Alec Baldwin Points Fingers at Barney Frank & Democrats for Fiscal Crisis

Michele: Lefties don't get it that when you raise taxes you lose income and jobs

Gosh, I guess that we should be swimming in jobs by now. We cut taxes when W got in and it was said that it would stimulate the economy and that we would actually get more revenue. Almost 8 years later, we have the highest deficit that we've ever had and we're losing jobs. The plan didn't work. Nine straight months of job loss. If Bush was right, the economy should be booming and we should have a labor shortage.

Michele: Don't they get it that the only solution to our problems that the government has is to throw money at it? That's why we are trillions of dollars in debt.

That's funny. The reason we are trillions of dollars in debt is that government took in less money than it spent. Bush said cuts in taxes would increase revenue. It didn't. Bush said the war would be paid for by oil revenue. It wasn't. So, the Republicans charged the war to a Chinese credit card. And McCain wants to sell people the same bill of goods. $10 billion a month plus who knows how much to rebuild a country with an $80 billion surplus while we wallow in debt. Good plan.

We've had 8 years of Republicans running the government and you can't blame the Dems for that. Bush has been solely in control of the executive branch for the past 8 years. In 8 years it supposedly hasn't been fixed. There's all this waste and McCain says that all we have to do is elect Republicans to find it. What in the wide, wide world of sports have they been doing all this time?

Well, maybe Bush has been busy...maybe he's getting calls from Chinese banks telling him he should switch credit cards to a lower interest rate and he's trying to decide which to use. Should he get one with a picture of him riding a horse on it or Cheney duck hunting? I hope he used a reward card....maybe we'll all get free magazine subscriptions.

Christiane (not "Christine") Anampour is one of the best international affairs broadcast journalists in the world. Your belittling comment demonstrates how little you pay attention to world news. I noticed that you ignore a devastating point that Garry Shandling made about the fact that Bush has played right into Osama bin Laden's hands by destroying our economy. How can Bush say we are winning the war in Iraq, Shandling pointed out, when only days ago the Secretary of the Treasury was telling us we're on the verge of financial ruin? As Shandling pointed out, 9-11 was fundamentally an economic attack. And Maher followed up by pointing out that bin Laden's chief lieutenant, the "Trotsky" to his Lenin, Zawahari, once said "we can't bring down the superpowers but we can make them bring themselves down."

Isn't that exactly what we have done by invading Iraq and becoming mired in a war that has bankrupted us?

You can watch an excerpt from the panel discussion here:

http://votersthink.org/?p=567

Back to Anampour: recently she and Frank Sesno hosted a special with five former Secretaries of State (who universally recommended measures that Obama has already adopted as part of his foreign policy platform, including that we engage with our enemies in the form of high level talks without preconditions. BTW, Maher made a good point last night, saying he wished just once that someone would ask Palin to NAME a precondition. She talks about them all the time but very likely has no idea what such a precondition might be--it's just one of those little catchphrases in her arsenal that she's memorized.)

You can find links to Part I and II of "A World of Challenges" on the CNN website.

That is one opinion...yes.

Aren't the government jobs that are created counted?

Where are they in Michigan? Please, my kids would love to know.

MzEllen I live by the river and its been hot and dry for six weeks but yesterday the river rose and rose is that the fault of the dems?

If the Democrats are the ones that shut off the damm downstream so the water backed up...yes.

Some things are for sure like the relation of supply and demand to price, but most of the rest is up for grabs.

In Michigan the cost of keeping an employee went up...so did unemployment.

In Detroit, it's important to campaign on the "old jobs".

The ones that the UAW represents. The ones that NAFTA took care of.

And the factory jobs that support the auto industry. Both my brother and his wife worked for a factory that produces parts that Detroit uses. Both of them have been laid off in the last year - and having years of service.

In Michigan, the "new jobs" are in the medical field. They will be up and coming and the next years and decades, but in the meantime, the auto jobs are in Mexico.

The auto industry is not going to save Michigan. Increasing employment through encouraging employers by lowering the cost of doing business will. Diversity in jobs will (what is left of the auto industry PLUS...)

The other jobs that are disappearing are the entry-level positions that college students work over the summer. Businesses are paying higher taxes, so the cost of doing business goes up. Labor is the highest and many times the most easily cut expense. Those jobs are getting much tighter.

obama wants to...

When Detroit wants to, it will happen. In the meantime, it is not Detroit that's making the marketable hybrids.

he was lucky enough to retire with a pension before japanese cars became the norm in the u.s.

The ironic part of your statement is...many "American" cars are put together in Mexico, or are put together in the United States, using parts that have been manufactured in other countries. Some "foreign" cars are more "American" than many "American" cars. Toyota Tundra, Camry and the Camry Solaris are on the list of "American made" cars, with plants in Indiana, Kentucky and Texas. (cars made with 75% or more US-made components AND assembled in the US).

Michigan took a hit when Bill Clinton signed NAFTA. It took another hit when Granholm's administration raised business taxes.