Originally Posted by herbal tee

I hope you realize how much that sounds like what most of us on the left were thinking in late 2008 to early 2009.

It's a nice dream isn't it?

1932 is here now, Obama is the new Hoover.....



Including the ones made by Paulson while constructing TARP for the " too big to fail" banks ?

Including the ones that have been made to the military industrial complex by every president since Eisenhower left office just after giving us a warning of what was likely to come ?


Like it has in Wisconsin where micro breweries now have to use the same middlemen distributors that the large national chains use ?

And don't forget, there's a lot more feeding troughs for the pigs to batten on inside the beltway than in any state capital.



Wall Street has been after the Social Security Trust Fund for decades now.
If your guys give it to them with the current "anything goes" rules on finance do realize that you will crate (briefly) a gigantic stock bubble. All of that free ( for the investment houses) money is gonna grease a lot of already well oiled skids.

But all bubbles eventually pop and that one will too.

You will end up giving us the true Herbert Hoover of this 4T it's just taking longer to get there because the safety nets that you so badly want to tear down are not down yet.

But who knows, you and me and all alive may get to see in 1932 America in real time internet color.



In other words, insurance that's not worth the paper it's written on will become the norm. Thanks for clarifying.


Come on, keep it real.
Do you really believe the neocon wing of the GOP is going to let this happen?





Rumsfeld was convinced of this going into Iraq.
It didn't work out too well so we had to do the surge or else declare victory and bring our people home.
And coming home was a non starter with the neocons.



Not with the unreformed banking sector that we have.
This is the main reason why I disagree with those who think that the 1T is nigh.
You can not run any economy with a corrupt banking system.
These new businesses are not going to be able to get the seed money that they need in our predatory financial environment.

But have a nice two years of dreaming.

1932 is here now, Obama is the new Hoover.....

I never said my scenario is going to happen...just that it might

whatever is in store its going to be a rough ride....

Originally Posted by Weave

1932 is here now, Obama is the new Hoover.....

There's two problems with that observation.

First, the crash of 2008 happened while Bush was still president. If my second point were not true then both of the last two presidents would share the blame.

Second, he's not Hoover because in 1932 we had somewhere between a half million and a million men, women and children hopping fright trains looking for work. We had about 125 million citizens then. With our current population of about 310 million we would have somewhere between 2 and 3 million citizens "going hobo" in search of work.
But we (so far) still have a safety net. Many people do qualify for unemployment. Those who can not qualify for UI can get the modern version of food stamps called SNAP as well as other emergency assistance.

Part of the reason why I think that this 4T is unfolding so slowly is because the level of human need is being mitigated by the reforms of the last 4T. When, or if we persue Tea Party style policies that cause people to really face real starvation you will see the system tested. And it won't be a Rick Perry that the desperate will turn to, it will be a Huey Long.

Originally Posted by Weave

whatever is in store its going to be a rough ride....

Now that I agree with totally. :

Originally Posted by Weave

Yes, by all means, when your arguments run out of steam, play the race card.

If the shoe fits, wear it. Just because there are a few people (like the ***hole narcissist in the apartment below mine that thinks that everything bad that happens to him is because he's black) who pull out the race card for spurious reasons does NOT mean there isn't racist. When somebody comes right out and says that they think "Obama is going to turn everything over to The Blacks" they are racist as F*CK, especially when they say "The Blacks" instead of "blacks" or "African-Americans".

Originally Posted by herbal tee

I hope you realize how much that sounds like what most of us on the left were thinking in late 2008 to early 2009.

It's a nice dream isn't it?



Including the ones made by Paulson while constructing TARP for the " too big to fail" banks ?

Including the ones that have been made to the military industrial complex by every president since Eisenhower left office just after giving us a warning of what was likely to come ?


Like it has in Wisconsin where micro breweries now have to use the same middlemen distributors that the large national chains use ?

And don't forget, there's a lot more feeding troughs for the pigs to batten on inside the beltway than in any state capital.



Wall Street has been after the Social Security Trust Fund for decades now.
If your guys give it to them with the current "anything goes" rules on finance do realize that you will create (briefly) a gigantic stock bubble. All of that free ( for the investment houses) money is gonna grease a lot of already well oiled skids. Ir will bring about a good time to be in the yacht or Lear jet business.

