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I'm not sure how much you think the President's policy has to do with gas prices, but if you think they're connected, remember 2 things:

1) gas prices doubled on Bush's watch
2) gas prices under Obama have not reached Bush's highs

http://factcheck.org/2012/05/soft-glove-same-gps-fist/

I hope you're not making an allusion to the previous slashdot article, because that was debunked by both snopes and factcheck:

http://www.factcheck.org/2007/12/bush-the-constitution-a-goddamned-piece-of-paper/

You are correct - Bush never actually said those words, in that order.

However, actions speak louder than words, and the intent of his actions are quite clear, IMO.

I hope you're not making an allusion to the previous slashdot article, because that was debunked by both snopes and factcheck:

http://www.factcheck.org/2007/12/bush-the-constitution-a-goddamned-piece-of-paper/

I'm not making any assertions as to the character of any past politicians, rather trying to correct one of those lies that keeps being repeated and believed to be true when in fact it is not. Slashdot itself has not formally corrected itself on that matter either, and still many slashdotters to this day echo that original article on a relatively frequent basis. (Capital Blue, by the way, still hosts that article, with no retraction or update of any kind, which unfortunately, many political blogs link to and even have written big editorials showing outrage over the comment, which in all likelihood was never made.)

Okay, here are the facts for you. Short version: Obama has spent far less time on vacation, per time in office, than his predecessor did. In fact, there's a fairly striking pattern among recent Presidents when you look at vacation time by party affiliation ...

It really depends on how high the standard is for a lie. Unambiguously incorrect statements are easy to come by:

"The entire north polar ice cap, which has been there for most of the last 3 million years, is disappearing before our eyes. Forty percent is already gone. The rest is expected to go completely within the next decade." [1]

Clearly not true; the percent gone was actually closer to 24%, and the worst-case projections only show the ice cap nearly disappearing in summer. OTOH, I'm not about to call them lies either; 40% would have been right two years earlier, and I can see forgetting to mention the detail about being ice-free only in summer. Furthermore, that was in a live interview; easy to make mistakes.

Perhaps more damning would be:
"The melting of ice in either West Antarctica or Greenland would result in a sea-level rise of up to 20 feet in the near future." (From An Inconvenient Truth)

Just no. Projections of sealevel rises of 20 feet tend to be looking at millenia-scale warming; for no conceivable definition of "near future" is that true. Worse, it's actually in a movie; presumably the script was edited with a finetooth comb.

You could argue it's still only twisting the data, as it is based on actual research; but it's based on claiming that research says something it really doesn't, which is roughly equivalent to Monckton's shenanigans.

As a wise man once pointed out, you can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. Rupert Murdoch's news empire has made a fortune for him by following this dictum to the letter. Murdoch has figured out which people he can fool all the time -- angry white males who live in the US. And as another wise man once pointed out, a man will hear what he wants to hear, and disregard the rest. Murdoch isn't worried about his angry white male revenue stream abandoning him simply because somebody fact-checked his propaganda -- Murdoch knows that angry white males will ignore anything that disrupts their vision of the world, and embrace anything that endorses it.

And -- just to affirm the Rule of Three -- another wise man once pointed out that the truth is out there. We already have fantastic sites like snopes and factcheck that eviscerate Murdoch's untruth stream in near real-time. People who can't be fooled all of the time and who don't always disregard what they don't want to hear can take comfort in the fact that sites like these are out there and are accessible to them any time their common sense alerts on one of Murdoch's "facts."

Never happened.

There's a whole lot of mentally ill people in the US.

There are hundreds of millions of guns in the US.

Yet:
1) These mass murders are pretty rare.
2) The bulk of the weapons used in these crimes are handguns (not "assault weapons").
3) The bulk of the weapons used in these mass murders are acquired legally.

Discuss.

