Originally Posted by James50

Deepening the port in Savannah is very important for the health of Georgia and the region. Naturally, the state is trying to get federal funds to help out. Frankly, I think that whether the feds come through or not, it is so important for this port to be deepened, that the state will figure out a way to pay for it from its own pocket if it has to.

After the ridiculous billions spent on the "big dig" in Boston, no one has any reason to hold back on asking for federal money for infrastructure improvements.

James50

Two points:

1. REALITY: According to the Boston Globe in 2008, the post-mortem on the Big Dig noted, "Contrary to the popular belief that this was a project heavily subsidized by the federal government, 73 percent of construction costs were paid by Massachusetts drivers and taxpayers." The total cost of construction was $15B, so the feds actually put-up a bit over $4B. Cosidering the fact that Tip O'Neil was Speaker of the House at the time, that's peanuts.
2. EQUITY: Do you honestly bellieve that, right now - today, Georgia gets less than its fair share of federal spending every year? Over the same period as the Big Dig, Fort Benning alone got roughly $140M a year to run the School of the Americas (now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). Unlike the Big Dig, the school has been funded for 46 years, and still continues to this day.

Military spending in the South continues the transfer payments FDR arranged during the GD. I guess they are now seen as a right. By my count, Georgia has 18 miltary facilities, many among the largest in the country. By contrast, Massachusettes has 11, of which none are large and al but 1 are small. Allowing for the fact that Georgia has 1.5 times the number of residents, they still come out ahead. At that, Georgia is not the transfer champion by any measure. Virginia has 37 facilities, including the Pentagon and the Norfolk Operating Base - home of the Atlantic Fleet.

Originally Posted by James50

Nothing comes close to California in regional myopia and chauvinism.

James50

Arguable but true enough. California certainly has its own brand of blinders, or they would have eliminated Proposition Government^TM years ago. That said, the South has a long unbroken history of regionalism, originating in Colonial days. The Northern colonies also had their own regionalism of sorts, but waves of immigrants dilluted it away. What rremains is internally contenious as much as anything. That can't be said of the South.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

Originally Posted by James50

This was in response to the crowing about GM becoming the biggest automaker. One reason this happened is because Japanese auto companies were crippled for several months by the tsunami in spring 2011. This is unlikely to happen in 2012, and GM's perch atop the industry will be short lived.

James50

Yes, but even now, GM in the US is nowhere near the biggest, right?

I don't see Toyota regaing their position, since Volkswagen is making a full court press even as we speak. Like GM, VW is a large agglomeration of brands. They own pretige brands like Bugatti, Lamboghini and Bentley as well as brands like Skoda that only sell in Eastern Europe and Russia. Their reach is very broad. If they penetrate China better than they already have, Katy bar the door.

Originally Posted by TeddyR

I'm not Republican and I am highly critical of Clinton (on many things besides this too). She wasn't just a subordinate, she was an intern for christsakes. This is taboo in the private sector (as Willard loves to call it endlessly).

Let's put it this way. If you were a front line manager somewhere and your company had an intern for the summer, and you had a fling with him/her, and HR discovered this, you'd be gone the next day. Why is the standard lower for the POTUS.

I'm not a Democrat, but I endorse this message anyway.

Originally Posted by TeddyR

I'm not Republican and I am highly critical of Clinton (on many things besides this too). She wasn't just a subordinate, she was an intern for christsakes. This is taboo in the private sector (as Willard loves to call it endlessly).

Let's put it this way. If you were a front line manager somewhere and your company had an intern for the summer, and you had a fling with him/her, and HR discovered this, you'd be gone the next day. Why is the standard lower for the POTUS.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

I'm not a Democrat, but I endorse this message anyway.

As an independent, I endorse this message also and have no use for Gingrich either.

Originally Posted by James50

This is a short sighted horse race comment, and a big mistake. You cannot know the future and putting someone like Newt at the top of the ticket raises terrifying possibilities. You should wish for the best possible GOP candidate.

On a lighter note, the WSJ editorial page today called Gingrich a "Hindenburg sure to explode". I like that metaphor.

James50

The least bad Republican candidate is Romney, and I think he would be a disaster. Thus I have no trouble wishing for some one who would be a worse President, but such a much weaker candidate that he is very unlikely to be elected. We could in fact reduce this to a mathematical formula: probability of election times probability of disaster.

I think Romney is obviously hiding something very embarrassing about his finances and I'm wondering if he will be able to get away with one year's returns, plus an estimate.

