Having defended Obama's candidacy largely on his economic team, I'm having serious buyer's remorse. Geithner, who is rapidly starting to look like the weakest link, is rattling around by himself in Treasury. Meanwhile, the administration is clearly prioritized a stimulus package that will not work without fixing the banks over, um, fixing the banking system. Unlike most fiscal conservatives, I'm not mad at him for trying to increase the size of the government; that's, after all, what he got elected promising to do. But he also promised to be non-partisan and accountable, and the size and composition stimulus package looks like just one more attempt to ram through his ideological agenda without much scrutiny, with the heaviest focus on programs that will be especially hard to cut.
The budget numbers are just one more blow to the credibility he worked hard to establish during the election. Back then, people like me handed him kudoes for using numbers that were really much less mendacious than the general run of candidate program promises. Now, he's building a budget on the promise that this recession will be milder than average, with growth merely dipping to 1.2% this year and returning to trend in 2010. Isn't there anyone at BLS who could have filled him in on the unemployment figures, or at Treasury who could have explained what a disproportionate impact finance salaries have on tax revenue? These numbers . . . well, I can't really fully describe them on a family blog. But he has now raced passed Bush in the Delusional Budget Math olympics.
It's therefore frankly more than a little disappointing that the free marketers are represented by Grover Norquist, who trots out conservative boilerplate to the effec that we'rea ll going to hell because of EFCA and marginal tax rate increases. Republicans will not fight delusional accounting by demonstrating that they're still tangled up in the Laffer Curve. Growth can still hit 1.2%--or even 3.2%--if EFCA passes. But it manifestly cannot in the middle of an ugly recession.
But he also promised to be non-partisan and accountable, and the size and composition stimulus package looks like just one more attempt to ram through his ideological agenda without much scrutiny, with the heaviest focus on programs that will be especially hard to cut.
When was the last time people in the TradMed gave Dubya flack for not being a uniter? Do you know what campaign slogans look like? Did you really think the Republicans would go along with anything Obama wants to do? Of course they won't. Boss Limbaugh echoed what Republicans want. They want Obama to fail. How can you be non-partisan in that atmosphere?
I don't expect him to be non-partisan. I expect him to set aside his partisan preferences in the face of an overwhelming need to fix the damn banking system.
But, but, but... Goolsbee!
(Hey, don't forget about Obama scrapping free trade deals with Colombia and S. Korea. Woo hoo!)
Joe Klein's conscience:
"When was the last time people in the TradMed gave Dubya flack for not being a uniter?"
---How about every freaking day?
Seriously, Joe, Bush got raped for being "extremely partisan" and creating into "the parisan atmosphere in Washington."
And remember how the media constantly harped on Obama being "post-partisan" and "above the partisan fray." Who do *you* think they were referencing with those statements?
The sad part is, Bush went out of his way to be nonpartisan. Every single act the far left hated---from the Patriot Act to the Iraq War to Guantanemo---was signed off on by the Democrats in Congress.
And one of the battle cries of the babykillers--"Bush forced through far right judges"--let's note that Bush's policy was to offer a smattering of liberal judges in liberal districts as a compromise to try to prevent judge blocking.
Biden The Liar agreed to the deal, only to welch on it when the Dems gained power. How? Simple: he only confirmed the liberal judges and went back on the agreement, refusing to confirm the judges he'd already promised to confirm.
SNL's skit on the bailout highlighted this as well. While Bush is there agreeing with Pelosi and supporting the bailout and co-authoring it, the Pelosi character tells him to get in the back and not take credit and that he's divisive.
Joe Klein, the facts don't back up your assertion one bit.
Megan, remember when you were telling us that despite Obama's promises from the start to be an extreme leftist, he would really govern from the center, because his speeches were full of "hope" and you thought he "seemed" reasonable enough to switch his entire political game, and that "no one" could not govern from the center?
My God, Megan, Rush Limbaugh has been yelling this at you and all the other Obamaphiles from day one. The facts have been staring you in the face, yet you chose to ignore them and focus on electing him based on nothing more than propaganda.
I feel no pity for your damn buyer's remorse. You chose ignorance over looking at the facts.
P.S. It's only going to get worse from here.
Of course the budget estimated growth for 2009 is -1.2%, not 1.2%
And here I've been wondering if it would be in poor taste to start wearing my "Don't Blame Me--I didn't vote for him" t-shirt.
Contrast this with the Democrat's attitude towards Bush. Many of them wanted him to fail to take the country to war with Iraq. After we were already at war, many wanted him (also known as us) to lose the war! Not because loosing the war as good for the country but because it would be good for Democrats. Now that the stimulus bill has passed, I hope that it works. Notice any difference in the desire that the President fail between Democrats and Republicans?
returning to growth of the recent past doesn't make sense, unless the growth is in more sustainable sectors. Growth in petro products, salad shooters, risky risk management, and male enhancement pharmas don't build a health economy.
"Meanwhile, the administration is clearly prioritized a stimulus package"
Megan,
It is not a stimulus package, it is a spending bill. It makes a lot more sense from this perspective.
Have a great day :)
- Jay
I mean everyone can see John McCain was obviously the better choice. I'm putting my faith in John McCain and the Republican Party to pull us out of this mess once and for all.
Note to self: This is some of the best hydro I have ever smoked.
Jay, excellent post.
marcus, bite me. commies like you put the babykiller-in-chief and his cohorts in total power. The best Repubs can do is vote no and speechify, but that won't stop him from making sure every child is dead, every black supremacist is in power, ever dollar is wasted, and the economy is ruined.
have a good day, druggie.
"Meanwhile, the administration is clearly prioritized a stimulus package that will not work without fixing the banks over, um, fixing the banking system."
Why did the banking system almost collapse? People could not pay back their debts. The first tidal wave was from those who could not have possibly afforded their mortgages after rates reset. They couldn't be helped.
The following waves were due to people losing their jobs, etc. It would make sense to stem that tide first, in the hopes of preventing further losses in banking.
"I expect him to set aside his partisan preferences in the face of an overwhelming need to fix the damn banking system."
It's been discussed on here about how nationalization won't work because of the size and global scope of the banks in question. And letting them fail threatens to seize up the credit markets. Maybe the decision to muddle through is the least bad option?
Banks are returning their TARP cash, due to strings attached, presumbably declaring that they are in good health. This limits corporate welfare. If there hasn't been a bank run on Citi or BoA yet, then I doubt one is coming. Large banks have cut their dividends, which will boost capital. Finally, counterparties have had ample opportunity to reduce their exposure to the troubled firms.
"commies like you put the babykiller-in-chief and his cohorts in total power."
One should ask how the commie ranks became so large. Maybe they were turned off by your hyperbolic rhetoric?
The best Repubs can do is vote no and speechify
At least Basic Fact got one basic fact right.
"One should ask how the commie ranks became so large. Maybe they were turned off by your hyperbolic rhetoric?"
--yes, or the economy tanking right before the election.
But hey, I'm a fan of Occam's razor myself.
"At least Basic Fact got one basic fact right."
---that Obama is evil and bad for the country? Damn right I did.
He was right about Bush getting pilloried as partisan (not being a uniter) as well, but that's just obvious.
I guess I don't understand on what basis people like Megan supported Obama, other than blind hope that what his policy posistions stated didn't really reflect what his policy posistions were going to be once elected. That seems the most extreme kind of a paradox, that you would support someone who claims to be a different, more honest, more transparent politician with the belief that everything he said he stood for was a lie.
I don't see how someone like Megan could have looked at ALL of the various policies, which almost universally come down to expanding the federal government and pouring more money into just about every conceivable program except the military and conclude that this would be possible with just raising the marginal tax rate on people making more than $250K. This was always impossible and it was always only possible by a massive raising of all kinds of other taxes.
I'm glad Megan admits to buyers remorse, but I still have a hard time understanding what exactly she thought she was buying and why.
That isn't to say McCain would have been any better, he might have been worse, but in a different way.
Megan, what the hell happened to your cool, Economist-honed libertarian analysis?
First off, the White House projects growth in 2009 to be negative 1.2%, not +1.2%.
Now, take a look at this CEA analysis of the Administration's economic projections. Don't even read the copy, just read the summary Table 1:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/cea/Economic-Projections-and-the-Budge-Outlook/
What this shows is that the Administration's GDP projections for the next two years are...
- Slightly more pessimistic (30bp) than the CBO's in 2009 and more optimistic (60bp) in 2010;
- More optimistic than the Blue Chip Avg both in 2009 (40bp) and 2010 (80bp); and,
- More optimistic than Macroeconomic Advisers (who were undoubtedly cherry picked from the Blue Chip Avg but who are hardly insane chimps) in 2009 (30bp), but more pessimistic in 2010 (50bp).
I will grant you and Greg Mankiw that the White House clearly like their prognostication eggs sunny side up, though I hasten to remind you that they are not the most optimistic for either 2009 or 2010. Even Goldman Sachs has the US economy back to positive growth in Q3 of this year.
But you weren't criticizing them just for being on the high end of macroeconomic forecasting. You said,
Really? Really?! I challenge you to look at those numbers in the context of other forecasts and defend your underlying contention that the Obama Administration is not just optimistic, but somehow dishonest and delusional at Bushian levels.
I think the latter charge is on its face clearly wrong. While arguments over forecasting can never by definition be "objective," it seems pretty close to objective that the Administration's estimates are not wildly out-of-line with what other private and public analysts are predicting. But by all means, and I mean this sincerely, if there's a critical mass of respected economic modelers out there who are significantly more dour than the White House and have gone unmentioned, then by all means please devote a post to their forecasts.
As to the former charge of dishonesty, isn't it possible, just possible, that the Obama Administration is staffed by economists -- like, I don't know, Christie Romer, Peter Orzag, Larry Summers, et al. -- who honestly believe in public spending as a valid tool for spurring aggregate demand, who honestly think the stimulus package signed by the President last month will do more good than harm, and who honestly think that macroeconomic assumptions and forecasts from before its passage ought to be adjusted up? You are within your rights to disagree with their assumptions, and you've done so eloquently at times, but how can you implicitly accuse an Administration of Keynesians of being dishonest about slightly rosier economic forecasts in light of a decidedly Keynesian short-term stimulus bill?
Anon @ 12:46pm nailed it. But I think I can understand the twisted rationale:
1. The economy tanked. Carville did get that right: its the economy, stupid. A bad economy will drive a party out of power, even if (as here) the economy tanking had nothing to do with the party in power.
2. Propaganda. Look how blatantly Joe Klein asserts that Bush was never attacked for being partisan. I'll bet Joe Klein honestly believes that. The propaganda machine for anti-Bush sentiment was running on high gears, and there was little to no counter.
3. People wanted to prove they weren't racist by voting for a black guy. Simple, really, since if Obama had lost so many talking heads would be talking about America's racial problem with no proof, and Al Sharpton (Al Sharpton!) would be given credibility.
That's not to say anyone who voted this murderous cretin into power gets a pass; its just to say the wilful blindness didn't come from thin air.
"Grover Norquist, who trots out conservative boilerplate to the effec that we'rea ll going to hell because of EFCA and marginal tax rate increases."
Supporters of Obama always want to use this argument: its just a small increase in the marginal tax rates for upper income earners.
Well NO - the high level of spending is ensuring that the small marginal increase will not cover cash flow - we will need and therefore see large increases in taxes for all producers - even those who thought they would get a break because they are below $250,000 in annual income.
Smarter people KNOW that the spending leads large tax increases, which in turn, slow down the private sector - and jobs, and standards of living etc.
I laugh at all the people who keep talking about 'just a marginal increase in the top tax rate'. Fools.
You didn't have to believe Obama was lying throughout the election to think he'd act differently than he promised. Believing he was completely inexperienced and incapable of doing the job is also a credible explanation. Which was it for you, Megan?
Me, I thought he was lying AND clueless about governing. But I still couldn't bring myself to vote for him.
Sure, it is possible that the Obama Administration believes their economic policies are going to work. In fact, I'd say it is 100% certain they believe their economic policies are going to work.
BELIEVING something doesn't make it so. The Bush Administration believed all kinds of nutty things, first and foremost that the front line of the war on terror should be Iraq.
My biggest fear about Obama has always been that he is simply a reverse version of George Bush, a left wing version, but still someone who puts his belief in ideology instead of facts.
From a factual and historical perspective, what Obama's economic stimulus plan is doing is almost guaranteed to fail.
I also don't believe that anyone in the Obama Administration really believes we're going to see any positive growth by Q4 this year, and 3.4% growth throughout 2010 and beyond is ridiculous, just as ridiculous, if not moreso, than all of Bush's projections that explained why the deficit wouldn't be as bad as everyone knew it would be. Outside of politics, that's called a lie.
Basic,
I don't know about you but I for one am waiting with bated breath for John McCain's economic solution that he is currently drafting. I just hope the Obama administration has the courage to follow the wisdom of this dean of the Senate. Failing that, we are all lost.
The Black Supremecists will surely have killed every white female stem cell baby and set fire to a mountain of hundred dollar bills in every city in America.
Dear God, please let the Republicans save us from this fate. John McCain, I pray you hear your nation's call once more.
Note to self: The vaporizer is definitely the way to go.
I too am starting to feel some disappointment in the Obama team, but more because of conventional they've been in their approach so far.
But they're still light years behind Bush/Paulson in terms of "delusional". When faced with a gangrenous leg, Bush/Paulson chose went with saran wrap and air freshener, instead of morphine and the saw. That was the "original sin" that set us on the path of delusion/denial/delay that will only prolong the crisis.
By the way, here are the ranges of GDP forecasts as reported in the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee minutes, courtesy of macroblog:
http://macroblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c834f53ef0112793b691028a4-popup
And whaddya know? The Administration's numbers fall pretty comfortably within each range. Mind you, that doesn't make them right, it just makes them, contra Megan, non-delusional.
I must say that I was confused in the recent election as many libertarians came out for Obama. I wondered - and even asked them - how could they support someone who's stated policies were so obviously against the basic ideals of libertarian thought.
They usually stated that they preferred Obama to Republican's crazy religious zealotry (embodied by Palin) and that their commitment to socially liberal polices were very important to them. Besides, they said, Obama will really govern from the center.
Now we see the truth. So many self-styled libertarians are really big government democrats (evidenced by their support of both social and fiscal big government). They were big government democrats all along, but thought that libertarianism just sounded cooler.
Hard core cynics like myself get criticized a lot by some folks, but it is comments like this which strengthens our stance. I have never had buyer's remorse as a voter, because by the time I was old enough to vote I realized that people who have the career goal of gaining state power, in order to force others to submit to their will, are a bottomless pit of mendacity, and thus there is nothing they can do which can disappoint me. Of course, these curs, in a democratic republic, always put forth rhetoric in which they maintain that they merely wish to serve the common good, but at their core lies an outsized pleasure in gaining dominion over other human beings. Power seeking for it's own pleasure is an ineradicable part of human nature, of course, and it is best channeled via the structures and rules of a democratic republic, but it is no less ugly for it being channeled in that manner.
As to specifics, lemme know when a figure with substantial power, or a figure with a decent chance of gaining substantial power, is willing to plainly speak of the plain fiscal truth; that paying a large number of people to not be productive for the last couple of decades of their lives, without regard to their ability to be productive, or their ability to materially support themselves, is wholly untenable. Until then, all debates and projections regarding fiscal matters is nothing more than the dishonest howling of jackals.
2. Propaganda. Look how blatantly Joe Klein asserts that Bush was never attacked for being partisan. I'll bet Joe Klein honestly believes that. The propaganda machine for anti-Bush sentiment was running on high gears, and there was little to no counter.
Can you cite anything besides The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, KO and Maddow to back up your assertion?
Marcus"
"I don't know about you but I for one am waiting with bated breath for John McCain's economic solution that he is currently drafting."
---Considering McCain wanted to go back to Washington to solve the problem when it *first* occurred, but Obama was too busy running for president to do his job as a senator and bother with saving the country, I think McCain probably has more of a grasp of this issue than NotMyPresident.
That being said, McCain is not my defacto leader, despite what you babykillers might say.
"Failing that, we are all lost."
---with NotMyPresident in charge, we are. Guns, gold, and goods (canned), people.
"The Black Supremecists will surely have killed every white female stem cell baby and set fire to a mountain of hundred dollar bills in every city in America."
-----Funny, that's not too far from the truth.
"Dear God, please let the Republicans save us from this fate."
---too late, the murderers are running the asylum.
back to commune, hippie. It's probably better run than this hateful mess of a government NotMyPresident is running.
> Seriously, Joe, Bush got raped for being "extremely partisan" and creating ... "the parisan atmosphere"
I can't image two typos in one sentence that would amuse me more than these, together. I'm picturing some sort of French Culture Defense League giving W Extreme Corporal Punishment for running a Parisian literary salon without permission...
Joe Klein:
"Can you cite anything besides The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, KO and Maddow to back up your assertion?"
----New York Times. Los Angeles Times. Boston Globe. CNN. Chicago Tribune. CBS. ABC. NBC. PBS--Gwen Ifill in particular, but also Jim Lehr. NPR.
More openly biased sources: Slate. Salon. HuffPo. Moveon.org.
Comedy: SNL. Letterman. Leno. O'Brien.
Need I say more? When all these groups start shouting at Bush for being "partisan," the average viewer starts thinking "hmm, he's partisan." Facts are irrelevant in the left-wing noise machine.
Joe, the theme since the Dems took control is Bush being partisan. Its a two fold strategy: makes Bush seem extreme (because he won't compromise), and papers over the Dems who voted for Bush's policies (because Bush forced them to, ya see?)
I'm glad you own up to the Daily Show/Colbert being mouthpieces of this partisanship. Too many lefites try to argue that "they're just comedians" without seeing a lot of people get their view points from these shows.
P.S. what's KO? Is that Kos?
TJIC, I count only 1 typo.
And parisan is not "Parisian."
Bush WAS partisan, very partisan, but I'm not sure what that has to do with Obama, other than he learned a lot of Karl Rove's tricks and is now using them on the GOP and the country.
Basic,
John McCain is my guy. For the life of me I can't understand how he lost by 7 million votes. It's puzzling. But I take comfort in the fact that the Republicans will take back Congress in the midterms and right the wrongs of this administration.
Until that bright shining day I will stay next to you in our bunker.
Try not to go through all my weed this time.
The classic problem with having a blog: no matter how much you try to avoid it, you're bound to lose perspective. You have to write something every day, and it's just too damn hard to wait on the juiciest topic of the moment.
Geithner, Volcker & Summers didn't got dumber in 60 days, and it takes time to form a plan that involves extremely complex multinational financial institutions.
Let's revisit this entry, along with all the comments, a year from now. Then we'll get a few laughs from the mass hysteria going around at the time. The loudest laughs will be reserved to the people who are, 1 month and a half after the election, saying "I told you they were gonna suck".
Meanwhile, Geithner appeared in Charlie Rose. Here are the highlights: http://www.charlierose.com/view/clip/10143
The whole interview is one hour long. He seems perfectly calm and sure of himself, but maybe he is a good bluffer...
Reading this blog makes me feel that I have fallen into the sewer. I don't know if it is the "I want to suck G.W. Bush's born again $%&#!," or the "I'm a whiny, pencil-neck city puke wanting everything from society, except the bill" among you that I hate the most.
No doubt, you are swarming over the Megan's dead carcass for a reason. Your free-riding asses have been beaten in the real world, in the election, so cyberspace is the only place where you can imagine that the American people don't hate you and that you are finished.
It is called society. Maybe you should think about starting to pull your own weight, instead of just escaping your responsibilities, for a change, libertarian, backstabbing scum.
Ah, Nimed, a clear Obamaphile. "Just give him time! Obama is awesome!"
Nimed was probably a guy who was throwing eggs at Bush on Day 1 and claiming the election was stolen, too, and that Bush was a far-right winger.
Pot, meet kettle.
ah, marcus, you're right: Obama, who won by less than what Bush won with in 2004, is clearly the choice of 99% of the American populace, and he didn't win because the economy tanked a few months before the election.
No, clearly his The Messiah.
Joe Klein, a google search of the term of "Bush" and "partisan" yields 3.5 million hits. A search of google news yields 3500 in the last month alone, and 155,000 total. And that is a non-lexis enabled search.
I encourage you, if you have lexis available to you (I don't) to search for the terms "bush" and "partisan" in just major news papers. I think the hit amount you will get will show that Bush was roundly considered to be partisan by the MSM, and received a lot of heat for it.
And those are just newspapers. Not the partisan ones (hello, Village Voice!). Not broadcasters. Not comedians. Not talking heads.
Bush got a lot of attacks for partisanship.
----New York Times. Los Angeles Times. Boston Globe. CNN. Chicago Tribune. CBS. ABC. NBC. PBS--Gwen Ifill in particular, but also Jim Lehr. NPR.
More openly biased sources: Slate. Salon. HuffPo. Moveon.org.
I get the feeling you are just a troll. I should have made it more clear. Sources that are supposed to be non-partisan. NY Times? The same outfit that hired Bill "William the Bloody" Kristol? That has/had idiots like Jeff Zeleny(he of the "Obama, are you a socialist?" question) and Judy Miller. Much less David "Bobo" Brooks and Little Tommy Friedman. LA Times and Chicago Tribune? You mean the papers that noted right-wing nut Sam Zell owns? CBS? The guy that was there before Couric was an old Bush family friend. NBC? Brian Williams is an admitted dittohead. Tweety admitted voting for Bush at least once. They have a corrupt Republican former Congresscritter on their morning show. As for Salon and the second group, they never said they are non-partisan. Slate is just a bunch of hacks(except for Fred Kaplan).
Geithner, Volcker & Summers didn't got dumber in 60 days, and it takes time to form a plan that involves extremely complex multinational financial institutions.
No, they got politicized in 60 days -- the world looks very different from inside the administration (ANY administration) and the changed perspective makes you act in ways that can appear dumb.
More to the point, though, they haven't had 60 days to work on this -- they've had 20 months to examine the problem, and they've been actively working on it since at least November. In that time, they have flailed a great deal, and provided Obama and Congress with cover for wasting incredibly vast sums of money. Or, to take the latest Krugman line, sums that are incredibly vast and yet far to small to actually accomplish their stated goal.
Seriously, Obama might do better to follow Clinton's lead and put his wife in charge of saving the economy.
LP, where did you earn your doctorate in nonsequiturs?
Joe Klein:
"NY Times? The same outfit that hired Bill "William the Bloody" Kristol? That has/had idiots like Jeff Zeleny(he of the "Obama, are you a socialist?" question) and Judy Miller. Much less David "Bobo" Brooks and Little Tommy Friedman. "
---lol, Klein. Trying to argue the NY times is somehow right wing or center lis laughable. They hire a token "conservative" every once in a while, and half the time they're either a joke (Kristol, who regularly gets his facts wrong) or fake conservatives like Brooks ---who is an Obama lap dog---or Douhat--who is a centrist, not a conservative. Then they put that one conservative up against 4-5 liberals --Herbert, Krugman, Dowd, etc.--and call it balanced.
Sorry, tokenism never works.
And Zeleny's question is a gimme. "Are you a socialist?" "No."
Tell me, was this before or after Obama went high fiving through the newsrooms with his press buddies? lol.
"LA Times and Chicago Tribune? You mean the papers that noted right-wing nut Sam Zell owns?"
--Yep, the same ones that consistently endorse liberal democrats. The Tribune, which makes deals with Blagoaivich. And the LA Times, which deliberately withheld Obama's speech supporting terrorism in Israel so as not to hurt his election chances.
"CBS? The guy that was there before Couric was an old Bush family friend."
---lol. You mean Dan Rather, right?? lmao. And Couric's chopblock interview with Palin is a textbook hit on a right winger.
"NBC? Brian Williams is an admitted dittohead."
---no, he's just listened to Limbaugh. I've listened to NPR to laugh at it, does that make me a green party member.
"Tweety admitted voting for Bush at least once."
---Who is tweety?
"They have a corrupt Republican former Congresscritter on their morning show."
--Who? Are we talking about Joe Scarborough? When MSNBC has Keith Olberman, Chris Matthews, and Manly Rachel Maddow?
"As for Salon and the second group, they never said they are non-partisan."
---lol. Joan Walsh has tried, and her own audience laughed at her. But I agree they are openly partisan.
"Slate is just a bunch of hacks(except for Fred Kaplan)."
--agreed. they cite wikipedia for their sources openly. But they are all hacks. And partisan.
Most of these places have a so-called "token conservative" to try to provide "balance." You arguing that they are non-biased is like my arguing that Alan Colmes balanced off the rest of Fox News. One token guy to back down and get beat up, or who is not really what he says he is, is not an argument.
And, like I said, look at any of these sources and search for stories on "bush" and "partisan." A simple google search gave us a ton, and lexis will reveal a ton more. I thought this argument was about that, anyway.
Nimed, I saw the Geithner intwerview when it was broadcast, and it wasn't bad, but Charlie Rose is almost always the epitome of the friendly interviewer. The next time Ol' Charlie asks a tough follow up will be the first. That's why Geithner selected Rose's show for an interview.
You may be entirely correct that things will be much better a year from now; things often get better no matter what is done. What I'm willing to wager on is that the long term fiscal picture will not be better, even with the wage cap raised on FICA taxes, unless retirement benefit cuts are also enacted.
Rose is int he tank, too. Remember hsi 14 part series on wonderful Rahm Emmanuel and his family was? Not surprisingly, it raised Rahm-bo's profile enough for Obama to select him.
I love how everyone ignores the only real nuance from Kobayashi Maru, and instead continues to kick back in their armchairs and shout slogans at eachother. I'm going to go out on a limb and thank Koba for some reasoned debate on the matter.
I've noticed his argument too, that while everyone points to rosy WH estimates, I continually see general, market, and private economic estimates pointing towards moderate recovery in 2010 (minus, of course, Dr. Doom). Even if Geithner et al. are wrong, it'd be bad policy for them to come out and undercut everyone else's estimate, especially since we're all looking to govt to steady the boat.
Geithner also came out fairly recently and basically said the administration was still within its original timeframe for getting regulatory fixes started, and had probably overplayed expectations on how quickly it would move. With Bernanke providing an additional regulatory nudge this week, it wouldn't surprise me if we started seeing more focus on "fixing" the banking system in the next month.
We'll see though, won't we?
It seems to me that the ultimate curse is that a person get exactly what he wishes for. For a politician, the ultimate disaster would be to see all his campaign promises come to pass.
I'm a Republican and McCain voter. But I'm also an American who has a job and would like to keep it. I'd like to see Obama have a successful presidency, if only out of self-interest. But that requires that the worst of his policy ideas don't get implemented.
Clinton's perceived success owes much to the fact that HillaryCare didn't pass but welfare reform did. If, in two years, Obama gets a Republican Congress to work with, he could become the moderate people like Megan were hoping for. It just requires that political realities require him to work with McConnell, McCain and Boehner rather than Pelosi and Reid.
Hope for Change!
The banking collapse is definitely very complicated, but they've had more time than 60 days to work on it, and since it has been said by just about everyone, including the Obama Administration that this is the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression, I'd say, time is running out.
I haven't seen anything that even approaches a plan in terms of what is going to be done with the toxic assets and the trillions in credit default swaps that are out there. Until this is dealt with, confidence isn't going to return to the market and neither is liquidity.
It has started to seem to me that Obama doesn't care as much about fixing the bank crisis as he does about getting the rest of his pet programs in place, which makes him an idealogue.
I've also started to wonder if maybe Obama's people don't have a solution and are just hoping that things will work out eventually, kind of like Bush's 'solution' to the Iraq War. Or, alternatively, that whatever solution they may have is so draconian they are waiting until a complete collapse before implementing it.
I can't have much confidence in Geithner or Benanke or any of the other former banking lackeys who all failed to forsee this crisis. Somebody needs to give Roubini a job.
I dunno, for delusional math I have yet to see anything approach "we must cut taxes or we will be in danger of paying off the entire national debt in short order" which I seem to recall from 2001.
SteveL, I believe the argument runs: cut atxes, give people back their money, and allow business to grow and help the economy.
But hey, that would prevent people from actually expecting NotMyPresident from solving all their problems. and a pony.
A clue: give one to a liberal today!
Anon, I also suspect that they are just playing a four corner offense, in hopes that time will improve the balance sheets of these troubled financial institutions. If they are right, they will hail themsleves as geniuses, and if they are wrong, the critics will say they knew it all along. The number of people who will be honest enough to admit that their prediction was correct mostly due to random chance, or more precisely, that random chance explains the outcome as well as the theory they are putting forth, will be quite small.
This kinda' ties in to Megan's gut-wrenching post about babies getting baked to death in cars; all of us have the tendency to maintain an illusion of being able to control a world in which random chance quite often is the deciding factor in extremely important outcomes.
