Parking Lot Debate

The last taunt hurled at me by my neighbor was a lip curling sneer that, " you just got it from Fox."

Several months ago we had another parking lot debate in which he decried the Bush deficit. At that time, I asked him to tell me how the deficit was affecting him personally. His only retort was the deficit was "bad." He didn't get his attitude from Paul Krugman or Mike Rosen. He seemed to have a "feeling" (that he couldn't explain) that the deficit was bad.

Fast forward to our recent debate I tried to point out that the deficit had fallen by almost $100 billion, according to recent "obscured" news reports. According to Mike Rosen:

Investor's Business Daily and the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, two conservative venues, have been heralding the good news on the sharp decline in the federal deficit. Liberal newspapers have largely buried the story. Now, this isn't an arcane, technical report of little public interest. These same newspapers were screaming bloody murder when the deficit was growing in recent years....Office of Management and Budget Director Josh Bolton reports that the projected deficit for fiscal year 2005 has been cut to $333 billion, a reduction of almost $100 billion from the president's official budget submission in February. That's down to 2.7 percent of gross domestic product, about where it's
been, on average, for the last 30 years.

My neighbor isn't the only brain dead Bush basher of which I have run afoul. At one time I debated a fellow member of my gym. Comrade - as I call him, referring to his Marxist proclivity - knows just enough about politics as he learns from the MSM. Comrade is a conspiracist i.e. Bush attack Iraq for oil and to give VP Cheney and his friends at Haliburton big bucks. In our last debate I asked Comrade if he went online. He said, no he didn't have a computer at home, he had one at work, but didn't go online.

Alas, I realized that, if your opponent is not informed enough to debate the nuance of politics, you don't have a chance of winning a debate. You can't win against slogans.