Originally Posted by JDFP

You're absolutely right here. The left has ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, and most other media outlets (such as "The New York Liberal Times"). I along with many other conservative-leaning people avoid such places like the plague as it's a highly subjective liberal-spin on news. Of course, liberals feel the same way towards news sources I enjoy going to for my information. All the media is political - it's all spun from one political side or another. You have to pick and choose where you go for your information as I do.

j.p.

H-m-m-m. I'd pare down your list a bit. The three big networks aren't liberal or conservative. They just want to sell ads. Since the Fairness Doctirne went away, they no longer have to be balanced, but then, the whole Public Service thing is pretty much dead too. I guess that means that, as far as they are concerned, the news can be infotainment. CNN is an outlier here. It's the only network that has tried balanced seroius news, and does a fair job of it. That's in large part why they're losing audience to the bomb-thrower networks like FoX and MSNBC.

Say what you want about the NYT and its RW cousin the WSJ, they are serious publications. Of the two, the NYT has a better track record predicting outcomes.

Here's a non-partisan site that checks the accuracy of political statements.

About the founders and their mission:

Our Mission
We are a nonpartisan, nonprofit “consumer advocate” for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding.


FactCheck.org is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The APPC was established by publisher and philanthropist Walter Annenberg to create a community of scholars within the University of Pennsylvania that would address public policy issues at the local, state and federal levels.

http://factcheck.org/

What about those super pacs?

http://factcheck.org/players-guide-2012/

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

The least bad Republican candidate is Romney, and I think he would be a disaster.

Help me out. In what ways would Romney be a disaster? And please no polemics. Just policies he has advocated that you think would be disastrous.

James50

Originally Posted by Odin

MSNBC is the propaganda wing of the corporate Dem Establishment. Cenk Uyger said after he was booted from the network that criticism of Obama from the left is not tolerated.

I agree on this. They are Democrat-friendly to the extreme. Of course, FoX is their doppelganger.

Oh JDFP, this is your neck of the woods...

Tennessee Tea Party ‘Demands’ That References To Slavery Be Removed From History Textbooks

But the Civil War was not about slavery! *sarcasm*

A social conservative wins Iowa. A northeasterner wins New Hampshire. A southerner wins SC. If you take out all the hot air from the MSM, is this really all that surprising?

James50

Originally Posted by James50

This is a short sighted horse race comment, and a big mistake. You cannot know the future and putting someone like Newt at the top of the ticket raises terrifying possibilities. You should wish for the best possible GOP candidate.

On a lighter note, the WSJ editorial page today called Gingrich a "Hindenburg sure to explode". I like that metaphor.

James50

I pretty much agree. Gingrich may be right that America may vote for the more-extreme right-wing Republican candidate, as it has done several times, because, as GWBush explained, "at least you know where I stand."

I don't think it will happen in Gingrich's case though; he has too much "baggage." So far the polls confirm that Romney is the greater threat, though that could change. At this point all the Republican candidates share one trait in common: they are all very very bad. So it does make some sense to hope Gingrich will win the nomination. I just remember the last time I had such a hope though: I was glad Bush beat McCain, and look what happened. It was close, and Bush was able to take the office by cheating.

Originally Posted by James50

Help me out. In what ways would Romney be a disaster? And please no polemics. Just policies he has advocated that you think would be disastrous.

James50

I'll let David answer, but I say; isn't it obvious? Isn't 30 years of his policies, and their results, enough?

Originally Posted by James50

This is a short sighted horse race comment, and a big mistake. You cannot know the future and putting someone like Newt at the top of the ticket raises terrifying possibilities. You should wish for the best possible GOP candidate.

On a lighter note, the WSJ editorial page today called Gingrich a "Hindenburg sure to explode". I like that metaphor.

James50

Help me out. What terrifying possibilities? And please no polemics. Just policies he has advocated that you think are terrifying.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

I'll let David answer, but I say; isn't it obvious? Isn't 30 years of his policies, and their results, enough?

Your "30 years" comment takes us back to the Reagan years, I do believe. And it seems that what you're getting at is that this is when a lot of the pathologies we are living with today got under way. If this is what you intended, must admit that you are right on. Ever since then there has been the mindset that business comes first when it comes to the public discourse.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

Help me out. What terrifying possibilities? And please no polemics. Just policies he has advocated that you think are terrifying.

It isn't just policies. It is also personality -- how well does a candidate get along with Congress? Gingrich does not. Interesting that very few Congressional Republicans who were in Congress during the Gingrich era are endorsing him.

