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Thread: 2012 Elections - Page 116







Post#2876 at 08-25-2011 12:55 PM by ziggyX65 [at Texas Hill Country joined Apr 2010 #posts 2,634]
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Quote Originally Posted by Hutch74 View Post
Yep, I forgot about Lindsey Graham. He's got a number of detractors in the tea party too.
It remains to be seen, of course, whether this is an impediment or a bonus when people actually start voting next year.







Post#2877 at 08-25-2011 04:19 PM by Marx & Lennon [at '47 cohort still lost in Falwelland joined Sep 2001 #posts 16,709]
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I've decided to see how many lies, distortions or simple misunderstandings can be strung together in a single, short post. I've chosen this one, more or less at random.

Quote Originally Posted by Weave View Post
We are heading to a double dip recession and Obama will get all the blame. His policies have clearly failed. Trying to pin it on the Repubs in Congress who have been blocked at every turn won’t work.
This wasn't all that bad until the claim that the GOP Roadblock had been blocked.

Quote Originally Posted by Weave ...
The election will be all about Obama and his failures, or success if things turn around in the next 15 mos which is still possible, although unlikely. Roosevelt won in 36 because things seemed better than in 1932. Unemployment was down from 25% to around 12%, Bank failures had slowed considerably etc. Unfortunately Roosevelt’s war on business was only gearing up leading to a further loss of business confidence in 37-38 that sent us into a double dip, similar to where we are today. This is brilliantly explained in Amity Shlaes book "The Common Man".
Am I surprised that a hack like Amity Shlaes might write drivel like this? No, of course not. After all, she graduated magna cum laude from Yale ... with a degree in English. She certainly can expound with authority on economics. Never mind that it is the consensus of economists of all stripes (real ones, that is) that the attempt to balance the budget too early (the GOP plan de jure) was the trigger, not lack of business confidence.

Quote Originally Posted by Weave ...
Another Repub could emerge but it’s getting late for a new entrant to the race for money raising reasons. This race is boiling down to Romney and Perry with Perry having the edge. Texas is booming, high tax states like California and Illinois are sinking like a stone. Illinois is a great example of what not to do in a recession. Pat Quinn and the Dummycrats raised taxes to balance the budget and jobs are bleeding out of Illinois to lower tax states like Indiana.
I can't speak for Illinois, but California is suffering from the inability to ever raise taxes (2/3 majorities required in both houses of the legislature) ever since Prop 13 clamped that requirement into their Constitution). Texas, on the other hand, has about the same level of unemployment as New York, with a lot less going for it in the way of schooling (poor to horrible) social services (fergiddaboudit) and just about every other human-values criterion.

Score: 72 out of 100. C- but better than I expected.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.







Post#2878 at 08-25-2011 05:43 PM by pbrower2a [at "Michigrim" joined May 2005 #posts 15,014]
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Quote Originally Posted by Weave View Post
We are heading to a double dip recession
We are in the closest thing to the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the causes are mostly the same -- weak conservative government that offered little but tax cuts to people who had no incentive to invest in plant and equipment, corporate bureaucrats then as now used market power to ensure that wages kept up with productivity, and a speculative boom that lured capital into it like a pheramone-loaded cobweb attracts moths to doom. What kept the recession from becoming as bad? New Deal, Fair Deal, and Great Society reforms -- federal deposit insurance on bank balances that kept people from losing their savings, Social Security that has probably fed some children, agricultural subsidies that have kept farm prices from going into the septic tank, minimum wage laws that do much the same, unemployment insurance that keeps workers from having to compete just to keep jobs, Medicare, Medicaid, AFDC, and TANF. Do you believe that America would be better off without these?

This is a Depression -- it is not the garden-variety recession that people can wait out. We may need contemporary equivalents of WPA programs. We may have a crisis more of productivity in that we can produce more of what we need in 30 to 35 hours of work per week instead of 40. One of the solutions to the Great Depression was the shearing of the workweek from 45-48 hours to 40 hours.


and Obama will get all the blame.
No, no, no! Blame seems to have gone to Dubya for the start of the Lesser Depression, but that is now going to Congressional Republicans. Have you seen approval ratings for Congress -- especially for Republicans? They aren't pretty.

(The President's) policies have clearly failed. Trying to pin it on the Repubs in Congress who have been blocked at every turn wont work.
The Republicans have nothing to offer but more than the same. The President can make promises of such methods for stimulating demand as "Cash for Clunkers II". Maybe unemployed people can get paid for expanding their mathematical and scientific knowledge. What does the Hard Right have to offer? Lower wages? Tax cuts for the super-rich? Evisceration of workers' rights? Greater hardships for vague promises that God will give them special blessings just won't work.

The election will be all about Obama and his failures, or success if things turn around in the next 15 mos which is still possible, although unlikely.
The Republicans want economic failure so that they can return to norms of a century ago or earlier --the 70-hour workweek and 40-year lifespan for industrial workers, child labor beginning in single-digit ages, economic disparities as severe as in feudal societies, and social norms that Karl Marx thought would lead to proletarian revolution. Return to the economic and social norms of the Gilded Age, and many Americans will look to Karl Marx for solutions.

Your ideal is something that leads to sure ruin for the economic elites that you try to serve serve with these posts. That ruin comes in the form of a revolution modeled after Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, or Fidel Castro. Such is catastrophic failure for all but the Commies.

Roosevelt won in 36 because things seemed better than in 1932. Unemployment was down from 25% to around 12%, Bank failures had slowed considerably etc. Unfortunately Roosevelts war on business was only gearing up leading to a further loss of business confidence in 37-38 that sent us into a double dip, similar to where we are today. This is brilliantly explained in Amity Schlaes book "The Common Man".
In 1934 the plutocrats were so scared of the Depression that they chose to give FDR a chance. In 2010 the same sorts of people chose to flood America with Orwellian propaganda and Tea Party theater. Political figures of current times have become far-more skillful... liars. Now we see the consequences of turning lies into public policy. Americans may have been more patient in 1934 than they were in 2010. Now their impatience has morphed into anger.

FDR may have offended the "economic royalists" of his time, but nobody else could have saved capitalism. That is right -- FDR kept America from a course that would have led to Nazi or KKK-style fascism or Bolshevism.

Another Repub could emerge but its getting late for a new entrant to the race for money raising reasons. This race is boiling down to Romney and Perry with Perry having the edge.
True.

Texas is booming, high tax states like California and Illinois are sinking like a stone.
Texas has oil, a very marketable resource to sell. Texas is more agricultural, so it doesn't have quite the boom-and-bust economics that places that depend more heavily on cyclical industries endure. Texas has much military activity -- big government spending. It didn't have the real-estate fraud that some other states had in the Double-Zero decade (it had something analogous in the 1980s and did reforms to prevent a recurrence thereof). It even gets economic advantages from being the state through which the largest volumes of illicit drugs enter the US and through which the most illegal guns are shipped into Mexico for use in the wars between drug kingpins. Texas is a miserable place to live in and a poor place in which to be a child, and it will become utterly infernal if global warming takes effect.

States like Michigan and Ohio would be far richer if they were to have Texas-style oilfields -- which is about like saying that my life would be better if I were a Rockefeller or a Rothschild. So how do states change their geology?

Texas is toward the bottom in educational achievement and wages, and toward the top in crime, child mortality, school dropouts, and pollution.

Illinois is a great example of what not to do in a recession. Pat Quinn and the Dummycrats raised taxes to balance the budget and jobs are bleeding out of Illinois to lower tax states like Indiana.
Indiana is losing jobs, too.
Last edited by pbrower2a; 08-25-2011 at 05:53 PM.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."


― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters







Post#2879 at 08-25-2011 05:54 PM by KaiserD2 [at David Kaiser '47 joined Jul 2001 #posts 5,220]
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Quote Originally Posted by pbrower2a View Post
Americans show themselves far fussier about politics than they were in 2000. They are less willing to tolerate a mediocrity in 2012 than they were in 2000. People recognize how significant politics are. The economy now seems as much as ever a zero-sum game with political choices deciding who gets the gold and who gets the shaft. In good economic times, most politicians can ride the economic cycle and get away with it. This time they can't.

The economic Right could win in 2010 if it could show that sacrifices on behalf of shareholders and bureaucratic elites brought economic growth and security; the recent record of corporate behavior shows that the mandated sacrifices (which those elites can demand through means other than political decisions) create starker disparities of privilege and deprivation instead of investment in plant and equipment that enhances productivity and creates jobs. Even the tax cuts or the Dubya era better reward those who can export capital (and in turn jobs) profitably than they do start-up small businesses, let alone working people. The political Right is as much the Religious Right... and the Religious Right is clearly in decline outside of its core areas in the South.

America worked better politically when moderates were the norm even in the South. Think about this: Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were governors of Southern states. Tennessee used to elect such senators as Al Gore and Jim Sasser. To be sure, the Right would love to have someone like the late Jesse Helms or the current Saxby Chambliss, a vulgarian on culture but a suck-up to corporate power, as political leaders everywhere in America. Such solves nothing except to make people comfortable about rottenness.
I would like to agree with the opening statement but I am not convinced. Americans are disgusted with politicians. Gen X has no faith in them and Millennials will ahve just as little if things don't pick up soon. There could very well be a very low turnout next time, but I'm afraid we may be stuck with a mediocrity (Obama) at best.

I agree with the last paragraph 100%. Th South used to elect quite a few very smart people to Congress.







Post#2880 at 08-25-2011 07:30 PM by James50 [at Atlanta, GA US joined Feb 2010 #posts 3,605]
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Quote Originally Posted by KaiserD2 View Post
I would like to agree with the opening statement but I am not convinced. Americans are disgusted with politicians. Gen X has no faith in them and Millennials will ahve just as little if things don't pick up soon. There could very well be a very low turnout next time, but I'm afraid we may be stuck with a mediocrity (Obama) at best.

I agree with the last paragraph 100%. Th South used to elect quite a few very smart people to Congress.
What has Saxby Chambliss done to earn your opprobrium? He has worked hard on developing a budget deficit plan across party lines. I have always thought he was a pretty straight shooter. He has a very typical conservative voting record. His first campaign against Max Cleland was harsh, but much of what happened was blown way out of proportion. Also, it was a long time ago now. He has made a normal number of gaffs but not as many as Joe Biden.

What's the beef?

James50
The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected. - G.K. Chesterton







Post#2881 at 08-25-2011 08:12 PM by Odin [at Moorhead, MN, USA joined Sep 2006 #posts 14,442]
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Quote Originally Posted by James50 View Post
What has Saxby Chambliss done to earn your opprobrium? He has worked hard on developing a budget deficit plan across party lines. I have always thought he was a pretty straight shooter. He has a very typical conservative voting record. His first campaign against Max Cleland was harsh, but much of what happened was blown way out of proportion. Also, it was a long time ago now. He has made a normal number of gaffs but not as many as Joe Biden.

What's the beef?

James50
Chambliss first got elected by attacking the patriotism of a Dem congressman who lost 3 limbs in Vietnam. he is an evil SOB slime-ball.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism







Post#2882 at 08-25-2011 10:21 PM by James50 [at Atlanta, GA US joined Feb 2010 #posts 3,605]
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Quote Originally Posted by Odin View Post
Chambliss first got elected by attacking the patriotism of a Dem congressman who lost 3 limbs in Vietnam. he is an evil SOB slime-ball.
You have been reading too much democratic propaganda. Look at the ad and tell me where he accuses Cleland of being unpatriotic. Hard hitting ad, yes, but it is a gross mis-characterization to say it conveys a sense that Cleland was not a patriot. Oh and BTW - it was 9 years ago right after 9/11. It is amazing to me the persistence of this bit of democratic mythology.

I am not saying you have to like the guy. His politics is different from yours, but that does not make him a slimeball.

James50
The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected. - G.K. Chesterton







Post#2883 at 08-26-2011 12:24 AM by Odin [at Moorhead, MN, USA joined Sep 2006 #posts 14,442]
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Quote Originally Posted by James50 View Post
You have been reading too much democratic propaganda. Look at the ad and tell me where he accuses Cleland of being unpatriotic. Hard hitting ad, yes, but it is a gross mis-characterization to say it conveys a sense that Cleland was not a patriot. Oh and BTW - it was 9 years ago right after 9/11. It is amazing to me the persistence of this bit of democratic mythology.

I am not saying you have to like the guy. His politics is different from yours, but that does not make him a slimeball.

James50
After 9/11 the Right was constantly implying that opposition to Bush was unpatriotic. Of course it was not actually said in the ad, but given the political climate at the time the insinuation of lacking patriotism is clear.

Often in such political ads what is IMPLIED is far more important than what is actually said.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism







Post#2884 at 08-26-2011 11:41 AM by KaiserD2 [at David Kaiser '47 joined Jul 2001 #posts 5,220]
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Quote Originally Posted by James50 View Post
You have been reading too much democratic propaganda. Look at the ad and tell me where he accuses Cleland of being unpatriotic. Hard hitting ad, yes, but it is a gross mis-characterization to say it conveys a sense that Cleland was not a patriot. Oh and BTW - it was 9 years ago right after 9/11. It is amazing to me the persistence of this bit of democratic mythology.

I am not saying you have to like the guy. His politics is different from yours, but that does not make him a slimeball.

James50
I did watch the ad. The clear implication was that Cleland was disregarding the Bin Laden threat and voting against the Department of Homeland Security. The truth was that Bush originally didn't even want the DHS (which actually probably was a mistake) and that Cleland voted against provisions designed to take away the rights of its workers. I agree that it was a scurrilous ad.







Post#2885 at 08-26-2011 11:58 AM by Brian Rush [at California joined Jul 2001 #posts 12,392]
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The New York Times carried a good, well-written piece by Timothy Egan about President Obama:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com...n/?ref=opinion

Quote Originally Posted by Timothy Egan
A year and change from the next election, the politics of the season are mean and raw. A conservative in Eastern Washington State runs for local office on a platform of shooting illegal immigrants on sight. A Republican senate candidate in Nebraska compares poor people to scavenging raccoons. And the leading Republicans who want to take Obama’s place deny the existence of basic science, scoffing at everything from evolution to the global consensus on climate change. Is gravity next?

Through the haze of this dystopia, Obama has no skip in his step, no lift in his voice. His poll numbers are the worst of his time in office. His enemies no longer call him Muslim, socialist or Kenyan. They don’t have to: they point to 9.1 percent unemployment, and seek to ride the wave pushed by three-fourths of the country that feels the nation is going in the wrong direction. . . .

As president, he’s been a sober, cautious, tongue-shackled realist — a moderate Republican of the pre-crazy, pre-Tea Party era. Having failed to come up with a Big Idea to guide his presidency, he will sink or swim now on strengths that don’t lend themselves to large rallies or passionate enthusiasm. Sobriety and moderation, by definition, are boring.

Urban liberals, labor, blacks and Hispanics, environmentalists, the young – the core of Obama’s army in 2008 — are disappointed in the president of August, 2011. They’re right when they say he caved on the debt talks: the evidence is House Speaker John Boehner’s boast that he got 98 percent of what he wanted from the president.

But instead of waiting for an arm-flapping populist to emerge from the genteel summer redoubt on Martha’s Vineyard, the left should focus on the coming ground war, and try to fill Congress with new people who can at least tell fact from fiction.

For Obama the political mortal, two lines of governance present themselves.

One is simply to be the executive whose policies, with a few exceptions, are backed by the majority of the public, and opposed by Republicans in thrall to kooks and corporate absolutists.

Tax cuts for wage-earners, but not for millionaires and billionaires, has deep, bipartisan support across the land, sensibly articulated by Warren Buffett, who pointed out the absurdity his secretary paying a higher tax rate than he.

If Obama plays this issue right, those Republican presidential candidates who said they would never raise taxes even with 10 spending cuts for every increase will wish they never made such a pledge to extremism.

He doesn’t have to launch a class war — merely to engage one that’s already underway. So far, surprisingly, he has not taken a side. He should make Republicans defend the politics of grotesque economic inequality.
"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?"

