Defending the Truth - View Single Post

Katczinsky · 01-29-2007, 05:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sgtdmski

The question that must be answered is this; Would Clinton have been able to accomplish this if the Soviet Union and the Cold War still existed??? The answer is a resounding NO. Thus from Reagan actions and work, Clinton was able to not only balance the budget but create a surplus. They both go hand in hand. If not for Reagan's success, there would not have been a Clinton success either.

dmk

I think that's way too presumptuous. Fiscal responsibility is fiscal responsibility; the military was just one means Clinton used to help balance the budget. If the Cold War still existed, he most likely would have found other means to help cut the debt. Other presidencies in the past have experienced an increase in military funding while at the same time decreasing the national debt as a percentage of the GDP, and sometimes at lower levels than Clinton did; specifically during the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

Quote:

Why is this number meaningless?? Is it meaningless because Democrats only look good when you look at the numbers measured as a percentage of GDP?

I always hear about the national debt clock that's always rising, but when I talk about the national debt which rose every year during the Clinton Administration, it's now a completely different story??

It's not that it's meaningless, it's just that it's meaningless without being superimposed over the GDP. When people link to the national debt clock, it's more significant now because it's large when compared with the GDP. But when Clinton was in office, the GDP was growing faster than the national debt, so placing the dollar value by itself really didn't tell you how we were doing as a country on the debt. Yet now, under the Bush administration, the debt is growing faster than the GDP.

This is why the debt is more accurately read as the percentage of the GDP. Otherwise, just the number alone will tell you as much about the debt as the number of the GDP alone. Which would be nothing in terms of determining whether we are 'doing good' or 'doing bad'.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sgtdmski

Hmmmm..........So today the story goes, Reagan didn't do anything to hasten the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet even former members of the Soviet Union state otherwise. KGB General Oleg Kalugin states, "Reagan and his views disturbed the Soviet government so much they borede on hysteria. Ther were cables about an imminent crises. He was seen as a very serious threat." Yevgeny Novikov, a senior staffer of the Communist Party Central Committee claimed that, "There was widespread concern and actual fear of Reagan on the Central Committee. He was the last thing they wanted to see in Washington."

Reagan called the Soviet Union and evil empire and he was ridiculed by academia and the main stream media. Reagan proclaimed that the Soviet Union would be left on the ash heap of history and these great members of the academia made their predictions.

The quote means nothing. The white house today thinks that Osama bin Laden and his views are disturbing and 'boarder on hysteria'. The White House and all of America also think of him as a threat, perhaps significatly more than the Kremlin saw Reagan. But that doesn't mean the United States is going to collapse because of it. If anything, Bin Laden has galvanized us and made us stronger. Likewise, merely 'standing up' to our enemies and calling them evil does absolutely nothing. Reagan might have looked good standing up there calling the USSR the evil empire and telling Gorbachev to 'tear down this wall', but it did nothing to further the collapse of the USSR.

Bush on many occasions called Iran and North Korea evil, and in the 'axis of evil', and look where it got us: two states poised on standing up to us, and one of them is setting off nuclear bombs and launching rockets in our general direction. It's too naive to think rhetoric alone collapses Empires. One of the most brave and defiant oppositions to an enemy on rhetoric and figurative opposition alone, that is Castro's Cuba, didn't get them anywhere, let alone causing the collapse of the United States.