Originally Posted by herbal tee

Romney is not a shoo in for the GOP nomnation yet.




South Carolina Republicans have a history of doing as their leaders wish on primary day. But this is the first GOP primary since the 2008 bank meltdown.
Next week's primary may be more interesting than many think.

:

What used to be called the "millhead" vote has, for the first time since the old Dixiecrats defected to movement conservatism Republicanism, disobeyed the elite that they usually follow unquestioningly. In the past they've voted for GOP moderates like Dole in '96 and McCain in 2008 when they were told to. But Romney got stomped.


SC be 4T.

Originally Posted by Tristan

Possible resuscitation of Gingrich's campaign could occur if he can win the South Carolina Republican Primary.

Yes indeed, see below.

Originally Posted by radind

South Carolina religious voters seem to not like Mormans.
http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/

and

Originally Posted by pizal81

I've said it before and I'll say it again. There is no way Romney will win. 2/5 voters in the Republican party are evangelicals and most of them will not vote for someone from LDS. I imagine if he did win the nomination the evangelicals will sit the election our or vote for whoever Dopson endorses. He is the Christian Oprah. People just do what he says.

Good observations.
As a former Southern Baptist sunday school teacher, yeah I did a little defecting of my own a few years back, I can tell you that if you are going to walk the evangelical walk there are certain requirements. One of which is to choose "Godly leaders."
Simply put, to evangelical Christians the Mormons are members of a cult. You can not vote for Romney or any other LDS member for high office without seriously violating the mores of conservative Christian culture, you just can not do it. You might as well ask an orthodox Jew to eat pork.
Romney will never get the evangelical Christian vote.
And the very fact that a lot of the economic elite within the GOP leadership has nursed the idea that the Mormon question could be swept under the rug with the largest voting bloc in the current GOP coalition says a lot about how little the GOP elite understands their own base.
I've seen this coming ever since it became apparent that Romney was going to be chosen as the golden boy of the professional right.
They backed a horse that can not win in the general election. A third party Christian rightist candidacy is very likely if Romney somehow manages to cobble enough non southern delegate to get the Republican nomination.

And as for that view from the ground here in western SC, it does matter for yard signs have long been a major part of campaigning. And over the last week I've seen a few Paul and Santorum signs and a lot more signs for Newt...but none at all for Romney.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Two points:

1. REALITY: According to the Boston Globe in 2008, the post-mortem on the Big Dig noted, "Contrary to the popular belief that this was a project heavily subsidized by the federal government, 73 percent of construction costs were paid by Massachusetts drivers and taxpayers." The total cost of construction was $15B, so the feds actually put-up a bit over $4B. Cosidering the fact that Tip O'Neil was Speaker of the House at the time, that's peanuts.
2. EQUITY: Do you honestly bellieve that, right now - today, Georgia gets less than its fair share of federal spending every year? Over the same period as the Big Dig, Fort Benning alone got roughly $140M a year to run the School of the Americas (now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). Unlike the Big Dig, the school has been funded for 46 years, and still continues to this day.

Military spending in the South continues the transfer payments FDR arranged during the GD. I guess they are now seen as a right. By my count, Georgia has 18 miltary facilities, many among the largest in the country. By contrast, Massachusettes has 11, of which none are large and al but 1 are small. Allowing for the fact that Georgia has 1.5 times the number of residents, they still come out ahead. At that, Georgia is not the transfer champion by any measure. Virginia has 37 facilities, including the Pentagon and the Norfolk Operating Base - home of the Atlantic Fleet.

Thank you, and let me weigh in as one who has always thought of the Boston area as his home and is eagerly awaiting his return.

The execution of the Big Dig suffered from the diseases of our era. Nonetheless, it was an engineering marvel that moved a great city from the twentieth century into the 21st. I don't know if you've ever even been to Boston, James, but the Central Artery was a horrible eyesore running above ground right down the middle of a great city. It is now gone, replaced by a a greenway and a tunnel underneath. The nightmare of travel to and from the airport has also been enormously simplified. You live in a sunbelt city which was still pretty small when the automobile came in. The cities that were well-established, from Boston to Washington to San Francisco to New York, had a terrible time integrating expressways into their existing structure. The Big Dig shows how it should have been done from the start.

Many of the posts in this thread neatly illustrate what put Gingrich over the top. Conservatives, in the eyes of the left, the elite and the media, are always motivated by bigotry. Whether it be religious bigotry, racism, or something else. Juan Williams made such an accusation against Gingrich in last week's debate. Rather than doing what nearly every Republican politician does, which is to cower from racial McCarthyism and apologize for having done nothing wrong, he said "no, I am not a racist for saying the welfare policies of the Democrats hurt people instead of helping them, and I'm not going to sit here and let you make that charge against me". He got a standing ovation.