My blog: https://brianrushwriter.wordpress.com/

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Post#2886 at 08-26-2011 12:05 PM by ziggyX65 [at Texas Hill Country joined Apr 2010 #posts 2,634]
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He doesn’t have to launch a class war — merely to engage one that’s already underway. So far, surprisingly, he has not taken a side. He should make Republicans defend the politics of grotesque economic inequality.
I've been saying this for months now. Almost all independents and folks not deep in the Republican political base support rolling back the tax cuts for the highest earners. There is a vast -- and growing -- feeling that the economic and corporate elites are determined to take more and more of the pie and destroy the middle class. The president doesn't need to engage in the usual left-wing talking points here that could turn off independents and moderates. These ideas are straight from Middle America, not the far left.







Post#2887 at 08-26-2011 12:13 PM by Brian Rush [at California joined Jul 2001 #posts 12,392]
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Quote Originally Posted by ziggyX65 View Post
I've been saying this for months now. Almost all independents and folks not deep in the Republican political base support rolling back the tax cuts for the highest earners. There is a vast -- and growing -- feeling that the economic and corporate elites are determined to take more and more of the pie and destroy the middle class. The president doesn't need to engage in the usual left-wing talking points here that could turn off independents and moderates. These ideas are straight from Middle America, not the far left.
Exactly. And that, incidentally, is why a Gilded Age High is not a possibility. It remains to be seen, though, how many twists, turns, and false starts it will take before we do what needs to be done.

(Sigh.) Par for the 4T course, I'm afraid.
"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?"

My blog: https://brianrushwriter.wordpress.com/

The Order Master (volume one of Refuge), a science fantasy. Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GZZWEAS
Smashwords link: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/382903







Post#2888 at 08-27-2011 10:53 AM by JDG 66 [at joined Aug 2010 #posts 2,106]
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Quote Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon View Post
I've decided to see how many lies, distortions or simple misunderstandings can be strung together in a single, short post...
-Check yourself.

Quote Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon View Post
Texas, on the other hand, has about the same level of unemployment as New York
-Allow me to clear up your lie, distortion, or simple misunderstanding:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...john-r-lott-jr

...it is true that other states such as New York and Massachusetts have very similar rates...

Unfortunately, job seekers’ simply giving up has been a hallmark of the Obama administration. During the Obama “recovery,” about 2.8 million Americans have given up and completely stopped looking for work.
This is why, even though Texas has created lots of jobs, its official unemployment rate is similar to those in “blue states” like New York and Massachusetts. It is a superficial similarity. While Texas’s labor force has grown by 350,000 since the recession ended in June 2009, Massachusetts’s has remained virtually unchanged, and New York’s has fallen by 140,000...

Quote Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon View Post
...with a lot less going for it in the way of schooling (poor to horrible)...
-Nope:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/arti...089503,00.html

...according to an Aug. 17 report by the group that administers the ACT college-admissions exam, Texas high school graduates only narrowly trail national averages for college readiness. True, the national averages aren't great, but Texas is right there with the pack. So why is Duncan dissing the Lone Star State? Its minority students outperform minority students in Chicago, albeit by smaller margins. And with a high school graduation rate of about 73%, Texas may be slightly below the national average, but it's doing a lot better than Chicago, which only graduates about 56% of its students...

Perhaps you haven't had the opportunity to see this:

http://nationalpriorities.org/public...ruitment-2010/

Military Recruitment - Proportion of Test Score Categories I-IIIA and IV by State [accepted in FY10]:

TX: 62.6% I, II, IIIA; [37.1% IIIB]; 0.3% IV.

Compared to:

All Recruits: 63.9% I, II, IIIA; [35.7% IIIB]; 0.4% IV.

US Recruits only: 64.5% I, II, IIIA; [35.3%]; 0.2% IV.

NY: 65.9% I, II, IIIA; [33.7% IIIB]; 0.4% IV.

DC: 52.2% I, II, IIIA; [47.8% IIIB]; 0.0% IV.

DC, with one of the most expensive systems in the USA deserves tthe term poor to horrible, not TX.

Quote Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon View Post
...social services (fergiddaboudit) and just about every other human-values criterion...
http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...john-r-lott-jr

...In order usefully to compare what people are making across the states, a better approach is to compare GDP per adult. In 2008 Texas ranked 14th, which is not too shabby. Even more important, from the day Perry became governor in 2000, until 2010, Texas ranked 10th in terms of real GDP growth per adult. By contrast, California ranked 24th.

Krugman and his cronies may not realize it, but Texas’s very young population also dramatically raises the rate of people in the population earning the minimum wage...

http://www.politicalmathblog.com/?p=1590

Texas median hourly wage is $15.14... almost exactly in the middle of the pack (28th out of 51 regions). Given that they've seen exceptional job growth (and these other states have not) this does not seem exceptionally low.

...and you can't explain why, if TX is so terrible in "every other human-values criterion," that people are fleeing the model progressive paradises for TX? Maybe your "Social Services" aren't as valuable to real human beings as you think they are. People fled East Germany for the West, not the other way around.

Quote Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon View Post
...I can't speak for Illinois...


-Here you go:

http://ptest.investors.com/NewsAndAn...rhage-Jobs.htm

As another manufacturer leaves, Illinois leads the nation in job loss in July. The free fall began with a tax hike. When will liberals learn when you tax something, you get less of it? ...In Illinois, the experiment of taxing your way back to prosperity has failed miserably...