Obama's had mroe than 60 days; he's had since the election, since this thing broke before then. We're talking 4 months, not 2 and change. So 120 days.
And probably a lot more, since the extent of the collapse became known in late September/early october. So 5 months, or 150 days.
So Obama's had 5 months to plan for and address this issue. And failed at it.
Yeah, NotMyPresident's partisanship and incompetence is even scarier than you imagined.
P.S. Joe Klein: And since you admit Slate is partisan pro-liberal-------who are they run by...why, WaPo! Where NotMyPresident did his victory stroll! And when one reporter dared to step out of the WaPo cheering throng and ask hima question, what happened?
Obama physcially manhandled him, told him to shut up, and he got shouted down by the WaPo staff!
I don't think the waiting game is going to work in this instance, I can't see how the derivative speculations and the toxic mortgage backed securities are going to regain their 'value' in line with reality. I find it hard to believe anyone who isn't in total denial of reality would believe it.
I feel your pain Megan. I was a much bigger supporter than you.
At the same time, the whole atmosphere seems like hysteria to me right now. This was a pretty regular pattern throughout the campaign. The thing that has often struck me is how supporters are always accused of thinking he walks on water. But they are the only ones who don't seem to expect perfection.
The thing that actually worries me most about the rosy assumptions is that they might actually believe them. I don't see recovery any time soon. I think the adjustment that has to be made is going to be much bigger and more culture wide than expected. Being more a history and politics buff than economist I don't really know the right term but in a nutshell it looks to me as though we have gotten into a really bad way paradigm with the ritual of looking at wall street for signs of growth and stability and then getting out the credit card if it looks ok. The result is a debt ridden middle class and a Wall Street which has been seriously over inflated both in its view of its importance in a functioning economy and its stock price. But generally when the middle class is getting debt ridden and lose ground economies get bad and stay bad. They do well and stay well when the middle class has lots of extra income to spread around and save.
"I can't see how the derivative speculations and the toxic mortgage backed securities are going to regain their 'value' in line with reality. I find it hard to believe anyone who isn't in total denial of reality would believe it."
Not sure if they have to regain their full value. Banks have already written them down to low levels, taken the losses, and survived. As long as they don't plummet to zero a clearing point should be reached soon, and these assets won't be as consolidated.
The banks just need their other loans, i.e. commerical mortgages, credit cards, etc., to not tank all at once.
Obama is an abject failure. I lost my keys two ago and Obama still hasn't called me to tell me where they are. Neither has anyone from his administration. This is not change i can believe in.
I love it when the real neanderthals come out of the closet to mock a president who is clearly alot smarter than them. If you get the urge to spout your cultish right wing economic baloney, I suggest you sell crazy somewhere else. We're all stocked up here.
Obama, who won by less than what Bush won with in 2004
Really?
Bush = 62,040,610 (286 EV)
Kerry = 59,028,444 (251 EV)
Obama = 66,882,230 (365 EV)
McCain = 58,343,671 (173 EV)
You must be using Wall Street math.
It's hard for me to have much confidence in what the banks say, since starting in 2007 they were doing write downs and always claimed this was "it"...but maybe.
I also think that we've reached a crossroads in temrs of society and economic growth. My view is that Wall Street and stock valuation has become an end in itself and that "value" has not been tied to reality for some time...the market cap of company X is often barely related to whatever hard and soft assets it owns. What started out as a way for a company to raise money for expansion and investment..selling stock...became an end in and of itself..to raise money and profits. Once the tail was wagging the dog, then all that mattered was quarterly earnings, and so the gutting of real and future assets and growth went on in earnest.
It is also pretty troubling that Obama's solution to the economic crisis is more of the same: More consumer spending, not less. More of a debtor society, not less.
So far he hasn't made any moves to address any of these fundamental flaws.
THE REPUBLICANS ARE ALWAYS RIGHT!!!!!!
Obama is a fraud. He hasn't fixed anything. He hasn't found my keys. My stereo remote doesn't work either.
John McCain has a plan. Rep. Cantor has a plan. The Senate Republicans have a plan. They will fix this mess.
P.S. Joe Klein: And since you admit Slate is partisan pro-liberal-------who are they run by...why, WaPo! Where NotMyPresident did his victory stroll! And when one reporter dared to step out of the WaPo cheering throng and ask hima question, what happened?
Talk about twisting words, troll. I said Slate was wingnut central. That means Republicans. Mickey Kaus. Will Saletan. As far as the Washington Compost, you mean the same paper that has Fred Hiatt as the editorial page editor? The same Hiatt who just hired the aforementioned Bill Kristol? The same paper that employs Charles Kraphammer and George "Let them eat cake!!" Will? Or the idiotic David Broder? Or bondhead reporters like Shaleigh "The Devil" Murray? None of them are Democrats
John McCain has a plan. Rep. Cantor has a plan. The Senate Republicans have a plan. They will fix this mess.
What plan is that besides yelling at you to get off their lawn?
Osama is a pablum puking liberal. How is this a shock to so many people? You were told up front by Rush and others that this guy was a socialist, but you refused to believe it. You bought into the hype, and now you're looking ridiculous and are suffering from buyer's remorse. I can understand being embarrassed by this moron, but how can you be surprised? He told you he was going to do all of these things, and now you're acting like it's all new. Incredible.
Anon, I tend to believe you are correct, but after having observed macroeconomic arguments for a long time now, I try to couch my beliefs in what I think are appropritae doubts. I do think you are also right regarding some basic problems with the way publicly traded companies operate, but I would protray it in terms of a principle/agent problem, wherein the managers of the company have too large an incentive to do things which drive up executive compensation (which also may help speculators) at cost to the interests of long term investors
Of course, I don't have any easy solution for this, but if they were going to cap executive compensation at 500k for these firms receiving federal money, I wish that they would have instead allowed greater compensation in the form of stock grants which could not be sold until all the federal money was paid back, and the executive had left the firm for some number of years. I don't know if this would have made things better, but it would have been an interesting experiment.
It has been proven than John McCain's yell has special economic powers. He will lead us out of this wilderness. As soon as we lower the capital gains tax the money will start flowing and the private sector will rebound.
Government spending has not been proven to work.
When will Joe Klein's conscience get a job in the Obama administration? The constant flagellation of Bush surely must have been noticed by now.
On brighter news the NY Times is selling their corporate jet, how close are they to getting a gov't bailout - they already are a state spun media outlet for Obama might as well make it official.
=============================================
Look!!!
Look!!!
The Emperor has no clothes!!!
Of course I've been saying this even before the election.
"But he also promised to be non-partisan and accountable, and the size and composition stimulus package looks like just one more attempt to ram through his ideological agenda without much scrutiny, with the heaviest focus on programs that will be especially hard to cut."
Did you not support Bush's tax cuts? Do you realize how difficult it is to raise taxes once they've been cut or match them to spending cuts? How about the Iraq War? That's an easy mess to walk away from.
Five trillion dollars in debt was incurred as a result of Bush's tax cuts and his war - neither offset by spending cuts - neither with any perceivable benefit to the American economy. As usual, you (and the Republicans) are a little late to the deficit hawk party.
For the record, there's no such thing as 'non-partisan'. If you're pissed off at Obama for shattering that notion, wait until you find out there's no such thing as Santa Claus.
But obama is sooooo pretty.
Can't we keep him ma, pleeeeese.
I will cleen up the messes.
NO!
DON'T let this pretender trash 200 years of prosperity under free-market capitalism!
I mean, really. Obama wasn't even a bait-and-switch. It's very annoying for someone to whine about buyer's remorse when they got pretty much exactly the product as-advertised.
The Iraq War is irrelevant at this point. A trillion dollars over 6 years looks like fiscal responsibility when compared to the spending frenzy we've seen in the last 2 months. And, no, I didn't support the Iraq War and no, I didn't support Bush either.
The stimulus is an incredibly poorly targeted piece of legislation. Instead of the laser focus on short term job creation that Obama promised, it is a free for all increase for every Democratic pet project ever conceived.
My state is spending the first round of stimulus money on 1) homeless programs 2) repairs to public housing 3) education.
Now, while I am not against any of these programs, in terms of stimulating the economy, e.g. private enterprise, or providing long term benefits 1) and 2) completely fail. Since the education money comes with no strings there is no reason to believe it is going to bring any more benefit than the rest of the money spent on public education which continues to bring in diminishing returns year after year.
No mention of major infrastructure repairs that will improve traffic flow or trade or even any beautification projects of public spaces which could raise property values.
I have nothing against the homeless or people who live in public housing, but these kinds of program support do not belong in an economic stimulus package and taxpayer money should not be spent on these kinds of programs during an economic crisis. That's reality and that's economics.
"Five trillion dollars in debt was incurred as a result of Bush's tax cuts and his war"
Huh?
Congressional Budget Office projected the deficit for the 2008 fiscal year at $357 billion, 2009 deficit to be $342 billion. This before TARP, which Bush let slide because he didn't want to slow Obama's transition down. It does not however add up to five trillion - liberals need to stop counting with their imaginations.
Joe Klein:
1. Do the Google and lexis searches. You will see Bush got trashed for partisanship. Trying to argue otherwise is disingenuous.
2. marcus is being facetious. He is an Obama supporter.
3. My last response got eaten, but here's the short version:
the WaPO is decidedly liberal: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/07/AR2008110702895.html.
Their own omnbudsman lays this out better than I could.I can counter with Meyerson, or Rodriguez, or anyone else on their staff. Their coverage is heavily liberal.
Slate has Saletan ---who loves abortion so much he might be doing them while he is writing---and Dahlia Lathwick--who hasn't met a Laurence Tribe-approved judicial opinion she doesn't love.
Slate's writers voted Kerry over Bush in 2004, and overwhelmingly for Obama in 2008.
Kaus is the token conservative there. Trying to argue Slate overall is conservative or center is ludicrous.
Trying to argue the NY times---which gave a *discount* to Moveon.org for their General Betray-us ad, tried to deny it, got caught, and have consistently refused attempts by conservatives to write response Op-eds (see William Ayers)---or the WaPo are right or center-based is utterly counterfactual.
Joe Klein, you may want to believe that your Glen Greenwald-inspired extremeism is truly left wing, but you're a fringe.
And, once again, Bush got attacked constantly for being partisan. Google/Lexis confirms this.
Armando, but that's where the ponies are!
Request for future column (or at least a clarification):
Could you write a bit more about why you're underwhelmed by Republican focus on tax rates and EFCA. Do you not think they're important issues for economic growth -- i.e. that tax rates and unionization are both low enough now that proposed increases will not slow growth significantly -- or simply that EVERYTHING is trivial right now except fixing the banking system and thus all serious people should be focusing on that, to the exclusion of all else, until banking is on the path to normal?
Okay people, return to talking past one another.
Megan:
I'm having serious buyer's remorse.
You didn't elect Obama and your support wasn't the deciding factor. Don't sweat it. Sheesh.
Believe me, I understand what you're saying but I really just wanted to point that out.
Beyond a smaller or different type of stimulus, McCain wouldn't have made any difference. The damage was done already.
And while I'm making this point, let's just say it:
There is no solution to this crisis. It's like trying to un-burn skin. The limit of what any one "expert"...like Greithner, Paulson or Bernanke...has in terms of knowledge and expertise to craft a solution is extremely inadequate to the point of being embarrassing....always has been, always will be. Well, it's not really
"embarrassing" from my POV. But considering their delusional expectations of themselves...it kind of is.
The best geologist can only say that the meteor that hit Gulf of Mexico happened "around 65 million years ago". Luckily for them, the inability to nail down the exact year to within 3-4 years (let alone 500,000 years) isn't of any consequence to our lives. It's an innocuous mystery.
I liken what economists are trying to do most of the time...this crisis being no exception...to the task of precisely nailing down the meteor hit to within a decade....not to mention ascertaining precise data about the circumstances of the time.
If people saw the task as indeed being that daunting in terms of difficulty (and it is), they'd severely lower their expectations and these economists would be much more humble and self-restrained.
And to tell you the truth, we'll figure out the exact year of the meteor strike before we ever master these economic enigmas...IOW, never. But I'll give the geologists a much better chance of succeeding anyway. Pretty grim.
richtfan:
"He told you he was going to do all of these things, and now you're acting like it's all new. Incredible."
---Best 2 sentence summation of conservative sentiment. Of course, Megan was on here a short time ago trying to claim that Obama would govern as a centrist and that his first few days in office proved that all his promises were bunk. Which is a bit scary, considering Megan was counting on all of Obama's past actions and promises to have been lies and falsehoods in order to get him elected.
Face it, Megan: you fooled no one but yourself. Obama is only to get worse from here.
I disagree, I think there are a lot of Megans out there who saw "beyond" Obama's policies and chose to only hear half of what he said in his speeches. Its worth remembering that one of Obama's strengths is the ability to give a speech where he appears to be supporting numerous contradictory things in order to appeal to almost everyone. He talks about personal responsibility in the same speech he talks about massive bailouts for the irresponsible. Everyone can hear what they want to hear. That's political genius, but a bad template for governing.
And before I go let's not forget how shabby Obama has treated our old dear friend England.
For tossing the Churchill bust out of the oval office ( Obama the Kenyan still pissed about the Mau Mau uprising) Not holding a joint presser as has been the routine since Roosevelt and every American President since, to the crappy 25 DVD set gift he gave PM Brown. Obama is a P.O.S., wrap your arms around that.
I cannot understand buyers remorse for Obama...everyone was warned, no one listened. I would love to hear some of Gov. Palin's speaches replayed, Palin nailed Obama right out of the gate. The media went to such extremes to destroy McCain/Palin, and they won out and now we have 4 years of hell to live through watching this administration bring the USA to it's knees. Obama without his teleprompter is an embarrassment...his treatment of Prime Minister Brown says it all. Even sleeveless, these two have NO CLASS. DVD's as a gift...God helps us. I feel like we are watching a grade B Hollywood movie, and you are not allowed to get up and leave.
The funny part is Anon, I never thought he was a good speaker.
Note: I never thought he was a bad speaker, either.
I just thought his speeches were the typical political hackery: vague, uplifting at parts, degrading at parts, and utterly meaningless. Nor did I think his voice or diction or method of delivery were any different from anyone elses.
What I think people mistook was the fact that, unlike practically every other liberal black politician, he didn't sound like minister charlatan (a la Al Sharpton). So people thought they had the liberal black alternative to the hucksterism of conventional black liberal politics.
But hey, this is a matter of taste. And I actually listened to all the words he said, not just the ones I wanted to----Megan.
