Baraka_Guru

Beck and his kind bank on the fact that the average person hasn't taken Economics 101. That's where you can slip in voodoo and call it theory, and if it smells Keynesian, it must be socialism. You can sell ideas that promise something from nothing, and if the government does something you don't want or understand, then it's automatically bad.

People are criticizing a government that taxes and spends and has trouble balancing the books. Bush had two terms of cutting taxes and spending like there were no tomorrow. Now Obama has taken the helm of a ship that was in the process of running aground. He's employing tactics that have been used before to try to avert a crisis and/or pull the nation out of one, depending on your perspective.

It's not that Obama doesn't want to balance the books. It's just that balancing the books isn't always a good idea. But let's remember: Democrats have a better history of balancing books than Republicans.

I can't believe people expect balanced budgets in a post-W era in the fallout of one of the greatest economic downturns in the history of America. It was a much better time to balance the budget between 2001 and 2008---a much better time---but what happened there?

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot