The “gay agenda” today is fundamentally conservative

[Kulindahr]

Which part is "deceitful"?

Here:

http://www.justusboys.com/forum/showpost.php?p=6671447&postcount=29

 

[T-Rexx]

Weird that we would carry 55 to 60 % debt while be balanced......

As you are no doubt aware, the federal debt and balancing the budget are not the same thing.

Johnson's the one that started the games of lies to make the budget look balanced, to finance the war he lied about not wanting, so he could beat Goldwater. Not even Clinton undid the mendacious accounting Johnson started -- if he had, he wouldn't have been able to maintain his lie about a balanced budget. And unless Obama stops the lying, by at the very least cutting Social Security receipts out of the budget and making that a totally separate set-up, he won't be balancing it, either.

There haven't been any presidents since Kennedy to maintain a balanced budget.

So, what you're saying is that you won't accept any numbers from anyone, because they're all lies.

That would make it impossible even to discuss, wouldn't it?

Laughable. Just simply laughable. Balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility have never been a tenet of liberalism. Ever.

As I suspect you are aware, only liberal presidents balance budgets. Conservatives believe in deficit spending (I presume because they think it stimulates big business). Fiscal responsibility is an exclusively liberal value.

 

[JB3]

As I suspect you are aware, only liberal presidents balance budgets. Conservatives believe in deficit spending (I presume because they think it stimulates big business). Fiscal responsibility is an exclusively liberal value.

You really think the budget was actually balanced? You can repeat your 'liberals are fiscally responsible' BS as long as you like, but the current president's (and democratic congress') trillion dollar deficit begs to differ.

 

[Kulindahr]

So, what you're saying is that you won't accept any numbers from anyone, because they're all lies.

That would make it impossible even to discuss, wouldn't it?

As long as they refuse to use the same accounting procedures a private organization such as, for example, Georgetown University does, yes, it's pointless to discuss it, because they're lying. The biggest lie is the one Johnson started by dumping Social Security in with the rest of the budget, to hide how much it was costing to ship kids to Vietnam to get shot, but they've come up with others since.

As I suspect you are aware, only liberal presidents balance budgets. Conservatives believe in deficit spending (I presume because they think it stimulates big business). Fiscal responsibility is an exclusively liberal value.

Lying about fiscal responsibility is a liberal value -- hardly exclusive, though. But at least they pay attention to the concept -- reactionaries (with God On Their Side®) seem to have the notion that if they dig a deep enough hole, wealth ill flow into it.

 

[rareboy]

Hey.

Mazda.

Don't forget to send in a $200.00 donation to the Matthew Shepard Fund.

Make a difference.

 

[Stardreamer]

Actually, there are a lot of gaycists (gay racists), so it'd follow that there are gay Repubs.

I don't know about racists but there are gay bigots, I'm met one or two. One of my first encounters in a group like this was gay man who informed me what scum of the Earth I was to think I could be Bi.

 

[construct]

I think the LGBT equality movement has gotten much more conservative over the last 30 years. NOT politically, but certainly philosophically. It is no longer about free love and people being who they are (though that is still certainly an element), but is instead about seeking the things that straight couples have had for generations. Marriage, children, everything that signifies the transition to a full adult life. I mean, how many guys on here want kids, want a husband or wife, want the house in the burbs or the apartment in the city, two cars, and so on and so on? Those ARE conservative things. The fact that gays want to join those institutions, and take part in those things, is in fact a very conservative turn for a movement that was actually quite radical when it first came about.

Anyone that cannot acknowledge that the LGBT movement HAS become more conservative since the 70s can't see the forest for the trees.

Yes, gay ideals have shifted since the 70s, but the shift has been more gradual than you seem to be saying. The shift may have started in the mid-70s with the implosion of the Gay Liberation Front, but it really wasn't complete until less than ten years ago. The 30-year mark you suggest would mark the beginning of the AIDS crisis. At that point, Larry Kramer gained a prominence in the gay community that he had not previously held, but Kramer was always a conservative. See his book Faggots for example. Despite his involvement at the beginning of ACT-UP, he was still ideologically out of step with the majority of the high-profile gay activists. He was, for example, calling for the closing of the bathhouses when most gay activists viewed this as a repressive measure of the anti-sex crowd.