Bush was also considered a good speaker by those whose message he agreed with. the media loved to highlight his gaffes, which came mostly from moments he answered questions or was off message. My feeling is they'll never do that for NotMyPresident, even though conservative websites are having a ball ripping apart his off-teleprompter remarks.
I'm still mystified as to Obama's choices on Great Britain, I have to agree, the president of the United States giving another leader a DVD set that somebody probably got from Target is tacky, tacky, tacky.
Because he's unqualified for the job.
I'll grant you he's no JFK and no FDR in terms of speech giving...but by modern standards he is a good speaker. When I listen to him speech, it makes me hopeful, everything sounds good, it is so easy to hear the parts you agree with and tell yourself the rest is 'for show'.
But, then, whenever I sit down and think about what he has said, how it would work implementation wise, or god forbid, I ever went to his web site to read his plan, then I could see it was all meaningless. Unlike Bill Clinton who could when asked, probably have given you a blow by blow description of how he envisioned every item in every plan to work and cite back up for his viewpoint, Obama has nothing beyond the top line talking points.
Everyone who voted for him thought that behind the talking points there was a towering intellect and resevoir of good judgement and management skills. So far, not so much.
The banks are NOT taking the stimulus money!! It's NOT the banks in trouble... Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac along with Barney Fife I mean Frank are the problem.
Give me a freakin' break.
The hard left was opening wishing Bush to be shot or worse, and now they get their delicate panties in wrap when somebody says No, I'd like to see the guy dedicated to the proposition that it should be the UNITED SOCIALIST states of the GLOBAL COMMUNITY fall flat on his radical face.
Well, screw you. I won't hope for any harm to come to BHO, I'll just hope he keeps on lighting up.
Hope and Change my butt .. Everytime I see a bunch of idiots cheering on his inane vaccuities, I see the same goofy light in their eyes I saw in grainy old fills of Nuremberg in the 1930's.
Wow...
I was just reflecting on the 20% of Conservatives who backed Obama, and how that if it had been 10% then Obama would have lost (~10% of Liberals voted McCain).
Megan, I exhale slowly when I say you represent the exact reason why Obama won. You are a victim of marketing. You were like a pre-teen girl at a Jonas Brothers Concert (South Park, anyone?). You felt the Chris Matthews tingle. With that, your attachment to the entire field of classical economics exited through your left ear.
You got rooked is what happened. You took your anger towards the opposite side of the Conservative base (namely the Social Conservatives) and used that as a reason to vote Obama. Megan, you do realize that McCain is a fiscal conservative, not a social conservative. Actually, I think that tingled out your left ear too..
Social conservatives had a better rationale for voting Obama than fiscal conservatives. At least Obama went to church! He is a family guy. The abortion thing was a problem, but we all know McCain gets a bit wobbly there too.
Megan, when you define yourself as a fiscal conservative, does that just mean you favor lower deficits? Does it matter where the money comes from and what it pays for? Does heeding economic incentives enter in anywhere? It should. I think you see the light suddenly.
I am just really having a hard time computing how someone so smart could read say...
Obama's energy plan for example, which insanely called for a 25% reduction in electricity use (IT HAS NEVER GONE DOWN. EVER!) while at the same time promising to put 3 million plug in ELECTRIC CARS on the road. Turns out he was talking about golf carts, and a few thousand, not million.
If you read something so incredibly asinine and moronic, and then tell yourself "Hey this guy is onto something" YOU HAVE GOT TO BE CRAZY! CRAZY!
That is like one of 50 things that were totally absurd on his web site...and you thought..."Hey here is a guy who will at least balance the budget." Seriously? Honestly?
Whew. Megan. I am a fiscal Conservative. I like gay people, but they are bit too pushy these days. I generally don't like abortion, but I am not about to get preachy with teenage pregnant girls. I can let most of that stuff slide. I sympathize with the right, but I just can't get in a tizzy over that stuff.
HOWEVER, running the economy in a way that would make Argentina blush...THAT IS WHAT I CARE ABOUT.
I like you, I will still read you. But I am bitter that supposed "fiscal conservative" sugar-coaters like yourself, Brooks, Frum, Buckley, et al just hedged the whole way through. You did not want to miss out on the "transcendent" candidate. You voted for a game show host. You voted for a darker-skinned Ron Burgundy. Nice guy, empty suit. You voted for a lawyer pretending to understand economics. They think value gets created by suing people...come on!
You made it real easy for Obama to pick up that critical extra 10% of Conservatives.
Forgiveness will take awhile. A one-term Obama will go a long way in helping. It will save our kids about $5 Trillion dollars plus interest.
Whaddya say we make that happen, eh? I am not sure he needs much help.
It appears he believed his own BS, just like you. It is redemption time. I do like where your head is. Keep it up...redemption time.
Anon, like I said, maybe its just my taste. He's not a bad speaker, like I said, just middle of the road. I really do think his race had something to do with how people perceived his speaking abilities and his speeches. We're so used to hearing black pols sound like preacher-hucksters that his not sounding like one automatically made him a good speaker in many minds.
"Everyone who voted for him thought that behind the talking points there was a towering intellect and resevoir of good judgement and management skills. So far, not so much."
---exactly.
I just had a humorous moment, where I imagined Obama giving his extensive questionaire and job interview to himself before his run:
"So, you want to be president, eh? What's your current job?"
"Senator."
"How long?"
"2 years. Almost."
"Not even a full term. Ok, what notable legislation have you run?"
"...."
"Ok, um, what positions have you strongly come out for, if any?"
"....wait, I'm really hard left on abortion. 100% NARAL rating."
"So you're pretty extreme on that. k, who did you beat to get elected to the Senate?"
"Some guy from out of state who's never won anything."
"Huh?"
"Well, see, there was an incumbent Republican, but conveniently he got caught in a sex scandal, so he dropped out. So they Repubs basically recruited Alan Keyes to run at the last minute."
"So you basically won by default?"
"Kind of."
"Ok, so you were in the House of Representatives before that? Somewhere in Washington?"
"Nope."
"Ok, then you must've been governor or something high up before that."
"Nope. State Senator."
"From Hawaii, right? That's where this application says you're from."
"nope. Chicago."
"K. So you careptbagged So what legislation did you spearhead there?"
"...I really voted hard for abortion; babies are punishment But most of the time, I was just present."
"K, what did you do before then?"
"Community organizer."
"What the hell is that?"
"Ummm, you know...organize communities. For left-wing causes. I'm very left wing, and into registering people for elections that shouldn't be. Gotta make sure the lefties win, BAMN."
"Yeah, I see you signed off on being in favor of a lot of hard left things during your community organizing days."
"Yeah, but we can just blame those applications on my staff doing them for me. Mistakes, lol."
"So either people will believe you're an extremist leftwinger, or we argue, as you're now claiming, that you authorized people to pretend to be you, sign your name, and falsify your political views just to get you a job? That you had people commit fraud for you?"
"Does that sound bad?"
"Moving on. Um, I see you went to Harvard Law."
"Yep. Affirmative action, baby."
"But you must've done well. You were president of the Law review."
"Not really. a white guy was supposed to be there, as he had better grades, but the Black Students Union protested that grades were racist. So I took his spot."
"So you took a job you weren't qualified for from someone who deserved it?"
"yep."
"K. Law Review editors write articles or notes. What was yours?"
"Write a note? Are you crazy? That's too much work. I got what I came for: the position. I left work to the little people."
"So you didn't add anything academic to a job you stole?"
"Hey, man, I was fighting off a coke habit. And I was busy making friends."
"Friends?"
"Yeah. I chose my friends based on their politics. Cool guys like Billy Ayers, Bernie Dohrn, Jerry Wright..."
"Wait. You chose friends based on their political beliefs, not on who they were?"
"So?"
"And you chose two murdering terrorists who proclaim happiness whenever Americans are killed? And a racist conspiracy-theory laden preacher?"
"You make it sound so bad."
"Sigh. Anything else I should know about you?"
"My wife hates America."
"NEXT!"
"Beyond a smaller or different type of stimulus, McCain wouldn't have made any difference. The damage was done already. "
Markets look forward, and Obama has proposed making this year's deficit larger than all of Bush's put together, as well as raising taxes during (hopefully) a recovery. The inability of the treasury to string a sentence together, while at the same time allowing a dimwit like Nancy Pelosi to run the recovery program is scaring the bejesus out of the markets. All of this together has made the government look like it doesn't know what its doing currently, and that its policies will be decidedly anti-business going forward. That is a lethal combination. The markets abhor uncertainty, and this administration reeks of it. They could decide to do ANYTHING tomorrow. How do you do business in that kind of atmosphere. They could decide to saddle business with a massive healthcare burden, crush business with taxation, ANYTHING. This is not any kind of atmosphere to make a stand in.
The single simplest thing the government should have done would be to take the trillion plus we've poured into the sand so far and have bought up all the 'toxic debt' necessary. Then bulldoze the houses built on them and sold the properties back to states for pennies on the dollar. That would have instantly saved the banking system instead of playing chicken with disaster that will end up costing far more and putting far more people into bankruptcy.
Megan, Chickens come home to roost.
Hope you like the ripped apart country for the remained of NotMyPresident's time in office.
Megan -
Any economist who thinks EFCA is a good idea is crazy. It will be a huge job killer.
I really want to see the first Wal-Mart to unionize. They will figure out a way to run that store with a single person. You friggin wait.
It will be RFID everywhere with automated checkouts. If it is in your cart, you pay for it. The will have robots restocking the shelves in...2 years.
Now, some of that will happen anyway. EFCA will make it happen sooner.
...guess what. All those designers who write the software, design the systems, do the analytics...they will get rich.
All the poor schlep teenage dropouts who thought signing that card was a good idea will be in the weatherizing corp of disconnected youth.
You want to see 500,000 retail jobs disappear in a flash?
You wait until the day EFCA passes. Wal-Mart will pre-emptively fire every single person they think would sign that card.
Then they will put up job postings in churches and gun clubs. The will try to hire only the people they think are anti-union.
They will probably dump a big percentage of part-timers if it means they will vote for stuff like health benefits.
Anyone who is untrained and has no experience? GONE.
It would almost be worth seeing if I did not care about people so much.
It will kill 500,000 service and retail jobs in a month...you wait.
Before the bill takes effect, it will be a new war in the store. Employees vs. Management. Store managers will pay attention to what you say, the music you listen to and they will want to know if your daddy or momma is in a union. You better hope they are not. If they are...well, it is a tough economy these days. So sad to see you go.
Mark Bruehner,
In response to my quote, you gave the key sentence of truth:
The markets abhor uncertainty, and this administration reeks of it.
Yes. I agree 100%. However, I disagree that McCain would have been much different in that respect. The markets are really teetering in uncertainty because of the stimulus...IMHO.
What has the markets teetering in uncertainty is the financial mess...which the stimulus is not meant to cure in any way.
I'll go to the extreme:
I think markets would respond better to certainty of bad times and knowable information that can react to than to uncertainty clouding the horizon and the needed clarity to make decisions...regardless of how good or how that clarity may be. Better to know it will be bad and go with it than oscillate and hesitate depending on the Treasury's or Fed's next move.
This started with Paulson and I see little reason to believe it would any different under McCain. This financial matter is not about being conservative or liberal...it's about having faith in the ability to tackle it and fix it or not having it and choosing a different means to just deal with it.
Both party's leaderships on the former side of that paradigm.
Obama COULD have been hope and change. He could have fought the omnibus bill...
Instead he signed it behind closed doors..
Business as usual.
correction:
The markets are NOT really teetering in uncertainty because of the stimulus...IMHO.
sorry
And Megan McArdle is ... who? An English major who's telling us exactly how the economy will turn out? Yikes!!!
Megan. Baby.
We told you once.
We told you twice.
We told you loud.
We told you nice.
Hope and Change
Thats what he said
But Obams'a in
Way over his head.
Barrack is not about to let an good crisis go to waste! Everyone should realize, Comrade Obama has an very feasible plan to make the Democrats the ruling majority and the USA an one party Nation! How? By making more & more Americans the wards of the State. The great society programs of the Democrats has made the Black race wards of the State while destroyed most of them as productive citizens of this Nation. Since the Social Engineering of the Democrats great Society there is no Category where blacks have improved! Aid to dependent children alone has turned the women into breed mares and the men into roaming studs & their spawn grow up on the streets and jails!
Now, for many blacks, if not most of them, the American dream consists of the next drug fix or their Welfare check, but they are the most consistent Democrat voters. They do not realize the programs & welfare has destroyed any & all initiative & chance for the American dream but has gently lead them into the ghetto & economic welfare bondage to the Democrat party!
Barrack and the Democrats already have funding for increased Welfare dependency. In addition to plans to give citizenship to the invading millions of Criminals and uneducated peons! This alone with chain immigration and their breeding rate assures that they add 100,s of millions of new welfare voters for the Democrat party! Welfare voters will then far outnumber productive citizens & effectively change this Nation into an Third World Socialist Dictatorship controlled by the Democrat party!
He is NOT a good speaker. To be a good speaker you have to actually say things that have real meaning, and you can't contradict yourself.
He is simply the opiate of the BDS masses. When Marcus listened to the dude, he was always really, really high. So even if the words didn't make sense, he looked cool, and used to "smoke a little pot and do a little blow".
He gives them "tingles", even though he adds 2+2=234.j. He said on the campaign trail that he would reduce spending while seconds later talk about increasing it. He would say he wasn't going to tax people making over 250k and then talk about the possibility of a windfall profits tax, as if only people who make 250k a year or more own stock. (Hint for the Leftarded, public employee union retirement funds often own oil company stock, even though the "hard working" union employee often makes less than 250k.)So in the same breath he would say he wasn't going to raise taxes upon a group of people and then immediately talk about a tax that would fall upon those very same people! What a speaker?
The list goes on and on. The ONLY WAY Obambi is a good speaker is if you don't actually listen to his words. Apparently that is over half the country.
Obama outspent McCain tremendously. At least 3 to 1. McCain was supposed to be an expert on campaign finance.
Republican McCain could not get the votes or the money of Wall Street for his candidacy.
About half of Obama's campaign money was given in amounts smaller than $200, and is, in effect, anonymous. I get this from eyeballing data at the opensecrets.org website.
I don't think Wall Street has turned Communist. Goldman Sachs bundled up a lot of cash, for example, and they ain't commies, neither.
I suppose the anonymous monies could have been from rich overseas donors, commies or otherwise, using computers to repeatedly make small donations.