Also, compare and contrast - Switzerland's ~50 guns per 100 households, and the US' ~88 guns per 100 household ownership rates, which are much, much higher than most of the rest of Europe's averages, with the great disparity in gun violence rates in the two countries. Perhaps the difference is due to some practical regulations and policies that we could enact here, as well?

You know, rather than shouting about "ban all teh guns all teh timez," why not have a constructive conversation about how to:
1) Sensibly regulate gun ownership;
2) Deliver mental health care to the people who need it;
3) Address the root issue of poverty inherent to many of the gun crimes in the US which contribute heavily to the shockingly high firearm murder rates here?

http://www.factcheck.org/2012/09/obamas-executive-orders/

i saw the forbes link but i was putting it down as partisan or at least vested interest. a couple places show that tax revenues go up every year (w/ some 6 exception years) which casts doubt on the forbes data. this seems to say that http://www.factcheck.org/taxes/supply-side_spin.html. These guys have a really crappy site (so they must be academics) but they say "what evidence there is suggests there to be a correlation between lower taxes and LOWER revenues, not HIGHER revenues as suggested by supply-siders. There may well be valid arguments in favor of tax cuts. But higher tax revenues does not appear to be one of them." They also seem to show supporting data based on percentages rather than straight numbers for gdp which seems to be more valid, imho. http://www.econdataus.com/taxcuts.html

I guess the cost of "Obama Phones" is more than expected.

You mean the ones that have been around since Regan?

http://www.factcheck.org/2009/10/the-obama-phone/

It's only progressive assuming the rich spend more, which they don't have to and certainly wouldn't prefer to do in a location with such a tax system. This would cause a massive offshoring of wealth to places with minimal sales tax, giving the rich the best of both worlds. In terms of taxes that you would be practically forced to pay on necessities, it's regressive.

And even with the best attempts to hack a regressive tax into a progressive one with the "prebate" system, at best it's even less progressive than the current tax system:

http://www.factcheck.org/taxes/unspinning_the_fairtax.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_the_FairTax_burden#Progressive_.2F_regressive_debate

Obama spent* as much (or slightly more) in 1 term than Bush did in 2.

Not entirely true. Obama has actually reduced the rate of spending in his first term, a majority of which was put in place before he even took office. He was the recipient of a budget that took a huge jump in 2009 thanks to Bush and Obama hasn't done a lot to shrink it but it's not fair to put responsibility for all the current spending on his back.

http://www.factcheck.org/2012/06/obamas-spending-inferno-or-not/

We know because plenty of people got caught doing it on both sides. If you're not being willfully obtuse, you could have started reading here for some information on Democrat "spin": FactCheck.org

Obama's deficits have merely hovered around what he inherited, he did not push them further

Sorry, but no: http://www.factcheck.org/2012/02/dueling-debt-deceptions/

Still, even THOSE spending policies...would be better than BHO's....who has spent WAY more than that...in only 4 years (vs. Bush's 8 years).

Apparently, your calculator is broken.

http://www.factcheck.org/2012/06/obamas-spending-inferno-or-not/

Wow, and yet Gore STILL got more votes than Bush in Florida, only to have them not counted by a conspiracy between corrupt election officials and corrupt Supreme Court justices.

My thanks go to the Washington Post and other fine newspapers for establishing this fact, so that nobody in the future will ever consider Bush 's first term to be legitimate:

...the study also found that Gore probably would have won, by a range of 42 to 171 votes out of 6 million cast, had there been a broad recount of all disputed ballots statewide...

171 out of 6,000,000? That's almost a whole 0.003%! I imagine that's well within the margin of error.

Wow, and yet Gore STILL got more votes than Bush in Florida, only to have them not counted by a conspiracy between corrupt election officials and corrupt Supreme Court justices.

My thanks go to the Washington Post and other fine newspapers for establishing this fact, so that nobody in the future will ever consider Bush 's first term to be legitimate:

...the study also found that Gore probably would have won, by a range of 42 to 171 votes out of 6 million cast, had there been a broad recount of all disputed ballots statewide...

