With Congress in recess until the 25th because of a combination global warming outburst/President’s Day hiatus…it’s HotAir comment thread misappropriation day!

First theft: The title of this post, “They Don’t Teach Economics at Cow College” was stolen from Cicero43 on February 10, 2010 at 11:39 AM in the thread about that which this post is concerned, another “Keith Olbermann is the stupidest idiot and lyingest liar on Cable”.

Reb…is that you?

Apparently, Olby really has no idea the difference between federal debt and federal budget deficit (that’s the stupid part) and then lies about the relative percentages of each in the period since 1970 (that’s the lying part). Google the words “debt vs. deficit” and you get 12 million hits. Here’s one. The fat dumpling hasn’t figured that out either:

Ed does a great job with the numbers so I won’t rehash them here. But I do want to elaborate on part of Squashbottom’s suggestion that it’s a bad idea to let Americans control a greater portion of their income:

That`s next, but first tonight`s worst persons in the world. The bronze to Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. You`ll remember, the record setter for longest monotone question to the president at their meeting. Her new debt solution? Allowing younger Americans to privatize their Social Security accounts, where they can get wiped out the next time the mortgage industry or some other form of legalized gambling wipes out another chunk of the economy.

So not only does Olbermann not know the difference between “debt” and “deficit”, he is still lying about what caused the “mortgage industry” to crash. Allowing younger Americans, or all Americans ideally, to privatize their Social Security accounts is the next best thing to dismantling Social Security altogether, with a grandfather clause of some sort to make good on the idiotic promise FDR made America 70 some-odd years ago.

(Incidentally, is anyone else bothered by the mere concept of Government “allowing” anyone to do what they want with their money? This is a philosophical debate to which people like Olbermann, who has proven he’d have trouble distinguishing between regular and chocolate milk, have never given a seconds worth of thought. I’d go so far as to say the vast majority of dummies on the Left couldn’t give it a seconds worth of thought lest their tiny brains explode. But that’s for another day)

Anyway, Social Security is broke…or at least it will be in the not too distant future. The point of letting younger Americans do what they please with their SS taxes is so that they and they alone will be responsible for their well-being when they reach retirement. If we continue to let Government manage our money, there is a far better than average chance that there’ll be none left in the til when it comes time for benefits to be paid.

These facts completely evade Olbermann. It’s been comical for a while now to consider him a “journalist” of any sort, but it’s rare even for him to so entirely mangle a rather simple concept.

Oh…and Marsha Blackburn is just one more intelligent, beautiful Conservative woman of whom Olbermann is terrified.

I think he’s gay.

Russ

Update on Wednesday, February 10, 2010 at 1:32PM by Russ

Don’t fret though ladies and gentlemen, “it’s a good thing only 3 people saw this”. 

Knucklehead on February 10, 2010 at 11:42 AM

Heh.