...As the Illinois Policy Institute notes, the state lost more jobs in July than any other state in the nation, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. After losing 7,200 nonfarm payroll jobs in June, Illinois lost 24,900 more in July. The report also says Illinois' unemployment rate climbed for the third-straight month and now tops the national average at 9.5%...


Quote Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon View Post
...but California is suffering from the inability to ever raise taxes (2/3 majorities required in both houses of the legislature) ever since Prop 13 clamped that requirement into their Constitution)...
-They should have had the same requirement to OK spending. Too bad.

Quote Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon View Post
This wasn't all that bad until the claim that the GOP Roadblock had been blocked...
-The Elephant House has to deal with a Donkey Senate and a Donkey POTUS. If you think the Tea Party got what it wanted, you know nothing.

Which is possible...

Quote Originally Posted by ziggyX65 View Post
... Almost all independents and folks not deep in the Republican political base support rolling back the tax cuts for the highest earners. There is a vast -- and growing -- feeling that the economic and corporate elites are determined to take more and more of the pie and destroy the middle class...
-No, that's not a cartoonish point of view...

You really need to get over the infantile envy of those who do well.

It's not about "taking more of the pie," but about creating more pie. The Europeans do it the progressive way, and their socieites are unsustainable. Coincidence?

BTW, the result of the Bush-era income tax cuts:
http://www.heritage.org/budgetchartb...income-earners

Quote Originally Posted by Brian Rush View Post
Exactly. And that, incidentally, is why a Gilded Age High is not a possibility...
-Well. That would be too bad: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economi..._United_States The Gilded Age saw the greatest period of economic growth in American history. After the short-lived panic of 1873, the economy recovered with the advent of hard money policies and industrialization. From 1869 to 1879, the US economy grew at a rate of 6.8% for real GDP and 4.5% for real GDP per capita, despite the panic of 1873.[34] The economy repeated this period of growth in the 1880s, in which the wealth of the nation grew at an annual rate of 3.8%, while the GDP was also doubled...

Quote Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon View Post
Am I surprised that a hack like Amity Shlaes might write drivel like this? No, of course not. After all, she graduated magna cum laude from Yale ... with a degree in English. She certainly can expound with authority on economics. Never mind that it is the consensus of economists of all stripes (real ones, that is) that the attempt to balance the budget too early (the GOP plan de jure) was the trigger, not lack of business confidence...
1) Economics is common sense. Economic history is using common sense to understand what happened in the past. Amity Sclaes uses both.

2) "Real" economists, as defined by Keynesian losers with no sense. Businessmen at the time warned what would happen when nonsense like the NRA was passed. What they predicted happened. DUH.

You can't persecute businness on one hand, and expect them to take a risk on the other. As Schlaes points out, even Keynes was smart enough to realize that at the time (sort of):

http://www.aolnews.com/2010/07/08/op...cking-it-down/

Even economist John Maynard Keynes noticed the damage to utilities, asking Roosevelt, "what's the use of chasing them around the lot every other week?"

3) Keynsianism didn't work in the 1930s, it didn't work in the 1970s. Let's give it another chance?

All these things happen as we watch progressive Europe die, now that the socialists have run out of everyone else's money. Too bad about those retards who invested in the Euro. Oh well. At least we'll have an object lesson in the evils of the welfare state to learn from.

Last edited by JDG 66; 08-27-2011 at 11:03 AM.







Post#2889 at 08-27-2011 02:06 PM by pbrower2a [at "Michigrim" joined May 2005 #posts 15,014]
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Quote Originally Posted by Timothy Egan

A year and change from the next election, the politics of the season are mean and raw. A conservative in Eastern Washington State runs for local office on a platform of shooting illegal immigrants on sight. A Republican senate candidate in Nebraska compares poor people to scavenging raccoons. And the leading Republicans who want to take Obama’s place deny the existence of basic science, scoffing at everything from evolution to the global consensus on climate change. Is gravity next?

Through the haze of this dystopia, Obama has no skip in his step, no lift in his voice. His poll numbers are the worst of his time in office. His enemies no longer call him Muslim, socialist or Kenyan. They don’t have to: they point to 9.1 percent unemployment, and seek to ride the wave pushed by three-fourths of the country that feels the nation is going in the wrong direction. . . .

As president, he’s been a sober, cautious, tongue-shackled realist — a moderate Republican of the pre-crazy, pre-Tea Party era. Having failed to come up with a Big Idea to guide his presidency, he will sink or swim now on strengths that don’t lend themselves to large rallies or passionate enthusiasm. Sobriety and moderation, by definition, are boring.

Urban liberals, labor, blacks and Hispanics, environmentalists, the young – the core of Obama’s army in 2008 — are disappointed in the president of August, 2011. They’re right when they say he caved on the debt talks: the evidence is House Speaker John Boehner’s boast that he got 98 percent of what he wanted from the president.

But instead of waiting for an arm-flapping populist to emerge from the genteel summer redoubt on Martha’s Vineyard, the left should focus on the coming ground war, and try to fill Congress with new people who can at least tell fact from fiction.

For Obama the political mortal, two lines of governance present themselves.

One is simply to be the executive whose policies, with a few exceptions, are backed by the majority of the public, and opposed by Republicans in thrall to kooks and corporate absolutists.

