jgoins: Where did I say 3 trillion? Actually, I said precisely this:

Quote
pulse
On the day President Bush took office, the national debt stood at $5.727 trillion. The latest number from the Treasury Department shows the national debt now stands at more than $9.849 trillion.

So if the debt is around 12 trillion now, that's an increase of 2.2 trillion, or approximately 22 percent of 9.849 trillion. If you're going to try and quote me at least .. you know .. quote me. I'm not debating it's not a big increase. But 22% falls well short of 400%. You're out by nearly a factor of 20.

Mrkim: I couldn't agree more. I'm actually a big believer in truthful debate. I love a good argument, but if I'm going to argue I'd prefer to do it with pride. I also love playing Devil's Advocate. I'll happily argue against my own views simply because it's a great way to learn. If we, society, don't learn from each other, what hope is there for any of us?

As for our election, yeah, we're pretty well screwed. I work as a consultant in a field that is very dependent on strong economic policies, presently contracting for a very, very large finance corporation. So I've got a choice. The guy that's going to fuck the economy by taxing mining through the roof (the one thing that got Australia cleanly through the whole GFC thing - we really were pretty much unaffected) and the other guy who's going to fuck the economy by indifference and having nothing of actual substance to offer.

So what it comes down to is the present leader, Kevin Rudd (or K.Rudd as he's called), is eroding our civil liberties at a rate unheard of since Homeland Security was launched and England put in its hundred million surveillance cameras, and I can't stand for that.

So we're damned if we do, and we're damned if we don't.