But all bubbles eventually pop and that one will too.

You will end up giving us the true Herbert Hoover of this 4T. It's just taking longer to get there because the safety nets that you so badly want to tear down are not down yet.

But who knows, you and me and all alive may get to see in 1932 America in real time internet color.



In other words, insurance that's not worth the paper it's written on will become the norm. Thanks for clarifying.


Come on, keep it real.
Do you really believe the neocon wing of the GOP is going to let this happen?





Rumsfeld was convinced of this going into Iraq.
It didn't work out too well so we had to do the surge or else declare victory and bring our people home.
And coming home was a non starter with the neocons.



Not with the unreformed banking sector that we have.
This is the main reason why I disagree with those who think that the 1T is nigh.
You can not run any economy with a corrupt banking system.
These new businesses are not going to be able to get the seed money that they need in our predatory financial environment.

But have a nice two years of dreaming.

Speaking of people wanting to destroy the social safety net, if all these RWers affected by Hurricane Irene were consistent they would decline to get federal disaster relief. The Right hates government until they beg for it to help them when a disaster comes along. Hypocrites and wannabe freeloaders all of 'em.

Originally Posted by Weave

I wouldnt exactly call the period of 1900-1940 the era of small govt.

Why not? Even with the tepid reforms of the Progressive Era that you mentioned, or those of the New Deal, size of government as measured by percent of GDP taken up by federal spending was only a fraction of what it became during and after World War II.

It's not appropriate to lump the years from 1933-1940 together with those that came after. The only major program characterizing the postwar economy that was introduced during the Depression was Social Security, and that was a tiny thing in its Depression-era infancy. Remember, most of the Roosevelt presidency consisted of flailing experimentation, and only a few of the experiments were successful and lasted. Most of them were either struck down as unconstitutional or abandoned once the Depression was over.

Also and very significantly, after WW2 we were the only country left standing with no competition to speak of.

No, although this is often trotted out as an explanation for the postwar prosperity, it doesn't work, for three reasons.

1) This condition lasted only until the end of the 1950s at latest. The postwar prosperity went on until the mid-1970s.

2) We became MORE prosperous, not less, as our former enemies and allies recovered from their wartime desolation, suggesting that there was no positive benefit for us from that devastation but rather a harmful effect.

3) The idea itself is dependent on "beggar-thy-neighbor," which in every other context I can think of is rejected by the same people who seem to believe in it in this context, including yourself. You don't believe in mercantilism, do you? You don't like the idea of blanket protectionism, do you? But if a lack of competition for our industry was a good thing in the postwar years, why wasn't it equally a good thing in the early 1930s when Smoot-Hawley was introduced? You can't have it both ways!

Unions, high taxes/high government services, and everything else that serves to narrow income gaps and promote equality is good for the economy. By this I don't just mean that it's morally good, I mean it's economically good as well. For Chinese workers to be paid American salary scales would not just be good for Chinese workers, but also for any American (or Chinese) business that wants to sell products to them. Narrow income gaps and a big, healthy middle class -- which can only exist as a result of working people being paid high wages -- means high consumer demand which means high sales which means high incentive to invest in real wealth production and more and better jobs, and so on. This is the side of the economy that needs to be maximized, because it is the necessity in shortest supply (assuming a sufficiency of natural resources). Maximizing capital formation, which is the premise of supply-side economics, results in far more capital than can be profitably invested in any job-creating activity, which capital instead goes into rent-seeking, bubble-blowing, and economic strip-mining, with consequences such as those we saw in recent years.

That's the theory, and the proof is in the comparison of years that I described above. For 40 years, the U.S. economy operated on that theory and had rules in place (protection of worker rights, graduated income taxes, generous social services) that kept income gaps relatively narrow, wages relatively high, and the ratio of consumer demand to capital relatively high as well. For 40 years before, and also for 30 years after, the U.S. economy operated on a supply-side principle instead, seeking to keep wages down, expand income gaps, and maximize capital formation. The period in the middle outperformed both the earlier and later period by more than two to one.