Tax cuts for wage-earners, but not for millionaires and billionaires, has deep, bipartisan support across the land, sensibly articulated by Warren Buffett, who pointed out the absurdity his secretary paying a higher tax rate than he.

If Obama plays this issue right, those Republican presidential candidates who said they would never raise taxes even with 10 spending cuts for every increase will wish they never made such a pledge to extremism.

He doesn’t have to launch a class war — merely to engage one that’s already underway. So far, surprisingly, he has not taken a side. He should make Republicans defend the politics of grotesque economic inequality.
We have been getting a harsh civics lesson over the last eight months -- that Congress does the legislating and the President isn't a dictator. In that time the President has been unable to achieve any of the "Hope and Change" that people voted him in for. Guess what the President tries to resuscitate a year from now? He can do so; the Republicans have only a cult of greed to offer.

What the GOP offers on its fringe is ideology that one would expect from right-wing thugs. Republicans now own much of the economic failure, and they seem to be in politics only for power and what comes from it (corrupt gain?) more than for service to constituents. I don't know whether this is the talking point of the GOP in 2011 or whether the Republican Party devotee really meant it when I challenged the current joke of a Representative of my district for better representing out-of-district wealth and power than the constituents of his district and the hack said that it was best that our Representatives represent what is best for their country (meaning the asset owners and bureaucratic power-players) than constituents of their districts. We do not elect our Representatives at large, and even if we did (through a system of proportional representation consistent with a parliamentary system) we would still vote for our own interests and not those of our supposed "betters".

I see only one way for President Obama to win in 2012 while holding onto the Senate for the Democrats and winning back the House of Representatives, and that is to return to the very things that he promised in 2008, this time reminding us that he cannot do that alone. Anything less -- even winning re-election with a landslide while the GOP holds one House of Congress -- ensures that US politics will be essentially what they are now until at least 2017. Such is failure. (GOP control of the Presidency and both Houses of Congress will ensure that this 4T features a false Regeneracy, basically a return to the 3T Degeneracy with a little glitter perhaps in the form of a revival of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous with even more condescension, perhaps culminating in a proletarian revolution, and that could be far worse than what we have now).

...I wonder if the Hard Right will now disown the atomic theory of matter and the ideal gas laws?
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."


― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters







Post#2890 at 08-27-2011 02:36 PM by Brian Beecher [at Downers Grove, IL joined Sep 2001 #posts 2,937]
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Quote Originally Posted by pbrower2a View Post
We have been getting a harsh civics lesson over the last eight months -- that Congress does the legislating and the President isn't a dictator. In that time the President has been unable to achieve any of the "Hope and Change" that people voted him in for. Guess what the President tries to resuscitate a year from now? He can do so; the Republicans have only a cult of greed to offer.

I see only one way for President Obama to win in 2012 while holding onto the Senate for the Democrats and winning back the House of Representatives, and that is to return to the very things that he promised in 2008, this time reminding us that he cannot do that alone. Anything less -- even winning re-election with a landslide while the GOP holds one House of Congress -- ensures that US politics will be essentially what they are now until at least 2017. Such is failure. (GOP control of the Presidency and both Houses of Congress will ensure that this 4T features a false Regeneracy, basically a return to the 3T Degeneracy with a little glitter perhaps in the form of a revival of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous with even more condescension, perhaps culminating in a proletarian revolution, and that could be far worse than what we have now).

...I wonder if the Hard Right will now disown the atomic theory of matter and the ideal gas laws?
Once he assumed the mantle of the office, Obama ceased to be the charismatic leader we voted for in 2008. I believe that he will be held to task on this, and there is a possibility that he could lose his re-election bid. Should this happen he could return to being a community organizer, and could even possibly unite the public in a nonviolent revolutionary quest for social change ala Martin Luther King. I am more than ever inclined to think that this is what it is going to take to shake the society out of its current malaise, which IMO is much worse than any so-called malaise of the Carter years. It is unfortunate that some now are comparing Obama to Carter, who many feel was highly inept as President but gained respect for his humanitarian work following.







Post#2891 at 08-27-2011 02:53 PM by Weave [at joined Feb 2010 #posts 909]
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Quote Originally Posted by Brian Beecher View Post
Once he assumed the mantle of the office, Obama ceased to be the charismatic leader we voted for in 2008. I believe that he will be held to task on this, and there is a possibility that he could lose his re-election bid. Should this happen he could return to being a community organizer, and could even possibly unite the public in a nonviolent revolutionary quest for social change ala Martin Luther King. I am more than ever inclined to think that this is what it is going to take to shake the society out of its current malaise, which IMO is much worse than any so-called malaise of the Carter years. It is unfortunate that some now are comparing Obama to Carter, who many feel was highly inept as President but gained respect for his humanitarian work following.
You lefties shouldnt blame Obama, you bought his dog and pony show with full knowledge of his underwhelming qualifications for President. You should, however, have some anger towards the media who carried his water, never vetted him like most Presidents are. By the way, he is unpopular because,while he may have promised you lefties alot, he also presented himself as a moderate to the general electorate and even duped alot of Republicans. He built himself up as some sort of savior as shown by his egotistic Nuremburg like presentation at the DNC convention complete with Roman columns.