AIDS was the catalyst for breaking the closet doors for many gay men. It also created an ideal that hadn't previously been articulated, i.e. "chosen" families--groups of friends who functioned as quasi-families in lieu of the families who had thrown them out.

Even the Hawaii and Alaska marriage cases in the mid-90s were viewed by many in the gay community as a distraction from more fundamental issues like basic civil rights legislation--employment, housing, and public accommodations. Funding for AIDS education and prevention was also taking up a lot of energy. If gay life was becoming normalized, it was because of the "great shower debate" (precipitated by Bill Clinton and presided over by Sam Nunn), Will and Grace, and Ellen Degeneres. Even in 2000 we were still embroiled in a philosophical debate about whether we wanted a state-sponsored marriage, whether civil unions were adequate, or whether the state should get out of the marriage business altogether.

I would date the shift from the mid-90s because almost no one (except Larry Kramer) was even talking about mimicking the pattern of heterosexual marriage until then. And all this was was merely a shift in a social model that added a couple of points onto the gay political agenda that was already in place.

None of this has anything to do with national economic policy. At most it would affect individual tax status and entitlements. Thus, I see no serious connection between the gay agenda and the agenda driving the Republican Party (tax cuts and religious oppression).

 

[Kulindahr]

Even in 2000 we were still embroiled in a philosophical debate about whether we wanted a state-sponsored marriage, whether civil unions were adequate, or whether the state should get out of the marriage business altogether.

That alone shows how the movement has turned conservative: rational people with individual liberty as their ideal would choose the last.

 

[JayHawk]

I suppose it is pedantic to continue this argument but

Anyways I digress, again no one ever looks at causation they just figure ...lets blame this party or that party. It is obviously easier to remain uninformed than to dig for answers.

It may be hard for many Americans to believe, but the United States' checkbook hasn't always been in the red. Aside from periods of war or economic turmoil, the federal budget was actually in surplus for most of the nation's first 200 years. The government incurred considerable debt during the Civil War and the Spanish-American War but paid it off by the early 1900s. Between 1901 and 1916, the budget was almost always balanced. But then came the Great Depression followed closely by World War II, which resulted in a long succession of deficits that caused the federal debt to balloon from $16 billion in 1930 to $242 billion by 1946. (Adjusted for inflation, that's about $206 billion and $2.67 trillion, respectively.) Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1918390,00.html#ixzz16cl0Hgat

The federal government's spending oscillated over the subsequent decades, running a surplus in the good years and a deficit in the bad ones, until the early 1980s. President Ronald Reagan's economic and foreign policies — tax cuts combined with substantial increases in Cold War–era defense spending — led to a string of deficits that averaged $206 billion a year between 1983 and 1992. The balanced-budget acts of 1990 and 1997 helped reverse this unprecedented level of peacetime spending, and in 1998 the U.S. recorded its first budget surplus in nearly 20 years.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1918390,00.html#ixzz16clNBfhH

Now I wonder who made that 1990 budget enforcement act so called 'PAY-GO' that was so effective that it was re-enacted in 1997?

It was signed into law by President George H. W. Bush on November 5, 1990, counter to his 1988 campaign promise not to raise taxes. This became an issue in the presidential election of 1992.

Wait didnt' Clinton do it all?

 

[T-Rexx]

You can repeat your 'liberals are fiscally responsible' BS as long as you like, but the current president's (and democratic congress') trillion dollar deficit begs to differ.

Perhaps you forget - the current deficit is a result of a conservative's unbelievably bad mismanagement of the economy.

Our current president is trying to correct even that conservative disaster by balancing the budget within the next six years. But the conservative element of our congress is trying to stop him from doing that, even as we speak. Obviously, conservatives believe fervently in deficit spending.

Only liberals can balance the budget, because only liberals value fiscal responsibility.

You really think the budget was actually balanced?

That's not my opinion. It's the opinion of the most nonpartisan, authoritative source we have: the Congressional Budget Office. If you won't accept their numbers, then I presume you won't accept any numbers.

Which means you are unable to discuss the matter.

So don't.

 

[JayHawk]

If he is balancing the budget how come ebby body keeps talking about the greatest deficit ever in the 9 trillion range over the next ten years?