I didn't fact check all of the companies on your list, but First Solar is not "near bankruptcy" - it's still trading on the NASDAQ with a stock price of $23, or a market cap of around $2B. In its last quarterly report, they claimed to have almost $700M of cash on hand, with $900M in revenues and 25% gross profit.

http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/FSLR/2133318876x0x587754/43642762-a08b-47d3-bc57-62ee73d6b300/Q2_2012_Web_Schedule_final.pdf
http://www.factcheck.org/2012/06/romneys-solar-flareout/

Even if much of the government money went to innovative companies that are struggling to get their product to market (i.e. Solyndra), that's pretty much where government money should be going -- if a company has a solid business plan and is on the track to profitability, the private sector will take care of them. But if a company with a promising product can't get enough private VC funding to get their product to market, then government funding can help them to compete against government subsidized foreign competitors. The alternative to government investment seems to be to let the Chinese dominate the alternative energy market.

The current estimate of the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is between 3.2 and 4 trillion dollars [...]

Yeah, but at least we found Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons!

Oh, yeah...

I fail to understand how I am a kool-aid drinker, when I point out that a) they both suck, and b) cite facts to back those arguments up. Mitt Romney was "for it before he was against it", and we see that especially with the health care plan that he passed in Massachusetts. Mitt Romney is an outright liar (worse than most politicians), and Obama didn't call him out on any of it during the first debate. http://factcheck.org/2012/10/dubious-denver-debate-declarations/ Nowhere in my post did I say or even imply that Obama isn't also an ideologue. He takes liberties with the facts and with his record as well, but has not changed his platform 180 degrees in the course of a day. It has been the stated goal of the Republican party to make him a one-term president, and they have obstructed nearly every piece of controversial legislation that Democrats have introduced. The Senate filibustered more bills than in all the years this country has existed. With the "Tea Party" at the helm, they have shifted to the far right with their social, economic, and foreign policies. Obama doesn't know how to play the game. His inexperience at politics means that he doesn't know the key players on a personal basis and never had to work with them, it means that he doesn't know how to use the bullypulpit of the president, and it means that he doesn't know how to use the 'carrot and stick' to get Congress to do what he wants. His inexperience is glaring. I'm writing in Ron Paul for president. Living here in New Jersey (ugh!), the state is guaranteed to go to Obama, so my vote doesn't make a damn bit of difference anyways. Ron Paul's mantra is to "stop telling people what to do!" I don't agree with many of his positions, but I do think that he is the best person for the job. I follow politics very closely, and although I'm just another asshole with an opinion, I at least think that it is an informed opinion.

I suppose if you call billions of dollars paid in taxes as nothing, then yea, GE paid nothing. Pretty sure it's the same with the other companies, but you can research it yourself.

The sad part here is that you fell for the liberal media view that Romney's campaign pulled the statement out of context, when no such thing happend. Yes, there were a few pundits who did just that, but not the official capaign.

Oh really?

"The Romney campaign replays Obama saying "if you've got a business, you didn't build that" five times in a 15-second video as part of a "petition" drive. It also uses the quote in an email fundraising appeal."

In fact, Romney even made an alalogy to the event that sums it up nicely. (paraphrasing here) You don't give the school bus driver credit for the honour student's success. Yes, the school bus driver got the kid to school, but it was the hard work of the student that is celebrated.

In my mind, the full context of President Obama's words are just as bad. He continually denigrates successfull buisnesses, this just being one example.

So here is a quote from the full context: "The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together." [bold mine]

Now compare that to Romney and his 47%.

