This doesn't surprise me. No logic, no limits…

What I wrote ages ago criticizing Bush's Social Security reform attempt, and the Dems' deliberate refusal to engage in reform themselves, was written. The issue here and now was that same failure (along with the Dems' current failure to reform this year, while expanding entitlements). Nothing I wrote on this thread merited your responses.

You forgot:

[rolling eyes] [sniffle] [chuckle] [GAG] [etc] [etc]

No, Roro. [sighhhhhhhhhhh] Please don't be illogical and overly emotional, AGAIN.

I have been on record numerous times as criticizing the effort. Since you are acting as if you don't know about it (you weren't reading then), here is a recapitulation. My criticism was not the low-IQ instant lefty reaction that it was some kind of incrementalist dismantling of the program (I'll use smarter language than the lefties used and use, then and now), or helping the same Wall Streeters that Obama is in bed worth, arguably more so this year. I had identified the central defect, that it was still a federally run program and sets up the possibility of making the federal government someday a gargantuan, and the largest by far, institutional investor in the USA and probably on the planet (including China). Already this year, we have seen Washington's wrongful intervention into and interference with the private sector in a number of instances, with threats of more to come. What the Bush takeover would have left available to future politicians in Washington would have been much larger, with an enormous potential for Washington to become the worst kind (worse than this year) of institutional investor “activist,” with all kinds of demands for things like “social responsibility,” installation of federal officials into management and directorships in corporations, revisions of corporate charters (if not someday federal corporate charters, whose potential would be advanced), “Israeli divestiture” and constraints and demands on things like dividends and finance, “industrial policy” throughout the private sector, and other nightmares.

The *** obvious *** point here was that at the time, when the Dems, who OWN Social Security and had the chance to rescue the program in the manner they preferred, to keep the program's characteristics in the form they preferred, and to clinch additional voter shares for a generation, by saving the program before the surpluses peak and then decline (which is incontrovertible proof of failure), and then run deficits, actually insisted on doing nothing, and defended the status quo, incredibly. (The most notorious example of their incredible decision and the incredible attitude driving it was by Maurice Hinchey, saying that Social Security “would be more valuable later” if we left it alone [now, to fail later].)

Not only was I critical of the Bush effort (about which you made an obviously wrongful set of assumptions and statements), but the real point here, *** obviously ***, is that the Dems, who had the ideal chance and in fact, responsibility, to act, obstinately chose not to. That is the major point made during that time, and repeated on this thread. That is *** the *** point, the central point, here.

Meanwhile, the Dems are also doing nothing to reform Medicare, Social Security, or the minor entitlements (that they said must be reformed — but who believed them?), ironically (hypocritically) while expanding federal entitlements at the same time.

Join those of us who are directing criticism where it belongs, not where it doesn't.

As I've reminded people many times before — don't know if it got through the fog, though, then or now.”

You're really going to defend Bush's attempt at “reforming” Social Security? No mention of how obvious that plot line was? (Hmmm…there's this whole pile of money just sittin' there, and none of my buddies can make any money off it…what shall we do? Privatize!) So maybe it's not that all us crazy lefties are too densely fogged over to see that the Dems blocked that, but that we actually stand up and applaud the fact that our seniors' money hasn't gone down the tubes like everything else in the stock market.

” How do we get our elected leaders to take long term national problems seriously? “

All the means you listed are good, along with subjecting our federal government to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Coming clean on unfunded future liabilities as well as the current debt is overdue.

As I've reminded people many times before — don't know if it got through the fog, though, then or now.

The Dems have also not reformed Medicare, before proceeding to expand federal health entitlements.

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and it will look like:

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If you use the Firefox browser they have an add on called BBCodeXtra and it makes blockquotes and links and other html coding easy.

If all else fails (or the Dems continue), the debt can be allowed to build until a debt trap occurs, or before that, the Chinese stop buying our debt or our dollars. It's arguable if the Dems, in particular, will wait that long before inflating the currency deliberately not only to monetize the debt, but to use cheap money as opiate of the masses — or as the “economic and social lubricant” that “a correctly chosen, reasonable amount of inflation” will be said to constitute. (Also arguable is if people like Krugman will not only approve of it, but have advocated it before it happens, and will argue the rate or amount is not sufficient, that more is better and indeed imperative.) If there's actual, nominal, formal default on the debt, that's simply additional entertainment for us.

Rove may well be looking to join or replace Dick Morris sometime (at Fox?).

* * *

“The idea that a year washes away 8 of Bush's disasterous economic policy is pretty offensive.”

The issue (which may have eluded you) is that Obama and his team's errors and wrongdoings cannot be blamed on Bush. When they blame Bush or when anyone blames or uses Bush as a prop, it's a big DQ.

I don't read anything by…

Ignorance is bliss.