Later in the same week, another moderator (following the lead of ABC News) tried to use Gingrich's private life against him. When the left tells us constantly (as they did for Bill Clinton) that people's private lives should be off-limits, but then repeatedly uses that kind of attack on their enemies with impunity, the hypocrisy is overwhelming, and eventually it's going to backfire. Especially since Gingrich has converted to Catholicism, openly admits his past sins, has publicly asked for forgiveness, and the behavior in question is almost 15 years in the past. The timing of it, clearly intended to be the primary equivalent of an "October surprise", also backfired mightily. People realize that the elites are trying to rig the game, and they're not going to play it anymore.

In short, all of the slanderous garbage being spewed in this thread is precisely the reason why Gingrich has caught fire. He's shown a willingness and an ability to stand up to it, call it the lie that it is, and not back down. So you can go on telling yourselves that people don't vote the way you want them to because they're a bunch of knuckle-dragging, backwards bigots. You're just motivating them to vote that way even more intensely.

Put simply: You say they vote the way they do because they're bigots. When in reality they're voting the way they do, at least in part, because you keep calling them bigots. Get it?

Originally Posted by James50

Help me out. In what ways would Romney be a disaster? And please no polemics. Just policies he has advocated that you think would be disastrous.

James50

I think he would probably go along with what has become mainstream Republicanism. I don't know for sure. It's conceivable that he could govern as he did in Massachusetts, although there he really had no choice with an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature. But I don't think he has the guts to rely on Democrats for his majorities while in the White House. To tell you the truth, I have no idea what the guy would do; he seems like a totally empty suit, and his election would be a total crapshoot. So I don't want him.

That's where we are, James. There may be Republicans I could live with out there (like Ford and Bush I) but they can't admit who they are any more and have the slightest chance of being nominated.

I find how all these "god-fearing Family Values" Evangelicals are supporting a serial adulterer (Newt) nauseating, especially these same people where gung-ho about impeaching Clinton.

They are a bunch of hypocrites.

Gingrich supporter shouting that Obama should be "strung up".

Yes, "string up" as in LYNCH.

Rep. Allen West: Obama is the Food Stamp President

Like I said, they can keep trying to do it, but it's just not going to work anymore. The bullies are being stood up to.

Originally Posted by James50

Help me out. In what ways would Romney be a disaster? And please no polemics. Just policies he has advocated that you think would be disastrous.

It's not Romney, its any republican. Here's why.

Obama is most likely to lose if the economy worsens over this year, in which casethe new president would inherit an economy in decline. Economic weakness increases the likelihood that another financial house collapses, leading to a another panic. The president's advisors will propose something like Bush's TARP. Romney would understand best of all the GOP candidates just what the country faces, and need no convincing that such action would be necessary.

But it doesn't matter what the president thinks. Republicans did not support the first TARP, Bush needed lots of Democratic support to pass it. In the wake of the Tea Party and the with the tenor of this years Republican primary, Romney would be unlikley to get half as much Republican support as Bush got. I doubt Democrats would take huge political risks to support Romney's TARP. They would for a Democratic president, but for a Republican they would likley insist that most of the support would have to come from Republicans. Nothing would be done and we get Depression II.

Fortunately there are many signs (as you have noted) that the economy is getting better and we likley won't face the potential disaster of a Republican administration with a weak economy.

The best outcome, IMO for both the country and the GOP would be Gingrich as nominee. He is not a Godly man, as Bush was. He is considered by the base as an authentic conservative. If he gets the nomination instead of Romney, and then goes on to lose catastrophically, it creates an opportunity for a political realignment. Religious conservatives might become disgusted with politics and retreat back into private life, creating a vaccum in the party that could be filled by a combination of businessmen, libertarians, and traditional conservatives united by a conservative economic philosophy, but tempered with more moderate social policy. With such a Republican parfty there will no longer be a need for business to support the Democrats as the saner business party and come back to the GOP, the party that has from the beginning (and before) been THEIR party.

Faced with the loss of their business support, Democrats will have to adopt a more economically populist platform (this being the only "political space" available to them) which will repel moderate Republicans and blue dog Democrats who may gravitate to the Republicans. American politics can then debate actual ideas and not the mostly contentless pap that dominates political discussion today.