See also this National Journal article.
I don't think I have ever seen a more sorry and sore bunch of losers in my life than these arch-conservative, no-account, no-idea attack-dog hacks who got thumped in November, and are well on their way to getting thumped again in 2010 and 2012.
Attack attack attack. Hate mongering, fear mongering. That's all they've got, and it didn't work for the last election, but....it's all they've got, so....rinse....repeat.
Keep it up, dittoheads. Keep attacking a popular, likable, even-tempered President and see where it gets you. Keep alienating the center. See how well McCain did when he moved to the right? Sorry, Joe the Plumber won't save your bankrupt ideology.
See you in 30 years after you rebuild the GOP out of toilet paper and matchsticks.
Huh?
Americans don't pay too much attention to details, that's how George W. Bush got to be a two term president. Americans thought he was cooler than Gore, who was too much of a nerd, too smart.
Now, America has elected Obama because he was cooler than the old coot McCain who can't use the internet. Also, Obama promised everything to everyone. The rich liberals who voted for him don't care because they know their accountants will find a way around it, and it appears that Democrats have a tendency not to bother paying taxes to begin with.
We deserve Obama just as much as we deserved Bush. When you elect people who tell you obvious lies or make promises that are obviously impossible to keep, then don't be surprised when turn out to be incompetant.
Ah, Hannity's Mistress, you are the reason why Republicans will come back: a smug liberal to blind to the moron he's following to realize what a mistake you've made. And claiming that it was "hope" and "change" and not a bad economy that won you the election.
lol. Gotta love the commies.
"popular, likable, even-tempered President "
--that;s what scum like you Hannity's Mistress did for 8 years. Dragging him down with lies, slogans, and half-truths, not to mention a smear compaign to end the ages.
the difference now is we're just going to use the truth. This socialist scumbag can't hide that forever.
"So Obama's had 5 months to plan for and address this issue. And failed at it."
He has? The financial instituions have crumbled? The world has stopped turning? Your life is ANY different since Jan. 21?
McArdle, who has a far thinner resume than our president or any of his staff, gets credit for putting it on the line - however, KobayashiMaru shows her to be a chump and an amateur - and I have a feeling that Obama, who was heavily criticized by right and left during the election, and basically ignored both, will win this one as well. He has little reason to put out overly optimistic forecasts unless he believes them to be accurate, and, as Kobayash clearly demonstrated, they're pretty mainstream. I bet McArdle will eat these words...
Warpublican Review, being an idiot:
"He has?"
--Where is stock market? Where is the unemployment rate? YES HE HAS.
"Your life is ANY different since Jan. 21?"
--considering the # of people I know who have been laid off since NotMyPresident took office, yes.
PWNED.
" Obama, who was heavily criticized by right and left during the election, and basically ignored both, will win this one as well."
---lmao rofl. Only people to the left of Stalin crticized NotMyPresident on "the left."
"He has little reason to put out overly optimistic forecasts unless he believes them to be accurate"
---Or unless that is the only way he thinks he can get anyone to let him pass off his social engineering programs as a "stimulus" package.
Warpublican Review, do not pass go, do not collect $200. Go directly to the Berkeley Admissions Office for your Work-Study job, hippie.
Obama= EPIC FAIL.
Warpublican's best line:
"I have a feeling that Obama....will win this one as well."
--lmao rofl. Ah, liberals: it doesn't matter what the facts are, its how NotMyPresident makes them "feel."
Can you feel the HOPE? Can you feel the CHANGE? Can you feel the unemployment/falling stock market?
Obama= EPIC FAIL.
Anon - 3/12 12:46 pm
"That isn't to say McCain would have been any better, he might have been worse, but in a different way."
I agree with the other parts of your post, but this? I don't agree. McCain would have worked with both parties to craft a reasonable plan forward for the nation and this economy that impacts on all corners of the globe. What's Obama's plan - I think, I hope, I wish. Works in a campaign. But now he's hit reality. I hope for everyone's sake, some of it works. I hope moreso that the Ds will listen to the good people of this country and reign themselves in from their insane agenda that is already taking big chunks out of our well being and threatening to destroy the free markets that generally work well.
Do we need government? Sure - for various and essential functions. Do we need free markets? Absolutely. What happened on the way to market for Obamamaniacs? Did they forget that price is equal to the intersection of supply and demand? Do they care? Wow...
Have we ever seen such a willing suspension of reality (economics 101) from a larger group of people? People, forget about your party, educate yourselves to the basic facts and conditions of economics.
megan, sounds like you've been hanging around too much with the brain dead pundits who behave way too much like spoiled children and whine "why isn't it fixed yet' like it's an hour long television program where everything is resolved in an hour.
It took decades to create this collapse so totally. It's going to take a heck of alot longer then a damn month to fix it.
Especially when you consider all the entanglements and complicated programs they used to totally destroy the banks and our economy.
So complicated that even degreed economists cannot figure some of them out.
This is going to take time and you, of instant gratification mindset, need to chill out and learn to think in reality terms.
This is going to take some time. And while all those in your field may think it's cute to thrown unreasonable tantrums because it's not fixed with the snap of a finger and presto, everything is all better, it's unrealistic.
No human being can fix this complicated and momentous economic disaster in a month or even two.
I wish you guys would wise up and quit being unreasonable and start to read more about it and listen to real economists about it rather then to each other in the bubble world.
lmao rofl at vwcat:
"behave way too much like spoiled children and whine "why isn't it fixed yet' like it's an hour long television program where everything is resolved in an hour."
---considering Obama promised to solve every problem on earth and lower the levels of the seas, and now NotMyPresident is flailing about and can't even get a cabinet assembled, a little complaining is justified.
oh wait, these are leftists. Do not question The Messiah!
"It took decades to create this collapse so totally.... IEspecially when you consider all the entanglements and complicated programs they used to totally destroy the banks and our economy."
---They being those conspiracy minded Repbulcians, those evil people. They did this to us!
FYI, moron: It took a few years to do this, not "decades", but thanks for playing.
"This is going to take time and you, of instant gratification mindset, need to chill out and learn to think in reality terms."
---an obama fan...demanding realism...lmao.
"No human being can fix this complicated and momentous economic disaster in a month or even two."
---but he is the messiah!
lol I love the obamaphiles. All of sudden any excuse will do. Try to shove social engineering in instead of fixing the economy, its "Oh, you're being unrealistic."
Obama= EPIC FAIL.
McCain had and has had his chance to put forth a comprehensive economic option, and he hasn't. The Paulsen plan was crap and everyone knew it, including John McCain and Obama. While I think that McCain got screwed by Obama and the press in terms of the economy--he was serious and honest about stopping the campaign to craft a good solution--that doesn't necessarily mean his solution would have been better.
He might have done a better job, or he might have listened to the bankers and securities and done at least as bad a job.
I didn't like his plan to help irresponsible homeowners much more than Obamas plan.
Also, consider the fact that if McCain was president and the market had dropped over 20% since he took office the media would be screaming about it every day, all day. He would never have been given any space to begin governing. Add in the daily manufactured Palin-gate stories and it would have been nearly impossible for a McCain administration to succeed at anything.
Obama believes in top down central planning, like so many before him, he thinks that "he" can make it work where everyone else in history has failed. The social engineers never take into account how/who/why wealth is created, they always take for granted that the wealth will always be created and always there for the taking. They're always perplexed and confused when their top down economic policies and plans result in less production and growth instead of more.
We are living in Atlas Shrugged at super slo motion speed. The Democrats think they have a mandate and they are going to go as hard and as fast as they possibly can.
jesus fucking christ....
He's been in office 52 days, and you're pissed that he has not fixed a situation that has been 10 years in the making?
Get a life.
I am starting to think all blogs should be renamed, "More Useless Advice From My Justly-Ignored Perspective." It would certainly be accurate, and perhaps it would help filter out the noise.
I thought this post was amazing.
I know exactly how you feel; what Obama has done is betray his promise of common sense, and that kills me inside.
Promised federal spending since Bush left office is about $5 Trillion. Assume no more spending will happen, ie, no second stimulus, $5 trillion is about $111,000 for every family of four in the country. Will it (can it) ever be paid no matter how much stimulus acutally occurs? No.
I hope nobody is so naive to think the stimulus will benefit every family the equivalent of $111K ie, break even, much less more than that.
Well Megan...you can now classify yourself as a
"Useful Idiot!"....my personal opinion, of course.
Bush was a RINO from the beginning...many said so at the time of his election...however, he kept us safe for the last 7yrs.....will Obamaism do the same? Hard to tell....right now they look like 6th graders in a poorly run school....
Your misery at losing your vote might well be the leading symptoms of your misery of losing your personal wealth & freedom's....as many spoke before the election...
Too bad you didn't listen....maybe you were too smart....just like liberals claim to be...
Fools are still Fools!!!!
Seven whole weeks to have "buyers remorse." How sad.
Follow the Messiah into stage 8 like lemming into the sea!
About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:
‘A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.’
‘A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.’
‘From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.’
‘The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years’. ‘During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:
1. From bondage to spiritual faith;
2. From spiritual faith to great courage;
3. From courage to liberty;
4. From liberty to abundance;
5. From abundance to complacency;
6. From complacency to apathy;
7. From apathy to dependence;
8. From dependence back into bondage’
Barrack is not about to let an good crisis go to waste! Everyone should realize, Comrade Obama has an very feasible plan to make the Democrats the ruling majority and the USA an one party Nation! How? By making more & more Americans the wards of the State. The great society programs of the Democrats has made the Black race wards of the State while destroyed most of them as productive citizens of this Nation. Since the Social Engineering of the Democrats great Society there is no Category where blacks have improved! Aid to dependent children alone has turned the women into breed mares and the men into roaming studs & their spawn grow up on the streets and jails!
Now, for many blacks, if not most of them, the American dream consists of the next drug fix or their Welfare check, but they are the most consistent Democrat voters. They do not realize the programs & welfare has destroyed any & all initiative & chance for the American dream but has gently lead them into the ghetto & economic welfare bondage to the Democrat party!
Barrack and the Democrats already have funding for increased Welfare dependency. In addition to plans to give citizenship to the invading millions of Criminals and uneducated peons! This alone with chain immigration and their breeding rate assures that they add 100,s of millions of new welfare voters for the Democrat party! Welfare voters will then far outnumber productive citizens & effectively change this Nation into an Third World Socialist Dictatorship controlled by the Democrat party!
Hey,
You guys who voted for Obama wanted *change*.
That's what you got!
Meantime, with millions of Americans without jobs no Liberal Democrat will address the 500 pound gorilla in the room, millions of invading Illegal Aliens taking millions of jobs that should be American jobs and 100,s billions of dollars in social services that should be for American citizens!
One cannot be political correct and admit that Illegal Aliens are an large part of the problems in this Nation.
Their negative impact extends to every area from Sub-par loans, Lower standard of living, Crime, Bankrupted hospitals, Failing schools, Property Taxes, Insurance costs, Environment, Culture, Welfare costs, Welfare fraud, SS fraud, Voter fraud, Disrespect for laws, our Constitution against invasion and even Balance of payments occurring from oil and other imports to support the 20 to 30 million illegal aliens in this country!
One has to only look at Calif. which is basically mostly an Spanish speaking, Bankrupt state that cannot afford to provide Welfare, Schooling, Medical, Prison cells etc. for millions of MS-13 Gang bangers, Drug dealers, Rapist and other assorted Criminals and uneducated, fast breeding, third world rejects from Mexico!
In a very few years it will be impossible to see where Mexico ends and Calif. begins as both will be an third world cesspool!
Failure to secure our borders and reward the Invading horde for their invasion and their relatives in an never ending chain with American Citizenship is nothing less than committing National Suicide & will assure our future is an over populated Spanish speaking third world Nation that is an Cesspool of Corruption, Crime, Poverty and Misery modeled on Mexico!
"Attack attack attack. Hate mongering, fear mongering. That's all they've got, and it didn't work for the last election, but....it's all they've got, so....rinse....repeat."
Where the hell were you for the past 8 years? That sounds like your Soros, Kos fueled 527's.
Popular? What the hell kind of criteria is that? Are we electing a president or prom king?
Six weeks and the real power behind Obama-the Buffet's, the Cramer's and Groves are all having buyer's remorse.
You might call yourself Hannity's mistress, but you're dreaming. Nobody could put up with you on an ongoing basis, you're too bilious and smug.
"I would love to find a sucker investor who is willing to take the other end of a bet that both growth and revenue will fall short of the administration's predictions."
OK, you found one. I'll take the growth and revenue parlay at 3:2 for $50k.
Do you have the cajones to put your money where your mouth is?
For the rest of the know-nothing "just say no" carpers, i'll cover at 2:1 Megan doesn't show the courage of her lead paragraph hyperbole.
I expect nothing to come of it. "Go Galt" or Joan Galt, it is all just so much babble.
Hat tip to KobayashiMaru.
Your writing shows you to be much more of a 'rugged individualist contributor' than the wannabees.
Basic Facts, I have to admit, I feel a little bad for you (sorry for the condescension but I think you got it coming at this point). Its going to be a long 8 years. And I have to agree with a few of the other posters, if the Republicans don't become the party of "Here is our idea for how to fix this mess", they are going to be out of the decision making roles for a LONG time. The Dems doing it 6 and 4 years ago was with problems much less impactful than this economic meltdown.
Here is my question for you. How would YOU fix this situation? Let me guess, cutting taxes, right? Soo, what do you think that will do to the deficit? And which progams are you going to cut?
Trickle down economics a la Reagan are great for folks making more than 100k but it sucks for everyone else in the country. I would LOVE to pay lower taxes. I could retire way earlier. I would not spend any more money than I do today. Folks who make a good income generally get that in order to continue or improve their lifestyle, they have to spend less than they make...
Check the figures. A higher percentage of US workers did better in the 90's under Clinton than did under Reagan and both presided over length periods of US economic expansion. And PS, the tax rates on the upper bracket folks were higher in the 90's. Oh, by the way, the tax rates are lower than they have been at any time in US history and look where it got us. Again, you should really look this up and see what the upper brackets were paying in say 1920...
Secondarily, this isn't just as US issue, its a global one. Cutting taxes "might" help but a safer option is to put people to work. The New Deal didn't solve the Great Depression but at least it gave people something to do. Having them sit on their ass at home is how you end up with a revolution and trust me, that is good for no one... Besides, there is plenty of stuff to do like repairing bridges (Minnesota guy here), putting more people through science and technology focused training programs, and building our alternative energy capabilities and infrastructure.