Go ahead, keep regurgitating garbage you hear without basic fact checking first:

http://factcheck.org/2012/09/romney-gets-it-backward/

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2012/sep/12/romney-says-us-embassy-statement-was-apology-was-i/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/the-romney-campaigns-repeated-errors-on-the-cairo-embassy-statement/2012/09/13/978a6be6-fdf0-11e1-b153-218509a954e1_blog.html#pagebreak

and just in case you suspect I'm a liberal (I am), lets run down some of the conservative roll call (as pulled from http://mediamatters.org/research/2012/09/13/even-as-experts-gop-figures-criticize-romneys-e/189862):

Bill O'Reilly: "I'm Not Sure [Romney] Is Correct On That. The Embassy Was Trying To Head Off The Violence" With Statement. During the September 12 edition of Fox News' O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly played video of Romney's remarks from his September 12 press conference and said, "I'm not sure the governor is correct on that. The embassy was trying to head off the violence" with their statement. [Fox News, The O'Reilly Factor, 9/12/12]

Former McCain Adviser: Pointing Out "That We Reject Vile Attacks On Muslims...Does Not Constitute Sympathy For The People Besieging Our Embassy As Gov. Romney Alleged." Longtime John McCain adviser Mark Salter responded to Romney's remarks on the embassy's statement on the website RealClearPolitics:
"
        [T]here is nothing wrong in principle with making clear to people, who have yet to embrace the categorical right to free speech, that Americans and their government deplore the deplorable, that we reject vile attacks on Muslims as vigorously as we reject vile anti-Semitic attacks.

        To do so does not constitute sympathy for the people besieging our embassy, as Gov. Romney alleged. Nor is at an apology for America, as some Obama critics have claimed. It's an expression of our decency. [RealClearPolitics, 9/12/12]
"

Noonan: Romney Isn't "Doing Himself Any Favors," "When Hot Things Happen, Cool Words -- Or No Words -- Is The Way To Go." Former Ronald Reagan speechwriter and Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan commented on Romney's remarks on Fox News, a Wall Street Journal blog reported:
"
        Peggy Noonan, a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan who writes a column for The Wall Street Journal's opinion pages, said on Fox News that he had opened himself up to accusations that he was "trying to exploit things politically."

        "I belong to the old school of thinking in times of great drama and heightened crisis, and at times when something violent is happening to your people, I always think discretion is the better way to go," she said. "I don't feel that Mr. Romney has been doing himself any favors.... When hot things happen, cool words- or no words- is the way to go." [Washington Wire, The Wall Street Journal, 9/12/12]
" ... (it continues, but my point is made)...

- Toast

I don't agree with tmosley's bald first sentence, but I will suggest that there isn't much graduation in our response. We go from sabre-rattling to invasion at the drop of a hat. Hell's bells, we're making shit up for an excuse to go to war.

But stacking him up against an insane-right-wing Ayn Rand ideologue who wants to abolish Medicare and Social Security

Really? No. For one, Medicare was to be replaced with a system similar to the Dem's own Affordable Health Care Act... and considering all the problems with Medicare, no one should be treating it as a sacred cow. Ryan barely registers above a neocon on the Utilitarian scale.

http://www.factcheck.org/2012/07/no-end-to-end-medicare-claim/

I, for one, am really tired of this shameful hyperbole. It just proves that so few put the well-being of other above their own pet agendas.

Actually be the government, that's the best way to steal.

Proof: US Senators are allowed to commit insider trading.

Also worth noting, the Federal Reserve Bank is a privately owned company, not a government institution.

The left profits just as much from the oil industry as the right. So go fuck yourself, skippy.

Do the math in places where people are allowed to carry, and the numbers go down significantly.

No. They don't.

http://www.factcheck.org/2008/03/violent-crimes-and-handgun-ownership/

Listen, I shoot, and if it wasn't for the cost, I'd own. But this lie has been repeated so often that people no longer even seem to question it. Causation has never been established between gun ownership and violence. But it's been demonstrably shown that gun ownership does not correlate to lower violence rates.

The GP wrote carry, which I'll take to mean concealed carry as most US states allow open carry. The article you linked discusses crime vs. ownership statistics, not crime vs. concealed carry statistics. The words "concealed" and "carry" do not appear in the article you linked.

