Debate Shift

Double post!  Making up for lost time!


This semester, in case you missed it when I wrote about it about 6,000 times, I have been in a class with Paul Begala on Politics and the Media.  And I think it worked.  


About 12 of my friends all posted this link from the NY Times.  In the past, the "B.B." era as I am now calling it (Before Begala, obviously), I think I would have sent this link on to my many, many Obama-hating family members with a message with the general sentiment of "See?!"


But now, in the A.B. era, I sent no such email.  Instead, I thought, "WTF have Republicans done to our national debate?"  Much healthier and smarter of me.


So if you hate links and didn't click, the graphs essentially show that the government share of GDP shrank dramatically in the first term of the Obama presidency, while it actually rose in both of the W terms, thanks mostly to that good ole military spending.  Thus showing that claims that Obama is some Big Government over-spender are wildly inaccurate.  I almost always support showing that anti-Obama claims are wildly inaccurate.  So why no share?


Because it makes me sad that we liberals have ceded so much ground in this debate that we are arguing for our own candidate that he is a conservative.  I'm not a socialist - I'm not looking for the government to run the economy.  But I am a liberal.  I believe that, especially during economic recessions, the government should play a larger role in the economy.  The fact that the candidate I campaigned for and voted for decreased government spending as a share of GDP is not exciting to me, nor should it be.


But this is how the Republican Noise Machine has warped our national conversation.  In the name of "balance", right wing ideals have gone unchallenged, because god forbid anyone in the media appear to have a liberal bias, and now we debate how little the government can possibly be involved in the economy, rather than addressing the full spectrum of solutions.


In other news, I am still watching Parenthood.  It's so terrible I have had to watch 10 episodes in 2 days.