One final thing. Whats with the "baby killer" comment? You are probably the same dude who is for the death penalty AND wanted to save Terry Schiavo. So which way is it, we want to save everyone OR just the people you deem worthy? At least the "Freedom of Choice" argument is intellectually honest.
I think McCain is a very earnest politician who legitimately means to do well with his influence. I have always been a fan and remain one today. Didn't vote for him but see his work via the Senate Armed Services Committee first hand and he is legit.
That said, Obama was and probably always is the smartest kid in the room. The guy got a JD from Harvard in 3 years, taught and practices law, and out manuveured one of the most skilled politicians on the Democratic side of our generation. The fact you don't like Hillary don't make it not true. The pace of his cabinet approvals matches prior administrations and the level of diversity is similar (slightly moreso but not dramatically) than that of President Bush. Get over it man, the guy is sharp and we will be better off in the long run with the guy who is actually curious about what is going on then some dolt who just says "well, I'll just pray on it".
"megan, sounds like you've been hanging around too much with the brain dead pundits who behave way too much like spoiled children and whine "why isn't it fixed yet' like it's an hour long television program where everything is resolved in an hour."
And this is coming from libertarians and Repubs who believe in the "invisible hand". Now they want government to wave a magic wand for an immediate fix. The government can't fix the crisis, they can simply mitigate the damage.
HR Guy17:
"That said, Obama was and probably always is the smartest kid in the room. The guy got a JD from Harvard in 3 years, taught and practices law, and out manuveured one of the most skilled politicians on the Democratic side of our generation."
Oh, that's rich. And the guy didn't publish any articles in the Harvard Law review, authored no significant legislation and won't reveal anything about his college transcripts. His claim to experience, saavy and smarts - a permanent campaign and his, uh, uh, uh, rhetorical skills...
"[Under Bush] Five trillion dollars in debt was incurred as a result of Bush's tax cuts and his war - neither offset by spending cuts - neither with any perceivable benefit to the American economy."
Well, NYC didn't get nuked.
Let's see if we can say the same thing by the end of Obama's presidency.
RG:
"And this is coming from libertarians and Repubs who believe in the "invisible hand". Now they want government to wave a magic wand for an immediate fix. The government can't fix the crisis, they can simply mitigate the damage."
You don't get it, do you? Rs and other critics of O - including now many Ds - are not saying they want government to 'fix the crisis.' That is what Ds and liberals have been claiming from government for 80+ years (lets start with John Maynard Keynes or so). Rs and Ls are saying, if I might paraphrase, 'Well, Ds have had control of 67% of the US government now for 2.5 years and most of the last 60 years, and now the POTUS, why, if what they're saying is true about government being able to mitigate and fix HASN'T IT HAPPENED YET?' OK, do I need to speall out the rhetorical answer to that for you from a conservative perspective - or do you finally get where this line of critique is coming from??
HR Guy17:
"then some dolt who just says "well, I'll just pray on it".
Some dolt who had higher test scores than John Kerry, et al. Come on. Get your facts straight. In any case, even people who have not done that well in school, have succeeded in the lab of life - or are you consigning all who have average educational results to some dolt junk heap. You're SO original about your thinking (ad hominem attacks - how does it feel?) - but I must say, your bias seeps through, so-o easily. Perhaps you're a legend in your own mind, a legend before your time, or just a dolt? For your own sake, I hope you're (still) curious!
"Let's see if we can say the same thing by the end of Obama's presidency."
If it hasn't been, should we consider Obama's budget spending a success? What about Clinton's? Carter's? NYC wasn't nuked under them either, and it didn't even require a doubling of the debt.
"why, if what they're saying is true about government being able to mitigate and fix HASN'T IT HAPPENED YET?'"
The economy ran fine for most of those 60 years? Are you validating liberal policy? On the flip side, if the conservative answer is tax cuts, didn't the last 8 years prove they don't work (especially when you don't cut spending)? Do you see where the liberal line of critique is coming from?
It was totally about culture. Ultimately people like Megan were too interested in fitting in with their lefty friends and looking cool to worry about the truth. I would imagine among Megan's circles it took some real balls to support McCain or at the least to call out BO for what he was. Whatever it took, Megan clearly didn't have it.
I also don't think her remorse is really that sincere. It is in that she understands what BO is doing to the country. It is not in that I have no doubt, no matter how bad things get, she will support him again in 2012. I can already hear the excuses and the thumb sucking. Yes BO is bad but he has learned. He will do better in his second term without any political debts to pay to Congress or any worries about being re-elected. Besides, Megan will tell us, those Republicans are just icky. Megan and those like her forfeited their right to be taken seriously when they supported BO. In doing so they announced to the world that culture and fitting in with the elite crowd was more important to them than ideas.
I always thought he was an economic idiot.
The fact that we couldn't stand another four years of overstretch in a neoconservative foreign policy was the real mark in his favor.
Oh gosh, HR Guy17, how much insipid liberal stupidity can one man bring to the table?:
"sorry for the condescension"
---liberals? pretending they know everything and speaking to others like children? no way (/sarcasm).
"Its going to be a long 8 years."
--Don't you just love the self-assured liberal? "Of course NotMyPresident will be elected again. I can see the future! Remember when I said Bush would not be re-elected in 2004?"
"And I have to agree with a few of the other posters, if the Republicans don't become the party of "Here is our idea for how to fix this mess", they are going to be out of the decision making roles for a LONG time."
---lmao I love when college kids are suddenly political experts. Note to liberals: NotMyPresident won because the economy tanked in the fall right before the election. Case closed.
And, liberals: Republicans have offered solutions. Suspend taxes on struggling businesses. Offer a tax break to struggling but financially solvent homeowners. Allow business to grow.
Just because your head is in the sand doesn't mean they're not talking.
"The Dems doing it 6 and 4 years ago was with problems much less impactful than this economic meltdown."
---The Dems offered their own ideas then, too. You equate losing with not offering a solution. Losing is not winning a political game.
"Here is my question for you. How would YOU fix this situation? Let me guess, cutting taxes, right? Soo, what do you think that will do to the deficit? And which progams are you going to cut?"
---Ah, the classic lefty argument. "Who cares if our ideas aren't even remotely related to the economy and are crappy, you don't have one! Therefore, NotMyPresident's ideas are RIGHT!"
"Trickle down economics a la Reagan are great for folks making more than 100k but it sucks for everyone else in the country."
---LMAO. The tax cuts of the Reagan years secured the budget surplus and the boom of the 90s. It beat stagflation and improved everyone's lives. Economics 102.
"Check the figures. A higher percentage of US workers did better in the 90's under Clinton than did under Reagan and both presided over length periods of US economic expansion."
---Correction: the 90s were under a Republican congress that didn't allow Clinton to spend us into oblivion, and had an economy thriving on the cut taxes of the Reagan years. Clinton didn't fuck it up. Bully for him.
"And PS, the tax rates on the upper bracket folks were higher in the 90's."
--Not compared to the Carter years.
"Oh, by the way, the tax rates are lower than they have been at any time in US history and look where it got us."
----I love how this economic recession---based on the crooked Dem deals with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac---is somehow related to the tax cuts. Ah, Liberals: never an unrelated cause they can't blame for their problems. See: global warming.
"Again, you should really look this up and see what the upper brackets were paying in say 1920..."
---Typical liberal. "Do my research for me, my factless assertions are all I need. Taxes improve businsses. Sky is red."
"Secondarily, this isn't just as US issue, its a global one."
---So right after blaming US low taxes for the recession, you admit its not, because its going on around the world, which have high taxes.
Contradiction: liberals don't know the meaning of the word.
"Cutting taxes "might" help but a safer option is to put people to work. The New Deal didn't solve the Great Depression but at least it gave people something to do. Having them sit on their ass at home is how you end up with a revolution and trust me, that is good for no one.."
---lol. yes, 10% unemployment is as dangerous as 15-20%. Don't you love how a crisis gives every liberal an excuse to socially engineer the world?
" Besides, there is plenty of stuff to do like repairing bridges (Minnesota guy here),"
---Note to the slow: the MN bridge was poorly designed and doomed to fail. It was a government project from the start. Like other government projects that have killed people and stolen money. See: Big Dig, Boston.
and I love the vague generalities. One bridge fails, they're all failing! Sky is falling! I have no proof or numbers and can't tell you which ones, but trust me! I voted for Obama!
"putting more people through science and technology focused training programs,"
---lmao. The typical liberal lament: we don't know anythign about science! This after the US leads the world in scientific innovation. Score: logic 1, Liberals 0.
"and building our alternative energy capabilities and infrastructure."
---lol. the US government will not solve the energy problems we may have. Private industry has always invented the latest energy innovations. Merely "wishing" or "hoping" that liberalism will finally work after so many failures is idiocy. See: Soviet Russia.
"One final thing. Whats with the "baby killer" comment?"
---people who are pro-choice enable child murder or do it themselves. Pretty simple logic, actually. Oh wait, I used logic on a liberal. My mistake.
"You are probably the same dude who is for the death penalty AND wanted to save Terry Schiavo."
---And you're too stupid to see that's not a contradiction. I am pro-innocent life; I do not want to see people (like babies and Terry Schiavo) who have done nothing wrong and have not expressed a desire to die to, in fact, die. I do want to see murderers and rapists killed. But hey,. I suppose you want the opposite, which just fits in with your illogical worldview, babykiller.
"So which way is it, we want to save everyone OR just the people you deem worthy?"
---Save the innocent ones.
"At least the "Freedom of Choice" argument is intellectually honest."
---LMAO. "You can kill your baby because we will not allow any debate on when life begins, because Roe is sacrosanct." Very intellectually honest, babykiller.
"That said, Obama was and probably always is the smartest kid in the room."
---lmao. Based on what? Hope?
"The guy got a JD from Harvard in 3 years,"
---Note to retards: everyone graduates from law school in 3 years. Dumbass.
Also, in terms of Harbard: Affirmative action.
"taught and practices law,"
----lectured, which basically means he read out of a book at the class.
barely practiced law. Was a community organizer, whicch does not require a law degree.
"and out manuveured one of the most skilled politicians on the Democratic side of our generation."
---The liberal argument for Obama: why is qualified? BECAUSE HE WON! Why did he win? BECAUSE HE IS QUALIFIED!
"The pace of his cabinet approvals matches prior administrations and the level of diversity is similar (slightly moreso but not dramatically) than that of President Bush."
----Proof? And considering he claimed he was going to have a wide open, drama free administration and just appointed a TAX CHEAT TO RUN THE TAX DEPARTMENT, your defense is weak sauce.
"Get over it man, the guy is sharp and we will be better off in the long run with the guy who is actually curious about what is going on then some dolt who just says "well, I'll just pray on it"."
---lmao rofl. I love how your opinions on their personalities and the future is based on Moveon.org. Bush didn't just "pray on it" and Obama, the man who chose friends based on their marxist views, isn't intellectually curious, but stagnant; anything that doesn't agree with his world view is wrong.
America is doomed with this moron in chief. And its hilarious to watch you idiots come up with illogical and/or lame excuses to defend the idiot.
Obama= EPIC FAIL
What other than white guilt causes people to think Obama is that intelligent? Yeah, he went to Harvard, but if you are a minority or a legacy, it isn't that hard to get into Harvard. There are a lot of people who go there that are anything but brilliant. There are brilliant ones, but those people show it in ways beyond just going to Harvard. They were Rhodes Scholars and go on to clerk for Supreme Court Justices and become tenured professors with serious and significant academic writing. Obama did none of those things. He did nothing beyond get in, graduate, and manage to get himself elected to Law Review. He has never published a law review article of note. He was only an adjunct at the University of Chicago. He was never a private attorney of any note. Before law school, he by his own admission failed as a community organizer. Even at a personal level, the man can't give a three minute statement at a bill signing without a teleprompter. I see no evidence that he has anything beyond above average intelligence. What I do see evidence of, however, is that he has above average ideological committment, a very above average opinion of himself, and little or no self awareness or understanding of his limitations. That is a very dangerous combination. The German general Von Manstein said there were three types of officers,
Hard Working and Intelligent - keep them around for staff jobs
Lazy and Intelligent - keep them around because they are good as strategic thinking
Lazy and stupid - keep them around because they don't do much damage and can fill unimportant spots
Lazy and hard working - ruthlessly eliminate them from any organization because of the damage their hard work does
It it pretty obvious Obama falls into the last catagor, God help us.
Make that last catagory, stupid and hard working. Preview is my friend.
"Don't you love how a crisis gives every liberal an excuse to socially engineer the world?"
LOL. Comedic gold coming from the person who thought invading Iraq to spread democracy was the proper response to 9/11.
"The tax cuts of the Reagan years secured the budget surplus and the boom of the 90s."
Revisionist history. Reagan raised taxes multiple times, but still not enough to match spending.
http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_bartlett/bartlett200310290853.asp
"Reagan may have resisted calls for tax increases, but he ultimately supported them. In 1982 alone, he signed into law not one but two major tax increases. The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act (TEFRA) raised taxes by $37.5 billion per year and the Highway Revenue Act raised the gasoline tax by another $3.3 billion.
According to a recent Treasury Department study, TEFRA alone raised taxes by almost 1 percent of the gross domestic product, making it the largest peacetime tax increase in American history. An increase of similar magnitude today would raise more than $100 billion per year.
In 1983, Reagan signed legislation raising the Social Security tax rate. This is a tax increase that lives with us still, since it initiated automatic increases in the taxable wage base. As a consequence, those with moderately high earnings see their payroll taxes rise every single year.
In 1984, Reagan signed another big tax increase in the Deficit Reduction Act. This raised taxes by $18 billion per year or 0.4 percent of GDP. A similar-sized tax increase today would be about $44 billion.
The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 raised taxes yet again. Even the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which was designed to be revenue-neutral, contained a net tax increase in its first 2 years. And the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987 raised taxes still more."
RG, being RG:
"Comedic gold coming from the person who thought invading Iraq to spread democracy was the proper response to 9/11."
---As you would say, revisionist history. Bush didn't invade Iraq because of 9/11; he invaded because intelligence from across the globe indicated Saddam had WMDs; the because UN was letting a genocidal dictator falunt regulations; because Saddam was offering harbor to anti-US terrorists; and to promote democracy.
Its very "Michael Moore-esque" to claim that Bush somehow justified invading Iraq via 9/11. He just plain didn't.
The problem with liberals is that they think that you can "create jobs" out of thin air. You can't. Only the private sector can "create" jobs or wealth because any jobs that the government "creates" are paid for by the taxes raised on the private sector and its related profits and employees.