What you prescribed in your post above would not boost the economy. It would wreck it.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

....
It won't matter what names I call Perry and Romney. Their characteristics will be self-evident to all voters, and they will lose to Obama no matter what the economy is like in 2012.

Bingo!

Perry is DOA if nominated. Let's just hope the GOP remains in their Ryan-trance (patent pending) and doesn't realize it until after their convention -

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/20...onstitutional/

KEYES: But should states-rights supporters be worried that, as governor you said that Social Security is not something that falls in the purview of the federal government, but in your campaign, have backed off that?

PERRY: I haven’t backed off anything in my book. Read the book again, get it right. Next question.

Keyes explains -

In Perry’s book, released just nine months ago, he writes on page 48 that Social Security is “by far the best example” of a program “violently tossing aside any respect for our founding principles.” On page 50, he goes on to say that we have Social Security “at the expense of respect for the Constitution and limited government.”

There's one level of anger in the highest voting group derived from -

"Keep the govt's socialist hands off my Medicare!!!"

It takes it to a whole new level for the 'socialist government' to tell grandpa -

"Your SS check is unconstitutional and violent!"

Yea, will see who gets all 'violent-on' at the voting booth.

Then there's Romney. I know he's running because of the hushed concerns at t-banger gatherings about him being the anti-Christ.

Dead men walking. Like I said, let's hope the GOP stays in their Ryan-trance and keep their attention on doing the Obamascare shuffle.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

What you prescribed in your post above would not boost the economy. It would wreck it.

Unless you're riding the storm out and bored, I think you're wasting your time using this type of argument... you know, facts and logic.

Next thing, you know, you'll be trying to explain to him the problem with -

"Keep your socialist government hands off my Medicare!"

But again, if you're bored. what the heck....

Originally Posted by Weave

As far as Obama's successes you state, he sat back and allowed an overwhelmingly Democratic congress pass by hook and crook an unconstitutional health care plan that most likely will be killed in the supreme ct. and a financial reform bill that is stifling the recovery. Hardly successes. In foriegn policy I see few success. Bin Laden was his only one. If you are alluding to Libya as the other one I hardly see that as a success. Sitting back letting the Euros mishandle it for 5 mos and then at then end jumping in and claiming credit...please....We havent seen the end game by a long shot, what crazies are going to take over? More Sharia law following nutcases is my bet.

1. We aren't going to get any messages from the late and unlamented Osama bin Laden on September 11 this year. He may have been a dying man in April, but I see no reason to believe that he would die before September 11 had he not been whacked.

2. The collapse of the insane and sociopathic rule of Moammar Qaddafi came with amazing speed. I don't know whether the military opposition to the mad leader was reading the handbook of revolutionary warfare of Vo Nguyen Giap ... but the results so suggest. It is part of the syllabus at West Point, and I wouldn't be surprised if the US supplied some copies in Arabic translation. The Fall of Tripoli has uncanny similarities to the fall of Saigon in 1975... but this time it is going to look good for the President of the United States.

3. Any carping about the Europeans mishandling the Libyan Revolution is an exercise in pointless perfectionism. Maybe D-Day could have gone better for the Allies...

4. The only obvious nastiness in the wake of the overthrow of Qaddafi is the execution of African mercenaries who didn't get out fast enough. Mercenaries have few protections under the Laws of War, and those who committed such crimes as firing into crowds of peaceful protestors ask to be executed after a revolution is over.

5. Qaddafi alleged that the Libyan Revolution was done on behalf of al-Qaeda, which is patently absurd. Do you wish to believe Qaddafi? There is no evidence that the largely Sunni Muslim population of Libya has any use for Iranian-style fundamentalism. Libya has quite possibly the most pro-western population in the Middle East except perhaps for Israel and the Christians in Lebanon.

6. We have our own crazies (Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum) to concern ourselves with, thank you. We have religious sects as reactionary and anti-modern as anything that any Ayatollah believes in in Iran, thank you.

I do agree that if the country percieves things as better in the fall of '12 Obama will clearly benefit and probably win. If it remains stagnant than calling Perry crazy or Romney an empty suit (although he clearly is more of a "full suit" than Obama was in 08 or even now frankly) won't work.