This is one of the key reasons the gun control debate gets so heated - people use data which is, at best, orthogonally related to specific points to improperly support their position. Sometimes this is an honest mistake (as I suspect in your post); more often it's disingenuous or straight up lies.

- T

Do the math in places where people are allowed to carry, and the numbers go down significantly.

No. They don't.

http://www.factcheck.org/2008/03/violent-crimes-and-handgun-ownership/

Listen, I shoot, and if it wasn't for the cost, I'd own. But this lie has been repeated so often that people no longer even seem to question it. Causation has never been established between gun ownership and violence. But it's been demonstrably shown that gun ownership does not correlate to lower violence rates.

A felony conviction amongst other things would invalidate them from public service ever again.

[citation needed]

Here's a counter-citation for you:

"As a result, according to the Congressional Research Service, committing a crime cannot constitutionally disqualify someone from serving in Congress. And the state has no say in determining whether or not someone is qualified to serve in the House or Senate:

"... Once a person meets the three constitutional qualifications of age, citizenship and inhabitancy in the State when elected, that person, if duly elected, is constitutionally âoequalifiedâ to serve in Congress, even if a convicted felon."

Or are you proposing a Constitutional amendment to prohibit felons from public service?

No. FYI, the link is to a page dispelling rumours about Obama signing away free speech.

The Congressional Budget Office begs to disagree with you, with an approximately 7% reduction in healthcare costs compounded over time. But don't let that influence your thinking -- mathematics is known for its liberal bias.

The only thing that is liberally biased is the tendency to use "projections" and "estimates" and "wild guesses about potential savings" as fact. Eliminate all these "facts" and the cost the bill practically doubles: http://news.yahoo.com/cbo-obamacare-price-tag-shifts-940-billion-1-163500655.html

Disingenuous much? (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/obamacare-twice-as-much-as-estimated/2012/03/26/gIQACSZncS_blog.html)
But that figure was pretty misleading. The CBO had merely offered a tentative guess, with significant caveats, that the health care law would reduce the deficit within a âoebroad range of around one-half percent of GDP [gross domestic product].â Democrats simply took that percentage, multiplied it against the predicted size of the GDP 20 years from now (itself a pretty fuzzy figure) and presto, they had a number. But it is a fairly meaningless one.
...
The gross-cost figure, as calculated by CBO, was actually $940 billion for the years 2010-2019. But it was a bit of a low-ball number because the law takes four years to fully implement. So it really only measured six years of major costs.
...
"The simple reality is that the cost of their bill has gone up dramatically -- as Republicans predicted it work -- and this latest news just highlights that the number they used to sell the bill was rigged," he said. "It was a budget shell game."

Not to mention the consistent ability of the CBO to wildly underestimate. Remember this? http://www.factcheck.org/kerry_exaggerates_cost_of_war_in_iraq.html
"The CBO produced three hypothetical "scenarios" for the future, and their ten-year price tag. A pullout starting next year and leaving no US forces in Iraq by October of 2008 would still add $52 billion to the total cost of "Operation Iraqi Freedom," not counting costs of reconstruction or "undistributed" costs shared among Iraq and other operations. Gradually reducing the current 160,000 US forces to 54,000 and leaving them there indefinitely would cost $233 billion through the year 2014, beyond what's already been spent."

Gotta love that CBO accuracy.

http://www.factcheck.org/2011/10/factchecking-health-insurance-premiums/

Rising because of increasing and aging population, not because insurance companies are mandated to increase their profits by their shareholders every year. That's why health care in Canada is cheaper.

National health care expenditures are $2.2 trillion, health insurance profits are $13 billion; that is 0.6%. Even if you took all the profits of insurers away, it wouldn't make a noticeable dent in US health care costs.

http://www.factcheck.org/2009/06/pushing-for-a-public-plan/

Socializing the costs for the uninsured also doesn't account for the increases, and neither does the aging population. The reason health care costs are rising much faster than inflation in every developed nation is because people receive more and more expensive medical services. And the reason they do that is because they don't have to pay for it.