This is the fatal flaw in liberal Democratic policies, because they refuse to acknowledge that ALL of their policies are based on having a successful private sector that they can tax, and yet their hostility to anyone who admits to wanting to create wealth is so strong, they can't help themselves but overreach.
In our childhood this was called killing the golden goose, and this is why all central planning will eventually lead to the same quality of life they had in Soviet Russia, many plans and many speeches but no productivity or real growth. And that is exactly where we are headed because Obama is under the same delusion that he can tax the productive sector ad infinitum and it will still continue to produce at the same rate with the same profits. It won't.
I think it's rather funny (in a tragic, ironic way) that many in the media (this now includes the internet) who supported Obama are finding he's nothing like they hyped -- I mean, hoped. That's news. That he had grand ideas was no surprise, and as one who voted for neither Obama nor McCain, I am very disappointed. For all his idealism, Obama has been exposed so quickly for the rookie and the ivory-tower type he is.
Off stage, Obama's actions show how he can be pushed around by a foaming-at-the-mouth Democrat majority starved for power. He's had to back away from his cries of catastrophe. He's had to back away from getting the Census into White House hands. He's had to back off punishing the financial sector. He's (finally) gotten around to taking action on earmarks, after passing a stimulus and budget loaded with thousands of them and signing the budget appropriations behind closed doors. He's put lobbyists in cabinet posts and hires the most Machiavellian Clintonista in Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff, and allows James Carville et. al. to divert attention to Rush Limbaugh, and the DNC to raise a petition for a billboard against the talk show king. All this within 50 days of inauguration.
This isn't to say the Dems shouldn't have their day. We're all sick of the Republicans, even if you're Republican. But the Dems' leadership shouldn't have let their starved-agenda power grabs overwhelm the national and global economic crisis because it's all about the money. Without money, agenda is just hot air.
I was beginning to think I was the only person who did't vote for the lesser of two evils.
So far, Obama looks like a novice, he doesn't understand the weight the words of the U.S. president carries because he says dumb things...like saying people should cut down on junkets and then having to clarify that he supports business travel. LOL.
I don't know whether the WH tried to reign in the pork in the stimulus bill and failed or whether they didn't try or don't care. But, either way, this would have been a GOLDEN opportunity for Obama to show his leadership. A strategic, targeted stimulus bill with clear, not muddy goals would have gone a long way to quieting his detractors and to calming the markets. But, he didn't. He either wasn't capable of pulling it off or didn't realize the opportunity or agrees with it. All bad.
Similarly, instead of whining about how he inherited a bad bill and had to sign it and then mouthing more platitudes about how things would be different in the future, he could have taken a 'buck stops here stand' and demanded changes. And again, either he doesn't have the political and leadership skills to get that done, didn't realize the positive impact such action would have had or doesn't care. All bad.
The fact that the GOP is in total disarray and doesn't seem able to find even a single competetant SPOKESPERSON, let alone a strategic thinker doesn't change the fact that Obama, so far, and yes, it is very early, he has always been said to be a quick learner, so we'll see..but so far, he looks and acts like someone who is in way over his head.
I won't even get into the bizarre nature of writing a letter to Russia to talk about about defense issues.
Well, duh! What did you and the other sheeple who supported and voted for this fake expect? Change?? Well, you got it. He's in way over his head - an empty suit only good with a teleprompter. I despise his arrogance and his naivete is glaring like fireworks. Just hope the economy survives long enough to give him the bum's rush out of the White House in 4 years. He's a disgrace and an embarrassment to the world. Maybe he can get a job in Hollywood when we run him out of the capital.
"he invaded because intelligence from across the globe indicated Saddam had WMDs;"
The same intelligence would tie WMDs to many countries, let me know when those invasions start.
"Its very "Michael Moore-esque" to claim that Bush somehow justified invading Iraq via 9/11."
Are you saying we would have invaded, regardless? Be careful how you answer. If you say no, then my original point is validated. If you say yes, you've basically admitted that Iraq was our primary target from the start.
Anon,
You are right. Obama could have have written the stimulus package himself and taken out all of the Dem goodies and made a real centrist and effective policy. If he had done that, he would have cut the Repulbicans off at the knees and his favorable ratings would be about 80%. Instead, he left the writing to Nancy Pelosi and got a pork filled Dem wish list that is destroying his support among moderate Republicans and Independent. He also could have threatened to veto to budget if the earmarks weren't removed. Even now, he has a 60+% approval rating versus Pelosis single digit one. Congress could have never shut the government down in the name of earmarks. Again, Obama could have taken a huge issue for Republicans off of the table.
Why did he not do those two things? The answer I think is that he thinks that he can blame the Republicans for the economic crisis and is using the crisis to get through as radical agenda as possible. Since he thinks people will blame Bush for the economy, it doesn't matter if he makes things worse. It only matters that he get his agenda through.
"Why did he not do those two things?"
Well Article I, Section I of the Constitution, explains why he didn't write the law.
"Are you saying we would have invaded, regardless? Be careful how you answer. If you say no, then my original point is validated. If you say yes, you've basically admitted that Iraq was our primary target from the start."
Clinton and Gore argued for the danger of Iraqi WMDs in 1998 and launched Dessert Fox where we bombed Iraq until they agreed to resuming UN inspections. We had basically been at war with Iraq since 1991. It couldn't go on as it was. The US either had to give up and go home or invade.
RG:
"If you say no, then my original point is validated. If you say yes, you've basically admitted that Iraq was our primary target from the start. "
---Don't you just love liberals? Pay no attention to logic, everything validates their world view.
See: Global warming. Temp goes up: global warming. Temp goes down: global warming. Temp stays same: global warming!
"Are you saying we would have invaded, regardless?"
Bush invaded for many reasons: threat of WMDs; genocidal dictator; flaunting UN sanctions; and, of course, Saddam harboring anti-US terrorists. That was the rationale, thats why we invaded. 9/11 was not one of them.
You lose, RG. 9/11 was not one of them.
"Why did he not do those two things?"
Well Article I, Section I of the Constitution, explains why he didn't write the law."
That is a stupid answer. The President, especially a new one, has the power to shape the agenda and run circles around Congress. He also has the veto threat and the ability to make a coherent message. It is called leadership. Falling back to saying "the President doesn't write the laws, the Congress does" shows a complete lack of understanding of how the process actually works.
And he might be right, the Bush presidency was a disaster and because Americans have come to like things in easily digestible soundbytes, it is easier to believe that Bush policies "caused" the financial collapse, rather than that American policies for the last 25 years caused it.
The only reason why this might not work is that OBama has so relentlessly claimed that his stimulus would work within 12-18 months, so if the results don't materialize in terms of companies beginning to hire again and the market stabilizing, then people will feel they have been had. Maybe.
I personally realized how dumb most Americans have become when Bush was reelected for a second term, and by a much bigger margin.
Obama might also "succeed" because he promises cookies and toys to almost everyone, since everyone except the very, very poor and the very, very rich considers themselves middle class, they're going to think all these goodies are for them. By the time the bill comes due, it might be too late.
Interesting times as they say.
PS, RG, on your fallacious "Reagan tax cuts argument":
http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=676
and also
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/feb/04/20040204-084711-8539r/.
QED, hippie.
HR Guy 17:
"Oh, by the way, the tax rates are lower than they have been at any time in US history and look where it got us."
You forgot the mention the collapse of the real estate market. That overwhelmed the effects of the Bush tax cuts. The attitude of the Ds in charge of the pertinent committees was, 'we're going to push forward [with some cockeyed idea of] social equality for all - the ability anyone (and everyone) to somehow own their house. Now, when we try to hold people like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd accountable for their lack of oversite in their committees, or their benfiting from key players in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or their blocking the Bush admin's efforts to reign in the craziness at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before the real estate implosion, what do we get in return from the know nothings? Some kind of reactive obfuscation - the so called 'blame Bush' for everything idiocy that has prevailed and subsumed anything resembling normal thought and argumentation on the liberal field for about the past 6 or 7 years.
Now do you suppose we could actually have an intelligent conversation about economics without having a knee jerk comment about Bush (or Obama?) That would be REALLY refreshing and unexpected!
Don't you just love Basic Fact? Change the topic to global warming, when asked a simple question.
"The President, especially a new one, has the power to shape the agenda and run circles around Congress."
But they expressly cannot write laws, which was your original point.
RG:
"NYC wasn't nuked under them either"
Do you really think the national security issues were the same under Carter and Clinton? Oh my...do we really have to start at square one here?
Basic, your first link does nothing to discount that Reagan signed those tax increases. And your second article was from 2004, before the national debt really began increasing. In other words, you spent a lot of time digging for those links that contained nothing of value to your argument.
RG:
"NYC wasn't nuked under them either"
Do you really think that the national security issues are the same as they were under Clinton and Carter? Wow, do we have to start at square one here?
Gotta love RG, can't understand a metaphor when he sees it. Oh well, I guess I'll write at his 3rd-grade-level and leave out the allusions to other liberal illogical conclusions.
And don't you love how he himself avoids talking about his original subject, because he knows he just got owned?
round...and round...we...go
"Do you really think the national security issues were the same under Carter and Clinton? Oh my...do we really have to start at square one here?'
Figuring the Cold War was underway during Carter's time, and that the Trade Center was attacked in '93, I'd say that the security issues weren't radically different.
RG:
"But they expressly cannot write laws"
Ah, but they can promise to spend and get a compliant Congress to actually spend trillions of dollars we don't have in the teeth of a recession. Hmmph! At least John Maynard Keynes advocated govt. supluses in good times and govt. deficit spending in tough times...what do Obama-ites recommend and why? Who knows?! As others have said, you cannot create jobs out of thin air and the government cannot employ all - oh, unless you want to become a 3rd rate 3rd World country...oh, is that the end game?
"Gotta love RG, can't understand a metaphor when he sees it."
I do recognize generalizations and non-sequiters when I see them. And you still haven't answered my original question, if 9/11 didn't happen, do we invade Iraq?
Well, RG, I can't predict alternate history, but given that 9/11 was not a reason we invaded, and considering Clinton had thought about it, too, yes we do invade Iraq.
Which, of course, completely disporves your argument that we "invaded Iraq b/c of 9/11."
"I do recognize generalizations and non-sequiters when I see them. "
RG baby, if this were true, you wouldn't be a liberal.
Hi-yo!
"Which, of course, completely disporves your argument that we "invaded Iraq b/c of 9/11." "
Where was that my argument? My original point was to laugh at your claims about Dems using a crisis to promote social engineering. This is ironic, because you appear to be a vocal supporter of using global crises like 9/11 to promote democracy across the globe.
RG, proving he is a liberal:
"This is ironic, because you appear to be a vocal supporter of using global crises like 9/11 to promote democracy across the globe."
Um, since 9/11 was not part of the rationale for Iraq. You lose.
p.s. RG, I never said we should be "using global crises like 9/11 to promote democracy across the globe."
What I said was I am interventionist, and I believe that the US has a duty to stop things like genocide in other nations. Never said we needed a 9/11 excuse. Some people, like yourself, are isolationists, which is a different argument.
Get the facts right, kid.
The Democrats are absolutely using the economic crisis as a way to get their social engineering policies enacted. They've already gotten money for any number of programs that have been on life support for several years as well as created whole new classes of government dependents and whole new entitlements.
The Democrats are doing EXACTLY what the Republicans did, Cheney used 9/11 as the excuse to get his draconian view of executive power enshrined into law by using the public's fear of terrorists as leverage.
Precedent has always been the worst thing about the Bush presidency, all the negative precedents that were set, which Congress and the public rolled over on, are set now. All of the negative tactics and strategies that were used during the Bush years are there for the taking.
Obama is using Karl Rove's playbook because Rove's playbook was successful right up until the point when the reality of Bush's failures simply could not be denied any longer. And this playbook will be successful for Obama right up until the reality of his failed policies cannot be ignored or denied any longer.
That's the true legacy of George W. Bush.
Anon, I'm on this subject, please save your making up rationales and attacks on Bush. We can have a bush thread, or we can have an obama thread. Your hackneyed and ill-supported bush bashing is not in my target zone right now.
http://moelane.com/2009/03/13/obamas-power-grab-on-signing-statements/
Ah, hypocrisy, thy name is NotMyPresident.
"Um, since 9/11 was not part of the rationale for Iraq."
"The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq are the ones who attacked us on Sept. 11," Bush said.
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Bush_Insurgents_in_Iraq_same_as_0712.html
"Um, since 9/11 was not part of the rationale for Iraq. You lose."
What a dick - I'm just SURE America would've LINED up to invade Iraq without the lies spent by Bush after 9/11...
And ps - have you been to your soup kitchen today? Howe about the bread line?
Idiot...
"Warpublican Review, being an idiot:
"He has?"
--Where is stock market? Where is the unemployment rate? YES HE HAS."
The stock market is downtown near wall street - you can't miss is - idiot...
And tell, is, sir dick, what would the unemployment rate be had the old lame war hero won?
"I'd say that the security issues weren't radically different."
Hmm, except the terrorists have been greatly encouraged to commit larger and larger scale atrocities, by relative inaction and general malaise and ignorant, ostrich like behavior. For instance, Clinton could have killed Bin Laden and failed to do so.
And then there's the decreasing size of a nuclear bomb and Moore's law which basically observes that computing power/speed basically doubles every two years.
And you think we are where we were 30 years ago under Carter? Who did you say you voted for? Note to self...
basic fart says: "Bush invaded for many reasons: threat of WMDs; genocidal dictator; flaunting UN sanctions; and, of course, Saddam harboring anti-US terrorists. That was the rationale, thats why we invaded."
No - those were the lies Bush used to invade - do the math after the invasion, how many Anti-Us Terrorists did we round up - those in the Iraq BEFORE the invasion - about the same number as WMDs?
Genocidal dictator? Since when have we ever had a problem with THOSE?
"For instance, Clinton could have killed Bin Laden and failed to do so."
Hell, he could've nuked every Muslim nation, as well - he failed to do that too... BTW - Bush could've ALSO killed bin Laden before 9/11 - he just didn't care...
wrong again, RG. BUsh was stating that the insurgents working in Iraq---post-invasion---were part of the terrorist forces of 9/11, which is true: Al-Queda used the post-invasion as an excuse to go in and start killing American troops.
Trying to claim that Bush's quote is about the rationale to invade Iraq is just plain wrong.
Next!
Warpublican, you are truly a clown.