This year's federal deficit is the result of declining revenue — people are making less money so they're paying less in taxes — and increased spending. So far, the government has spent $530 billion more this year than it did last year, a number that includes $169 billion for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), $125 billion for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and $83 billion to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And that doesn't even account for the spending scheduled for next year. Add to this the projected $1 trillion price tag of Obama's proposed health-care plan and things begin to look pretty expensive.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1918390,00.html#ixzz16cpITZR5

The White House and the Congressional Budget Office will both release their financial budget estimates on Aug. 25 and there's good news and bad news. The good news is that the Obama Administration has scaled back its estimate of this year's budget deficit to an estimated $1.58 trillion (down from $1.84 trillion in May). The bad news is that this is by far the largest budget shortfall in U.S. history — nearly $900 billion more than last year's deficit — and it accounts for 11.2% of GDP, the largest percentage since 1945. It's more money than we have circulating in actual currency and if added to the national debt, it will raise the tally by 13%. (To understand debt vs. deficit, think of a credit card: debt is the outstanding balance on the card while the deficit is the amount added each fiscal year.) At this rate, the Administration estimates that the U.S. could face a cumulative $9 trillion in deficits over the next decade — $2 trillion more than previously thought.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1918390,00.html#ixzz16cpakHYE

Wouldn't balanced ...by your self described Clinton success story..... mean that we don't have a deficit......?

 

[Sausy]

Laughable. Just simply laughable. Balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility have never been a tenet of liberalism. Ever.

And if Clinton didn't have a Republican Congress to hold his feet to the fire,there would have been NO surplus,either.The point Mazda makes is crystal clear...but common sense evades the vast majority of our liberal posters and rabid lefties in general,substituted by self righteousness and reflexive,unyielding ideological zealotry(thought only the idiot moron evil ones on the right were like that,when in truth they're mirror opposites of the other).

Marriage and serving in the military ARE in the grand scheme of things fundamentally conservative values,when the old left wanted to turn society upside down.They are also the right values to fight for,as for our rights to adopt,opposing discrimination in hiring and housing,etc.To serve in the military and get married and settle down certainly don't reflect what the old left,and many gay radicals,had in mind but the overthrow of the current order and remaking of society.Mazda is coming from a very interesting,completely defensible perspective....thought most of us gays got irony,and this is delicious.We want to make America live up to its grandest ideals,not remake society into a socialist paradise.The values we are fighting for now IS American at its best.

 

[T-Rexx]

If he is balancing the budget how come ebby body keeps talking about the greatest deficit ever in the 9 trillion range over the next ten years?

You do realize that without adding to the deficit, we would be in another great depression? The entire American banking system would have collapsed, along with General Motors, Chrysler, and the many, many companies which supply parts to the automotive industry. Not to mention the collapse which would have occurred in the insurance and other industries.

You do realize that that collapse of the American economy was because of the misguided policies of a conservative?

You do realize that the liberals who are attempting to dig us out of this mess are attempting to balance the budget within 6 years, and that the conservative element in congress is attempting to stop this?

Wouldn't balanced ...by your self described Clinton success story..... mean that we don't have a deficit......?

You don't seem to understand the difference between debt and budget - they are NOT the same thing. I may own a $100,000 house but only make $25,000 per year. The fact that I have debt does not mean that my annual budget is not balanced.

When Clinton left office, he left the nation with a huge budget surplus. Democrats wanted to use that money to pay down debt. But GWB insisted that it be given to the wealthiest Americans instead. Obviously, GWB did not believe in paying down debt. Fiscal responsibility is an exclusively liberal value. Conservatives invariably have increased the national debt over the past 60 years. Liberals invariably have attempted (albeit not always successfully) to balance the budget and pay down debt.

 

[JayHawk]

You do realize that without adding to the deficit, we would be in another great depression? The entire American banking system would have collapsed, along with General Motors, Chrysler, and the many, many companies which supply parts to the automotive industry.

You do realize that that collapse of the American economy was because of the misguided policies of a conservative?

You do realize that the liberals who are attempting to dig us out of this mess are attempting to balance the budget within 6 years, and that the conservative element in congress is attempting to stop this?




You don't seem to understand the difference between deficit and budget - they are NOT the same thing. I may own a $100,000 house but only make $25,000 per year. The fact that I have debt does not mean that my annual budget is not balanced.

