Rara did you decide if you were lying or not literate enough to read my post yet?

How about just abolishing the debt ceiling. What is the purpose of having it if it just gets raised over and over?

I agree

It should be. We are pretty much the only country that has it.

Yes and 99% of those countries are in financial trouble. Venezuela, Brazil, Greece, GM, and Argentina. Why not just balance the budget. Deficits are only to be used to fund wars, not peacetime PBS shows. If the debt never rises, you don't need to worry about the debt limit. As Obama said in the video a few pages back listen to your POTUS. Obama got elected by saying fiscally conservative rhetoric. He is a liar?

Mmm. I mean, in Australia, the government regularly has to pass appropriations bills which permit them to spend money. In the 1975 constitutional crisis, the opposition, who controlled the Senate, refused to let these bills pass. The crisis was resolved when the Governor-General, the Queen's representative in Australia, dismissed the government and ordered an election. The opposition then won office with a massive majority.

Point is, if it wasn't the debt ceiling it would be something else. What America actually needs is less grandstanding idiots who threaten to vandalize the legislative process in order to score political points.

Grandstanding will happen anyway but the debt ceiling doesn't make sense at all. Grandstand all you want when the budget is being debated and feel free to shutdown the government over the budget as that at least makes some sense.
Threatening to default on your debt because it reached an artificial ceiling is just never going to work out well.

You're wrong

The debt ceiling is one of those tiny little clues about what makes America so great, a little piece of the puzzle.

For example: abortion. It is well known that abortion is never getting overturned and that GOP insiders who claim they are going to overturn abortion legality will never actually do it. Abortion is mutually beneficial for both good and bad people alike. Good people like it because it allows women to make their own choices and orevent their rights from being violated and it unendangers them from illegal abortions.
Bad people like it because it is an effective form of population control. Good people think its a humane way of necessary population control as well. So powerful people who are good and bad are united on that one.
which leaves the question is it ok for gopers to raise billions on anti abortion positions. The answer is its actually good for america because 1.) it grows the economy 2.) it allows people who think abortion should be illegal to have the illusion of a voice and choice.

In the same way a debt cieling is good for america because it allows there to be the illusion of conflict when there needs to be and allows people to raise money and this all happens just by declaring an abirtrary and totally free "debt ceiling"

If anything other countries in europe should get their own debt ceiling.

You know, people say this all the time, but I think abortion is a lot like voting rights. There are protections for it, there's lots of case law defending it, but still red states have spent decades trying to poke every possible hole in letting it happen and some of their attacks have had moderate success in stopping or discouraging it and survived court attacks, so far.

"it" works for both "abortion" and "black people voting".

Can't figure out to what extent bryce is trolling. I would think 100%, but he was advancing the proposition the other day, apparently seriously, that GWB is smart.

My working theory on this is that the GOP doesn't want white people to get abortions. Most of the success in curtailing abortions is in white places like wisconsin and kansas. Thats a whole different can of worms and I could be totally wrong but thats what i think is going on there.

I was mainly adressing the belief that because george bush has a texan accent and Jeb doesn't people think George Bush was some sort of idiotic caveman.
For starters Jeb and George were in the same family. Jeb has a latin studies degree from U of Texas. George has a degree from Yale and a harvard MBA and was president of the united states.
I know it will be said but George could get into any college in the US because of his connections but i dont think there is any reason to think Jeb is magically smarter than him. Its not that important; i think Obama is smarter than George and Jeb.

W's accent and manner, combined with his occasional verbal mis-steps, led a lot of people to regard him as legitimately stupid imo. He's fairly obviously nothing special, but there's plenty of room between that and being an actual dunce.

Jeb doesn't have those disadvantages, so 'the smarter brother' is just something that happens by default. When people call him that, they're just indirectly calling W stupid, rather than calling Jeb smart. Even in this he can't escape his name.

I'm not convinced that JEB is smarter than Rick Perry.

I was about to say that I regard GWB as being of below average intelligence, but I caught myself and thought again about what "average" really means.

I think he's comfortably below average compared to others in the circles in which he moves, put it that way.

Dangerously below the level needed to be president.

IQ isn't everything as well - God knows I wouldn't want Sklansky being President. GWB always came across naive and insufficiently cynical. Compare him with Bill Clinton for instance. If you knew you had to lie to one of them about something important and get away with it, who would you pick?

Perhaps it's a simplification but it seems like GWB spent his presidency getting sold on fantasies by dangerous individuals who were delighted to discover they had America in crisis and a credulous president who would do whatever they wanted.

This is to be expected. Federal employees do way more skillful stuff on average than private sector jobs. There is no one pumping gas or scanning barcodes in the fed.

Obama, and Bill Clinton especially, seem like wicked smart dudes. Seeming intelligent probably matters more to Dem voters than R. Dukakis is another example (I think? He was before my time).

In fact, one of Biden's problems is lacking the top-flight intellect of Obama/Clinton.

Republicans pick guys like GWB so they obv don't care as much. They want toughness. If IQ mattered to em, then Bloomberg would run and crush.

What states have white people as the minority?

Maybe California?

If asked to pick 200 adjectives that best describe GWB, "tough" would not make it in there.

Hawaii.

DS for president - what a thought

It's a simplification but a fairly accurate one imo

Yeah, pretty sure this is the only one. It'll be some time before white people lose the majority in any other state, let alone the plurality.