Post#2892 at 08-27-2011 03:59 PM by KaiserD2 [at David Kaiser '47 joined Jul 2001 #posts 5,220]
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Quote Originally Posted by Brian Beecher View Post
Once he assumed the mantle of the office, Obama ceased to be the charismatic leader we voted for in 2008. I believe that he will be held to task on this, and there is a possibility that he could lose his re-election bid. Should this happen he could return to being a community organizer, and could even possibly unite the public in a nonviolent revolutionary quest for social change ala Martin Luther King. I am more than ever inclined to think that this is what it is going to take to shake the society out of its current malaise, which IMO is much worse than any so-called malaise of the Carter years. It is unfortunate that some now are comparing Obama to Carter, who many feel was highly inept as President but gained respect for his humanitarian work following.
I think this is a misunderstanding of Obama. His two years in the community appear to have been resume-building. He seems to have taken nothing serious away from them at a policy level. He's a totally establishment guy, albeit of the Democratic variety, and worst of all, he appears to think that nothing is fundamentally wrong with the country that a little sound management won't cure. Perhaps that is why the Tea Party is winning--at least they say something is badly wrong.







Post#2893 at 08-27-2011 04:51 PM by herbal tee [at joined Dec 2005 #posts 7,116]
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Quote Originally Posted by KaiserD2 View Post
I think this is a misunderstanding of Obama. His two years in the community appear to have been resume-building. He seems to have taken nothing serious away from them at a policy level. He's a totally establishment guy, albeit of the Democratic variety, and worst of all, he appears to think that nothing is fundamentally wrong with the country that a little sound management won't cure. Perhaps that is why the Tea Party is winning--at least they say something is badly wrong.
Sadly, I have to agree.
If one considers his resume it's the only logical explanation for the total demobilization of the populist base that elected him. Money has always been the mother's milk of politics. The only time that it is overcome is when there is a mobilization of the disaffected. We had that in 1932. We also had that in 2008. How many people knocked on doors for him in 2008? Made phone calls for him? How many of those people will not be doing those things next year?

Right now I see the enthusiasm gap that cost the Democrats so many seats last year as likely to reemerge.
Yes the likely radicalness of the eventual GOP nominee may cause a lot of "lesser evil" votes for Obama, but a party can't and shouldn't count on that. As of now the people's cause is lost and because of the type of electoral system that we have can not be championed again until the 2014-2016 cycle.
And this is as optimistic as I can be.







Post#2894 at 08-27-2011 04:56 PM by ziggyX65 [at Texas Hill Country joined Apr 2010 #posts 2,634]
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Quote Originally Posted by KaiserD2 View Post
Perhaps that is why the Tea Party is winning--at least they say something is badly wrong.
Interesting take, and you could be right there. Regardless of political leanings, almost everyone in Middle America feels like things are turning for the worse. If nothing else, the Tea Party is tapping into that feeling (even if we may disagree with their reasoning and their "solutions"), which makes people think they are more "in touch" with us -- because they aren't denying that things, well, kinda suck right now.

Establishment Democrats act as if only a little tinkering around the edges of our institutions is needed, for the most part. And where they think we need more than that, there's little backbone to it. I'm not a fan of the full left wing agenda, but I do think it's in the best interests for even relative moderates like myself to see the Democrats "grow a pair" and make a stronger case to the voters in 2012.

In other words, we know the patient feels sick and the Tea Party has "diagnosed" us as quite sick. Yes, the diagnosis may be for the wrong sickness and the prescription may be bad medicine, but at least they aren't saying "no, you're basically okay, just eat a little better and exercise a bit and you'll be good as new."

Quote Originally Posted by herbal tee View Post
Right now I see the enthusiasm gap that cost the Democrats so many seats last year as likely to reemerge.
Yes the likely radicalness of the eventual GOP nominee may cause a lot of "lesser evil" votes for Obama, but a party can't and shouldn't count on that. As of now the people's cause is lost and because of the type of electoral system that we have can not be championed again until the 2014-2016 cycle.
And this is as optimistic as I can be.
Yeah, I said it earlier but it bears repeating -- Unless something changes quickly, 2012 will be a Republican year, and if they take everything (with possibly only a Senate filibuster preventing total domination) *and* our plunge into more corporate domination and more concentration of wealth, then '14 or '16 will be the "voter awakening" that works to take back government from corporate control and works to get it back to the people.
Last edited by ziggyX65; 08-27-2011 at 05:01 PM.







Post#2895 at 08-27-2011 05:23 PM by herbal tee [at joined Dec 2005 #posts 7,116]
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If the GOP takes control of all 3 branches next year I expect to see the filibuster go.
It certainly needs to be reformed. Along with the idea of a single Senator putting holds on nominations and bills.
Even if the GOP does not get a sweep next year I still expect some form of filibuster reform during the 4T.
This is the time theory wise when broken systems get fixed. And the filibuster is certainly broken.
I would disagree with their motives for fixing it, but if a GOP/Tea Party Senate reformed or quashed the filibuster it would certainly qualify as a 4T action.