SO if liberal democrats are the savior then why did they stop the only effort that was designed to reign in Freddie and Fannie?

In light of the collapse of Fannie and Freddie, both John McCain and Barack Obama now criticize the risk-tolerant regulatory regime that produced the current crisis. But Sen. McCain's criticisms are at least credible, since he has been pointing to systemic risks in the mortgage market and trying to do something about them for years. In contrast, Sen. Obama's conversion as a financial reformer marks a reversal from his actions in previous years, when he did nothing to disturb the status quo. The first head of Mr. Obama's vice-presidential search committee, Jim Johnson, a former chairman of Fannie Mae, was the one who announced Fannie's original affordable-housing program in 1991 -- just as Congress was taking up the first GSE regulatory legislation.

In 2005, the Senate Banking Committee, then under Republican control, adopted a strong reform bill, introduced by Republican Sens. Elizabeth Dole, John Sununu and Chuck Hagel, and supported by then chairman Richard Shelby. The bill prohibited the GSEs from holding portfolios, and gave their regulator prudential authority (such as setting capital requirements) roughly equivalent to a bank regulator. In light of the current financial crisis, this bill was probably the most important piece of financial regulation before Congress in 2005 and 2006. All the Republicans on the Committee supported the bill, and all the Democrats voted against it. Mr. McCain endorsed the legislation in a speech on the Senate floor. Mr. Obama, like all other Democrats, remained silent.

If the Democrats had let the 2005 legislation come to a vote, the huge growth in the subprime and Alt-A loan portfolios of Fannie and Freddie could not have occurred, and the scale of the financial meltdown would have been substantially less. The same politicians who today decry the lack of intervention to stop excess risk taking in 2005-2006 were the ones who blocked the only legislative effort that could have stopped it.

Please feel free not to rewrite history. I feel that the lax rules adopted over the last five Presidents are the aggravating factors. Nothing so huge as to bring about the collapse of the US economy was undertaken in a single session.

 

[JayHawk]

You do realize that without adding to the deficit, we would be in another great depression? The entire American banking system would have collapsed, along with General Motors, Chrysler, and the many, many companies which supply parts to the automotive industry. Not to mention the collapse which would have occurred in the insurance and other industries.

You do realize that that collapse of the American economy was because of the misguided policies of a conservative?

You do realize that the liberals who are attempting to dig us out of this mess are attempting to balance the budget within 6 years, and that the [

You sir are a victim of campaign sloganing. Here is a hint...it isn't the truth.

 

[Kulindahr]

We want to make America live up to its grandest ideals,not remake society into a socialist paradise.The values we are fighting for now IS American at its best.

Just as with the American Revolution: they fought to maintain their heritage, often called "the traditional liberties of Englishmen".

All we want are the traditional liberties of Americans.

 

[Stardreamer]

My understanding is that the threat of the banking system collapsing was largely prevented by TARP the program passed by Bush before Obama even came in office.

 

[Kulindahr]

SO if liberal democrats are the savior then why did they stop the only effort that was designed to reign in Freddie and Fannie?

Because before ideology, most politicians are first loyal to greed.

I feel that the lax rules adopted over the last five Presidents are the aggravating factors. Nothing so huge as to bring about the collapse of the US economy was undertaken in a single session.

You don't have to 'feel' it, it's been traced out by economists: Carter, Reagan, GHW Bush, Clinton, Bush the lesser....

And getting it to 'final form' was bipartisan.

 

[T-Rexx]

Please feel free not to rewrite history. I feel that the lax rules adopted over the last five Presidents are the aggravating factors. Nothing so huge as to bring about the collapse of the US economy was undertaken in a single session.

No, it wasn't just GWB. It started with Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and his hatred of government regulation ("government is the problem"). Then it got worse with GHWB. Things began to improve a bit during the Clinton years, but GWB then rapidly reversed that from 2001 to 2009.

 

[T-Rexx]

My understanding is that the threat of the banking system collapsing was largely prevented by TARP the program passed by Bush before Obama even came in office.

You are correct. The three quarters of a trillion dollars of TARP debt occurred under GWB, not Obama.

But now, Obama needs to find some way to repay that.