You don't quite realize the weaknesses of Mitt Romney (he is more a destroyer of jobs than a creator of them in his "restructuring" of businesses), let alone Rick Perry. President Obama isn't campaigning -- yet. In the next few days he gets to do some governing -- getting relief to states that Hurricane Irene hit. In view of how he dealt with a tornado outbreak in Alabama -- for which the Republican Governor gave him much credit -- I wouldn't bet against this President. The region that Hurricane Irene has hit or is likely to hit contains 140 electoral votes that the President won in 2008 even without Florida and South Carolina that were just 'brushed', so even the cynic in me would expect the President to lavish aid on afflicted places.

Watch the polls in the next three weeks.

In the House, the Dems will have thier work cut out for them as redistricting is going to work aganst them in many states. The Senate is even bleaker with many red state Dems up for re-election. Of course it will all go down to Obama, if he does well, the Dems have a shot, if he loses, the House will not flip and the Senate will probably go Repub.

Uh, no. The Republicans did everything possible to redistrict states in the wake of their victories in 1980, 1990, and 2000, so there isn't that much more that they can do. One of the states in which the Republicans have been able to gerrymander most effectively is Indiana, where in a normal election the Democrats would reasonably be expected to hold only two Congressional seats. The Republicans managed to box Democratic and republican districts so that two districts have Democrats likely to win seats with near-certainty (Obama won those districts with about 60% of the vote in both areas) and a bunch others so that the Republicans will compete against Democrats in districts in which President Obama won only 45% of the vote in an unusually good year for Democrats.

Indiana is conservative, but it isn't crazy. Democrats who don't have some of the cultural baggage that President Obama has could win some of those districts against Tea Party types, especially if the Tea Party Cult tries to defeat Richard Lugar in the primary. Gerrymandering does no good for a Party with an agenda widely rejected.

Originally Posted by Odin

Back in 2008 I was able to get one "moderate" co-worker (an Aquarian Boomer) who "supported Hillary" and thought "Obama wasn't qualified or experienced" to spill the beans about what was REALLY driving her dislike of Obama, she said that Obama was going to "give everything over to The Blacks".

Nice to see that one anecdotal example is sufficient to "prove" what ideologues love doing -- when all else fails, discredit your opponents by demonizing their motives. Why criticize their ideas when you can just portray them all as evil instead?

Originally Posted by Weave

Yes, by all means, when your arguments run out of steam, play the race card. Sorry but 4 years as a junior senator without any accomplishments or significant legislation passed and a few terms in a state senate is an extremely thin resume. Colin Powell would be qualified in my book, so would Condileeza Rice as they served in important Govt positions for extended periods. Executive experience as a Governor or High Military Officer would also qualify someone IMO. Short stints in Congress probably not. Obama would have been better served to wait and run later. Or served as Hillary's VP.

John McCain would have been a disaster as President -- especially with the VP having temper-tantrums. Maybe he would have had a fatal or debilitating stroke... and you know what I think of superannuated Adaptive leaders in a Crisis. John McCain might have been an adequate President if elected in 2000 -- but not much later. Adaptive leaders need peers who show genuine loyalty -- and those peers vanish as the last wave of them enter their 70s. Fanatics with their own agendas and crude cutthroats with 'the mailed fist under the velvet glove' tend to undermine the authority of an elderly Adaptive.

If you think that Barack Obama was unready to be President -- Sarah Palin was even less ready. She will never be ready.

Barack Obama showed as a campaigner what sort of President he would be. He had a clear agenda, he exuded optimism in rough times, and he showed great energy. He has a sense of humor which keeps him from getting "full of himself". He is (and remains) smart and rational. These would all be virtues for a conservative; his political skills are much the same as those of Ronald Reagan. A bad candidate would argue, like John McCain, that "the fundamentals of the economy are sound" and would simply try to protect what remains.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Barack Obama showed as a campaigner what sort of President he would be. He had a clear agenda, he exuded optimism in rough times, and he showed great energy. He has a sense of humor which keeps him from getting "full of himself". He is (and remains) smart and rational. These would all be virtues for a conservative; his political skills are much the same as those of Ronald Reagan. A bad candidate would argue, like John McCain, that "the fundamentals of the economy are sound" and would simply try to protect what remains.