Most developed countries, with the exception of the United States, have partially or fully publicly funded health systems

The US spent $769 billion on public funding for health insurance. That's about a third of total health care expenditures. I'd call that "partially publicly funded" through "taxation during their working life".

Every single survey, poll, etc that was on the news at the time had between 96 and 98% of american black voters voting for him. That means they ignored all policy, all politics, all financial plans, all qualifications, all personal history, all things in general he said he'd do, and just for him based on the color of his skin.

What you mean is "96 and 98% of american black voters" voted for the Democrat - the 96% Obama got is consistent with the 90% that Gore got, the 88% Kerry got, the 90% Mondale and Dukakis got, the 94% Johnson got etc.

If blacks were voting overwhelmingly based on race, than you should see overwhelming support for Hermain Cain, Alan Keyes, Ward Connerly, etc. That's not the case.

That accounts for only $0.06 difference. The majority of the difference in cost is due to higher demand and environmental regulation, forcing the use of ultra-low-sulphur diesel.

Check it

"I have to pay to subsidize social security and medicare, neither of which I will ever see, because they are both projected to go broke before I ever collect a cent, and fixing them is a political third rail."

God the fact that you were modded insightful is disturbing how ignorant americans have become

http://www.factcheck.org/2011/04/ryans-muddy-medicare-claims/

Apparently, when Bush referred to the Constitution as "just a goddamn piece of paper" he wasn't only being a traitorous ass, he was setting legal precedent.

Yeah! Except for the fact that he never said anything remotely like that.

True scepticism means doubting the things you really want to be true.

>They also have a history of not paying tax and in getting large tax deductions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE#Recent_controversies

Every tax year cited in that article is post-collapse and is thus eligible for deductions due to the financial collapse. If you look it up you'll find GE lost $32 billion as a result of this.

Also the statement that GE paid zero taxes is total bullshit. What they paid is zero federal income tax. They paid plenty in local and payroll taxes.

Here's the accurate story:

http://factcheck.org/2012/04/warren-ge-pays-no-taxes/

Why would you bring up sandwich prices while discussing the People's Republic of America's leader? The federal debt increased 45% from the time Obama took office to January 2012.

This isn't the time or place for political discussions, but your claim that my side is upset over sandwich prices is a strawman fallacy.

http://www.factcheck.org/2007/12/bush-the-constitution-a-goddamned-piece-of-paper/

Refining is the bottleneck. More domestic oil doesnt increase gasoline supply nor does it decrease its demand.

From the link, "We have half as many refineries as we did in 1982, and they're not meeting demands."

The 47% of the people who don't pay the IRS are mostly because they're too poor to afford it. They're exempted because the IRS is a progressive tax that doesn't give those people an impossible taxation. They still pay the other taxes, like Social Security, property, sales and use taxes, which are even worse for people who can't afford it.

Meanwhile the top 20% by income pay 63.5% of collected taxes, but receive 66% of tax expenditures. That's a 4% return on their tax investment, which isn't supposed to earn any profit at all. The numbers surely are weighted by the richest of that 20% getting an even better return than the rest. BTW, over 90% of "entitlements" go to old people, disabled people or working people.

Your "entitlement generations" are a fake, designed to make you sick.

Also, any government can take someone's private property, in whatever way they do that. And without a government, anyone with the force can take the property. In fact, we have thousands of years of history showing that "no government" guarantees that people will collect whatever force, even momentarily, to take others' property, and that democracies are the best at protecting private property.

It might be easy to just repeat the corporate anarchy propaganda cooked up for you. But you're helping your masters steal from you.

Trust me, with our current socialist trends...

Warning: misinformation code phrase!

The US fed refuses to allow any new refineries.

The US federal government does NOT have a moratorium on building refineries. New refineries are currently being built in Arizona (Arizona Clean Fuels Yuma, LLC) and South Dakota (Hyperion). Additionally existing refineries are being upgraded in place, like the Motiva Houston refinery that doubled capacity.