Keep calling them lies, I'll keep backing my argument up with facts. DailyKos will be on par with Pravda when the dust settles, kiddo.
lol Warpublican. because we've gone to war in Iraq previously without 9/11
oh wait, what was that thinkg called ? The Gulf War? Early 90s did you say?
Warpublican=clown.
Obama=Epic fail.
NEXT!
False, false, false. There wasn't any Al Quada in Iraq until Bush invaded and by most intelligence estimates most of Al Quada Iraq wasn't part of Bin Laden's network.
Even the U.S. intelligence forces finally admitted that the vast majority of insurgents were not foreign terrorists but were Iraqis.
It is obvious to anyone who isn't totally deluded that there was a purposeful and very successful campaign to muddy the water between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, how else do you think a majority of Americans in 2003-2004 believed there was evidence that Iraq and Hussein was involved in 9/11?
However, this isn't a thread about the Iraq War but about Obama's over rosy economic predictions.
I would suggest to any Republicans out there that continuing to defend the Iraq War as anything but a bad strategy poorly executed is going to further condemn them to the wilderness.
BBBBasic Fact says: "---Correction: the 90s were under a Republican congress that didn't allow Clinton to spend us into oblivion, and had an economy thriving on the cut taxes of the Reagan years. Clinton didn't fuck it up. Bully for him."
Just so we understand - the solid economy of the 90s falls into Republican laps - but the same Republicans - who had chairmanships on EVERY military and intelligence committee had NO responsibility during al qaeda's ascendency? Pretty funny - and then, the internet bubble and economic slowdown of 2000-01 - is back to being Clinton's fault - right?
"lol Warpublican. because we've gone to war in Iraq previously without 9/11
oh wait, what was that thinkg called ? The Gulf War? Early 90s did you say?"
Right - but never invaded - even as we knew ALL ABOUT Saddam's evil side -hmmmmm - I wonder why we never finished THAT job? Still you EPICLY FAILED to answer the question - not surprising as you're probably Palin's retard baby playing with the keyboard....
Anon, not following me:
"There wasn't any Al Quada in Iraq until Bush invaded"
---agreed. That's why it wasn't used as an excuse to invade.
"and by most intelligence estimates most of Al Quada Iraq wasn't part of Bin Laden's network.
Even the U.S. intelligence forces finally admitted that the vast majority of insurgents were not foreign terrorists but were Iraqis."
----backing up what I said: Al Queda came in post-invasion. When Bush said these are the same people involved in 9/11, he wasn't lying at all; Al-Queda, which took credit for 9/11, was in Iraq post-invasion. Case closed.
And, in any event, RG is owned, because he still has not pointed to a shred of evidence indicating Bush declared that Iraq was for 9/11.
"It is obvious to anyone who isn't totally deluded that there was a purposeful and very successful campaign to muddy the water between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, how else do you think a majority of Americans in 2003-2004 believed there was evidence that Iraq and Hussein was involved in 9/11?"
---Um, how about a simlplistic media who thinks that anything in the mid-east is terrorist v. Israel? How about an attempt post-invasion by Michael Moore to smear Bush?
"I would suggest to any Republicans out there that continuing to defend the Iraq War as anything but a bad strategy poorly executed is going to further condemn them to the wilderness."
---It was poorly executed---at the start. Note to the slow: The Surge worked. We won in Iraq.
lol warpublican. Ad hominem attacks, and a silly question off topic:
"Just so we understand - the solid economy of the 90s falls into Republican laps"
---yep. congress controlled the power of the purse.
"- but the same Republicans - who had chairmanships on EVERY military and intelligence committee had NO responsibility during al qaeda's ascendency?"
---Nope. Because who is the commander in chief.....hmmm...lemme check....Clinton.
"Pretty funny - and then, the internet bubble and economic slowdown of 2000-01 - is back to being Clinton's fault - right?"
---nope, never blamed him for it. keep up with me here, kiddo. I know you're the NYU kid screaming about a facilitator, but take off your earmuffs and listen sometimes.
"Keep calling them lies, I'll keep backing my argument up with facts."
Good luck with THAT one - "The CIA had evidence Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction six months before the 2003 US-led invasion but was ignored by a White House intent on ousting Saddam Hussein, a former senior CIA official said, according to CBS.
Tyler Drumheller, who headed CIA covert operations in Europe during the run-up to the Iraq war, said intelligence opposing administration claims of a WMD threat came from a top Iraqi official who provided the US spy agency with other credible information. The source "told us that there were no active weapons of mass destruction programs," Drumheller said in a CBS interview to be aired on Sunday on the US network's 60 Minutes."
We'll have to agree to disagree since I think it was a purposeful campaign by the Bush Administration to tie Saddam Hussein to 9/11 in order to gain public support for the invasion.
I will admit I did not think the surge would work and it has, however that to me doesn't come close to any kind of "winning"...the only way to win was not to play in the first place.
The ROI on the Iraq War can never justify it, in my opinion. No matter what our stated and unstated goals were in Iraq, there were many, many better, less risky and much less costly ways of getting all of those goals accomplished.
""- but the same Republicans - who had chairmanships on EVERY military and intelligence committee had NO responsibility during al qaeda's ascendency?"
---Nope. Because who is the commander in chief.....hmmm...lemme check....Clinton."
Correct - so you take their silence on bin laden and islamic terrorism during the mid to late 90s (and they knw ALL about it) as deference for the CinC - and out of such respect, they fought to have him impeached for lying to Ken Starr about a consensual blow job? And all this as bin laden was preparing for global jihad?
They served us well!
Fair enough Anon. I do consider it winning, and a win. Iraq has a stable government and below-level violence. I would do it again---but of course, with more troops.
"The CIA had evidence Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction six months before the 2003 US-led invasion but was ignored by a White House intent on ousting Saddam Hussein, a former senior CIA official said, according to CBS."
---yep, one disgruntled employee, despite other reports that directly contradicted it. And reports from every other major European power stating that they did as well.
And let's not forget that wasn't the only reason for going in: genocidal dictator. UN regulation flaunting. harboring anti-us terrorists.
Warpublican, you lose.
Warpublican, rewriting history:
"Correct - so you take their silence on bin laden and islamic terrorism during the mid to late 90s (and they knw ALL about it) as deference for the CinC "
---actually, unlike the NY Times, they had respect for national security secrets.
"they fought to have him impeached for lying to Ken Starr about a consensual blow job?"
----correction: Slick Willy was impeached for lying under oath. Purgery. Oh yeah, that whole sexual harassment/abuse of power thing.
"They served us well!"
---lol. compared to the democrats in congress and NotMyPresident, they're practically the Roman Senate.
Warpublican, you lose.
"And let's not forget that wasn't the only reason for going in: genocidal dictator. UN regulation flaunting. harboring anti-us terrorists.
Warpublican, you lose."
I do? Funny - it doesn't feel that way: America rejected Bush (and the republican party) and the war, and Obama is taking the troops out (for the most part). That means I won...
Warpublican, using Obama math:
"America rejected Bush"
---only 2 terms! what a rejection
"and the war,"
--notice how the democrats stopped talking about the war in the last 1.5 years? When we won it? I wodner why....
"Obama is taking the troops out"
--nope. He's leaving them there.
Warpublican, you lose.
""Correct - so you take their silence on bin laden and islamic terrorism during the mid to late 90s (and they knw ALL about it) as deference for the CinC "
---actually, unlike the NY Times, they had respect for national security secrets."
So much respect, they sat like a deer in the headlights on 9/11 -
"they fought to have him impeached for lying to Ken Starr about a consensual blow job?"
----correction: Slick Willy was impeached for lying under oath. Purgery. Oh yeah, that whole sexual harassment/abuse of power thing. "
Interesting take on a perjury trap - but, yes, they got him - how'd that work out for the Republican party?
"They served us well!"
---lol. compared to the democrats in congress and NotMyPresident, they're practically the Roman Senate. "
Except for that whole 9/11 thing...say what you want about Billy or Obama (as of now) - he didn't loose 3000 Americans in one afternoon - as well as downtown manhattan..
Oh, I forget - that wasn't their fault - they were ONLY in charge of the congress and White House for 9 moths:
Republican Math: 9 months mean no responsibilty for 9/11 -
6 weeks - everything is Obama's fault...
""America rejected Bush"
---only 2 terms! what a rejection"
He can't even show his face in the country he liberated (without shoes being thrown) - or the one he destroyed (that would be America)
"and the war,"
--notice how the democrats stopped talking about the war in the last 1.5 years? When we won it? I wodner why...."
Obama never stopped talking about it - and the American people have never stopped hating it...
"Obama is taking the troops out"
--nope. He's leaving them there. "
No, he's not...
"So much respect, they sat like a deer in the headlights on 9/11"
--yep, they obviously knew it was coming and let it happen. Clearly. It wasn't a massive intelligence failure. All Republicans fault, deliberately.
"Interesting take on a perjury trap - but, yes, they got him - how'd that work out for the Republican party?"
---Considering they then won the white house and an even larger majority in Congress, pretty damn well, kiddo.
Also, I love how they trapped him into perjury, in your wee little mind. They controlled him! Made him do it!
"Except for that whole 9/11 thing...say what you want about Billy or Obama (as of now) - he didn't loose 3000 Americans in one afternoon - as well as downtown manhattan..."'
---Yes, Clinton just failed to recognize the threat for 8 years and left the federal agencies disjointed and not talking to each other. But 9/11 is now Bush's fault! you heard it here first, folks.
Obama math: abortions and grants to acorn= save the economy.
Democrat math: Economy tanking in September=vote Obama.
Warpublican, you lose. again.
"He can't even show his face in the country he liberated (without shoes being thrown)"
-----lmao. You mean a criminal attacks him, and that proves something? Wait, this is a democrat we're talking to.
"- or the one he destroyed (that would be America)"
---Nah, you liberals killed America off all by yourselves.
"Obama never stopped talking about it - and the American people have never stopped hating it..."
---lmao rofl. Obama shut the hell up about the war once it was obvious the surge was working. He just congratulated the marines for winning the war. what part of logic don't you get, kid?
"No, he's not..."
---lol. The troops are there to 2010. They will draw down, but not leave. Exactly as Bush had predicted.
Warpublican, you lose.
My last word on Iraq, it is going to be a lot more difficult for Obama to take the troops out and maintain the peace than he thinks.
Notice how there has been a pretty big uptick in violence in Iraq since the election, which nobody from the media is analyzing because the analysis would tend to show that violence is increasing as the various parties get ready to jockey for position amid a U.S. withdrawl.
To me this condemns both the Iraq War in the first place--the country is only stable because we have hundreds of thousands of troops there--and Obama's pie in the sky belief that he can pull out 2/3 of those troops with no negative consequences.
More delusional thinking.
After his first 50 days I am so relieved that I can proudly say I didn't vote for Obama. During the transition he seemed to be more moderate, and pragamatic than I expected, and I thought just maybe we would have a truly honest, smart, hard working President that would try and work with all Americans to get things on the right track and bring back a sense of honor and dignity to our politics. Then came inaguration day and the real Obama came out! Scare tactics to sink the economy deeper into recession to get his corrupt ,so called, stimulous bill passed with its barrels of pork, arm in arm with Queen Pelosi. A, not yet disastrous, but clearly weak foreign policy, complete betrayal of his promise to end earmarks/pork as he signed almost 9000 into law...out of sight. A budget with more debt, taxes, and spending then in the history of the world. Tax cheat after tax cheat appointed to his cabinet. The ineptness and weakness during his first 50 days takes us back to Jimmy Carter. It only took 50 days folks to proudly tell the entire world....I did not vote for Jimmy Obama!!!!!
The Democrats' crazed obsession with Bush has no end, it seems. It's like that old Susquehanna Hat Company skit by Abbot & Costello.
SeattleBruce, not sure you are still checking this but I have to say I have been entertained by this blog. I do appreciate your replies though and have many friends/debate partners who are either farther left than I or on the right side of the aisle. Not a legend in my own mind at all, just was tired of the rantings of mr BasicFacts.
My only point about the "dolt" comment was former Pres Bush was known to not be very curious or interested in understanding nuance, research, science, etc... He was the "Decider" but not an intellect. I do think he was a good politician but having been elected twice (sort of) by the smallest margins of victory in US electoral history hardly should have given him a "mandate". I think early on he was heavily influenced by Mr. Cheney and his "for us or against us" orientation. Life isn't that way in my humble opinion. Its all kinds of grey...
I do tend to be left of center some but I think like a lot of people, I would rather we have some debate on the things going on and being decided. I personally don't think either side of the aisle has it purely right. Lower taxes help but it also leaves a lot of people behind. Heavy regulation and high taxes stiffle job creation and eliminate innovation/incentives to achieve. Striking the right balance is not easy and getting it wrong can have unbelievable consequences (see current economic meltdown for argument against too much deregulation).
Not sure who the philosopher was but the statement "Societies are measured by how they treat their weakest members" has a nice ring to me. While I am a true believer in capitalism, greed is a human inevitability and is not good for everyone.
We have to watch this president and congress just like any other. Are they running amok right now with all our money, yes. Bush did too unfortunately. You can't deficit spend for ever, eventually that bill comes due.
All stuff you already knew anyway. Have a good day and thanks again for taking the time to read my rant.
PS Obama and smarts - I am by no means putting him on a pedestal. I hate idol worship. My personal feeling is everyone puts their pants on one leg at a time and all of us are fallable. I think he always planned on running for office so wanted to keep a small target to shoot at hence the lack of legislation. Basicfacts tried to make the point that all lawschool students graduate in 3 years. yes they do but not all of them also get an MBA at the same time. Doing one of them is hard enough, very few people try them concurrently...
As to the Kerry/Bush grades thing. Completely agree that lots of people do great in life without amazing grades (Einstein, Bill Gates?). A couple folks bashed Harvard in their comments and that is just silly. It consistently grades out at one of the top 5 institutions of higher learning in the US on almost any measure available (incoming class grades and test scores, % of students with jobs at graduation, etc...). Frankly, I want to know that the President of the United States is smarter than the average guy I can have a beer with at my local bar and Bush 43 didn't make me think that on a consistent basis. Some of that reaction might be to his folksy style but I would have thought in 8 years, he would have at least given one speech where I had to go look something up to understand what he was talking about... Maybe that was his gift, he could dumb it down enough for me to get it.
Like an oak in a fantasy.
The yellow
sand appears
in my mind
with a rumbling
and delicate
look; you call
me near a
sylvan hedge,
and everything
shines like a
taciturn wind.
Francesco Sinibaldi