enemies list to find another American leader who crossed the line of acceptable discourse as extremely as George W. Bush has done.

Ronald Reagan (news - web sites) may have been a hard line conservative, but had Wellstone died during his watch you wouldn't have heard liberals asking whether the Gipper had had him offed. Bush is different. Asking mailmen to spy on ordinary Americans, creating military tribunals for anyone deemed an "enemy combatant," locking prisoners of war in dog cages, spending a decade's worth of savings in six months, allowing journalists to die rather than provide them with help in a war zone, smearing Democratic politicians as anti- American, invading sovereign nations without excuse--these are acts that transgress essential American reasonableness. A man capable of these things seems, by definition, capable of anything.

Ironically, Paul Wellstone would have been the last person to suspect Republicans of such a monstrous crime. One of his final acts in the Senate was to praise the career of retiring Senator Jesse Helms, his ideological counterpart on the Right. Like most idealists, Wellstone thought the best of humanity, that people would do the right thing if the choices were properly and clearly explained. Wellstone wouldn't have wanted to believe that he was assassinated.

Neither do I. So let's hope those black boxes turn up.

(Ted Rall's latest book, a graphic travelogue about his recent coverage of the Afghan war titled "To Afghanistan (news - web sites) and Back," is now in its second edition. Ordering and review-copy information are available at nbmpub.com.)

Originally Posted by Sanford

It doesn't matter because the U.S. government knows that the results of doing that would be disasterous. So, it doesn't do it. The U.S. government has at least been pretty disciplined in this way (thankfully).

This puts the U.S. government in the same situation with regards to its debt as an individual is with regards to his or her debt. An individual CAN'T just print money, and the U.S. Government WON'T just print money.

The US government does it all the time, what do you mean? How do you suppose we paid for WW II?

By borrowing money; that's why the debt rose during WWII. If the goverment just printed money, the debt wouldn't have risen.

Yes, the governent prints money, but it is limited in how much it prints by economic considerations. It doesn't want hyperinflation.

Originally Posted by Stonewall Patton

I personally find it difficult to believe that anybody would engage in foul play with plane crashes this close to the election...

But, still, you feel compelled to post Ted Rall's atrocious lies. No surprise there, Stoney.

If you care to ever read something that doesn't conform to your worldview, the lies are debunked, among other places, here:

http://www.interglobal.org/weblog/ar...82.html#001782

Small excerpt:

"Of course, Ron Brown died under extremely strange circumstances. He went down in what was described as "the storm of the century," which was later found to be a light drizzle, and his body was found with a hole in its skull and X-rays of lead chaff that was physically difficult to reconcile with a plane crash, but was easy to reconcile with a gun to the head after apparent survival of same. This is, of course, ignoring the fact that the X-rays were destroyed, or at least disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and the few military officers with the integrity to point this out were drummed out of the service...

Does Mr. Rall have any equivalent situation to relate here, a few days after the crash?"

Yes and we "paid" the debt by monetizing it.

Originally Posted by Sanford

By borrowing money; that's why the debt rose during WWII. If the goverment just printed money, the debt wouldn't have risen.

Yes, the governent prints money, but it is limited in how much it prints by economic considerations. It doesn't want hyperinflation.

Sanford,

The gov't "borrowed" money by selling bonds (claims on future revenue (taxes)) to the general public. These, they printed. As they are based on no existing assets (unlike corporate bonds, which are secured against tangible goods), they are, in effect, printing money -- just not in a single step.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

The gov't "borrowed" money by selling bonds (claims on future revenue (taxes)) to the general public. These, they printed. As they are based on no existing assets (unlike corporate bonds, which are secured against tangible goods), they are, in effect, printing money -- just not in a single step.

Yeah, sorta kinda... but not really.

I could borrow money from somebody based on "no existing assets", simply agreeing to pay it back with interest.

If I did so, no one would accuse me of "printing money", even if we wrote it all down on IOU's, and the guy I borrowed from gave these IOU's to someone else to in return for a baseball glove.

You might argue that banks don't generally do that, but there is an entire financial industry, the "cash-flow industry", based on giving people money in exchange for their future income.

You guys are using sophistry. When the government sells bonds, it is borrowing money, not just printing it. If it wasn't borrowing, we wouldn't speak of its "debt".

And for the government to get out of debt is a matter of MATH. Spend less than you receive. MATH.

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

The US government does it (print money)all the time, what do you mean? How do you suppose we paid for WW II?

I added the parenthetical statement in the text above in order to clarify.

Money must have some meaning or it is not worth the paper it is printed on! In our case, money is supposed to represent the productivity of the citizens (because it no longer represents the amount of gold in Fort Knox). So money effectively represents our work. If we print more money than the assets we gain from production then the money becomes worthless. When this happens we have a disaster worse than the deflation of the Geat Depression. Ask anyone who remembers Germany in the 1920's what hyperinflation does to a country.

Right, elilevin.

There is a clear distinction between simply printing lots of paper money and issuing bonds.

One results in government debt. The other does not.
One results in hyperinflation. The other does not.

The real value of the dollar is reflected in its index against other currencies and its ability to purchase goods. Another aspect is the faith of the reciever in the govt. printing or backing it. As govt. debt rises along with personel debt the confidence in the currency declines. This puts more burden on the govt. for debt service.