Like he really has any control over what they do anymore...

Interesting. That's not at all the case where I live, so my perspective is completely opposite yours. Probably good for both of us to be reminded that the attitude of local SAR is going to be extremely variable across regions...

Bullshit. The actual invasion and ousting of Saddam were economical. The ongoing >10-year slog to clean up after the botched initial occupation has been enormously expensive. And remember, "the stimulus in the 1st year of the Obama administration" was actually the stimulus that Bush got Congress to pass. Fucktard.

That statement is partisan bullshit, pure and simple. The 2009 budget was Bush's budget, passed by Congress before Obama was elected. Obama assumed office in early 2009 and began work on implementing his policies, so the 2010 budget was the first one over which he had any control at all. (This is the way it works for all incoming presidents--they don't get to influence the budget before they are elected. Duh.)

Sure you did. You blatantly blamed Obama for the part of the debt increase which was directly caused by Bush's last budget.

Rumsfeld overruled Powell (and the rest of the chiefs of staff) regarding the plan for the post-invasion occupation. He allowed for far few troops to control the country and far less effort toward rebuilding than they wanted. He made the decision to not only oust Saddam, but oust all Baathists from government, leaving almost no one in office. He made the decision to dismantle the police force without a clear plan to replace it. He is the goddamn arrogant fool who thought that he could just sweep aside the entire governing infrastructure in Iraq, sit back, and wait for a democratic republic to magically spring forth from the ashes.

WTF? Are you fucking blind? Read what I said more carefully this time: "...the amount wasted on the war due to incompetence in carrying out the occupation...".

I wasn't even arguing against having gone to war with Iraq. Just pointing out the fact that Rumsfeld's incompetence caused the cost of the whole Iraq mess to be at least twice what it should have been. (Not to mention US casualties probably being 10x what they should have been.)

1) Every president does so his first year. In OP's claim that the debt doubled during Obama's first 6 years, he was implicitly including Bush's last budget. (Submitted to Congress by Bush 5 months before Obama was elected, 7 months before Obama took office.)

2) It's not possible, barring massive social and economic disruption, to strip the better part of $1 trillion from the deficit in a single year. Massive deficit reduction such as what Obama has accomplished takes time. (BTW, I agree that more needs to be done, and that too much of the reduction comes from the wobbly recovery with too little from spending cuts.)

I wasn't just the typo. It was the blame-shifting onto Obama of Bush's fiscal disaster. So I stick by my second sentence, because it applies to your post as a whole.

The deficit has been reduced by more than half in 6 years. The national debt has increased greatly, because of the huge deficit which Obama inherited from Bush. But seriously, why I am wasting my breath on a fucktard who doesn't know the difference.

The amount wasted on the war due to incompetence in carrying out the occupation would easily pay for the health care for all uninsured citizens for almost a decade.

Yeah, but if you look at the history of car brands in the U.S. that was actually a time-tested well-accepted strategy. In no particular order, Honda, Toyota, Nissan (Datsun), and V.W. had all done the same thing.

That depends entirely on locale. Some prosecutors would go after you for the assault.

Right now what we know is that some people are saving, some people are paying more, and we have no idea what the overall balance is.

No, you have provided a single data point, which is interesting but by itself no indication of the overall trend. That's altogether fine as far as it goes.

My ranty response to lgw was because he is insisting that the numbers are not what they actually are, with no evidence at all to support his assertion, and in spite of ample contradictory evidence--the very definition of a delusion. Now of course the fact that your post changes the subject to an altogether different aspect of the ACA implementation as a rebuttal to that is somewhat trollish--changing the subject to costs does not in any way change my point about the numbers of newly-insured--but it does at least address a valid point. (I also am paying about $2,000/yr more now.)

Especially the ones that reek of classist arrogance and condescension ;-)