Warren Buffett tells Congress to stop coddling the rich

It is the same thing because they screamed about deficits when Clinton was President and helped get a surplus under him then went on a spending spree when they were in control of the Executive Branch. You are accusing Buffett of not practicing what he preaches when Republicans are certainly guilty of that and more so because they can do a lot more about government spending and taxes than he can.

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It reminds me of a toilet paper on the trees
- Paula

The Clinton years only take care of the "much more debt" difference. They don't account for why it's being spent. And it was far less of an issue then than it is now. Which makes sense, since it's much higher now. Also, you're now going back roughly 17 years, when a great many of the specific legislators were entirely different human beings.

To recap: it's appropriate (nay, downright logical) to have different reactions to different levels of debt. Even without this, it is similarly logical to have different reactions to debt depending on what it's being used for. A point I've made a good dozen times.

Even through all this, you appear to be going to great lengths to try to convince me that sometimes politicians are hypocrites, in which case my response would be: no kidding. You've also admitted that Democrats have been similarly hypocritical (under your logic, at least) for freaking out over Bush's deficits and largely keeping mum about current deficits at 2-3 times the size. So if your point is "politicians of all parties are hypocritical" then why, exactly, is that something one party in specific needs to answer to?

This is why I prefer to argue about ideology over party. The latter is a never-ending recursive nightmare that compares different human beings at different points in time and comes to the inevitable conclusion that no large group of people will ever behave consistently, not that we should expect them to. Far more interesting and generally productive is analyzing actual consistent ideologies and seeing which ones are superior. And when we do that, we find that your accusations about Republicans is that sometimes in power, they act too much like Democrats. That's an accusation I won't deny, but it doesn't do a lot for liberalism.

I think that analysis of ideologies being more important than actions is nonsense because ideologies mean nothing if they are just hot air. As for Democratic Party hypocrisy, we all know Democrats don't really put a high priority on deficits. Even when they complain about Republican created ones they don't make a big stink about it the way Republicans do. If your real argument is Republican deficits are better than Democrat created ones because Republicans spend more of it on pork barrel spending and defense and war (and unnecessary wars and defense spending on programs that are often wasteful and necessary) while Democrats spend it on entitlement programs, then we are talking about what type of deficit spending is best, not deficit spending itself. And the Bush deficit was not manageable because the economy crashed in a big way under his watch and the huge deficits he created made combating an economic meltdown much more difficult.

Hold up right there. I didn't say it was more important than actions. I said it was more important than parties. Which they are, for lots of very good reasons, like:

1) There are a wide range of ideologies even within parties.
2) Even to the degree to which a party's belief can be generalized about or assumed most of the time, they are subject to shifts over time.
3) The actual human beings involved change over time, meaning that there's nothing inherently hypocritical about a majority Congress in one instance behaving very differently 20 years later, when most of its members are different people.

The idea of trying to enforce some kind of consistency across different people, places and times? That's nonsense. There's no reason we should even expect that, let alone demand it. And if we did, we would only find that no sizable party ever lives up to it, which means it isn't a club one partisan can wield against another. So it's a pretty pointless thing to try to score points with.

That, of course, is another matter. All voters have the duty to come to informed conclusions about which ideology is best on a given issue, and then to determine which candidates they believe are most likely to enact that ideology. The fact that we can't always trust politicians to follow-through doesn't much change that, and isn't an indictment of any one party or ideology.

Yeah, see, this sounds very much like a rationalization to me, partially because it's so vague and unfalsifiable. You'd have to define a "big stink," but in 2003 and 2004 we sure seemed to hear a heck of a lot about it. What was that; a "moderate stink"? So they're moderately hypocritical? See how silly and nebulous it gets when you try to parse this stuff down?

I think that's a meaningless distinction, unless you're talking about Republicans who are actually saying that no deficit is ever justified, ever. Which is rare, if it exists. Not even the ones supporting a balanced budget amendment say that. I don't see why it matters that the argument is usually not about the abstract concept of deficit spending. Though even if it were, even justified deficit spending has its limits and consequences.

You keep suggesting that the existence of these much smaller deficits somehow tied Obama's hands into doing whatever he's done. That just isn't true. It's the kind of thing someone would say because they think it sounds plausible, not because it's based in any economic, political, or financial reality.

Also, you really need to pick whether or not you're going to go with the "no President is an island" argument you made a week ago to defend Obama, or whether or not you're going to start blaming people for things that happened "under [their] watch." Right now you seem to switch depending on the situation.

Fitst off, we are not talking about different ideologies over a long period of time when we are discussing Republican Party hypocracy because the Bush Presidency wasn't even four years ago and most Republicans in Congress are still there. And as for core party beliefs, Democrats complain with their mouths about Bush deficits. They never did the destructive things Republicans did when Democrats occupy the White House like the Newt Gingrich showdown and the recent high noon face-off, then ignore it when they hold the purse strings, and here is the key point, submiited to Bush higher budgets than he requested with the increases centered on getting money for their districts and states. And Bush never ever vetoed those inflated budgets.

I think you're confusing different discussions. The reference to long periods of time was not about the current deficit issue, it was in reference to my claim that discussing ideology makes more sense than discussing party. Which it does, for the reasons I listed.

As for Democrats not doing "destructive things," that's becauses Bush's deficits didn't do destructive things. Historically they weren't even especially large as a percentage of GDP--they got headlines because people could say they were "records" in a nominal sense, even though measuring them that way makes zero sense. If they had ever even gotten within hailing distance of a credit downgrade, you'd better believe Democrats would've eviscerated him for it. But they couldn't, because it wouldn't be accurate and it wouldn't fly with the electorate, and most of their outrage was directed towards the way. The degree to which they held back is the degree to which it was politically advisable to do so; it wasn't out of some good hearted sense of political propriety.

There's no hypocrisy, unless you want to a) conflate situations that are highly different, or b) accuse them of a type of political hypocrisy which is almost entirely universal and is only a form of attrition that scores no net points for Democrats.

I'm not sure how we keep going round on this when these two points remain completely unchanged. Waiting a couple of weeks before making the same accusation doesn't mean it's suddenly going to hold together.

The Gingrich face-off had nothing to do with a credit downgrade risk.

If you're trying to convince me not to vote for Newt Gingrich, don't worry, I'm already there.