Many conservatives seem to ridicule the "hope and change" mantra of Obama's campaign in 2008, but yes -- didn't Reagan essentially campaign on the same theme in 1980, even if not in those specific terms?

Originally Posted by Weave

Yes, by all means, when your arguments run out of steam, play the race card. Sorry but 4 years as a junior senator without any accomplishments or significant legislation passed and a few terms in a state senate is an extremely thin resume. Colin Powell would be qualified in my book, so would Condileeza Rice as they served in important Govt positions for extended periods. Executive experience as a Governor or High Military Officer would also qualify someone IMO. Short stints in Congress probably not. Obama would have been better served to wait and run later. Or served as Hillary's VP.

Paper qualifications don't always translate into a great Presidency. Buchanan was extremely qualified based on the criteria that you listed, and he was a disaster. Lincoln had far less "qualifications" and he was what was needed.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

Nice to see that one anecdotal example is sufficient to "prove" what ideologues love doing -- when all else fails, discredit your opponents by demonizing their motives. Why criticize their ideas when you can just portray them all as evil instead?

True. I know a number of Boomer women (feminist types) who were truly excited about electing the first woman President. Even though I was not a Hillary supporter, I thought she would win the nomination back in 2007 and was excited myself at seeing a woman President ( would have voted for her if she won the nomination). Almost all of them supported Obama in November 2008.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

Many conservatives seem to ridicule the "hope and change" mantra of Obama's campaign in 2008, but yes -- didn't Reagan essentially campaign on the same theme in 1980, even if not in those specific terms?

Reagan's theme was "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?"

There's an interesting phenomenon in political discussions that might be called mirror-image projection, in which those who sharply disagree are given not one's own attitudes and feelings and behavior but their mirror image or polar opposite, whether or not that is objectively true. A good example is Weave's statement above that the left "loved Bill Clinton."

News for you, dude: we didn't. Just because the right despised him doesn't mean that the left took him as some kind of savior. He came in for a lot of criticism for things like the failure of his health-care initiative, welfare reform, Don't Ask/Don't Tell, and the bombing of Bosnia. I've always seen it as a bit of a puzzle that he was so demonized by conservatives when he was himself so conservative (for a Democrat). As best I've been able to figure out, it was a combination of pure partisanship ("how DARE a Democrat usurp the presidency, that belongs to US!"), which would have applied to any president from his party, and disgust not with his politics or policies but with his personal life. It wasn't what he did so much as who he was (a guy who use to smoke dope and protest the Vietnam War and who was a notorious philanderer), and what it said about America that someone like that could be elected president.

Regarding Obama, remember that the context of all this was Weave's original assertion that his supporters should have known from the beginning that he was incompetent. Whether he is in fact incompetent (which I don't think is true by the way) is irrelevant to that assertion, since it depends not so much on his factual incompetence but on that being what the left is unhappy with him about, and it's not. We're unhappy with him because he turned out to be, as in the image above, a wolf in sheep's clothing. We thought we were electing a fiery reformer, and we got a corporate aparatchik. Very disappointing indeed, but it has nothing to do with competence.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

Many conservatives seem to ridicule the "hope and change" mantra of Obama's campaign in 2008, but yes -- didn't Reagan essentially campaign on the same theme in 1980, even if not in those specific terms?

Yes. He may have offered what liberals considered a very flawed idea of "hope and change", which is an inverse of how reactionaries -- and I say "reactionaries" because they are too incautious to be described as "conservatives" see President Obama.

The start of a 3T, which begins with cultural splits and an early weakening of the economy, is very different from a 4T.

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

Reagan's theme was "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?"

Reagan actually delivered it.....

http://theconservativepost.com/WordPress/?p=3380

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

John McCain would have been a disaster as President -- especially with the VP having temper-tantrums. Maybe he would have had a fatal or debilitating stroke... and you know what I think of superannuated Adaptive leaders in a Crisis. John McCain might have been an adequate President if elected in 2000 -- but not much later. Adaptive leaders need peers who show genuine loyalty -- and those peers vanish as the last wave of them enter their 70s. Fanatics with their own agendas and crude cutthroats with 'the mailed fist under the velvet glove' tend to undermine the authority of an elderly Adaptive.