Post#2896 at 08-27-2011 07:36 PM by The Wonkette [at Arlington, VA 1956 joined Jul 2002 #posts 9,209]
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Quote Originally Posted by pbrower2a View Post
We are in the closest thing to the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the causes are mostly the same -- weak conservative government that offered little but tax cuts to people who had no incentive to invest in plant and equipment, corporate bureaucrats then as now used market power to ensure that wages kept up with productivity, and a speculative boom that lured capital into it like a pheramone-loaded cobweb attracts moths to doom. What kept the recession from becoming as bad? New Deal, Fair Deal, and Great Society reforms -- federal deposit insurance on bank balances that kept people from losing their savings, Social Security that has probably fed some children, agricultural subsidies that have kept farm prices from going into the septic tank, minimum wage laws that do much the same, unemployment insurance that keeps workers from having to compete just to keep jobs, Medicare, Medicaid, AFDC, and TANF. Do you believe that America would be better off without these?
Just a nit, but we haven't had AFDC for 15 years; specifically, since 8/22/96. You mean SNAP, don't you (food stamps)?
I want people to know that peace is possible even in this stupid day and age. Prem Rawat, June 8, 2008







Post#2897 at 08-27-2011 07:39 PM by Child of Socrates [at Cybrarian from America's Dairyland, 1961 cohort joined Sep 2001 #posts 14,092]
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Quote Originally Posted by Copperfield View Post
It doesn't sound like you even know what individual freedom is, let alone value it. What you appear to value is the feeling of comfort you get by not being free at all. You have bought into the American version of "freedom" which isn't freedom. It's a euphemism for the same old, time-honored ruler/ruled relationship that the rulers would have you believe is necessary for your very survival.

Ahhh yes. Please show me my "irrational side." In lieu of that, please do explain how you balance freedom and justice in your own life.
You know, Copperfield, I've been on vacation for the last several days, and now that I've come back and read the above, I've decided that I really don't care to continue this with you.

Maybe with someone else down the line, but not you.







Post#2898 at 08-27-2011 08:05 PM by pbrower2a [at "Michigrim" joined May 2005 #posts 15,014]
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Quote Originally Posted by The Wonkette View Post
Just a nit, but we haven't had AFDC for 15 years; specifically, since 8/22/96. You mean SNAP, don't you (food stamps)?
OK -- the Great Society programs got new names and somewhat-different purpose.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."


― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters







Post#2899 at 08-27-2011 08:13 PM by Weave [at joined Feb 2010 #posts 909]
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Quote Originally Posted by herbal tee View Post
If the GOP takes control of all 3 branches next year I expect to see the filibuster go.
It certainly needs to be reformed. Along with the idea of a single Senator putting holds on nominations and bills.
Even if the GOP does not get a sweep next year I still expect some form of filibuster reform during the 4T.
This is the time theory wise when broken systems get fixed. And the filibuster is certainly broken.
I would disagree with their motives for fixing it, but if a GOP/Tea Party Senate reformed or quashed the filibuster it would certainly qualify as a 4T action.
If the Senate House and Pres all go Repub I would see that as the Regeneracy and the old order, that of Big Government, will finally be sent to the ash heap of history. All of the unfunded promises will have to be changed, the old archaic early 20th century systems that are highly innefficient will be scrapped and new dawn of personal responsibility and local control will emerge. Young Boomers and Gen X will be hardest hit as ridiculous state pension plans such as in California will be privatized, early promises of 80% salary and retiring at 50 will vanish. Luckily with longer life expectancy Gen Xer's and younger will have plenty of time to plan for the future. The Era of Big Governement as Bill Clinton once stated, will really finally be over. Obamacare will be gone, new laws allowing health care companies to compete across state lines and true tort reforms will emerge. Business regs will be loosened and new areas for oil development will also open. Many military bases over seas will close saving billions. The Europeans will have to start defending themselves. With technology advances, large army formations will become smaller. What once took a battalion to accomplish will be accomplished with a company of highly skilled men and thier hi-tech equipment. This will also save billions. Public schools will radically change with teacher tenure probably disappearing. Teachers will have to perform or get axed.


America will emerge leaner, smarter and ready to face competing with the emerging BRIC bloc countries that otherwise would eat our lunch under the leftists dreams of a European style socialist state with heavy regulations and massive social welfare programs. In 1st T, the USA will be beacon of capitalism leading the world in per capita growth rates, low taxes and low unemployment rates.







Post#2900 at 08-27-2011 08:27 PM by The Wonkette [at Arlington, VA 1956 joined Jul 2002 #posts 9,209]
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Quote Originally Posted by Weave View Post
If the Senate House and Pres all go Repub I would see that as the Regeneracy and the old order, that of Big Government, will finally be sent to the ash heap of history. All of the unfunded promises will have to be changed, the old archaic early 20th century systems that are highly innefficient will be scrapped and new dawn of personal responsibility and local control will emerge. Young Boomers and Gen X will be hardest hit as ridiculous state pension plans such as in California will be privatized, early promises of 80% salary and retiring at 50 will vanish. Luckily with longer life expectancy Gen Xer's and younger will have plenty of time to plan for the future. The Era of Big Governement as Bill Clinton once stated, will really finally be over. Obamacare will be gone, new laws allowing health care companies to compete across state lines and true tort reforms will emerge. Business regs will be loosened and new areas for oil development will also open. Many military bases over seas will close saving billions. The Europeans will have to start defending themselves. With technology advances, large army formations will become smaller. What once took a battalion to accomplish will be accomplished with a company of highly skilled men and thier hi-tech equipment. This will also save billions. Public schools will radically change with teacher tenure probably disappearing. Teachers will have to perform or get axed.


America will emerge leaner, smarter and ready to face competing with the emerging BRIC bloc countries that otherwise would eat our lunch under the leftists dreams of a European style socialist state with heavy regulations and massive social welfare programs. In 1st T, the USA will be beacon of capitalism leading the world in per capita growth rates, low taxes and low unemployment rates.
In your scenario, where will the jobs come from?
I want people to know that peace is possible even in this stupid day and age. Prem Rawat, June 8, 2008
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