Here are some facts about US refining capability.

Look at the last thirty years, when you have a Democratic white house, abortions go down. When you have a Republican white house, they go up.

Except, of course, that they don't.

I understand why you repeated this lie, it makes it sound like your side is the reasonable one in the debate. Well, it's not and the figure is untrue.

Look here. The claim was fact checked and debunked years ago.

Look here. Abortions peaked under the Reagan administration. They fell almost continuously through the Bush, Clinton and Bush administrations. At the end of GWs presidency, abortions had fallen to their lowest level since 1974. This isn't politics, it's fact.

Let's forget that for approximately six years of Bush's presidency, the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, and the White House, and didn't do a darn about abortion.

Except re-institute the Mexico City policy and implement policies that reduced abortion to 1970s levels. You forget the abortion was placed into legal limbo by the third branch of government, the SCOTUS never explicitly made abortion legal. The SCOTUS held that the right to privacy trumped the states' rights to legislate abortion during the first trimester. In order to eliminate Roe v. Wade, what would be needed is for the SCOTUS to revisit the case and rule differently or a constitutional amendment. Regardless of the fact that the Republicans controlled the Executive and Legislative branches of government, they didn't have a 2/3 majority needed to amend the Constitution.

LK

till the Jr. Bush administration, the US Treasury and Government was on target for a ZERO debit, in fact the issues was so alarming that countless research was done on how to handle it ( it's rather interesting thinking that Bush Senior and Clinton were on the track to reduce the federal debit ) http://www.factcheck.org/2008/02/the-budget-and-deficit-under-clinton/ [factcheck.org]

It's also interesting to visit the US Treasury website, and discover that the US National Debt increased every single year of the Clinton Presidency.

Hard to see how we're headed toward zero debt when debt is constantly increasing.

For the record, the last time the Debt decreased was during the Eisenhower Presidency, before I was born.

I take that your comment of supporting the US empire is lacking research ....
till the Jr. Bush administration, the US Treasury and Government was on target for a ZERO debit, in fact the issues was so alarming that countless research was done on how to handle it ( it's rather interesting thinking that Bush Senior and Clinton were on the track to reduce the federal debit ) http://www.factcheck.org/2008/02/the-budget-and-deficit-under-clinton/

As for whom has supporting the debit as foreign powers, prior to the 90's it was Japan and Britain as the biggest investors and purchases of US debit. ( sorry don't have the data for that from 90's till 2005

Onepoint

I really get tired of hearing that the Supremes gave Bush Florida:

http://www.factcheck.org/2008/01/the-florida-recount-of-2000/ disagrees with your statement that Gore won. The only scenario that would have possibly given Gore the victory was counting "overvotes" (multiple candidates marked on a single ballot) statewide. Gore did NOT request this scenario in court, and besides counting multiple candidates on a single ballot would be ridiculous. So the legal decision by the US Supreme Court was consistent with the vote.

Don't even start with calling factcheck.org a right wing mouthpiece.

All the people with "U.S. out of the U.N. now" signs have no clue.

Of course they don't. They will never hear about this. Why? Because the pundits they watch and listen to will never mention this.

And in the meantime, all they hear is how America is exceptional, we're on top and will always be there, and anyone who criticizes America hates it, yadda yadda yadda.

They also hear distortions and lies about what is being done like The UN Gun Ban Treaty that Obama is going to use to take our guns away!

No one seems to bother to check the facts. They watch or listen to some overpaid mouthpeice whose job is to scare the shit out of them so that these spewers of nonsense can get rating to justify their seven figure or more salary.

It's hard though. There is sooo much information being thrown at us, how can a normal person check up on everything? You have to work 8+ hours a day, take care of your chores, exervise (I hope!), eat, connect with friends and family, etc ... and check up on those liars?

The easiest thing to do is turn off the TV and most radio.

The Economist and NPR seem to be the last reliable newssources left on the planet.