If you think that Barack Obama was unready to be President -- Sarah Palin was even less ready. She will never be ready.

Barack Obama showed as a campaigner what sort of President he would be. He had a clear agenda, he exuded optimism in rough times, and he showed great energy. He has a sense of humor which keeps him from getting "full of himself". He is (and remains) smart and rational. These would all be virtues for a conservative; his political skills are much the same as those of Ronald Reagan. A bad candidate would argue, like John McCain, that "the fundamentals of the economy are sound" and would simply try to protect what remains.

Obama was hardly tested in the campaign and recieved kid glove treatment from an adoring media. We now know almost 3 years in the hard light of Presidency he is by far out of his league. He is more interested in NCAA brackets and playing golf than providing any real leadership.

Thus explains his 38% approval rating by Gallup. http://www.gallup.com/poll/113980/Ga...-Approval.aspx

In matchups with all the GOP candidates he is essentially tied with most of them, even Ron Paul. That would be like GWB in 2004 being tied with Kucinich or Al Sharpton. http://www.gallup.com/poll/149114/Ob...mann-Paul.aspx

The "corporate sellout" that you and the other lefties disparage but continue to support is sinking like the Titanic.....and the rats are starting to flee the ship....better get on a lifeboat quick.....

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

Nice to see that one anecdotal example is sufficient to "prove" what ideologues love doing -- when all else fails, discredit your opponents by demonizing their motives. Why criticize their ideas when you can just portray them all as evil instead?

Saying that Obama is going to "give everything over to The Blacks" IS a racist statement. It HAS NO basis in fact.

Originally Posted by Weave

Reagan actually delivered it.....

http://theconservativepost.com/WordPress/?p=3380

Only because the price of oil collapsed after wells in the North Sea started coming online. Had the high gas prices lasted for another year Reagan would have lost the 1984 election.

Originally Posted by Weave

Reagan actually delivered it.....

http://theconservativepost.com/WordPress/?p=3380

Yes, I remember it. The "misery index" (unemployment plus inflation) was about 20 percent.

Originally Posted by Weave

Reagan actually delivered it.....

Like the rooster crowing delivers the sunrise.

Ron Paul wins New Hampshire straw poll, raises 1.5 million in a day!

Byron York

GOP Operatives Fear Lasting Ron Paul Problem

8/23/2011

"Ron Paul is going to destroy this party if they keep him in there," said Rush Limbaugh the day after the Aug. 11 Fox News-Washington Examiner debate in Ames. "This is nuts on parade."

http://townhall.com/columnists/byronyork/2011/08/23/gop_operatives_fear_lasting_ron_paul_problem

Originally Posted by Odin

Saying that Obama is going to "give everything over to The Blacks" IS a racist statement. It HAS NO basis in fact.

Yes, it is a racist statement -- no disputing it. My point was that you are using one person's example as proof that this is a widespread cause of opposition to the president's ideas. One example is simply one example, not proof in the general case.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

Yes, it is a racist statement -- no disputing it. My point was that you are using one person's example as proof that this is a widespread cause of opposition to the president's ideas. One example is simply one example, not proof in the general case.

There's more than one kind of racism. Classically, racism is a belief that one race is superior to another or that members of one race have certain disagreeable qualities (low intelligence, propensity for crime, laziness, etc.) The attitude Odin described doesn't fit that mold. It's not a belief that black people are inferior, but merely a recognition that Obama is black and a fear that he may support his own kind over the rest of the people.

One may reject classical racist ideas about racial superiority or racial traits, and still think in terms of one's own interest as a member of a particular race. Those white people who think that way are in a pickle these days due to changing demographics. Non-Hispanic white people will within a few decades be a minority of the U.S. population. This has in the past always been a white people's country. When we have enacted changes guaranteeing civil rights for non-whites, this has always arisen from the consciences of white people. White people have always held the power, whether they chose to use it selfishly and cruelly or magnanimously and honorably. That's what's changing.

A true racist would believe that Obama is unqualified to be president because he's black. That I think is a view held only by a very few people. But there are a lot more people who are uncomfortable with the idea of a black president, not because he would necessarily be worse than a white one, but because the fact that a black president could even be elected is a sign that this is no longer a white people's country.